Page 76 of Delta Force Defender

And she was surprised when her sister reached over and put a hand on her leg, because that wasn’t like them. But then, Who were they now? Who knew what waslike themafter all this time?

Lindsay wasn’t a princess anymore. Caradine wasn’t a problem. Maybe they blamed each other, but they’d also always trusted each other more than anyone else, growing up. And their own family had always been treacherous and violent and sad, but they’d gone ahead and built new ones, anyway.

It felt simultaneously like some kind of betrayal and some kind of surrender to accept that she’d gone ahead and done exactly that in Alaska.

Built a life. Built a family. Built a place to live, and then lived there.

Despite her best efforts, she’d reallylivedthere.

Deep inside, something shifted inside her. Something she was terribly afraid might be hope, or its untrustworthy companion,what if.

What ifthey really could stop this?What ifshe was finally free?

“Julia,” Lindsay said then, fiercely, if quietly. “If they’re good men, that might mean that when it comes to it, they’ll make good choices. Proper choices. The way good people who believe in things do. Because good people don’t know what to fear. Not like we do.”

Caradine looked down at her sister’s hand on her leg.And had an almost overwhelming urge to cover it with her own. She didn’t. She was still herself, after all.

Even if her heart felt like someone else’s today. Someone softer. More sentimental.

Julia’s heart, maybe.

And the truth was, Caradine kind of liked knowing that it was still in there. Still beating, still hoping, still what-iffing. After all this time.

“I can’t leave Hawaii.” Lindsay’s gaze matched her voice, intense and serious. “Or I should say, I won’t. Because I would go and do whatever had to be done if I could. But there’s Luana, and she deserves better than this. Doesn’t she?”

And Caradine knew what her sister was asking of her. She raised her gaze to Lindsay’s, and for a moment, they just looked at each other, the way they had that night ten years ago. The way they had after Phoenix.

All that panic and terror. The bleakness. The rage. Their own kind of love mixed up in all of that, sure, dark and strained by the blood they carried in their veins. The bruises that would never heal. The running that never took them far enough away. The fear that they were just as bad as what they were hiding from.

And beneath it all, what had to happen next.

Caradine smiled. “It’s so sad you died out there on the run.”

“Not really that sad.” Lindsay smiled back. “I was always the weak link.”

“Less mouthy, anyway.”

“Probably had it coming.”

“You know you did.” Caradine nodded once, sealing the vow. “I doubt anyone even misses you.”

“Thank you,” Lindsay whispered.

The day was spent in negotiations and planning. Caradine and Lindsay caught up, haltingly at first, but then with more deep, helpless laughter over the things only they found funny.

Then, as evening approached, it all turned into something far more relaxed than a strategy session.

“This is Hawaii,” Lindsay said, smiling, when Koa’s family turned up. “You should have at least one night that’s nothing more than that.”

Koa’s family had come prepared to get their barbecue on. If Caradine pretended not to notice the ex–special forces military men looming around, she might have been tempted to imagine it really was just a family gathering on a lovely Hawaiian evening.

A little slice of heaven in the middle of the thick, green jungle, with the tropical sky above and the sea in the distance. So far away from her memories of Boston—and her life in Alaska, which didn’t involve all the soft, close, perfumed air that she’d gotten used to over the course of the day—it might as well have been a different world.

The different world she knew better than to let herself imagine. Even if that ribbon of hope deep inside her seemed to shimmer every time she breathed.

“Walk with me,” Isaac said, appearing out of nowhere behind her, out in the yard. Caradine had been leaning against the SUV and staring up at the changing colors of the sky and the clouds that looked like sails.

“I’m not sure that I want to walk with you,” Caradine replied.

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