Page 8 of Delta Force Defender

Because as far as Isaac was concerned, it was high time for an overdue reckoning.

Two

Running for her life was a lot like riding a bicycle.

It came back to her that easily. Like muscle memory the moment she heard the noise outside that night. The unmistakable sound of breaking glass followed by the ominous rush of flames igniting.

She’d been asleep, then awake and alert in an instant. She knew exactly what she had to do.

What she’d always known she would have to do, sooner or later.

Even if this time, she’d gotten complacent. She’d let herself imagine that she could be Caradine Scott forever. She’d started thinking of herself as Caradine and had assured herself that was a good thing. That she was well and truly in character. That it would be that much easier to hide the more fully she embraced her made-up life.

She’d done a lot more thanembraceit—but Caradine couldn’t let herself think about Isaac Gentry. Not now, while her world was literally on fire. Again. When she’d known better all along. From her very first night inGrizzly Harbor, when she’d walked down what passed for a road in the most remote and unlikely place that she’d been able to find, located the only bar on the island, and seen him.

Only him, though the bar had been full of locals making merry on that chilly fall night.

Caradine’s breath still deserted her in a rush every time she remembered it. Even now, in these crucial moments, when she should have been focused on other things. Like staying alive.

She’d pushed open the heavy door to the Fairweather, then found her way in out of the cold. And she’d gotten tangled up in Isaac Gentry when he looked up from the bar as surely as if he’d set a trap for her.

His gray eyes had found hers and held, like he’d been waiting for her all along.

And she’d known better. She’d always known how her time in Alaska—or anywhere, forever, until they finally caught her the way she knew they would—would end.

“It was always going to be exactly like this,” she muttered at herself as she rolled out of her bed.

Caradine was all too aware of what she needed to do now,no matter how gray Isaac Gentry’s freaking eyes were.

Hiseyesnever should have mattered in the first place.

She took nothing but the bag she kept packed and ready for precisely this purpose. She’d practiced a hundred times a year, at least. More, probably. The getting out of bed at the first sound, no matter when she’d gotten in it. The dressing in deliberate layers for any weather in less than ten seconds. Then out the window immediately, scrabbling down the side of her house the way she’d also practiced. Over and over again, night and day, in all kinds of weather and regardless of whether she felt like it, making use of the fact the café stood over the boardwalk and the water, but the rest of the building was setback into the hill. And though the town was built on an incline, there was nothing directly behind her.

That meant that no one could happen by and see who was at her back stairs. Or how many times she climbed out of her side window. A person would have to deliberately walk around to the back of the building to see her, and no one did. This was Alaska, where people respected one another’s privacy. Because that privacy often came heavily armed.

It was nice that it was summer, she thought, as she hit the ground twenty seconds after waking up. Cool, but not cold, and that weird almost-light she’d never quite gotten used to. She froze when she landed and assessed the situation. Half hoping it had been nothing but another bad dream—but no, she could see the glow of a real, honest-to-God fire flickering in the gloom, from the front of the restaurant.

There was no time to mourn her life here. There was no time to grieve for what she was losing in those flames.

It was never your life in the first place,she reminded herself fiercely. Not out loud, because she had to assume that whoever had started the fire was still here. Waiting for her to reveal herself.

She executed her plan, the way she’d practiced and plotted so many times. She slunk up the hill, trying to blend in with the shadows and make as little noise as possible, then caught the trail out to the community hot springs. She changed her shoes when she hit the cabin that made the hot springs accessible and comfortable all year round, grabbing the hiking boots she kept there for precisely this purpose, then kept going.

And she didn’t look back.

She told herself she didn’twantto look back, because the next step was all that mattered.

Caradine had worked out a lot of contingency plans over the years. If they came when it was winter and toocold to risk prolonged exposure outside. If an assailant broke into her apartment and attacked her, leaving her injured but still needing to disappear. If they got the drop on her and incapacitated her. If they reverted to type and used a fire—either meant to lure her out or meant to kill her.

They’d gone with the fire. Downstairs, in the middle of the night. That suggested they wanted to give her the chance to live long enough to be killed in a more personally upsetting fashion. And they weren’t chasing her out of town now, meaning whoever had started the fire probably figured she was still inside. They’d have to look for her body before they decided to look for her, and she could use that.

She would use everything she had, the way she always did.

The minute she was in the woods again on the trail that led away from town, she ran. Flat out. And she was grateful that she’d trained so hard all this time. So relentlessly, year after year, without any contact, because she’d known that sooner or later, it would come to this.

It would have been so easy to get soft. To let herself imagine she was safe, here on a faraway island with its very own collection of commandos. To shift over into complacency about this, too.

That was what they’d been banking on. Caradine had no doubt.

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