Page 93 of Delta Force Defender

And all he could think about was running through that long tunnel, in that same frozen state he’d been in when he’d gotten that call weeks back. When he’d taken that helicopter flight into Grizzly Harbor to find her restaurant charred.

“I thought you were dead,” he gritted out. “Again.”

“Then you’d really know what to do,” she said, and her voice was thicker then. Her words slurred. Adrenaline was draining away and turning into shock, he could tell. She tried to smile. To stand up straighter. “You do like your suffering, Gentry.”

This time, when he lunged forward, he caught her in his arms before she crumpled into a heap on the floor.

“I’m notswooning,” she said, sounding disgruntled and faintly horrified. “If you tell anyone I fainted, I’ll kill you. As soon as I can stand up again.”

“Noted,” Isaac said gruffly. “Now shut up.”

Her lips curved as her eyes fluttered shut. And Isaac stayed where he was, cradling her in his arms in a way she would never have allowed him to do if she were in complete control. He smoothed her dark hair back from her face, taking care not to touch any of the cuts or bruises or red, angry swelling that made him want to storm across the lobby and finish the job she’d started.

She let out a breath as if she’d been holding it in a long time.

Isaac stayed where he was while time flattened out and lost all meaning again. The way it had when he’d been in that tunnel, running to find her. The way it had when he’d been sixteen and had been pulled out of school to discover everything he knew was changed forever. Grief and love, panic and joy, all of them fused together and hummed in him like so many sides of the same coin.

And all the while, this woman who lied to his facewith glee, deliberately misled him, and was affronted when he helped her turned her face toward him and snuggled in closer, breathing him in like he was the only thing that had ever mattered to her or ever would.

Isaac knew he would pay for that, too.

But not right now. Not here.

“Incoming,” Jonas said, tapping his comm unit. “Sirens blaring.”

Soon enough, too soon, Isaac had to tear his eyes away from his woman yet again. He had to hand her over to the paramedics, though she looked fragile and vulnerable and it made him want to break things with his hands, because she would hate to think anyone saw her like that.

And then, though he had no interest in any of it the way he normally did, he had to suck up and surrender himself to official business in the form of the deeply unimpressed federal government. Because he was the head of Alaska Force, not the former Julia Sheeran’s boyfriend, and it was high time he remembered that.

Or better yet, acted like it.

Twenty-four

It took days.

Isaac had spent most of his career building his relationships with officials for use in situations like this. Often, he worked magic in tight spots, thanks to those relationships. But even he couldn’t wave away a decade-old mass murder, the five-year-old murders in Phoenix, Jimmy Sheeran’s new face and rise to criminal prominence after his supposed death, or the ten years Caradine and her sister had spent on the run.

Much less Caradine’s obvious preference that Lindsay be officially declared dead—and therefore free, he understood.

He sat in briefing after briefing, up and down the food chain. He called in favors. He played games he’d always been good at but that seemed little more than hollow now. He did his best to control his impatience and focus on the end game—that being Caradine and Lindsay free and clear and no longer forced to run or hide, unless thatwas what they wanted—when allhewanted was three seconds alone with her.

Because he wanted to know what the hell she’d meant.You do like your suffering, Gentry.

It ate at him.

Four days later, after he’d debriefed and bargained, declined the usual employment offers, and reminded himself why he was glad he was out of government work these days, he was finally released from custody.

Not that anyone had called itcustody, of course, even when they’d issued him an invitation to fly south to the Pentagon and had thoughtfully provided him with armed transport to hurry him along.

He walked out of the building and squinted in the summer swelter of Arlington, Virginia, still happy to have left his former life behind. He liked his life less classified and with less bureaucracy. He fished out the phone that had been confiscated for two days and monitored for the next two, and called into Fool’s Cove.

“The rest of the team got released yesterday,” Griffin told him once the line was secured. “They kept them all in Boston, so I’ll send you the coordinates to the safe house they’re staying in while they wait for you to finish doing the dance.”

“I hate dancing.”

“You can dance until the music stops,” Griffin replied. “Everything here is under control.”

“The music ended a while ago,” Isaac said shortly as he walked toward the Metro station, some ten minutes away. “Give me the highlights.”

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