Page 94 of Delta Force Defender

Griffin launched into a breakdown of active missions, including a developing situation in Brazil that everyone was hoping wouldn’t blow up.

It occurred to Isaac then, walking away from the Pentagon with as little interest in looking back as he’d had when he’d left the service, that of all the things he’dworried about over the past four days, Alaska Force wasn’t one of them.

He’d offered explanations to men who required salutes. He’d explained himself to men who’d declined to introduce themselves. Mostly, he’d worried about Caradine. And throughout the process he’d had absolutely no doubt that his business was in safe hands. That the people he’d hired could take care of it themselves.

Meaning that, after all this time, this overcompensating workaholic could maybe let go a little.

A notion that might have felt revolutionary if he’d known where Caradine was.

“Do we think Brazil is going to heat up?” he asked. And rubbed at the back of his neck, because he had the feeling he already knew the answer.

Griffin sighed. “Oz thinks we should send a team, but there’s no way of telling how long we’ll have to be there if we do. Typical quagmire.”

“Okay.” Isaac moved swiftly to get around a group of tourists. “Let me think about who we can send down there on an open-ended op.” It was a different math these days, now that the better part of his first string had personal lives back in Alaska to consider. He still wasn’t used to it. “No fires to put out?”

“None whatsoever.”

Isaac didn’t want to ask, but he’d scrolled through all the messages on his phone. He’d checked all his voice mails. She hadn’t contacted him, which wasn’t a surprise.

It was another kick in the gut, but it wasn’t asurprise.

“Where is she?” he made himself ask.

He thought of the way she’d closed her eyes and put her battered face in the crook of his neck. He figured he’d carry that with him.

Griffin paused. “She didn’t tell you?”

“How would she do that? With telepathy? They don’t allow that in the Pentagon.”

And when the icy, emotionless sniper laughed, Isaac gritted his teeth.

“She’s still in Boston, though not in the safe house,” Griffin told him. “She’s giving press conferences from the Four Seasons.”

***

It was entirely too easy to slip past Caradine’s security, such as it was. And even easier to break into her hotel room.

The same way he had in that little bed-and-breakfast in Maine.

Isaac had attempted to cool off his temper by flying commercial up to Boston. It was good to remind himself that not everything was private jets and the most restricted halls of the Pentagon. It was even better to spend time around all the regular people who didn’t know what evil lurked in the world, who had no idea what he did to combat it, and to remember that there were good reasons he did what he did.

Better still, the hours of inconvenience and overcrowding had allowed him to catch up on what he’d missed over the past few days. He’d read all the headlines in theBoston Globeabout Jimmy Sheeran’s arrest ten years after his death, Julia Sheeran’s escape all those years ago, and her sister’s subsequent death, and flicked through all the old articles they referenced from back then.

But he was most interested in now.

In Julia Sheeran herself, notably blond and pale in all the coverage of her, which the cynic in him couldn’t help but note made the beating she’d taken all the more noticeable. She’d stood outside the FBI building in Chelsea, leaning on the arm of an attorney as if she were too weak to stand. She’d been wearing pastels, as she spoke in a trembling voice about how scared, yet determined, she was.

Caradine in pastels. Caradine making publicstatements in a soft, shaking voice. Caradine weak and trembling orscared.

He had a lot of follow-up questions.

Isaac made his way into the hotel suite, silently. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark, then he made his way to the foot of yet another bed where she slept, hard.

With one hand under her pillow where he felt certain she still kept her gun.

He couldn’t have said how long he watched her. Or when her breathing changed.

She woke in a rush in the next moment and sat up straight—one telltale hand sliding beneath her pillows, confirming his suspicions.

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