Page 98 of Delta Force Defender

She nodded as if it hurt her, and not because of the injuries she’d sustained.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, her voice rough.

And when she dropped her hands and sat back on her heels, he felt grief plow into him again, black and bright and blinding.

“Caradine,” he said again, like her name could make the difference here.

Like it was still her name. Or had ever been.

“Isaac.” She said it in that same rough way that sounded like a sob. That felt like one inside of him. That he knew he would carry with him, always, like too many other things he didn’t want to look at. She shook her head, her blue eyes filling. “I already said good-bye to you.”

And later, he had no idea how he left, only that he did.

He staggered out into the hallway and alerted her security detail that they sucked. Hard.

“I didn’ttryto get past you,” he growled. “I walked right up to her door and let myself in.”

He called Blue in the safe house and ordered him to find and manage a far better security force to keep her safe.

“You got it, boss,” Blue said. “Are you—?”

But Isaac hung up before he could ask the question. And he didn’t call Templeton or Jonas, who wouldn’t accept that kind of nonresponse.

He found himself in the Public Garden in the dark. There was music coming from somewhere, and he was vaguely aware of people moving on the dark paths, but all he saw was Caradine.

That’s the only kind of love you understand. The kind you lose.

God, he wanted to fight... something. Anything.

Everything.

I love you, Isaac.

He took a breath, and then he called Griffin.

“I’m going to take the Brazil job myself,” he said. “And I’m leaving tonight. Now. I want to be in Manaus by morning.”

“We’re talking about a month down there, potentially,” Griffin argued, sounding less than his usual icy self. “Maybe two.”

“I’m headed for the jet,” Isaac told him shortly,because there was no room for debate. There was only the next fight, the longer and more complicated, the better. Because what he loved most died, and so he saved what he could. The things he didn’t love but could help. As if that could make up for it. As if somehow, that might make him whole. “Make sure it’s ready.”

Twenty-five

It was getting toward the end of August when Isaac finally returned to Grizzly Harbor.

Though summer in Alaska after almost two months in the Amazon felt a whole lot like the dead of winter. He actually almost shivered while walking across the tarmac in Juneau. As a native-born Alaskan, he was appalled.

He’d immersed himself completely in the tricky situation he’d had to monitor and guide toward a fruitful resolution down there, relying on texts and the occasional e-mail to keep him updated about what was happening at the office. That was the only takeaway he cared to acknowledge from earlier in the summer—that Alaska Force ran smoothly.

Whether he was obsessively monitoring it or not.

And if relying on infrequent texts cut down on his friends’ and colleagues’ ability to ask him extraneous questions about his personal life, that was more than all right with him.

The seaplane he took from Juneau delivered him into Fool’s Cove with a showy jump or two on the water, letting him get a good look at the place he’d called home for years now. The home he’d built for himself and had made into a haven for men like him who didn’t fit anywhere else. The cabins set into the rocky hillside, which was already starting to look like the coming fall. The fog draped over the mountain and dancing through the trees.

That was the thing about Alaska. No matter how roughed up he was, no matter what he’d lost, it always felt like home.

When he jumped down to the dock, the cool air smelled like woodsmoke and salt, and the slap of it against his face made him think about smiling—which was more than the humidity in Brazil had done. He slung his bag over his shoulder and climbed up the stairs to the lodge, happy to see that everywhere he looked, everything seemed to be just as he’d left it.

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