Page 98 of Special Ops Seduction

And suddenly she was horribly aware of her skin.Everywhere. She was afraid to investigate, for fear that prickling feeling was actually the beginnings of those sores she’d seen all over Sowande earlier.

“What’s the updated estimate?” Jonas asked, sounding completely detached.

If she wasn’t already ridiculously in love with that man, that would have pushed her over the edge. Because the question was so unemotional it allowed her to breathe. To get some air past the tight band that had suddenly taken over her chest. The great weight crushing her ribs.

“That depends,” Isaac replied. “Factors include the size of the subject and activity levels.”

No one said the next part. Because they all knew. The more activity, the more the blood pumped that poison all over their bodies.

And the smaller the body, the quicker all that infected blood would turn around and start causing trouble.

In a way, Bethan thought, it was clarifying.

“Spitball the window for me here,” she said, and she was proud that she, too, managed to sound nerveless. As if they were discussing a lunch order.

“Sowande says he was infected last night,” Isaac said. “Around elevenp.m.”

And there were too many silences on this comm unit today. Bethan stood there in Grand Central Terminal, surrounded by strangers, but she knew that her friends and colleagues were right there, in her ear. She knew their silence was fury. That they were all filled with the same impotent rage that she would feel if the situations were reversed, in any one of them.

No one called for a moment of silence, because that wasn’t who they were.

This is who I am, she thought, her eyes catching on a little girl who reminded her of herself, a thousand years ago. Clinging to the hand of an important and busy-looking father. A little girl who grew up and became her own hero.A little girl who went from gazing up in awe at her father in uniform to wearing her own.

Bethan didn’t want to die. But all things being equal, her life had been pretty great.

She couldn’t feel the poison that was inside her even now, killing her where she stood. If asked, she would have happily signed up for a far more active death than this, with something invisible eating at her from the inside.

But she had chosen her path a long time ago. She had become the soldier she wanted to be, and then more. She’d rejected all the ceilings and limitations that others had put before her, and while she might not have joined the air force like her father, she had damn well figured out how to fly.

If she’d known how short a time she was going to have here, she would have figured out how to love her family a little better, a lot sooner. But still, she’d had the wedding. She’d had that week, and it occurred to her now, standing here in this unknowing crowd, that she’d been so busy telling herself she was playing a role in front of her family that she’d never stopped to consider that maybe she hadn’t been. That instead, it had been the first time she’d allowed them to really see her. Without her trying to prove anything. Without her trying to hurl her accomplishments in their faces, as if they were whom she was fighting.

All in all, she thought, she couldn’t regret a thing.

She scanned another quadrant, then stopped, dragging her gaze back to that little snag—

It was Jonas.

He didn’t speak into the comm unit. He didn’t come closer. He was a face in the crowd, nothing more, but she knew why he was there. Why he was letting her see him.

And they’d agreed.

So Bethan didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell him she loved him. She didn’t say,I fell in love with you a long, long time ago, sitting in tents in a makeshift base while we weredifferent people. She didn’t tell him how much she admired him. How he had been her hero even then, and more as the years passed. How often she’d thought of him while she’d trained to take her shot at Ranger School, and how much more he’d been in her head while she’d been in and somehow surviving.

And now he was her hero more than ever. The more she knew about him, the more she loved him.

Bethan couldn’t regret that, either.

Because they’d had this last week.

And if she’d learned anything, it was that trying to pretend she had no feelings was the weakness. Not the feelings themselves. Because what she felt made her feel stronger, not weaker.

Maybe she wished she’d understood that sooner, but on balance, she had nothing to complain about.

His gaze was so dark it hurt. And she was sure that he understood all those things she couldn’t say, because he always did.

They had been exposed hours ago, and they’d spent a lot of that time running around New York. Bethan likely had very little healthy time remaining.

They both understood that they were very likely saying good-bye.

---