Page 15 of Boomer
She swallowed and stared hard at the highway lines.
“Boomer,” she said softly, more plea than warning. “I don’t even know how to deal with this.” There. It slipped out, quiet and raw and true.
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was an explanation. “I got deployed. Black op. Out of the blue. No access to my phone until I was back on US soil. I should’ve found a way to reach you. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
She felt his words land inside her like dropped stones. What was she supposed to say to that?
A part of her wanted to clutch her anger tighter to use it as armor, to stay safe inside the lines she’d drawn. But another part, the part that hadhopedwhen she saw his name on that text, the part that had waited just long enough before giving up, that parthurt.
Here he was. Six inches away. Warm. Solid. Real. It had been out of his control. But now there was the complication that they were working together. On the clock, not leisurely sightseeing moments.
She wanted to let go of the hurt, slide sideways into all the things he made her feel the two times they were in Colombia.
But his not showing up made her remember that she was still a woman who’d learned, more than once, that losing control meant losingeverything.
So she pressed her lips together, kept her hands steady on the wheel, and said nothing.
But her heart was already betraying her, and he was doing what he did best. No pressure, no push, just patience. Somehow, that was more devastating than him getting loud.
3
The city wasquiet in that way only Lisbon could be after midnight, breathing slow, humming low, like it knew how to sleep with one eye open. Streetlamps cast long amber cones over the slick cobblestones, and the river beyond the docks whispered against its moorings, carrying secrets out to sea.
The tires hummed against ancient stones, the kind that remembered empires. Lisbon’s waterfront shimmered to her left, white moonlight rippling across the Tagus, while egrets slept like white feathered silhouettes over theAlcântaradocks, motionless at this hour, their shadows thrown long and thin across the ground.
Taylor turned off her headlights two blocks early. Habit. Not protocol.
The compound wasn’t listed on any civilian registry. Not under MAOC-N, not under any NATO designation. But the path to it was etched into her muscle memory, veer right past the shuttered fish market, cross the graffiti-tagged pedestrian bridge, then follow the narrow lane that ran like a scar along the base of theAlcântaraviaduct. A dead end for anyone who didn’t know better.
She braked softly in front of the gate. It blended into the stonework like it had been poured in with the foundation of the city itself. The keypad blinked once, scanning her badge, and the camera above it whirred to life with a faintclick, its lens catching the shine of her eyes.
After three seconds, the reinforced gate sighed open.
Inside, theAlcântaraCompound, or as everyone referred to it, the Lisbon House, was all function over form. A long two-story structure stretched along the north edge, its facade a dull sand-washed gray, the kind of color that wouldn’t stand out on satellite. Solar panels glinted faintly along the roof. Satellite dishes rose like listening ears from a communications bank farther back. The flags of eight nations hung limp on poles near the main entrance, catching only the faintest wind from the river.
To the left, she caught a glimpse of a gym, windows fogged from inside, music pulsing faintly through cracked ventilation. Beyond that, a squat rec center shared space with a kitchen, and tucked behind it, the pool, where off-duty testosterone often forgot the word “off.”
A breeze swept in through the open window, smelling of diesel, salt, and something older. She could still hear her brother’s voice on that pier not far from here, asking her on a rare visit if she would always look out for his son. Her heart contracted. Could still see Ansel’s small hands wrapped around her thumb the day she brought him here as a tribute to her brother.
The compound didn’t care about any of it. The compound wanted results.
Her thoughts hadn’t quieted since Boomer’s apology, and his magnetic, inescapable presence was still there, heavy, distracting. All heat and pull.
She hadn’t responded. Couldn’t. Now the silence between them felt charged with everything she hadn’t let herself feel, guilt, frustration…not just anger, but something deeper. Something bruised and aching. She had the unsettling suspicion that this man, with those big, gorgeous hands, could do something about it.
She parked in her assigned spot, still chewing on the space between too much and not enough. She grabbed her radio. “What is your ETA?”
“Ten minutes,” one of the drivers said. She was aware the laden vans had dropped behind her car. Her badge was clipped somewhere, jacket, maybe her belt, she had lost track, her fingers fumbling in the low light. The exhaustion hit like a second wave, and she bent slightly to check the floor of the car, brushing at her coat hem.
Before she could make sense of it, her door opened. She startled, just a fraction, then looked up. Boomer stood there, backlit by the floodlights, eyes steady on hers, one hand braced on the door frame, the other casually extended, offering.
Her pulse stuttered.
It wasn’t the gesture itself. It was theeaseof it. That unthinking Southern grace. He wasn’t showing off. He wasn’t even trying. It was just…who he was. A man who handled explosives and cleared rooms with tactical precision and still knew how to open a car door for a woman with ingrained manners.
Her gaze flicked to his hands.
Big, beautiful, steady. The same hands that wired breaching charges. That dismantled IEDs. That had once held up a blanket peppered with holes so she had some privacy to dress on a plane full of tough operators.
