Page 5 of Broken Trust
Elin’s pulse drummed in her throat. She curled her hands to keep them from shaking, and she had to lock her knees to keep herself from either collapsing or running to her former lover.
“Mason, do you have something you need to add?” Con’s sharp bark was an order to remain silent if she’d ever heard one.
“No, sir.”
She gulped against the rising tide of emotions threatening to knock her off her feet.
Liam. Alive. Breathing. Here.
Con again explained the clock was ticking.
Elin nodded, barely hearing him. Her heart wouldn’t stop bouncing around in her chest. She caught words—cyberattack, power stations—but they washed over her like white noise. She couldn’t focus with Liam so close, his eyes boring into her.
Her eyes kept snapping back to him despite her best efforts, but she avoided his direct stare at all costs. One time would be enough to break open the hellfire of pain she felt the day she lost him.
No, the day helefther.
His jaw was tight, his hands clenched on the table. He looked like he was fighting the urge to cross the room and—what? Touch her? Explain? Apologize?
God, he’s alive.
The thought kept echoing through her mind, a refrain she couldn’t silence. He’d been alive this whole time.
While she’d cried herself to sleep, while she’d forced herself to pack away his effects and any trinkets he ever gave her…
While she’d learned to live with the hollow ache of loss, he’d been here. Fighting. Breathing.
That can be remedied.
TWO
Mason thought leaving Elin had protected her, but seeing the scar of that choice carved into her warm green eyes, as deep as a Swedish vale, was damn near killing him.
The briefing ended with Con’s clipped dismissal, and the team dispersed like smoke. Most headed for the shower but others would end up in the gym to burn off the last remnants of adrenaline after their op.
Mason stayed rooted to his seat, watching Elin’s back as she followed Con and Dante toward the new computer lab to meet Sophie.
She hadn’t looked at Mason once since that initial moment of impact. Not once.
Fuck.How did she find him?
The countdown clock mounted on the wall blinked at him. Six days. One hundred forty-four hours. Eight thousand six hundred forty minutes until Cipher’s cyberattack brought the Eastern Seaboard to its knees.
Six days.
But all Mason could think was:Six days close to Elin.
In the two years since he walked out of her life, he thought he would get over his feelings for her, but just the sight of her brought a surge of emotion in him.
When she walked through that door, she didn’t even flinch when she saw him sitting there, which could only mean that she knew before her arrival.
And as their gazes locked for that brief but thundering heartbeat, he knew she hated him for what he did.
He deserved her hate. He’d earned it…but he couldn’t live with it. When they were together, she’d slipped past every defense he’d spent years building and made him believe he could have something normal, something good. But the walls she’d built around herself now? Christ, they were more impenetrable than the walls of Blackout’s base.
He sat there for long minutes, head bowed, fingers tightly laced, while that damn clock continued to count down.
He was frozen in place, running scenarios in his head like he was planning an op, but every scenario ended with variables he couldn’t control.
