Chapter 1 #2
“You’d be surprised what can go down when the lights go out,” he’d rumbled, then kissed her neck and made her forget the dark edge in those words.
At the time, she thought it was just pillow talk, some warrior bravado mixed with the kind of intensity that made her pulse race.
But later, after they told her he was dead, those words haunted her.
And led her straight to him.
The “how” of it was complicated, but months after his “death,” she was on a layover while traveling for work, and saw something on the news—a man killed on a subway platform.
Reports were that the lights blinked out, chaos erupted on the train and when the lights came back on, they discovered someone died from a stab wound.
No suspect was ever found, and the cameras caught nothing useful. But the real breadcrumb was the victim himself—what looked like an unfortunate traveler was actually a known terrorist the FBI had been hunting for months.
Her first thought? The deed had the mark of a man trained to eliminate threats with exactly the kind of quiet strike Liam was known for. Everything she found about the incident pointed straight at the hero she’d known.
Her mind raced through scenarios and probabilities, falling back on the patterns she’d always trusted to make sense of the disorder.
That was when she started digging. If she had confided in anyone, they would have told her she was being obsessive when she checked flight records of the last day she had contact with Liam.
Every plane left a data trail. Every minute they were in flight, they were in contact—unless they went dark for classified reasons.
So when she discovered that a military plane had been in the vicinity the day Liam vanished from her life—and that it too disappeared from the radar for several minutes—she dug even deeper.
It had taken her eighteen months. Eighteen months of late nights, of chasing ghosts through encrypted channels, of learning to cover her own tracks so thoroughly that even she sometimes lost her trail.
Eighteen months of wondering if she was losing her damn mind.
If grief had twisted her into someone who saw conspiracies where there were only coincidences.
But the patterns didn’t lie. And Elin trusted patterns more than she trusted people.
Now here she was on a hidden military base, brought here wearing a black hood over her head like a prisoner.
All that, only to prove she was right.
Liam Mason was alive.
She stood in a war room full of massive men, testosterone thick in the air, and Liam Mason stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost.
God, his eyes—smoky blue with darker gray rims. When the sun caught them, they were pure gravity, pulling her in before she remembered why she should resist.
He didn’t look at her like a boyfriend caught in the act. No, his brand of regret and remorse looked completely different.
His face had gone pale, then flushed as emotions flickered across his features too fast for her to keep up. Shock. Guilt. Something that might have been pain if she didn’t know better.
If she didn’t know that he chose to leave, chose to let her believe he was dead while he was out here playing soldier with his band of brothers.
Liam made a noise deep in his throat.
The men shifted uncomfortably, sensing the tension but not understanding it. She felt their eyes on her and the weight of being the only woman in a room built for warriors.
They were all broad-shouldered with eyes as hard as the steel blades that Liam preferred to fight with.
But it was Liam who held her attention. Liam with his oak-brown hair slightly longer than she remembered, bearing new scars she didn’t recognize.
Liam, with the same eyes that used to look at her like she was the only person in the world who mattered.
Those eyes were looking at her now with something close to devastation.
Good.
She saw that warning flash in his eyes. The same look he’d get when she asked too many questions about his work and attempted to break through the walls he built around himself.
Liam spoke first, his voice as rough as gravel. “How did you—”
She cut him off hard. “I’m looking for someone named Sophie. Unless she’s a muscle-bound powerhouse, I gather she’s not here.”
“Who’s she calling muscle-bound?” one guy asked loud enough to earn several chuckles from those around him.
She looked straight at the tall god of a man standing at the front of the room. “Are you Con? He gave me clearance to come.”
The room went silent. Even the monitors seemed to hum quieter.
Liam stared at her harder.
Before her courage left her and her knees buckled at the mere look of him, she tilted her jaw a notch higher to completely avoid his intense gaze. “Can somebody please direct me to Sophie?”
She wanted to kick Liam in the balls. Wanted to scream. Wanted him to explain why she wasn’t worth the truth and why he’d let her break herself grieving for him while he was out here alive and breathing.
But mostly she wanted him to see that he hadn’t broken her.
Liam tried again, in that low rumble meant only for her. “Elin—”
“Someone named Sophie contacted me,” she pushed on, louder now, addressing the room but scanning the men around her, looking at anyone but Liam. She needed to take control of this conversation before he said something that would crack her carefully constructed armor.
The tall, confident man at the head of the table—their leader Con, she assumed—took over, voice cutting through the tension like a blade. “Miss Lindgren, I’m Commander Ryan Constantine. I appreciate you coming today. I know the trip isn’t easy.”
“I didn’t expect the hood.” She lifted a hand to swipe an errant lock of hair off her face.
Con gave her a nod before continuing. “You’ll work with Sophie and our computer expert Dante to get ahead of a terrorist’s next move. We look forward to working with you.”
Did everybody else feel the pulse between her and Liam? Even without looking his way, she felt his unwavering stare on her. Con threw him a questioning look but began explaining that they had a limited timeline before disaster struck.
Several guys seated around Liam glanced between them, picking up on the throb of energy that actually might be her own fury bursting out of every pore in her body.
She’d never known this emotion. It was a million times stronger than any anger she’d ever felt before, even when she had proof that Liam was actually alive.
“Sophie is highly impressed with your skills, Miss Lindgren.”
She nodded that she understood, but her focus wasn’t on hacking or terrorists. Of course she didn’t stumble into this job. She orchestrated it by placing herself in the path of a cryptologist named Sophie Edwards and demonstrating the precise skills that helped her crack a particular code.
“Elin—” Liam tried again.
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 he left her.
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.