Chapter Eighty-Six
Phoenix
For half a beat, mouth open, eyes wide, my intruse stared at me.
Then she was Oscar Mike.
Throwing off the covers, scrambling for her pants, yanking them up, she tore out of the bedroom.
“Trahern Wolf King!” She flew into the kitchen like a fucking superstorm, and just as she had on the Paragon, but with another Tier One and a different weapon, she yanked the 9mm out of her brother’s back waistband and aimed it at him.
“Did you threaten anyone who came near me? Threaten their families?”
A sandwich halfway to his mouth, not bothering to turn to face her, Legend paused only long enough to spare her a glance before his focus returned to his food. “No. Yes.” He took a bite.
She shoved the barrel against her brother’s shoulder. His right scapula. Exactly where it’d fuck him up. “No?”
Linc looked at me with the same wide-eyed expression my little intruse had not thirty seconds ago.
I tipped my chin, letting him know everything was okay. He was okay. But I still had a fucking score to settle with Legend.
Setting his sandwich down, Legend reached for a glass of water and took a swallow. “That’s correct. I didn’t threaten anyone. Only Tier Ones.”
“Like Dad?” she spat out, incensed.
“Yes.”
Her chest heaved, but her aim didn’t waver. “Did you threaten Lincoln?” Her voice took on a level of menace I’d never heard. “Did you scare him?”
“No on threatening him.” Legend looked at my son and raised an eyebrow for an answer to her second question.
The fury that’d become my little intruse was having none of it.
Jamming the barrel into his trapezius, she squared off like I’d only seen her do once before, and it was with Helios on the Paragon. But this time, she wasn’t holding back. “I asked you the damn question.”
As fast as any SEAL and without giving any tells, Legend stood and pivoted.
My little trespasser, quick on her feet, was already a pace back, out of immediate arm’s reach from her brother.
“Uh-uh.” Shaking her head, she raised her aim.
“You don’t get to silent treatment your way out of this one.
The way we were raised, the fucked-up shit Dad did to us—I’m not letting it slide anymore.
This ends with you. You make it end.” Her threatening tone lowered to a steeled resolve. “Or I will do it for you.”
For Linc’s sake, I stepped in. “Intruse.”
“What?” she snapped.
“Enough.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
She held her aim another two beats, then she jerked her arm toward me as she flipped the Glock around in her hand. Offering me the 9mm, she kept her wrath aimed at her brother. “Fine.”
I took the gun, dropped the magazine, cleared the round in the chamber, then tossed the piece onto the table.
Isla grabbed the paper sack sitting between Linc and Legend, then gripped my son’s arm. “Come on, Linc. We’re leaving.”
Looking this side of shell-shocked, my son scrambled to his feet.
Letting go of Linc for only a second, Isla swiped the rental’s key from the counter and stepped into her hiking boots. Then she leveled Legend with a glare that made me proud. “Fucking fix this.” Pivoting, she aimed for the door, taking my son with her.
Legend watched them go. Then he trained his stare out the front window as the SUV peeled off in reverse before spinning in an arc, and gunning it down the makeshift driveway that was barely two dirt tracks in the scrub brush.
When he spoke, he kept his back to me. “I’ve been tracking you.”
“I figured.” Cap d’Antibes. The hotel.
“You came in.”
“I did.” He hadn’t. I waited.
“Dangerous.”
“Not the way I did it.” Whatever he was behind, whoever he was aligned with, he could do the same.
But deep cover, living off grid, decades of honed skill and covert ops didn’t disappear because you stepped from one reality into another.
He’d have to make a choice. Because of Isla, I’d help him if he asked.
Because of Linc, I wasn’t fucking offering.
Legend turned to me. “Are you going to protect her?”
I saw it now. Blood or not, my intruse was his Linc. Full siblings, step, or circumstantial, it didn’t matter to him. She was the family he had. Compartmentalizing my anger toward him, I told him what he needed to know. “Already do.”
“And her final wishes?”
So he knew. “Her body. Her choice.”
“Not if she becomes too incapacitated to voice her own decisions.”
I was never going to let it come to that. “Is that what happened before?”
A couple inches taller than me, looking more feral than the SEAL I remembered, Legend eyed me a beat. “Yes.”
I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.
I pushed for more intel. “She was young.”
“She knew her mind.”
Now I got it. “She wasn’t allowed to choose.” And he’d witnessed it, either unable or unwilling to stand between her and their parents, and now he was making up for it.
“No.” Legend’s gaze didn’t shift, but his focus did. It was immediate, disturbing, and a tell I’d seen too many times to count. No longer seeing me, the man was staring down his own demons. “She wasn’t given the option not to fight.”
I slowly moved my hand closer to my Sig. “I’ll fight for her. If it ever comes down to that.”
His jaw ticked, then as fast as he’d lost it, his focus zeroed in again. “That’s not what she wants.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He briefly, pointedly, glanced at my hand that was only an inch closer to my piece.
“We’ve discussed it.” But I wasn’t done exhausting every avenue with her over it.
“You have more to protect than just her.”
“I do.”
He stated the obvious. “Your son.”
“Yes.” And my sister. Though arguably, her protection was being handled by Alpha. But Lincoln’s and Isla’s protection was my domain, and I was making that clear once and for all. “Convince me you’re done with that proclamation you made when you were on the Teams, and I won’t end you.”
“You’re still breathing and so is your son.” It was all Legend offered as he eyed the wine bottle in the sink, then scanned the small cabin. “She left you.”
I didn’t trust or know him, I probably never would, but warfighter to warfighter, I took Legend at his word. “Now she’s coming home.”
“Her position hasn’t changed,” he warned.
“Understood.” She’d given her brother the order to fix this, but I could see he wasn’t going to.
Stuck in the past and an ingrained need to protect, I got it.
To an extent. “I’m giving you my word—I will protect her.
I’ll also respect her wishes, but you have to respect hers.
She’s made a choice, and I’m it.” I spoke to him in terms he’d understand. “I have the watch now.”
Trahern “Legend” King looked at me.
I held out the magazine for his Glock and threw down an offer. “Come work with me. Paragon Operations could use you, and you’d be closer to Isla.” And I could keep an eye on that hair-trigger focus of his that’d cut out on a dime.
Legend grabbed the Glock, took the magazine, slammed it home, then turned toward the door.
Not knowing if I’d see him again, I fished for intel on the one thing my intruse wouldn’t talk about. “She has a phobia of the dark.”
“It’s not the dark. It’s ocean storms at night with subthermal temps. Explosive cyclogenesis.” His voice lowered. “Coast swam her out in one. Left her.” His hand fisted. “Twenty-foot swells. Fifty-degree ocean temp.”
Rage hit, immediately followed by her confession coming back to haunt me. Drownproofing. “Is Coast dead?”
Legend didn’t answer my question. “Tell her to keep the phone this time.” He ducked under the head jamb. “She knows what to do with it.” A second later, he was gone.
I grabbed my cell.