Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
NEW YORK CITY (FIVE AND A HALF YEARS LATER)
Owen snapped his gloves together, eying Asher in the boxing ring.
Asher lowered his fists and winked. “Come on, princess. Is that all you got?”
Owen raised his leg in the air and brought it down, straight like an axe, onto Asher’s leg and then shifted on the ball of his foot upon landing and caught him across the jaw with a right hook.
Asher shook it off and grinned. “Better.” He motioned for him to come at him again.
Owen attacked with jabs and uppercuts, but Asher deftly blocked each one of his moves and then wrapped his arms around him in a cinch position.
“Aww, are you boys hugging?” Jess rested her wrists on the rope that circled their makeshift fighting area and flashed a smile.
“You want to swap with him? I’d be happy to teach you a few moves.” Asher released his hold on Owen, but Owen caught him with an elbow to the chin in the process. “Fucker.” Asher half-laughed.
Owen ducked Asher’s next swing and swiped his leg to bring him down.
Asher’s body smacked the ground with a heavy thud, and another smirk found his lips. “Finally got the drop on me, man. Won’t happen again.”
Owen may have been a decent fighter, but Asher was practically a pro.
“So, Peaches, you want me to teach you, or what?” Asher shoved upright, his attention focused on Jess.
“I don’t need lessons from a caveman like you. I’m capable of defending myself, but thanks.”
“Sure, honey. You keep telling yourself that.” He directed his gaze back to Owen and raised his guard.
Owen was ready to let loose again, to alleviate some of his stress, but before he could swing, he caught Jess tilting her head to the side, her quiet way of saying we need to talk. “Give me a minute.”
He lifted the rope, ducked under, and started after her while removing his gloves.
“Can we chat in my office?” She stopped in front of the private elevator and faced him.
He tossed his gloves on a nearby chair. “You want me up in your swanky office like this?” He thought about their admin who always sat coyly behind her desk whenever the guys were in the office.
A grin teased her lips as she observed his sweaty and bare chest. “Tyra would have a heart attack.”
He propped a hand on the wall over her shoulder and angled his head. “You okay?” His eyes thinned as he studied the woman who had become like a sister to him over the years.
Her blues traveled over his shoulder, and he followed her gaze to where Asher banged out burpees in the middle of the fighting ring.
Owen cleared his throat and fought a smile. “You two should get it out of your systems, and soon, it’d be better for all of us.”
The muted red of her shirt now matched her cheeks. “Are you nuts? He drives me crazy.”
“And your brother would kill him if he touched you, but why let that stop you?” He dropped his hand from the wall when the elevator doors opened.
“I don’t want . . .” She shook her head. “Can we just talk upstairs?”
“With or without the shirt?”
She rolled her eyes and tsked. “Get cleaned up first.”
He waited for her to disappear behind the closed elevator doors before heading back to Asher. “I’m being summoned. We’ll have to pick this up later.”
“I wonder if she’ll ever get that stick removed from her ass.”
I’m sure you’d like to be the one to do it. Owen bit back his thought, though. He wondered if Luke purposefully ignored the tension that pounded the room whenever his sis and Asher were together. They really were going to either kill each other one day—or tear each other’s clothes off.
“So, what does Boss Lady want with you?” He shoved a hand through his dark hair before reaching for his gloves on the floor.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be about an op.”
“She requested both of us to fly in yesterday, so what else could it be about?” Asher crossed his tatted arms and eyed him. “Luke’s still on vacation with Eva, right?”
Owen nodded. He still couldn’t believe his boss had fallen in love. He broke the rule of no commitments allowed Luke himself had made mandatory after their only married teammate died on an op.
Guess the rule was null and void now.
“Maybe she needs us on one of her school-boy missions,” Asher said as they went into the men’s locker room. The entire gym was for their team and only their team. No one in the Manhattan sky rise was aware of its existence.
“‘School-boy missions.’ Is that what you’re calling them these days?” Owen turned on the shower.
The cases they took on under the Scott & Scott Securities alias could still get dangerous, but maybe Asher was right—compared to what they did on the DL for the president those ops were like a walk in the park. A dark park with shadowy motherfuckers hiding, but still.
“Well, she didn’t request your ass up in her office. So, maybe she just brought you in to release some tension?”
Asher’s dark brown eyes caught Owen’s in the reflection of the mirror as he braced against the vanity counter. “Fuck you.”
“Pretty sure it’s not me you want to screw. Well, it’d sure as hell better not be.”
“You want to get back in the ring so I can show you how easy I’ve been taking it on you?”
“Right. You’re as old as me. Those days are almost over.”
Asher shook his head. “Speak for yourself. Thirty-seven is looking to be my best year yet. I’m getting better with age.”
“Sure, buddy.” Owen cracked his neck and shook off the tension that wrapped up his arms and bit into his biceps.
After cleaning up, he punched in the code inside the elevator and ascended the fifty stories to Jess’s office.
When the doors opened, he greeted Jess’s admin. “How’s it going, Tyra?”
She tucked her short dark hair behind her ears and smiled. The woman had no idea whom she really worked for—she thought she was answering calls for a cybersecurity and PI firm. The less she knew, the better.
“I’m hanging in there.” She smiled. “Miss Scott is expecting you.”
“Thanks.” He went to Jess’s office and found her leaning back in her leather chair with closed eyes.
“What’s up?” He shut the door and dropped down in front of her desk. He caught a whiff of vanilla and musk with a hint of cinnamon. “You change perfumes?”
Her eyes opened, and she laughed. “You and your hound’s nose.”
He held his palms open and up. “What can I say? My mom’s influence.” His smile dissolved, though, when he remembered the memorial slash celebration-of-life party his folks would be throwing this weekend for his brother.
Was it really ten years on Saturday since he’d been gone? He pressed his palms onto his jeaned thighs. “So, you didn’t answer me.”
“I did change perfumes. Do you like it?”
“He’ll still call you Peaches, you know.” Owen shrugged. “Changing perfumes won’t get Asher to leave you alone. Well, maybe he’ll switch to calling you Cinnamon. Whatever will piss you off.”
She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I asked you here because we need to talk.”
He arched a brow. “We are talking.”
An exaggerated sigh slipped from her lips. “I’m worried about you.”
He straightened his slouched position. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s almost the ten-year anniversary.”
He stabbed a finger at his chest and stood. “Do you think I don’t know that?” He strode to the floor-to-ceiling windows, stealing a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance.
“I know how you get every September . . . but ten years is—”
“How I get?” He scoffed. “It’s the same way we all get every November around the time Marcus died.
We haven’t avenged our own teammate’s death, and it burns us all—not just in November, but year-fucking-round.
” He stiffened and took a breath before facing her.
“So, if anyone understands how I feel it’s you.
And you hate talking about feelings as much as the rest of us. ”
“Jason was your brother. It’s different.”
“Luke. Asher.” He tightened a fist and tapped it at his lips. “All the guys on the team—they’re blood to me.”
“I didn’t mean that, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you were ready to kill Asher downstairs in that ring. You’re on edge, so I can’t help but assume it’s because it’s ten—”
“Stop.” An iciness curved around his spine and splintered out, like an infection, into the rest of his body. “I don’t want to talk about this. I can’t fucking talk about this.”
The military’s mandatory shrink sessions after Jason’s death had driven him nuts. And when his team had lost Marcus—they all had to sit with a therapist, without divulging classified details, and discuss their “feelings.”
Jumping from a plane without a chute was the more reasonable thing to do.
After all, the odds were in his favor he’d still land on his feet. He’d been lucky over the years. And some days, he wondered if he was invincible.
She stood in front of him now and pressed a hand to his shoulder. “I won’t stop because I care about you.”
He stepped away, and her arm fell to her side. She tried to pose as a heartless and icy woman, but deep down he knew the truth about her. He knew she wore a mask—just like him. “Why’d you have us fly in? You need us for a job? That’s all I care to talk about.”
“I do have somewhere I need both you and Asher.” She returned to her desk, grabbed a folder, and handed it to him.
“Why isn’t he up here with me, then? You wanted to have this heart-to-heart first?” A sharp breath left his lips.
When she didn’t say anything, he knew he was right.
“Where are you sending us? Is this for Uncle Sam or one of our school-boy missions?” He had decided he liked Asher’s terminology.
“Neither.”
He opened the folder. “Los Cabos? Why am I going to a resort in Mexico?”
“You’re going on vacation, and I want someone with you to make sure you actually go . . . and stay out of trouble.”
He laughed. “You think Asher will keep me out of trouble?” More like get me into it. The two of them together—they’d probably end up in a Mexican prison, and she’d have to send the team to bust them out. “I’m good, but thanks.” He tried to hand it back to her, but she wouldn’t take it.
“This is a direct order. I want you to get away for a week to clear your head. To take some time to just, you know, breathe.”
“I don’t need time. I need justice,” he said, louder than he’d meant to.
“Jason’s killer may not even be alive. It’s been a long time. He may have been wiped out during the war.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and dropped her gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry, but we just can’t be sure.”
He shook his head. “Shahid Ismail’s on the list of terror suspects at large.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s still alive.”
“Yeah, our government said the same about Osama—and then we found the motherfucker.”
“If he’s alive we’ll find him. But right now, I want you to take a break. We’re between jobs, it’s the perfect time.”
“Luke’s out of town. It wouldn’t make sense for us both to be gone.”
“He’ll be back in two days. Besides, this was his idea. He noticed how tense you’ve been lately. If your head isn’t in the game it could compromise the team.”
“I’d never put the team at risk.”
She carefully edged closer and reached for his forearm. “Do this for me. Please.”
God, she was going to guilt trip him into a damn vacation.
“Fine.”
Maybe he could use some time off.
She let go of him and went back to her desk. “Do me a favor?”
“Yeah?”
“If Asher gets thrown in jail for whatever reason . . . leave him there.”
He fought back a laugh. “Sure, and lose one of our best trackers.”
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “Fine. Have fun.” She smiled. “Not too much fun, though.”
“You have my word.”