Code Name: Grizz (Cypher Black Ops Security Book 2)

Recap Michael

There are so many things I shouldn’t have done where Dana was concerned.

Our mission was simple. We had an anonymous tip with coordinates to a hacking team we had been hunting for years. For me, it was a means to an end, as I was invested in who they would lead me to.

Matteo Sparr was my very reason for joining Cypher Black Ops Security to begin with.

Before I met Logan and Jack, the owners of Cypher, I was a Navy SEAL. I enjoyed the anonymity and camaraderie of my work. I was proud of my contribution, and even prouder that I was following in my father’s footsteps of service in the protection of others.

It all ended with a call at two in the morning, one that shattered my world and set me on a different path. One that walks the fine line between right and wrong like it’s a tightrope, and I could fall at any moment.

Now I fight to stay balanced on that frayed rope. I hope I’m still making my father proud, but I’ll never know for sure.

Everything changed for me the day I came face-to-face with Dana.

I should have left the mission the moment the woman with Jay was identified as Dana Granger. But I remained out of some kind of morbid, masochistic curiosity.

The woman sitting in the interrogation room, staring down Logan, is far from who I pictured her to be. A shameful piece of me even hoped she suffered in the life she was living, all because of something I know she isn’t personally responsible for, yet she’s the only one around to blame.

A cop-killer’s kid, and not just any cop—my father is dead because of her father. My father was shot execution-style and left to bleed out alone on the side of the road. It came at the order of Matteo Sparr and was carried out by one Kenneth Granger, Dana’s father.

If it hadn’t been for the anonymous tip, her father would never have been caught and convicted.

Once we returned to base with Dana and Jessa, I volunteered to inventory the items collected from the farmhouse. It gave me access to the comms room so I could listen in on her interrogation as I worked.

Hearing Dana recall the abuse she and her mother suffered at her father’s hand softened me a fraction. I had to remind myself that she was still in high school when my father was murdered, but I refused to allow myself to consider her a victim in all of this as well. It felt as if doing so would take away from what my mother lost.

“He—killed a guy.” A cold chill wound through me as Dana recalled how she and Jessa found the evidence that finally put her father away. “We decided to send it to the cops anonymously.”

It turns out Dana was the anonymous source that gave my mother the peace she needed. The family I wished suffering upon had been suffering all along, and she is the only reason justice was served.

I shouldn’t have sought Dana out after. I should have left it at that, but I couldn’t stay away from her.

Tex was scheduled to watch her the next morning, after our late-night interrogation with Jessa, but I took the shift from him and escorted Dana to breakfast.

Her fire from the night before had extinguished, and she avoided making eye contact with everyone around her, including me, even though she had no idea of the connection we shared. She nibbled at her cereal, but I knew she must have been hungry.

I wanted to tell her about the pain that connects us, but I couldn’t bring myself to open those wounds.

So instead we talked about everything else, and after a while we slipped into a comfortable conversation I wasn’t expecting.

Dana was nothing like I pictured a cop-killer’s kid to be. I expected a junkie, definitely a liar. What I didn’t expect was her. A fiercely loyal friend and a survivor.

She shared pieces of her life with me, and in that we found some common ground. As she opened up, she held my gaze for longer moments at a time, until I was the only one she gravitated to. I quickly grew to enjoy that position with her.

It wasn’t lost on me how she sought me out when she entered a room, and I liked having her eyes on me.

I shouldn’t have asked to take her to the common room during our downtime, but I found myself unable to share her attention. I didn’t want to see her enter the room with another member of my team, even if they were just doing their job.

When we knew Jessa as Jay, they were our mission. We were sent to take down an integral part of Maxwell’s team, but we didn’t know everything.

In the end, Jessa was working her own play. Whether Dana knew all of her plans or not, she was determined to be there for her friend till the bitter end. Her fierce determination struck a chord in all of our hearts, because at our very foundation, our team values loyalty.

I shouldn’t have offered to show Dana around after the movie was over and my team retired to their quarters. I knew exactly where I was going, and as she tentatively slipped her hand in mine, I allowed her touch and led her to my bed.

I shouldn’t have wanted her.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I craved a connection. Consequences be damned, I wanted Dana. Having her was selfish, and I didn’t care. I told myself that my job was something I did for myself, but now that I was finally faced with something I wanted with every fiber of my being, I realized that it was something I did for others.

But Dana would be mine.

And for a fleeting moment, she was.

For a brief pause in time, I wasn’t a soldier, a fatherless son, nor a protector. She called me by my real name.

I was Michael, and I was hers.

Then everything came crashing down.

We can blur the lines all we want, but they’re still there, and the moment Jessa told me to remove Dana from the room, I saw it in her eyes.

Dana was never going to forgive me, even though my actions went against Logan and Jack’s orders and made her my priority.

I shouldn’t have left her outside to return to my team, but I believed that she would allow me to be there for her in her darkest time.

I hadn’t realized how vulnerable I had made myself until Grey announced that Dana had taken a vehicle and run.

Of course she left. I had viewed our connection from my perspective. I was safe. I had my brothers all around me. She thought her only friend just killed herself in front of her to protect her. She was still a cop-killer’s kid, only now she believed she was completely alone.

I would never have been enough for her at that moment.

I shouldn’t have let her go.

There are so many things I shouldn’t have done where Dana was concerned.

Yet I did them all.