Chapter 14 The Truth
FOURTEEN
“The Truth”
HALO
I wake with her wrapped around me.
Sunlight cuts through the gap in the curtains, sharp and thin, slicing across the stained carpet like a blade. The room smells like sex and sweat and something softer underneath—her. Vanilla and sleep and the particular warmth of a woman who stayed.
She’s still asleep, her head on my chest, her breath warm against my skin.
Her hair is a tangled riot of red across my shoulder, catching the light in strands of copper and rust. One arm is draped over my waist, possessive even in sleep.
Her leg is hooked over mine, skin against skin, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.
I should get up. Check the perimeter. Contact the team. Run surveillance on the parking lot, verify our exit routes, confirm the van hasn’t been tagged overnight.
I don’t move.
Instead, I lie here like a civilian. Like a man with nowhere else to be.
I count her breaths—slow, steady, peaceful in a way that seems impossible given everything we’ve survived.
I trace the curve of her shoulder with my eyes, memorizing the scatter of freckles across her pale skin, the way her lashes rest against her cheeks.
A few days ago, she was a mission parameter. A package to extract and protect. A name on a file.
Now she’s this. Whatever this is.
She stirs. Shifts. Her leg slides higher over mine, and the friction sends heat pooling low in my gut—a slow, lazy burn that has nothing to do with danger and everything to do with her.
Her eyes open. Green and sleep-soft, looking at me like I’m worth looking at. Like I’m something other than a weapon with a pulse.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
She stretches against me. Deliberate. Her body presses into all the right places, and I’m suddenly, painfully aware that we’re both still naked under the scratchy sheets. That there’s nothing between us but skin and want and the fading echoes of last night.
“We should get moving,” I say.
I don’t move.
“Probably.” She doesn’t either.
Her hand slides up my chest. Traces the scar on my collarbone—the old bullet wound from Fallujah, puckered and faded to silver. Her fingers are light, exploratory, mapping the terrain of damage and survival like she’s reading braille.
“This one?” she asks.
“Iraq. 2014.”
Her hand moves lower. Finds the knife scar along my ribs. The rough patch of healed shrapnel on my hip.
“And these?”
“Colombia. Syria.” The words come out rougher than I intend. Her touch is doing something to my brain—short-circuiting the tactical channels, flooding them with something warmer.
Her palm comes to rest flat over my heart. The beat is steady. Slower than it should be for a man who’s spent the last few days keeping her alive.
“Cassie—”
“Shut up.”
She kisses me.
This time there’s no anger to burn through. No fear to exorcise. Just want—clean and simple and devastating in its simplicity. Her mouth is soft against mine, unhurried, tasting like sleep and the faint ghost of the cheap motel coffee from last night.
I roll her beneath me. Take my time.
It’s different in daylight. No shadows to hide in. No darkness to blame. No adrenaline demanding release.
This is a choice.
Deliberate.
Conscious.
Two people reaching for each other because they want to, not because they’re drowning.
I watch every expression that crosses her face. Every gasp, every shudder, every moment she comes apart under my hands. The way her lips part when I find the spot on her neck that makes her breath catch. The way her back arches when I trail my mouth lower.
She’s beautiful like this. Not the polished beauty of the attorney in the Georgetown apartment—that woman in her tailored suits and courtroom armor.
This is something rawer. More real. Her hair spread across the pillow like a sunset.
Her skin flushed pink. Her eyes locked on mine like I’m the only thing in the world worth seeing.
“Diego.” My name is a whisper on her lips. A prayer. A demand.
I move inside her slowly. Deliberately. Memorizing the way she feels, the sounds she makes, the way her hands grip my shoulders like she’s trying to anchor herself to me. To this. To whatever impossible thing is building between us.
Last night was a collision. Two people crashing together in the dark, all sharp edges and desperate need.
This is a conversation.
I see you, every touch says.
I choose you, every movement answers.
I’m here, her body whispers against mine.
I know, mine replies. I know.
We move together in the thin morning light, the silence broken only by breath and the rustle of sheets. Outside, a truck rumbles past on the highway. Inside, time stretches. Slows. Becomes irrelevant.
When she finally shatters around me, my name on her lips like something sacred, I follow her over the edge. The release is different this time. Softer. More terrifying.
Because this isn’t just sex. This isn’t just adrenaline, fear, or proximity.
This is something I don’t have a tactical term for.
She’s smiling when I finally pull back, rolling onto my side but keeping her close. A real smile. The first one I’ve seen since DC. It transforms her face, smoothing away the fear, exhaustion, and grief of the past few days.
“We really need to get moving now.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moves for another ten minutes. We just lie here, tangled together, breathing in sync. Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my chest. My hand rests on the curve of her hip, thumb stroking the soft skin there.
It feels like a crime. To be this peaceful in the middle of a war.
It feels like survival. The only kind that matters.
She’s the one who finally breaks the spell.
She sits, stretching, and the sheet falls away from her body. I watch her—the curve of her spine, the way the light catches the red in her hair—and something tightens in my chest.
Then she looks up at me and her brow furrows. Her eyes are bright. Not tears, exactly, but something close.
“You keep sacrificing pieces of yourself. The bruises. The exhaustion. At what point do you run out of pieces?”
The question hits harder than it should.
Her thumbs trace circles on my palm.
“When I think of all the ways you could be hurt …”
“But I wasn’t. More importantly, you haven’t been hurt.” I pull her hand to my mouth. Kiss her palm.
“Halo,” she says, softly. “You really do have a guardian angel watching over you.”
She doesn’t laugh. She looks at me like she’s just realized what I’ve risked to keep her alive. The full weight of it settles behind her eyes.
“Those bullets,” she says slowly. “On the wall. When we were rappelling. They should have hit you.”
“They missed.”
“It shouldn’t have. I saw—” She stops. Shakes her head. “Something moved. Or you moved. Or the wind changed. I don’t know. But one missed when it shouldn’t have.”
“That’s the job. Sometimes I get lucky.”
“That’s not luck.” Her grip tightens on my hands. “That’s you. That’s whatever it is that keeps you alive when everyone around you dies.”
“Cassie—”
“I’m serious.” She meets my eyes. “You’ve survived things that should have killed you. The bullet wounds. Syria. Colombia. The canyon.”
“The canyon killed someone I loved.”
“But not you.” Her voice is fierce. “Never you. Why?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I don’t have an answer. I’ve never had an answer. The other operators joke about it—Halo and his guardian angel—but the truth is simpler and more terrifying.
I survive because the universe hasn’t gotten around to killing me yet.
Or maybe …
Maybe I survive because I haven’t found something worth dying for since Sofia.
Until now.
“I don’t know,” I say finally. “I just do.”
“Then keep doing it. Whatever it takes. Keep surviving.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
It’s the easiest promise I’ve ever made. And the most impossible to keep.
But it’s time to move. Reluctantly, we get out of bed, shower, and head out to the minivan. A few miles down the road, I find a small gas station outside of nowhere. There’s a payphone bolted to the brick wall like a relic from a dead century.
Which is perfect.
The gas station is a squat cinder block box with a faded Mobil sign and windows clouded with decades of road grime. Two pumps out front, the old-fashioned kind with analog dials. A rusted pickup parked by the air pump. No other cars. No surveillance cameras visible.
Perfect.
Cassie waits in the van while I make contact with my team. She’s dressed now—jeans, one of my hoodies swallowing her frame, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looks younger like this. Less like an attorney. More like a grad student on a road trip.
The fiction almost works if you ignore the fear in her eyes.
I walk to the payphone. Lift the receiver and feed quarters into the slot—actual quarters we found in the van, because the universe apparently decided that payphones and I would be friends today—and dial the relay number from memory.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Third ring. Click.
“Designation.”
“Halo-Seven-Seven-Delta.”
“Hold for verification.”
Static. Forty-five seconds of nothing. Long enough for me to scan the parking lot twice, check the tree line, and clock the old man shuffling out of the station with a coffee cup.
Then Ghost’s voice comes through, scrambled but clear, “Brother. You’re alive.”
“Barely. The hotel was compromised. Package intact.”
“We heard about the hotel. Lit up the whole damn city.” His voice is tight. Controlled. The voice of a man who’s been awake for too many hours, running too many operations. “Phoenix coordinated multiple strikes after your position was flagged. Hit three other assets in DC.”
“What?”
“I’m there, mopping up the aftermath in D.C.. All are somehow connected to Meridian Pharmaceuticals or Echo Logistics.”
“Echo Logistics?” Shit. I know exactly what happened. “I’ve got intel.”
“You do?”
I relay the intel about Stratton Financial. The biological assets. The Terra Alta address. The contract Cassie found with the CEO’s signature.