EIGHT
Rivers had breached an enemy compound with three seconds of prep and zero hesitation. He’d also cleared a room of four armed hostiles without a scratch.
Walking into the war room to find Caryssa in his seat nearly took him out at the knees.
She sat primly at the conference table, fingers folded in front of her in a pose meant to appear relaxed, but he knew better.
He knew her.
As he walked in, she turned her head slightly, enough to catch a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. In an instant, any semblance of ease left her body. Her spine snapped straight and she twitched her face aside.
Her blatant rejection made him stop in his tracks, and all of Sierra saw it. By the time he forced himself to keep moving, a few guys smirked and several wore shit-eating grins at seeing him so rattled.
He took the open chair two down from his usual and carefully avoided looking at Caryssa. Just being in the same room with her had his cock stiffening and his arms aching to hold her.
Two grown adults, deliberately not looking at each other across a conference table. It would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.
Cannon was already at the head of the table, arms crossed. His tense jaw told them all that somebody was about to catch hell. He sent a glare around the table. “Where’s Rorke?”
Rivers caught Rome’s eye, and a silent this ought to be good passed between them just as the door swung open and Rorke shouldered his way in, arms stacked with cardboard boxes up to this chin.
“I’m here.” He dropped the pile onto the table with a thud that rattled every coffee mug. “Took a little longer than usual. There was a big haul today.”
Cannon’s brows lowered into jagged lightning strikes over the bridge of his nose. He reached for the top box and whipped out a huge knife to slit the top. He peered inside, going stone still.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Who ordered curtains?”
From the hallway just outside the room, where the ladies were definitely not supposed to be, Jolie’s gasp carried clear through the door. Without looking up, Cannon tossed the package toward the opening as though it were a live grenade.
“We don’t even have a curtain rod,” he muttered, tearing into a second box. When he lifted the flaps, he withdrew yet another box showing a clear diagram of how to piece together a curtain rod.
He shook it, making the pieces rattle, and groaned even louder. “What the hell do we need curtains for? We don’t have windows.”
Caryssa lifted a hand and pressed it over her mouth to hide her smile, but Rivers caught it in the tiny creases of amusement around her hazel eyes. The sight he’d missed so damn much it left a hole in him smacked him hard in the chest. How long had it been since he’d seen her smile?
He wished he had put that smile on her beautiful face instead of Cannon’s misery.
Stina rushed in and snatched the second box out of Cannon’s hands before he could hurl it too. “This is going to look great! You guys are going to love it!”
Cannon glared after her. “I doubt that.”
Stina was already gone, the box tucked under one arm.
Cannon muttered something under his breath Rivers didn’t catch, but Rorke tossed back something with an equally sharp tone.
Everyone else in the room probably heard nothing more than light banter. But every single eye was on the pair as they picked up the edge in their tones.
It was no secret that Cannon and Rorke had some beef between them, but none of them had ever been able to figure out what was behind it. In the past two months since Rivers had been gone, their grudge seemed to have built.
Rome caught Rivers’s eye and gave a small nod.
Rivers reached into his back pocket and extracted a folded bill. He threw Cannon a glance to make sure he wasn’t seen before he slid the money across the table toward Rome to make good on the bet he just lost.
“I saw that,” Cannon said without looking up from the third box he was tearing into.
Rivers slipped the cash back into his pocket to hand over later.
Cannon reached into the box and pulled out a ring of keys. Dozens of them, tagged with faded labels. Caryssa let out a noise, and Rivers’s gaze flew to her.
She stuck out a hand, reaching for the keys. “I think, sir, those were sent to me.”
He continued looking through them methodically, checking each tag.
“Sir. Shouldn’t Caryssa be going through those?” Rivers asked.
Cannon didn’t look up from his task. “No.” He kept working through them and eventually stopped on one, holding it closer to his face.
“What is it?” Rorke asked.
“The key to your mom’s bedroom,” Cannon said in a flat tone.
The room erupted. Rome choked on his coffee and Rivers burst out in a deep chuckle that made Caryssa dart a look his way before her own face broke into a smile.
“Nice, Cannon. Now you’re reverting to your teen years.” Rorke was smiling too, but it didn’t exactly reach his eyes.
Cannon squinted at the key and then his expression shifted. “This one’s ours. Storage shed.”
He pulled it off the ring and tossed it down on the table. Rome shot out a hand to gather it into his palm. He stared at it for a beat and then passed it to Rivers.
“You’re right. That’s ours,” Rome said.
Rivers took the key, but he already knew what it opened. For much of the year, weather made the road to Sierra base impassable to supply trucks. Deliveries were left in a locked shed a couple miles out, and someone from the team had to haul everything the rest of the way.
The key circled the table and landed in front of Caryssa. She looked down at the object but didn’t pick it up.
Cannon turned to her, all business. “Your order is to go to the Portland office.”
He slid an envelope that arrived with the shipment across the table to her. “Here’s the warrant. And these”—he added the keys to the pile in front of her—”are yours to discover what they open.”
Rivers scraped his chair back before he fully decided to stand. Everyone looked up at him.
“I’ll go along,” he said too fast, panic already climbing his throat.
He’d just gotten Caryssa back. The thought of her walking out that door with someone else, driving away from him and disappearing into the world made his breath stall in his lungs.
What if she didn’t come back. What if this was it—six years compressed down into one shower and a few cutting glares, and then she was gone from his life again?
Cannon’s stare fixed on him. “Take Rorke as your guard. Get him out of my sight for a few hours before I lose what’s left of my patience with him.”
Rivers sat back down slowly, his jaw tight, and made himself breathe through his irritation.
Caryssa didn’t glance his way as she gathered the envelope and keys. He watched her stand and push her chair neatly up to the table. Then she turned and walked out with Rorke a step behind her.
The only thing Rivers had ever wanted was finally within reach again, and already slipping through his hands.
And god, did he want her.
It was a simple truth buried under a mountain of complicated ones.
Wanting her didn’t change anything for him, though, because Younger was right—he couldn’t keep her. Couldn’t offer her a life that wasn’t underground tunnels and hooded car rides and a name that belonged to a dead man.
So what was the point of any of it? The shower, the stolen kisses…the way his chest tightened just watching her walk out?
He didn’t get to choose between having her and not having her. That choice had been made the day he signed the paperwork that ended his old life. All he got to choose was how much of her he let himself have while she was still within reach.
If he couldn’t have Caryssa forever, couldn’t build the house or the yard or the family, then he wanted every hour he could get.
Every look she didn’t mean to send his way—even the glaring ones—he’d store away for after she was gone. Every smile she tried to hide behind her hand. Every second she forgot she was supposed to hate him.
Fuck.
It was going to hurt so much worse when he lost her a second time.
* * * * *
Caryssa was grateful Reid wasn’t the one going to sweep the office with her. They’d end up in a compromising position before they got to the destination.
Rorke strode ahead of her, moving at a fast pace through the tunnels. As they neared a closed door at the end, he stopped and turned to her. A hood that he’d pulled out of nowhere dangled off one finger.
“Ready for this again?”
“Are you the one who put it on me last time?” She arched a brow at him. “Without even a hello?”
His lips quirked. “That was Townie.”
Now she was even more satisfied that she’d knocked him on his ass that first day in the kitchen.
“Well, Townie could use some manners. But don’t bother with the hood.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
“I meant really—don’t bother. I already know where we are.”
Her claim hung between them while Rorke stared at her, saying nothing.
“The Sierra base is under the Montclair ski resort,” she said. She’d connected enough dots by now to know Sierra was part of Blackout, and Echo was another team within it.
His jaw dropped. “No way you were given that information.”
“No one needs to give me anything. I took it for myself.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. “So you got it out of Rivers when you slept with him.”
What a dick. She was reconsidering whether Rorke actually was the better option for her escort.
She folded her arms. “I got nothing out of him.”
He gave her a look that said exactly what was on his mind.
She shifted her shoulders. She’d made this bed—literally. She could damn well own it. If the guys were going to clap Reid on the back for what happened between them, maybe somebody ought to congratulate her too instead of having double standards.
“I figured the location out on my own. I’ve got the clearance and the skills to cross-reference a truck driver’s delivery route with a ski resort’s public land records. Give me a little more credit.”
He stuffed the hood in his coat pocket again. “We’re going to have to crack down harder on security.”
The humor had disappeared from his voice.
Caryssa studied him. “You really don’t trust me.”