When the blanket started to fall away, he turned. Waited. Simmered.
Why didn't you let me know you were alive? I would have moved heaven and earth to help you.
“Okay, I’m dressed. You can turn around now.”
As he turned back, habit had him holding out a hand.
Sara looked at his face, his outstretched hand, a million doubts in her eyes. She had doubts, he had questions, but her hesitancy to so much as lay her hand in his, well, by God, that stung. He dropped his hand. “You want to go so bad, let’s go.”
Pressing her lips together, she walked out the door.
She looked so completely wiped out there was no way she was going to make it out of the building under her own steam. His temper fought with sympathy and came to a stalemate. But the husband, the protector, in him won.
He locked his office and, knowing she’d protest, swung her back up into his arms. What he didn’t expect, what he’d never expect, was the way she went rigid, and in one smooth motion, pushed out of his arms. Landing in a defensive crouch, her breathing came fast and shallow. An instinctive, practiced move, he thought, and wondered where the hell she’d learned it. And why.
“Jesus, Sara, you need self-defense? Against me?”
She straightened. Backed up a step. “What?” She shuddered, looked shaken. “It’s…I’m…don’t…don’t do that.”
“Don’t help my wife?” He studied her. Saw the wary look she tried to cover with indifference. Watched her muscle up to keep from falling. “That stubborn streak you’ve got working is going to kick your ass some day.” He started for the car. “Freeze me out while you can. I’ll hate it while you do, but I can promise you I’m going to get some answers.” Those shadows in her eyes were going to, at some point soon, tell him a story. He hoped like hell he could handle it.
She didn’t talk or even meet his eyes as she sat in the front seat of his Corvette. When they’d been dating, she’d smiled and flirted with him from that very spot a thousand times.
Tonight she did nothing but stare mutely out the window.
Turning toward her, he said, “Your call.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s a reason for all this and my gut’s sending out big red warning signs. Someone has hurt you and I don’t know why. Or who. Or where you’ll be safest.” She nodded, looking uncertain, and he thought for a moment--back to the explosion twelve months ago. Remembered who’d been responsible. “Who else knows you’re alive?”
She lifted one shoulder. “My business.”
“We’re married. That makes it mine as well.”
“Not this time,” she said, and opened the door to leave.
He put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her exit. “I want you to be safe.”
“Then take me…I don’t know.” Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples. “I just don’t know.”
Home, Dillon thought. She didn’t say home.
Considering the evening’s events, how safe would
home
actually be? Their address had always been kept off the radar, they lived in a gated community, but there was still a huge bounty on his head and the admiral hadn’t left him exposed in six months. He was supposed to check in with the security team when he left work, but tonight he was taking a pass. With whatever leak was out there, he wasn’t about to trust Sara’s life to anyone else but him. By the time an alarm was raised, he’d have Sara tucked somewhere else.
“We’ll go home long enough to grab some clothes and supplies.” Supplies meaning his weapon and ammo. “Then I’m taking you to a safe house until I have more answers. Like it or not, I think I deserve them.”
Without speaking, she closed the door and snapped on her seatbelt.
He glanced at her several times during the short drive to their house. She looked faded, wrung out, and after he parked the car, he watched her slowly approach the front door of their modest three-bedroom home.
As he passed through the foyer and into the living room, he expected some sort of response. Surely the memories would hit her, and she’d say something,
anything--
But no.
Instead, she hovered quietly near the doorway, eyes and expression blank.
Okay, if that’s the way she wanted it, fine. He’d wait. Hell, he’d already waited a whole friggin’ year, what were a few more hours?
Just then, their German shepherd rounded the corner into the living room, tail wagging. The second the dog spotted Sara, he stopped short with a low growl.
“Merlin, no. Stay,” he commanded. And then he waited.
<><><>
An image of a puppy with a big red Christmas bow plopped on top of its head blurred behind Sara’s eyelids and the emotional wall she’d built around herself crumbled a little bit more. “Merlin?” Emotions collided like a twenty-car pile up and she stumbled over and sank onto the couch before her legs gave out completely.
She’d no sooner said his name than the dog whimpered and lunged. His tongue licked trails across her face and his entire body shook with eager joy. She hugged him and buried her bruised face in the fluffy fur of his neck. “He remembers me.”
“I guess dogs never forget who they're supposed to be loyal to.” The words kind of scratched out of Dillon’s throat and he looked away.
Sara didn't miss the dig. “Unlike husbands.”
“We’re back to that now? After everything else?” Dillon took a seat at the other end of the forest green couch and she watched as he ran a hand through his hair. Silky dark hair she used to touch. So much shorter now than it had been a year ago.
“We’re not
back
to anything.” She continued petting the dog and experienced a slightly disconnected feeling as she looked around. She never thought she'd see the green leather couch again, Dillon's tan recliner, or the fireplace with the huge area rug in front where they'd lain together in a tangle of limbs and blankets that one brilliant and horrible day twelve months ago.
She shouldn’t be seeing it now. Shouldn’t be here. She had a child to protect.
And Dillon still had the same job that meant more to him than her life.
Not to mention a woman, and that woman’s child, who had claimed his heart.
How could she ever forgive him?
Restless, wary, she got up, moved around, tried to think. What should she do? Where should she go? How was she supposed to get a hold of Craig? Look in the yellow pages, ask Dillon, call the local DEA office? She had no idea. Matt hadn’t had time to tell her. Craig had always been in control, had always contacted her, and the phone he’d given her for emergencies had been taken by Sanchez.
She was lost.
Dillon sat quietly, not talking, not moving, he sat on the couch watching her with a question in his eyes she didn’t know how to answer.
Framed photographs sat on the cherry side table and she wandered over to see what Dillon had kept. Still thinking, still wondering, trying to figure out what to do next.
One picture showed Dillon in a silver party hat cocked sideways, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Another showed her in a red bathing suit coming up from the beach, waving and happy. And still another was of her and Dillon, surrounded by friends in front of an anniversary cake and a glistening ice sculpture of King Arthur’s castle.
Colors and shapes mingled and blurred. Dillon had kept their stuff. Their memories. Everything. Why? After a year of thinking she was dead, why hadn’t he boxed it up, moved it all to a closet--
A black and white photograph on the corner of Dillon’s desk caught her eye and she walked over to study it. An ominous buzz started in her head. She pushed the top picture aside. Then the next and the next. Folder after folder of pictures, newspaper articles, reports, printouts, thick notebooks, all of the same man, the same face, the mean eyes, the revolting mouth. All of them Sanchez. All of it a shrine to obsession.
She swept her arm across the desk shoving them all to the floor in fury before whirling toward Dillon. “You just can’t quit, can you? When is enough going to be enough for you? Who else has to die before you end this?”
“I’ll quit when justice is served,” he said. Coldly.
“That,” she jerked a hand at his desk, the floor, “is not about justice. That’s about obsession. Vengeance.”
She wheeled away from Dillon, the pictures, the destruction. Jesus, God, nothing had changed. Nothing. And suddenly she couldn’t do this. Couldn’t go through it, go over it and rehash it all again. Everything was just too much, and she needed some breathing room before she choked on her own sorrow. And resentment.
She needed to find Craig. Needed to give him the flash drive before Sanchez found her. Or found her with Dillon and killed them both.
Find Craig. Wait for Matt. Get Ellie. Then get away and think. God, yes, she needed to think.
“Coming here was a bad idea. I need to leave. Where are my things?”
<><><>
Dillon’s temper started a slow roll. “You tell me you’re going to leave one more time and I swear, Sara, I’ll lock you in a damn room.” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s obvious you’re in trouble. Tell me how I can help.”
“You? Help?” She gave a short burst of laughter. It set his teeth on edge and he stood.
Control kept him still. “I’ll be damned if I’ll stand here and let you whip me with contempt. You want to go a round with me, then by all means let’s get it over with.”
Oh, she was primed. He could see it in her eyes, the rage, the way her body tensed, the pulse beating fast at the side of her neck. Her fatigue fled, replaced by a rage only a woman light-years past simple scorn could appreciate. “I should slap you to hell and back for what you’ve done.”
He couldn’t argue the truth and nodded. “I won’t stop you.”
She didn’t slap him. She hammer-fisted him in the stomach and as the air left his lungs, he blinked in just enough time to dodge a kick to his balls. He grabbed her full on. Tried locking his arms around her, but she managed to turn and smash a heel onto his instep. “Son of a bi--”
She back-fisted him in the face.
The strike had enough power behind it to jar his teeth and have him shoving her away. He wiped blood from his mouth as his eyes narrowed to slits. “This would be easier on both of us if you’d stop long enough to talk to me.”
She resumed the same fighting stance she’d taken earlier, outside his office, and he wondered where she’d learned to fight. “Pictures, and actions, don’t lie,” she said, and wheeled, kicking high with a savage roundhouse that sent him crashing into a side table.
He regained his balance, readied himself for the next attack. “I said I wouldn’t stop you, but I’m hardly going to let you destroy our house or try to kick my ass because you’re too damn stubborn to listen.”
“I tried to listen twelve months ago. I damn near
begged
to listen. You’re the one who left. Then you pulled a no-show.”
“I had to leave. Besides, you wouldn’t have listened then, just like you’re not listening now.” He relaxed his guard a fraction. “Are you going to stop or am I going to have to paddle your ass like a child?”
Her eyes went dark and her back stiff. “Just try it.”
“Don’t think I won’t.” He wanted to admire her spirit and skill, but he had just a tad more experience in hand-to-hand than she’d ever know. Even so, she looked glorious. Agile and quick, with her hair flying around her face, her stance perfect and her expression furious. “If you keep this up, I’m going to have to stop you. I don’t want to hurt you. I won’t.”
They circled each other, each wary, each waiting for the next move. “You’ve already hurt me. And you’re a lifetime too late to apologize.”
“I won’t apologize for your inaccurate conclusions.” He swept a foot out, hooked it behind her knee and had her landing on her back. He jumped her the instant she went down.
She bucked against him, breath heaving, fists flying, and landed a solid punch to his jaw before he finally caught her wrists and pinned her. “Stop! You’re already bruised, hurt, and dammit, I won’t add to it.”
“You son of a bitch! I loved you! We had everything, were everything. We were perfect. And you…you broke us. You lied.”
“Maybe I did lie.” To Sanchez, Sara, not to you. Not on purpose. “But not about the pictures. Not about our marriage. If we hadn’t already been fighting, if you weren’t so blindsided, you might’ve listened. I never cheated on you. Not ever. Nor would I. I don’t know who sent those pictures. Or why. You--”
“Not me.
You.
It’s about you. You and your all important job.”
Yeah, his job. All the secrets, leaving in the middle of the night without a ‘why’ or ‘where’ or ‘how long would he be gone this time’, and then the clincher—would he make it back alive this time or would Sara get that inevitable knock on the door that would change her life forever? “You married me knowing my job. What I am.”
“What you were. Not what you’ve become. I married a Navy SEAL, not a man who goes under for three long years when he promised it would only be one.
One.
I didn’t marry a man with vengeance in his soul. And I sure as hell didn’t marry a man who’d fall in love with another woman.”
“You’re going to try me, convict me of crimes without knowing the truth?”
“You may not have cheated physically, but tell me you didn’t love her.”
“Them,” he said. “I did, yes. And may God forgive me.”
“It’s not only God you need forgiveness from.” The fight left her then and she slumped in defeat. “Get off me.”
He stood. Helped her to her feet. “Now that you’ve bloodied my lip, are you going to tell me what’s going on? Sure as hell, Sara, I’m pissed too. You let me think you were dead for an entire year.”
She shook her hair back. “I chose you. I chose to spend my life with you. Every aspect of my life. No secrets, no lies. You knew my past, what had happened, and still, I let myself be vulnerable. To
you
. I
trusted
you. With my life, I trusted you. When you put your job ahead of my very life, I stopped owing you anything.”