Or—and this was the one he couldn’t stop returning to—she’d heard it and hadn’t understood what it meant, because Alyssa had kept the message vague. Something happened tonight. Don’t worry.
He picked up the quarters. Set them back down. He had to be the one to tell her.
He’d made death notifications before. It was part of leading a team, the part nobody trained you adequately for. He knew the language—specific, direct, with no softening that would delay understanding. He knew to make eye contact, to say the person’s name, and to explain what had happened, rather than using euphemisms that made it easier on the speaker and harder on the listener.
He knew all of it. None of it would help when the time came.
Somewhere around four AM, the threat assessment stopped working.
He’d done it three times. Methodical, systematic, starting from the outermost perimeter and working inward. Weather, cartel, Blake, roads, FBI timeline. He had contingencies mapped for eight different scenarios. He knew exactly what he’d do if the roads cleared faster than expected, if they didn’t clear at all, if cartel operatives found the cabin, if Blake made contact, if the FBI moved the safe house timeline.
Then he got to Alyssa. Status: sleeping. Location: his bedroom.
And his mind stayed there.
She was an unknown variable he couldn’t reduce to facts or strategize options for. Every time he tried, his mind strayed to her face, her eyes, that sexy voice, and his heart stuttered.
He hadn’t expected her to look the way she did. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected—he hadn’t let himself think about her, the theoretical someday of seeing her again. Thinking about it was its own particular torture.
She’d pushed back at him. That was the first thing he’d noticed, even in the middle of an active extraction with a cartel enforcer a few feet away. The old Alyssa would have gone quiet and compliant the second he’d taken charge of the situation, would have smoothed herself into whatever shape the moment required. This one had argued with him.
I’m not going anywhere with you.
He’d wanted to shake her. He’d also, and this was the part he was least proud of, wanted to laugh.
Then, here at this table, she’d drawn his hands.
He hadn’t meant to look at the sketchbook—had glanced at it reflexively, the way he registered anything that moved in his peripheral vision—but he’d seen enough. The scar was rendered exactly right, the way it pulled at the base of his thumb, the quarters beside it.
She’d drawn him from memory a hundred times over his years of deployments, she’d told him once. She’d been keeping him present the only way she knew how.
He reached for the anger. It was usually reliable—the clean fury of choosing Blake over him, of watching her face when she’d said, he’s my brother, Mack, I can’t. Of not believing him, not even doubting Blake for a moment.
It was still there, but other things were behind it. The way she’d fit against his chest in the hallway. His arm had known exactly where to go, her body had known exactly how to settle, like the intervening time since their breakup was a technicality that didn’t apply to how they’d been built to stand together.
A sigh escaped his lips. He snapped them shut. He picked up the quarters and rolled them until his hand ached, and then rolled them some more.
At five AM, he called Garrett.
He’d been putting it off, which was unlike him and which he recognized as avoidance, which was also unlike him, which meant the evening had gotten under his skin in ways he’d deal with later.
Garrett answered on the second ring. “Claire called.” No preamble. Garrett never wasted words.
“I figured.”
“You want to tell me why you abandoned an active operation against direct instruction?”
Mack glanced out the window. “The civilian was going to get grabbed, interrogated, and killed.”
“And the FBI couldn’t handle it because?—?”
Silence.
“Mack.”
“She’s Blake Bennett’s sister.”
The pause on the other end of the line was heavy. Garrett Cross had been running Shadow Point Security with Dr. Vivi Montgomery since its inception. She was the psychologist behind the scenes who’d once worked for the NSA. Commander Cross had been a SEAL. The two of them had built it from a five-man operation into something that mattered, and Garrett had a particular talent for receiving information and saying nothing until he’d fully processed it. It was one of the things that made him a good commander.