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“I’ll sweep the house,” Sachi told them, pulling a gun from the pocket holster tucked under her shirt at the small of her back.
After shutting off the car, Gabriel stepped out and eyed Brad. Interestingly, he didn’t follow Sachi, but continued to survey the area around them. She got the same way, hyper vigilant, unable to relax. To be blunt, most of the team had the same issue. He’d familiarized himself with a good bit of their history, both from files and from the stories that occasionally slipped out. They didn’t talk about their missions, not the way others did about their activities—but now and then, an anecdote escaped and pointed him in the right direction to learn more.
“You seem to be taking all of this rather well,” Brad said, his voice pitched low so it wouldn’t carry.
“Am I?” Trusting Brad’s watchfulness to alert him, Gabriel circled to the trunk and opened it. He retrieved his go bag and Sachi’s, leaving Brad to get his own. Meeting the other man’s gaze, he raised his eyebrows.
“She’s worth fighting for.” After his earliergame onchallenge, Brad’s statement was hardly news.
“Yes, she is.” Then, because not addressing his earlier challenge was pointless, Gabriel studied him. “She’s also her own person. She chose me to be here. To be with her. Until the day she tells me to take a hike, I’m not going anywhere. If she doesn’t want you around, she and I can take care of that, too. You’re here because she still cares. I’m here because she wanted me to stay.”
“Fair enough.” The easygoing jovial façade the Marine had been sporting since Titanium dropped the bomb on them vanished. “I’m here because I love her, and I want her back. If that means you’re part of the package, I have no issues with that. You’re here—you’re right—because she cares. If she didn’t, or if you were bad for her, you’d already be dead.”
It seemed they had more in common than he’d originally surmised. “Then, for the time being, this isn’t about who shares her bed or her heart, but about keeping her alive.”
“It’s always been about keeping her alive.” Brad retrieved his go bag. “Isn’t that right, John?”
“Tell you what, fairy boys,” John’s gravel voice came out of the dark. “I don’t give a fuck which of you are in her bed, but I will put a bullet in both of you if you keep standing here comparing your dicks while she’s in there alone.”
Even expecting John to put on an appearance, the rock-on-rock grind of his voice in the dark with absolutely no sign of him was an eerie thing.
“There’s two of us and one of you, now.” Brad sounded almost cheerful.
A slide lock echoed through the quiet evening.
Bumping his fist to Gabriel’s shoulder, Brad jerked his chin toward the lodge. “Let’s go see what she’s found, and whether or not we’re going to spend the next few hours in uncomfortable silence while she plots the many ways she could eviscerate me.”
He set out ahead of him. Gabriel watched him go, then called, “We can do that aloud if it makes you feel better.”
“Hey, Inigo Montoya.” John’s voice stopped him before he took another step. “Be careful. I’ve never fully trusted him with her.”
“You’d take a bullet for him.” It wasn’t a question. He’d seen Merc with the team. He protected them all, trusted them on the shadiest of operations.
“Trust him with my life? No problem. Trust him with hers?”There was the rub.The lie didn’t sit well with John any more than it did with Gabriel. “He abandoned her once.”
“She’s not alone this time, and we’re not going anywhere.” No reply came to his statement, which he supposed was approval enough. Ahead, the lights came on inside the lodge windows one-by-one. Brad was right about one thing—not talking to each other wasn’t helping. So, time to dig the information out of both of them, and then the three of them could see what was left after. Trusting John could still hear him, he said, “Unless you hear gunfire, steer clear of the lodge tonight.”
“Ten-four.” It was a whisper on the wind, and Gabriel chuckled. John really wasn’t so bad when one got to know him, but damn if he didn’t do creepier than fuck better than any CIA agent Gabriel ever met.
Himself included.
After a sweepof the lodge and deeming it secure, she found the generator and got it turned on, then dialed up the heat in the building. By the time Brad entered, she had the wood stacked in the fireplace and teased a flame to life in the kindling beneath. Sparing him a look, she frowned at the lack of Gabriel either ahead of or just behind him.
“He’s out there talking to Merc.” Brad pointed with his thumb. “What room are we sleeping in?”
“Gabriel and I are sleeping in here.” She motioned to the living room.
“Fine.” Brad dropped his bag. “Then I’ll be sleeping here, too.”
Before she could respond, Gabriel entered and closed the door with a thump. Like her, both men left their boots by the door. “He’s right. He should sleep in here. Everyone together for the time being.” Dropping their bags on the sofa, he crossed the room. The intensity in his blue eyes arrested her attention. “We also need to talk.”
What the hell had they discussed out there?
“Fine, we’ll brainstorm on the possible source, see what information we can put together. The faster we resolve this—”
“No, Sachi.” The two simple words punched through her defenses, and she considered how to shore them up.
“We discussed this,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. Instead of giving them privacy, Brad joined them in front of the fire, but Gabriel wasn’t looking at him. No, the full weight of his focus was on her.