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It left him feeling grumpy and out of sorts, which annoyed him even further, since he’d built an entire military career on his composure. His ability to remain calm and unflappable no matter what.
Blue wasn’t a big fan of the notion that a ghost from his past could careen over a mountain pass and lodge herself beneath his skin. And yet there was no denying Everly had done exactly that.
To say it bothered the hell out of him was an understatement.
He sprawled at his usual table in the corner of the Water’s Edge Café, in the ragtag handful of brightly painted storefronts that constituted downtown Grizzly Harbor, trying to keep his mood off his face, because he didn’t want to explain it to the other men at the table.
He trusted his brothers-in-arms with his life, but he also knew them. They would torture him endlessly over any and all perceived weaknesses—a favor he would have happily returned tenfold if the shoe had been on the other foot.
It had already been a long morning. He’d taken Everly into town on one of the skiffs they kept tied up at the docks in Fool’s Cove. Isaac had long ago made arrangements with one of the largely seasonal so-called inns here in town for situations just like this one, so it hadn’t been any trouble to settle his once-upon-a-time neighbor into one of the rooms, even at such a weird hour. He’dgone back home and grabbed a few hours of sleep himself, then had dragged himself to the 0700 daily community workout in the cabin down on the beach, which Isaac had converted into a stark, unwelcoming, dark box of pain that functioned as Alaska Force’s gym.
Pain is growth,Isaac liked to bark out while they were all lifting impossibly heavy things, running like madmen up and down the steepest inclines out back, or doing entirely too many soul-killing burpees at the cold water’s edge to allow any complaining. Or much breathing.
Because the truth about Isaac Gentry, Blue had learned over the past six months as much in the gym as in the field, was that the man was, at heart, a sadistic bastard. That was the only possible way an actual human— instead of, say, a cyborg—could stay in such fantastic shape outside active duty.
The daily workout wasn’t mandatory. It wasn’t boot camp, and there were no drill sergeants roaming around Fool’s Cove, for which Blue was eternally grateful. But miss the 0700 sweat and a man could expect the entirety of Alaska Force up in his face.
Hard. Freaking. Pass.
After a typically brutal hour of suffering and struggle, which Isaac cheerfully claimed would make them all better men, because he was one hundred percent the demon from hell Griffin liked to call him in three or four glacially precise languages every morning, Blue and Templeton had transported Everly’s rental car back into town. By boat, not that hair-raising suicide-by-mountain road he couldn’t believe she’d managed to drive over.
Templeton had loped off to get an extra trail run in,because he hadn’t had enough abuse for the day, apparently. Blue had gone to get food. Now he just needed to drink enough of the rocket fuel masquerading as coffee in the Water’s Edge Café to feel like himself again, or so he kept telling himself. He was well into his third cup, and so far, no luck. There was far too much Everly and her tearstained face messing around with his head, not to mention the feel of her arms beneath his hands when she’d catapulted herself at him.
Blue still didn’t like the fact he’dwantedto let her crash into him. That he almost hadn’t caught her, just so he could see how a ghost felt in his arms.
But this was definitely not the time to be thinking about things like that, because two of his Alaska Force brothers sat across from him in the deceptively cheerful restaurant, both as well trained in reading a man’s secrets, no matter how hard he tried to keep them hidden, as Blue was himself. If not better.
“You get any more clarity on why your girl passed out like that?” Isaac asked, cupping his palms around the thick, sturdy coffee mug in front of him. It was huge and his fourth, but even the high-octane caffeine served here couldn’t make the leader of Alaska Force jittery. As far as anyone knew, nothing could.
“Tired,” Blue said with a shrug. “It’s a long drive from Chicago.”
“Not to mention over Hard-Ass Pass,” Isaac agreed, though the look on his face was too studiously blank to be believable. As was his attempt at chitchat.
Still, Blue didn’t really want to think about Everly up on that narrow, winding, eroded mountain pass. There was still snow and ice up there, even though it was theheight of summer. This was Alaska. The mountains were as crotchety and randomly lethal as the bears. Not to mention all the locals.
And the fact that it bothered him that she’d put herself at risk like that made him even more irritated with himself.
Directly across the table from him, Jonas Crow—special ops designation still too highly classified to mention, though the way he hummed with barely leashed power offered a few clues if a man knew where to look—watched Blue balefully.
That was his usual expression. Today it looked more intense than normal.
“She’s trouble,” Jonas said, through the beard that made him look particularly ferocious, long and black and as grim as the expression he always wore.
“Because she’s a woman or because she’s the first person who’s ever dared show up at our front door without going through the proper Internet channels to get herself an invitation?” Isaac asked. His mouth twitched behind the beard that, unlike Jonas’s, made him seem more approachable and less fierce. Without the beard, he looked too much like what he was. A sharpened blade, ready to strike. With the beard, the unobservant might mistake him for a good ol’ boy. “I agree, of course.”
Blue glared at Jonas, who blended in maybe too easily with all the rest of the local Alaskan survivalists around here who lived out in the bush and made it into town only when it was necessary and the weather permitted. He was dressed all in camo, his black hair straight and long, and wearing the scowl he preferred during tourist season—on the off chance anyone visiting from the vastand distant south might look at his usual thunderclap expression and imagine he was cuddly. “You think everyone is trouble.”
“That’s because everyoneistrouble.” That Jonas could talk through a scowl so ferocious remained an enduring mystery, but he was good at defying expectations. “If I liked people, I’d live where they swarmed over everything like ants. Which is everywhere else, as far as I can tell.”
“You think Kodiak, population maybe six thousand at a stretch, is clogged and crowded.”
Jonas made a low sound that Blue thought was his version of a laugh. “I’m sure it would be a great place to live. If they lost about six thousand people.”
Blue switched his glare to Isaac. “And you know better than to encourage his antisocial crap.”
Isaac’s laugh didn’t require interpretation. “The difference between Jonas and me is that I like trouble.”
Blue rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the particularly potent mix of tired and amped that he knew from long experience meant that he was bordering on too agitated for his own good. Or anyone else’s.