Page 2

Not the man himself. He was a total stranger. But Blue still knew him.
He was lethal. A harsh reckoning on two feet, and it was always funny to Blue that men like this—men like him—didn’t set off alarms when they walked into places where normal people went about their lives, never knowing how quick and easy it could all be taken away. And would have been about a hundred times already if it weren’t for all the men like the one who walked toward him.
Like the one Blue saw in the mirror when he could stand to look.
The stranger walked like a marine, and Blue pegged him as Force Recon in two steps. It was something about the grim, ready set to his shoulders and the way hecommanded the space around him as he moved, as if he’d already plotted out contingency plans for every possible outcome. He threw an assessing glance around the room, and that confirmed it. More than Force Recon, Blue thought as the man drew closer, moving like a threat. He’d swear this guy was Delta Force, despite or possibly because of the battered jeans he wore, the snow-packed boots like all the locals, and the dark beard on his face that made him look like maybe he was trying to blend into this frontier town the way Delta Force did in all the worst places in the world.
But he blended about as much as Blue did with all these relatively soft, safe people, for all that they were Alaskan and hardier than the average American.
Meaning: not at all.
The man walked directly to Blue and stopped, then lifted his chin by way of a greeting. He didn’t check out Blue’s whiskey shot glass or the money on the bar, but Blue had no doubt that the man in front of him knew exactly how much he’d had to drink, what he’d tipped, and how long he’d been here. All in a single glance Blue hadn’t caught.
He stood straighter, squaring off his shoulders almost unconsciously.
“You look like a SEAL,” the man said, and he sounded like every arrogant SOB marine Blue had ever encountered. Which was to say, all of them.
“You sound like a marine,” he replied. The eye roll was implied.
The other man studied him a moment.
“You feeling a little antsy?” he asked gruffly. There was a hint of a smile on the other man’s hard face, but itdidn’t take. “I get it. You’re not underwater, which means there’s no place for a SEAL to hide while the serious shit goes down.”
Blue eyed him like he was thinking about taking offense, when instead the traditional obnoxious greeting between different branches of the military made him feel more relaxed than he had in a long time. As if he might just make it on the other side of active duty after all.
“Nice town.” He offered a bland grin. “Until you and your marine buddies roll in and start blowing it all up, that is.”
The other man didn’t grin in return, but his eyes crinkled slightly in the corners, which was as good as a belly laugh from an individual carved out of pure steel and trouble like this one. He nodded at the stool Blue had vacated, waited for him to slide back onto it, then claimed the one next to him. He lifted a couple of fingers in the bartender’s direction.
Blue knew three things then. That this was a man used to leading other men. That the places he led them were likely versions of hell, but he brought them back out again, one way or another. And that he led by example. Which was all Blue needed to know.
They sat there in comfortable silence. Chris Stapleton rasped his version of quiet southern despair on the jukebox. It seemed fitting even this far north and west. There was the clink of pool balls and the rise and fall of various alcohol-infused conversations in the background, here in a place that hadn’t seen much sun in a while.
Blue studied the whiskey in front of him and used themirror behind the bar to stay alert to the man who exuded so much menace and calm beside him.
“Just out?” the man asked after some time had passed.
“Less than seventy-two hours ago.”
“No wonder you have that new-car smell. Don’t worry. It wears off.”
Blue grinned at that, and raised his whiskey glass in a salute that was only half-mocking. He took a pull, then returned his attention to the bar mirror. There was a pack of four outdoorsy-looking men in the corner getting rowdy with a busty waitress who didn’t seem at all fazed—or impressed—by their attention. There were more men at the pool tables, telling one another fishing stories Blue didn’t have to hear any details of to know were exaggerated, if not outright lies.
And he figured it was the bartender who’d recognized what Blue was and called the man beside him. Unless this place was wired, but Blue had done his usual surveillance when he’d come in, and he hadn’t seen any cameras. His money was on the old man behind the bar, with a mouth that looked as droopy as his mustache and a map of questionable decisions all over his face.
“It’s hard to find a way home,” the marine said quietly. Almost offhandedly, but nothing about the man sitting next to him was anything but ruthlessly deliberate. “Takes a while.”
Blue met his gaze in the mirror. The other man’s was hard like flint, gray and sure. Steady.
“I don’t know what home is,” Blue said. If his voice was rough, he blamed it on the whiskey. Not stray memories of his tense childhood in that house outsideChicago he never wanted to see again, because he’d never considered it his home. Not the friends he’d lost on too many missions to count, who would never make it home at all. “I stopped looking for one a long time ago. What I want is a mission.”
And that was when the man beside him smiled.
“You can call me Isaac, brother,” he told Blue, like everything was settled. Then he lifted his own glass. “Welcome to Alaska Force.”
Two
PRESENT DAY