Page 19

His chest hitched. The next words came rough.
“We’re the only proof they existed. Don’t leave them behind again. Find whatever it takes, grit, anger, anything, and get back to OrdoTech.”
“Rest now, Nash,” she said quietly. The sound of her voice dissipated the anger, replacing it with a haunting ache that sat squarely in the middle of his chest. “I’ll be in the lobby at 0800. I have a rental, and I can drive us to the facility each day.” The guilt surged when he heard the door close behind her as she retreated. No answer. Nothing. He had no way of knowing if he’d gotten through to her or only pushed her farther away.
He had his answer when the next morning he waited for her until 0815. It was coming down steadily when he left the hotel, heavy, wet crystals that settled on his leather jacket and clung to his hair. For a moment, he looked at the sky, wondering if it was even productive for him to go back to OrdoTech. It would be better for him to just call Caspari, tell her what happened, pack his bags, and go back to DC. He closed the car door, reached back for his phone as he pivoted back toward the hotel. His jaw set, he paused, stopped moving. Combat breathing just started on its own. Breathe in for four beats, exhale. The drift was like a white blanket covering him in stillness. He couldn’t give up. No goddamned way. Who the fuck was he? He was a goddamn winner that’s who he was. He would convince Grace. She would agree. She was the one who embracedwait. He was the who shouted,go.
Before he could move, someone rushed into his path. He stopped and stared, flexing his jaw, he met her gaze. Nash stood still. White dust gathered on his shoulders. Combat breath fading. Waiting. She was the one who rushed this time. But for once, it wasn’t away.
Snowflakes caught in her hair like lace, clung to her shoulders, kissed the curve of her lips. Her pea coat was stark against the collar of her pink shirt. Her impossibly red hair was wild again, free in crimson waves around her face. She was standing with her hands jammed in her pockets, her laptop case hanging by a strap from her shoulder, her eyes green and anxious as she watched him, and Nash’s chest tightened even more as the falling hush brushed her like a silent prayer.
The space between them blurred with windblown white. Grace didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe heavy like she’d run, but she had. You didn’t carry that much storm in your eyes unless you were coming in from the cold.
Her voice trembled, an edge of anxiety in her tone. “When I didn’t find you in the lobby, I practically ran into you again.”
“That seems to be a pattern with us.” He wasn’t going to take any more chances. His jaw still tight, he rasped, “We’re locked in now, Grace.”
He waited for her confirmation, six months of frustration boiling up in him, six months of spiraling, drinking, fucking his anger into willing bodies, six months of memory loss of pain sunk deep into his marrow.
The torment in her eyes kicked off another twist of guilt. “I’m not leaving you,” she said, and those words settled in him like sunlight, like a promise. “I found the courage only ten minutes ago. We are witnesses to their deaths. We are the only ones who can finally bring them home.” Those words set off a thick ache in his chest. “I can’t…leave them behind again either.”
Relief rushed through him with enough force that his knees went weak. He was grateful for plenty of things, but mostly for her showing up. She would have chased him like a shadow, haunted him like a ghost. He didn’t need more ghosts and shadows. He needed Grace and the answers they would discover.
He walked up to her. “My car is over there,” he said as he crowded her toward it. They split apart as she headed for the passenger door, and he got his open and settled inside.
They buckled in and he started the engine. Grace looked at him, her expression unreadable. “You’re not only distracting,” she said softly. “You’re persuasive.” She sounded peeved and still spooked. “I read your file three times, and I didn’t expect that. But I should have known. Former SEAL, quitting isn’t in your vocabulary or your DNA.”
His breath tightened. “We never leave the brotherhood, even in death,” he said. “My file is highly classified. How did you get—” No, he already knew. “Caspari.” His disgust laced through her name.
Grace shook her head, turned to look at him, those unique green eyes full of disquiet. “No, not exactly. All she was able to get was your redacted file. I read the original after-action report, your interview. I was the tech assigned to scrub everything.”
Nash’s breath caught.She’d seen it all. The blood. The burn marks. The parts of me I barely remember, and she’d been the one to press delete.“So, what I said?—”
“Hit me hard. I lost people when the drone exploded. I know what I saw. It shouldn’t have happened. I made the call so that it wouldn’t happen. I’m lucky to be alive.” She pulled the sleeve down over the scars on her wrist. He’d seen them yesterday.
“Who, Grace? Who did you lose?”
The road curved gently, pine trees blurring past the window in a smear of green and gray. Grace sat beside him, her arms folded tightly in her lap, her face angled toward the glass, but he could see the tension in her jaw. The way her fingers curled against her forearm. The way her breath kept catching just slightly before every exhale.
He gave her time. Didn’t push. Just let the silence stretch between them, calm and open. Like space she could fill when she was ready.
Finally, just before the turnoff toward OrdoTech, she spoke.
“You don’t know what happened. Caspari, she didn’t?—”
“No. She didn’t. Grace, I don’t think she cares what happened to us. She’s just using it as leverage,” he bit out. Nash flicked his eyes to her, then back to the road. “The drone op? What happened?”
She nodded, barely.
“I read the tribunal report,” he said, voice low. “But most of it was redacted. Sanitized.”
She didn’t answer right away. But something shifted in her posture. The way her shoulders curled in slightly. The way her hands, clenched so tightly a second ago,eased openlike the question had disarmed her. She turned her face more toward the window, but not before he saw it. A flicker of disbelief. Then something that looked likerelief.
Not because he’d asked. But because hemeantit.
He bet every time she’d tried to tell this story, someone had buried it. Dismissed her. Rewritten it until she wasn’t even a person in it anymore, just a glitch in the system. But not this time. Not with him. That realizationchanged her.
Her lips curved, not a smile. Just a bitter flex of lips. “Sanitized is a nice word for it.”