Page 46 of Delta (Alpha #12)

"No, didn't think so." He pauses, thinking.

"You did what you had to do for your daughter.

I get it, and while I haven't had an in-depth conversation about it with my daughter yet, I'm gonna guess she does too.

But in the end, you knew what you were doing was wrong.

Your conscience won. You made an impossible choice.

" He leans forward again, elbows on knees, fingers steepled in front of his face.

"Your subconscious helped you make that choice. "

I frown at him. "Not following that bit. My subconscious helped me? How?"

"You knew, somehow, deep down, that by making the right choice for Bryn in that moment, it would work out. You knew your daughter would have told you to make the choice you did."

More burny, salty eyeballs, the traitorous fucks. "She would've done, yeah."

"You acted out of faith that saving Bryn wouldn't doom your daughter. And it didn't."

"Hell of a fucking gamble," I mutter.

"It wasn't a gamble, son."

"Why d'you call me son?" I ask. "Never had no father. Never been a son to no one."

He just shrugs. "Dunno. Maybe I feel a kinship to you. Maybe I see something of myself in you."

I spend the rest of the shockingly short flight working through the chaotic muddle of thoughts and emotions inside me.

Falling in love?

A kinship to Harris.

Everything will be different, now.

Never been a son to no one.

Acted out of faith…

"How d'you know?" I ask Harris, as we slow out of hypersonic in preparation for landing.

He doesn't have to ask what I mean. “Think about your life tomorrow, next month, next year…is she in it? Does the thought of her not being in your life in a day, a week, a year, or a decade make your stomach hurt? Does it make you feel all panicky? If it does, then you love her."

"Then what?"

He grins. "Then what? Son, that's the good stuff. Then what is putting your lives together. Leaving behind who you were and figuring out how to be you and her. How to be the man she sees when she looks at you. Because, Rush, when the women who love us look at us fucked up, fight-or-flight, never-show-weakness warriors, they see the real us. The us we don’t see.

They're not seeing potential, they're not seeing who we could be and trying to make us into someone we're not, they're seeing who we really are, who we should be.

Our job is to take all that effort we spent defending our hearts and being the being goddamn soldier we could be, and put it into being that man.

Her man. The man she sees. Because son, I guaran-fucking-tee you, that man is infinitely better than who we would be otherwise, without her. "

The man's a font of wisdom, too?

"Is there anything you're not good at?" I ask, shaking my head.

"Cooking. Sewing on buttons. Knowing when to stop. Basketball."

“That's funny, though, coz I’m a proper killer on the court."

He grins. "Well, then, I’d like to see you and Killy go one-on-one. That kid's a sniper from the outside."

"I'm an inside bloke. Can't hit shit but bricks from beyond the free throw line, but put me in the paint and let me cook, bruv."

"Look forward to it," Harris says, and somehow, I realize he's not kidding or blowing sunshine up my ass.

I've been pulled in, it looks like. And again, I'm not sure how to categorize the feeling that knowledge puts inside me, other than warm, weird, shaky, and…addictive.

We put down for a landing at the Austin airport, taxiing to the business aviation area. There's yet another parade of black SUVs, but these are definitely not your run-of-the-mill government issue Suburbans. Even as I descend the ramp and approach one, I can tell it's been heavily modified.

I'm stood there trying to sort out what's been done to them when the sun is blotted out by a mobile cliff on my right.

I turn, wondering if the jet rolled backward or something, and instead encounter the most enormous human being I’ve ever seen.

Seven feet tall if he's an inch and built like Arnie in his prime…

and this man's pushing sixty if not beyond it.

Blond hair gone half silver, cropped close on the sides and messy on top, a trim beard squaring off a hard jaw.

"So you're Rush." His voice is as deep as you'd expect, rough and hard and curious.

"You must be Thresh," I say.

He just nods. "You here for a good time or a long time?"

"Um. Sorry, mate, but what?"

"Brynnie."

“Oh. Hopefully a good long time."

He grins. A massive, heavy, cinderblock hand crashed down on my shoulder with casual power that makes me realize this fella's as much stronger than me as I am your average doughy, pencil-pusher type. "Good answer, kid." He glances down at me. "We're gonna get her. Nobody fucks with us."

"Think I'm workin' that one out on my own, mate," I say. "Not sure these wanna-be warlords know what they've bitten into."

"No. They don’t.”

"But that said, it don't do to underestimate Pugli. I've done work for him for a couple years now. He's a canny, cunning, unpredictable fuck. We've got to assume we're walking into a trap."

Thresh nods. "Rule number one of hostage extraction is always assume everything is an ambush."

The telltale scent of cigar smoke wafts across my nostrils, and I glance to my right—the man who is suddenly there is quite short but as broad as he is tall, with shoulders so broad you could land a Harrier on each one.

Arms near as big as Thresh's. His head's shaved to skin, and a long, thick black beard brushes his diaphragm—incongruously, there's a trio of clumsy braids woven into the beard down the center, the ends knotted with pink, purple, and baby-blue bows.

He's got a fat cigar clamped between his jaws on one side, acrid smoke curling upward, small, deep, dark, wickedly intelligent eyes scrutinizing me. "I'm Puck."

"Rush," I answer. I extend my hand to him.

He takes it in his and crushes mine, a smirk on his mouth. I notice he's missing the tip of a finger—same finger of the same hand as Bryn is now missing. I indicate the finger in question. "You and Bryn have matching missing fingertips."

Puck plucks the cigar from his jaws and taps it with his missing fingertip-hand. "That a fact?"

I nod. "Lost it in the firefight right before she got taken."

"How'd she handle it?" he asks.

I shrug. "Pissily."

This gets me another smirk. "Thatta girl." He eyes me, popping the cigar stump back into the corner of his mouth, on the opposite side, now. "Dyin' to ask, ain'tcha, bub?" He strokes his beard, fingering the incongruous bows.

I nod, biting down on my tongue to keep from letting out a comment about him being a Walmart Wolverine. "Bit out of place, is all."

"Granddaughter wants to braid Papa's beard, granddaughter braids Papa's beard," Puck answers, shrugging.

He shows me his other hand, which features fingernails messily painted—respectively from thumb to pinky—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.

"She was mighty annoyed I didn't have a sixth finger to make it a full rainbow. "

"You have a granddaughter?" I ask.

He nods. “Colbie and I’s daughter had a little oops when she was sixteen. We take care of the li’l stinker while her mama finishes her degree.”

I think back to conversations Bryn and I had, and what I know from media coverage of the A1S guys. “Didn't know you and Colbie had a granddaughter."

Puck nods. "Chloe's seven.” A blinking, thoughtful expression. He eyes me. "Internet stalking us, are you?"

I snort, shake my head. "Nah. Talked to Bryn a good bit. Done a fair whack of traveling since I ran into her, and not much to do but talk."

Puck snorts. "Ran into her? Is that what you're callin' it, bub?" A rough bark of sarcastic laughter. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"Puck," Harris snaps from the SUV trunk he's loading gear bags into, not looking up. "Belay that shit."

"Sir." This is accompanied by a sarcastic little salute.

"It's fine," I say. "Can't exactly say I don't deserve it."

Puck smacks my shoulder. "That's the spirit, kid. If you own your shit, folks aren't as likely to try an' hold it against you. And I dunno about you, but I don't like shit being held against me. It stinks."

I snicker a laugh at that. "Right you are there, mate."

A man I can only describe as nondescript approaches from…

somewhere. "Unassuming" also comes to mind.

Medium height, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes.

Nothing about him screams operator or badass extraordinaire, but I know this man is Anselm, one of the deadliest men on the planet—past, present, or future.

He extends a hand to me. "I am Anselm."

"Rush."

Anselm grins at me. "We like to call him Grampy, now." He points at Puck.Puck's eyes narrow at me. "Don't even think about it, kid."

I chuckle. "Warning heeded. I like my insides on the inside, after all, don't I?"

Puck nods, expression serious. "Good plan, kid."

A thick, heavy, hard hand rests on my shoulder like an anvil. "Don't listen to Grampy, kid. He was just born salty."

I look at the owner of the hand—Duke Silver. Two inches taller than me and carrying something like twenty-five pounds of muscle more than me. And I'm not small. Red hair with streaks of silver at the temples and along the hairline, buzzed close on the sides and longish messy on top.

He grins at me. "Welcome to the club."

"Which club is it I'm in?" I ask.

He gestures at the men around us. "This one. We've all been where you are right now—rescuing a beautiful woman from a complicated and dangerous situation, and tryin' to figure out how we feel."

"Oh." I let out a breath. "Quite a club. I'm alright with the rescue part—done more than a few hostage rescues with the service, but the feelings bit is a whole other thing."