Page 22

Chapter

Twenty

BONES

S ounds of pans on counters, fridge opening and closing, followed by chopping in the kitchen told me he was up. The doors to the rooms Alphabet and Voodoo had taken the night before were both closed. A low whistle kicked up, then stretched into a tune.

I paused, hand on the swinging door, to identify the song. He was whistling Patience . Interesting choice. The door swung inward silently. It was still dark outside, the sunrise at least another hour off.

The scent of fresh coffee perfumed the air and there was a whole pot of it that he’d brewed. Dressed in jeans and nothing else, Lunchbox chopped vegetables with his back to the door. The red marks on his neck and shoulders were very visible.

Even if we hadn’t heard her for a good portion of the day and into the evening, the shift in their relationship was blatantly obvious. I waited until he paused mid-chop to let the door swing closed behind me and headed for the coffee pot.

Silence rushed in to fill the room. The apartment that Grace had borrowed for us was very nice. Too nice. We’d need to make sure we didn’t damage it. No sense in leaving her friend holding the bag for our choices.

Voodoo and I had already discussed that when we left the day before to get supplies. We needed another safe house in the area anyway. Locating one and locking it down could fill in the hours while Alphabet worked on decrypting the files we’d taken.

I filled a large mug with coffee, taking about half of what was left in the pot. Downing a long swallow of the strong brew, I let it burn away the cobwebs and the light fog from low sleep. Carrying the mug, I settled at the kitchen table with my phone.

Aware of Lunchbox’s stare, I opened my emails and flipped through the responses that had come in through the night. I’d tapped some sources I still had in intelligence. Reached out to other contacts we’d cultivated over the past few years.

We’d done more than one black bag job that couldn’t have official fingerprints. Beyond the actual Network itself, we’d developed other—connections through intelligence sources and local resources in the region.

The chopping resumed without the whistling this time when I took another swallow of coffee. I spared him a look. His jaw had tightened and he glared at the vegetables he was chopping like they were the culprits.

“You want to hit me or just make that face until it cracks?” The question pinged off the walls like we were sitting inside a game of pinball. It whooshed past me, grazing but not quite scoring the hit he was going for.

Lunchbox stared at me steadily as he finished chopping an onion then scraped it all into a bowl. The lack of pretense was probably a good thing. We needed to address this issue. All of us.

But we had to be controlled because I wasn’t going to risk destroying this kitchen to solve it. Leaning back in my chair, I turned the phone facedown.

It shouldn’t have to be said, but here we were.

“She’s not yours,” I told him. Not clenching my jaw took effort. Where his opening salvo had sailed past me, mine struck. His knuckles went white on the knife handle before he shifted to rinse it and the cutting board off.

“She’s not yours , either.” That landed. More than I cared to admit, that sliced. But I could handle the blow. It took a lot more than a cut to stop me.

He pulled out a basket of potatoes in a strainer from the sink and went to work cutting them.

Blowing out a long breath, I weighed my options. Direct would be better for both of us, no matter how much it might cost. “Do you really think this is about territory?”

“Nope, Cap, I don’t.” He didn’t look up as he halved, then quartered, the chopped until he’d made solid square shaped potatoes for frying. “I think this is about the fact that you’re terrified of needing her.”

I ignored the accusation. Fear had no place in command. Fear could choke. Fear cost lives. I wouldn’t let fear cost me any of them. “What about what she needs?”

He spared me a look before swapping his knife to his free hand and picking up his coffee. “You’ve been fighting this since Pennsylvania. Watching her bleed, letting her carry it, pretending you don’t give a damn and that she needed to be treated as nothing more than a client.”

After emptying the mug, he returned it to the counter then began to chop again.

“You might like to think you’re stone, Cap.

But you’re not.” He shook his head, making steady progress through the potatoes.

“I’ve let it slide. At first, I got it, she’s been through hell.

She’s not all the way through it yet. Voodoo—he’s already invested and even when it pissed me off, he helped her. ”

“Something you made clear when you punched him.” The dry delivery stopped Lunchbox mid-chop and he just stared at me. “Fortunately, the shifting nature of the relationship hasn’t disrupted the team too much.”

He snorted. “You do realize the only one who has ever sounded jealous is you ?”

I didn’t bother to deny it. “Then you haven’t been paying as close attention as you claim.”

“Do you think keeping our distance is going to protect her? Do you think not touching her is a noble sacrifice?” He shook his head. “They took a lot from her. A hell of a lot more than she will admit to herself. That need she has for control, you should recognize it.”

“I do.” I had. Too damn well.

“Then you have to know what she needs isn’t a saint or saints? She doesn’t need us to parachute in and out. She needs a pack around her.” He pointed the blade at me. “A pack that will defend her and let her defend us. She told you herself, don’t you remember?”

“She said to use her like a weapon.” I remembered. “We did. It put her in O’Rourke’s crosshairs.”

“She was already in them.” Lunchbox huffed out a breath. “We’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to think his appearance there has nothing to do with Reznik’s in Monaco. Reznik is involved. Grace is on their lists. We were there. It’s not a huge stretch to link us to her.”

“After the chateau, O’Rourke has his supposition confirmed.” If I’d been closer, I could have just ended it right there and right then. Eliminating him took a lesser priority than getting Grace out.

“Well, we can’t exactly put the cat back in the bag.” He finished cutting up the last of the potatoes and rinsed off the knife, then the board before he washed his own hands. Only when he was done and drying them did he face me again. “Even if we could, I wouldn’t.”

“No?” I raised my brows. “Tying her to us only adds fresh targets to her back.” For anyone who wanted to get to us, she would be the leverage they needed. We’d kill them. All of them. But it wouldn’t take the target off.

It wouldn’t let her go home.

“No, I wouldn’t. Because A, the guys want her. They want her and they care. B, I’m not backing off. Not now. Not after she’s let me see her. All of her.” He sounded damn near reverent. “I wasn’t interested in retreating before, I damn well won’t now.”

He went to the cabinet and pulled out a bowl before he retrieved eggs.

“So either you step up or just get the fuck out of the way, Cap. Don’t make us choose between you and her.” He cracked the first egg into the bowl. “She needs us. We need her. If you were honest with yourself, you’d admit that you aren’t immune. It’s that simple.”

We both wanted to protect her. That was obvious. But he wanted to dive in with her. No tempering with restraint or caution. He was as lost as Voodoo and Alphabet were.

“She’s not ready for this,” I said, rising with my empty coffee cup. “She’s not ready for what we are.”

Lunchbox laughed. “None of us were ready.” He spread his arms. “Yet here we are.”

“They key is we chose this life.”

“You think she hasn’t?” He looked genuinely shocked as I split the remaining pot between his cup and my own. Then I took the time to set up another one. “You’re not that blind, Cap. You can’t be.”

“She didn’t choose,” I reminded him. “She was kidnapped. Assaulted. Raped. Kidnapped again. Physically abused. Then she’s been attacked repeatedly—that’s not choosing, Legend. You damn well know that.”

We didn’t generally rely on the names we were born with, choosing to be the team we were.

“Cap, Alphabet didn’t choose to have his leg blown off. He didn’t choose to be so wrecked that he needed a dog to help him with episodes and to manage his PTSD. Doc didn’t choose to—” He cut off there and sighed, hands braced against the counter.

“We signed up,” I reminded him. “Each and every one of us signed up, trained, and went into our service with our eyes open. Were we betrayed? Yes. Did it cost us? Yes. Doc went into that conflagration to get Alphabet. There isn’t a single one of us who wouldn’t have done the same damn thing.”

Facing him across the island, I met his gaze and didn’t flinch.

“Everything that’s happened to Grace… everything from the time they took her until we got to France, even some of it here, has not been because of her choices.”

“She asked for our help.”

“I know she did. We’re going to help her.” That wasn’t even a question. “But she wouldn’t be here out of choice. She’s here because the choices of others have forced her hand.”

Lunchbox bowed his head, his throat convulsing once before he snapped it up to stare at me. “Look me in the eye and tell me she doesn’t belong with us. That she doesn’t burn for every single one of us in a different way.”

I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

I’d held her when the nightmares came and the fear tried to tear her apart. I’d fought that fear, using her own body to wrest her free of it.

“You care about her. I get it.” Lunchbox’s voice was deceptively quiet. The coffeemaker hissed and spit as it brewed. Outside, the sky grew lighter. “You’re just trying not to drown in it. But me? I’ll drown. Happily.”

I sighed. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. They’d all go over that cliff and into the rapids. They’d let the water sweep them away.

After a moment, Lunchbox went back to cracking eggs as he cleared his throat. “So now we’ve got a problem. We’ve got Reznik and O’Rourke, alive and hunting. And we’ve got Grace, running hot and not stopping to breathe. So what’s our move, Cap?”

With a whisk, Lunchbox began to whip the eggs.

“The way I see it, we go after Reznik now. He’s one of the big bidders, a lynchpin.

We pull him and we strike loud. We send the others scrambling for cover.

” That was definitely one way to handle it.

“Not like we don’t owe Reznik some pain.

Or… we ghost now and get Grace back stateside and to base. Let things chill here.”

She would never agree to the second, he had to know that.

“We can’t do both,” Lunchbox pressed on. “She’s not bulletproof.”

All facts. He wasn’t wrong. Going after them with her would risk her. Securing her meant letting them go for now. She wanted to be used as a weapon. “If we pull her,” I reasoned. “We could lose him. We might not get a second chance.”

That was one risk.

“If we stay, and use her, she might not make it out.” Real concern edged that fear.

That was another risk. That fear would push them to take the hit for her and it wouldn’t be Grace we lost—or not her only.

“It’s your call.”

I didn’t snort, because after all that, it was still my call. Whether they agreed with me or not, they would follow my lead. That curbed some of the irritation and the anger souring my gut.

Another choice.

We had friends.

We had Doc.

“We get her out.” I didn’t like it. I didn’t like trusting her safety to someone else, but putting distance between us might be the best thing. “We get her safe. Then we burn Reznik and the rest of those bastards to the ground. Quiet. Smart. Permanent.”

“She’s not going to like it.” As if I didn’t already know that.

“She doesn’t have to.” The simple fact was as long as she was secure, we could focus on the mission. Destroy this whole arm of it. Then we could work on finding her sister. “She just has to live through it.”

“And when she finds out we made the call without her?”

“She’ll forgive us.” I shrugged. She could forgive them. She had at almost every other step.

The skepticism in Lunchbox’s expression was almost laughable. “You think so?”

“No,” I told him, taking another long drink of my coffee. “But I’ll take that hit if it keeps her breathing.”

The creak of the door saved me from the sympathy in Lunchbox’s eyes. The light shuffle of steps was Grace.

She was perfect, and composed. Except for her eyes.

They were on fire.