Page 122 of Rogue Mission

Tension coils so tight in his flexed forearms, I expect he’ll stand and walk out.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if he did. Spence shut down all communications six months after he left the Teams.

Now I know why.

Instead of leaving, he reaches into his front jeans pocket.

A small Saint Michael medal, scuffed and dulled, is in his palm when he holds his hand out. “This was hers.”

In a flash, I see myself in him. The vision terrifies me. I have to end the threat against Rosalie.

“I don’t use it like a shrine.” He drifts a thumb over metal. “I use it to remind me to do better. Doing better right now means helping you protect your girl.”

There’s fire burning in my throat, a sting in my eyes as I push a hand into my hair. “Where are we taking her?”

Spence taps the medal on the table. “First, you have to tell me what made you the way you were. Was it just playing the field, or did you have some ghost riding your six like I do?”

I sit back, a corkscrew of tension twisting around inside me.

Spence always knew how to dig in, drive spikes under fingernails when he needed to.

“Oh, there are ghosts.”

The words leave a coppery taste in my mouth.

As I press my fingers against my forehead, I dig up my own personal hell. And tell him the story.

“My mom discovered a bottle she loved more than my sister and me. You can probably imagine the story. I was seventeen. Liberty was just turning sixteen. Mom took off, never to find her way to the surface again.”

It takes a few seconds to push down the lump of emotion rising against my sternum.

But the pop of gunfire outside brings me back into sharp focus.

“I was gone half the time,” I admit, “paying for a roof over our heads and food, working after school all the time. In what littletime I had, I taught Liberty how to change a tire and throw a punch, but I missed the part where she learned how to hide the fact a man beat her.”

There’s a breeze pushing through the window. Colder than before, but I’m sweating more.

I flex my hands in my lap. Old anger returning to that familiar place.

“All the signs were there. There’s no one to blame but myself.”

Shaking my head, I shift to press my hands flat onto the table to keep from punching something.

“How did you find out?” he asks, looking at me across his mug of coffee. As if this was a normal conversation between two normal guys, when it’s anything but.

“Not because I realized why she wore sleeves down to her wrists in August. Or why she always flinched at loud noises. Her eyes were always downcast when he was around. No, I missed all that.”

“Go on,” he says, looking at me with unwavering intensity.

“Think I was telling myself it was stress. Exams. Some kind of make-up trend, but she was actually covering bruises.”

God, I was a fucking idiot. The chair groans when I shift. “I saw a text from him. But by that time, she’d been living with his hands on her for a year.”

Spence sits with it. Doesn’t tell me he’s sorry. Doesn’t try to downplay my guilt.

“I mopped the kitchen floor with his ass and dragged him across the lawn til he had grass embedded in his face,” I say, voice gone raw.

The medal glints between his fingers.