Page 4

CHAPTER FOUR

For a long, agonizing moment, Nash stood as the door closed in his face. Shock coursed through him. I’m distracting her? He hadn’t meant to. If anything, she was reawakening everything that was male in him. That numbness he’d experienced crawling through bars, fucking women he didn’t know, stumbling home to his bed feeling dirty and hollow. The empty pleasure left him aching in his bones.

He clasped his head as he stepped back. He admitted that he was looking at her not like a coder, but like a lush, desirable redhead bound so tightly she would break if someone…his mouth went dry…touched her. Was he attracted to her? Fuck , yeah. But not like those women in the bars. They were a blur, faceless bodies he used to release all the anger and tension, to help with the headaches. But it had all been a temporary fix, and deep down he knew that, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t know what else to do.

It’s you.

Him. He was chasing her away. He was the reason she’d packed her bags. That revelation dropped on him like a load of cement. Thrusting himself away from the door, the heavy sensation in his gut spreading, he settled on the edge of the bed, suddenly blindsided. He looked at the door, one that connected between them. Hell, they were connected. They needed each other for this investigation. He needed her more than she needed him.

Leave .

That one word had been laced with tension. Now he knew why. Tightening his jaw against the jolt of anger directed solely at himself, he dragged his eyes away from the closed door , and he couldn’t fathom why it hurt, the sudden thickness in his chest crowding his breath. He barely knew her.

You want to know her.

Again. Fuck , yeah. There was all that reckless hair that was now tamped down into that audacious bun, leaving her neck bare…kissable skin tempting him into more than sin, and her buttoned-down librarian clothing only made him want to loosen her up.

What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t fail his teammates, yet instead of finding answers they both wanted, no needed… fuck …to move on, to let go , he was thinking about Grace in a way that wasn’t going to help.

Panic grabbed him by the throat, the anger, shock, attraction all mixing together, settling into a lump in the pit of his stomach, setting off one hell of a headache. He’d suffered from them after he’d gotten out of the hospital, blinding, mind-splitting headaches so bad that it felt as if his skull would explode if he so much as moved his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one. An hour later, he was at the gym pummeling the bag, but each hit seared from his knuckles up his arm into his head. He worked the bag until he was sweat-soaked, until his shoulders were burning, until his muscles were quivering from sheer physical exhaustion.

By the time he got back to his room, a doozy had already clawed into his temples, and the back of his skull felt on fire. He was courting something debilitating if he didn’t lie down. Fighting against the nausea boiling in his stomach, he stripped down to his boxer briefs.

Gritting his teeth against the sickening jolt of pressure in his skull, he stretched out on his back on the bed, then rested his arm across his eyes. Remaining absolutely motionless, he waited for the nausea to ease, trying to release the grinding tension in his jaw. All this time without one, and one run-in with Grace, one run-in with reality, and he felt as if someone was trying to drive a tank through his head.

What the hell was he supposed to do without her help? Caspari…she would ruin Grace even more than she had already been traumatized. He couldn’t have that on his conscience. He couldn’t. If she had endured even half of what he’d gone through after everything went to hell, his heart contracted for her.

The pain took him under. He dreamed, he saw snatches of flashing lights, heard screams, sobbing, dirt and sand and wind swirled around him. The heat of an explosion and the blackness of night that had cloaked his mind. He reached for answers, but there was nothing there for him to latch onto.

There was soundless movement beside him, and someone very gently slid a delicate hand under his head. Her scent settled over him like a breath. Jasmine and steel, a contradiction in grace. Softness layered over something unbreakable. He hadn’t known a woman could smell like a delicate flower and armor at the same time… but she did.

It grounded him. Anchored him.

“Nash,” she whispered, voice low and laced with something too tender for the battlefield of his mind. “Let’s get this pillow under your neck.” Carefully cradling his head in one hand, she fixed the pillow with the other, then gently lowered his head, making sure there was a secure roll under his nape. “Take these. I found them in your bag,” she whispered.

He always carried the medication just in case. He opened his mouth, and she tipped the water carefully so he could swallow them.

Was that her fingers brushing the hair from his forehead? Or was he dreaming? Her voice was husky with concern when she asked. “Do you need medical attention?”

“No,” he managed. “Just the pills.”

“Ice sometimes helps,” she offered.

The next thing he knew, cold pressed to his temples. The excruciating pressure in his head eased, and he was finally able to unclench his teeth. Letting go of that grating, brittle tension left him feeling cold and shaky. As if tuned into his every need, Grace stopped massaging him with the ice, drawing the sheet, blanket, and comforter over him, her touch infinitely gentle as she tucked everything around his shoulders. His throat closed up, and he had to shut his eyes against the sudden surge of emotion. Had he ever known how this kind of attention felt? He couldn’t recall.

He opened his eyes, found her profile in the dim light. Her thigh pressed warm against his ribs. He meant to say don’t leave. But it came out different.

“Please… don’t leave them. The ones we lost. One of them, I can’t find him. No one knows what happened.”

She tensed beside him. He swallowed the groan, pushed through the pain.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know I’m a lot. I’ll try to be better.”

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 embraced wait . 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 open like 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 like relief .

Not because he’d asked. But because he meant it.

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 realization changed her .

Her lips curved, not a smile. Just a bitter flex of lips. “Sanitized is a nice word for it.”

She drew a slow breath.

“It was a joint training evaluation, DoD, JSOC, and OrdoTech,” she said, voice flat.

“Secure site east of Fallon, Nevada. Concrete bunkers. Bad signal. It wasn’t supposed to be live fire. Just a simulation. Human-supervised.” She hesitated. Just a second. “OrdoTech’s exclusive, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence. Their meal ticket. Stunning capability. Designed to think faster than any human.”

Nash’s voice broke through the memory, soft, warm. "Even you?"

She looked at him then. Her eyes went tender for a breath, barely a second, but the ache lingered. "Even me," she whispered. Her gaze dropped away, the moment gone. "GRAVITY," she said. "Guided Response Autonomous Variable Intelligence Tactical Yield."

Nash glanced at her again. Her voice was steady. But her hands were clenched in her lap now. White-knuckled.

“There were six of us embedded at the site,” she continued. “Two SEALs, they were the muscle. Commander Ray Castillo and Petty Officer Second Class Kyle Danner. Young. Danner had just earned his trident the month before.” Her voice dipped there. Tight. “We called him Baby SEAL.”

Nash’s throat burned.

She kept going.

“There was a CIA systems liaison, Mira Holt. Senior. Brilliant. Cutthroat as hell. She ran black-box validations and trusted the AI too much. Colonel Davis Lin from the DoD, oversight, a career guy, who followed protocol to a fault.” She paused, eyes flicking to the trees. “My supervisor was Gordon Trask. NSA crossover. Technically senior to me, but he didn’t understand the new adaptive code OrdoTech was using. They’d tapped NCIS and brought me in to interpret the compiler logic. Make sure the AI didn’t do anything it wasn’t supposed to.” She swallowed. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Then it did.”

Nash said nothing. Let her speak.

“I flagged an escalation loop, a hidden recursion directive. GRAVITY was looping target designations based on pattern recognition, not rules of engagement. It started pulling in adjacent data. Nearby thermal heat signatures. Then radio chatter. Then… shadows.”

“ Ya Allah ,” Nash murmured.

“I tried to shut it down. I sent the kill command. It ignored me.” She turned to face him now, the edges of her expression slipping, like a mask she could no longer hold in place. “It marked one of our own. Danner. His thermal was too close to a flagged silhouette. Instead of marking him for human review, it initiated a live strike protocol.”

“Command let it go live?” Nash asked, voice sharp now.

“Not at first. But GRAVITY routed the signal through its own comms. It found an unlocked drone channel. It skipped us.”

“Holy—”

Her voice broke. “The explosion hit before I finished typing the override.”

Nash tightened his grip on the wheel until the leather creaked. The car felt too small now. The windshield wipers clearing the heavy snowfall were too loud.

“It didn’t stop there,” she whispered. “Ray tried to pull Danner’s body. Mira ran into the signal chamber to try to cut the uplink physically. I saw them—” She blinked hard. “I saw them go. Not just fall. Just… vanish. Gone.”

“Trask?” Nash asked, quiet now.

“He froze,” she said. “Stood there staring at the screen while Lin tried to pull power. GRAVITY rerouted through a fallback generator. Lin died trying to rip the cord out of the wall.”

“And you?”

“I survived, and Trask, but he won’t ever walk again.” It came out hollow. “I was in the relay room. Shrapnel hit the barrier. Knocked me unconscious. Mira was the last one alive who saw me. I woke up three hours later. GRAVITY had already wiped local logs.”

Nash pulled the car to the shoulder and stopped, turning to her.

Grace stared straight ahead.

“I was the one who tried to stop it,” she said. “They buried me anyway.”

He reached across the console, covered her hand with his.

“You didn’t fail them.”

She didn’t speak.

“I’ve seen operators freeze. I’ve seen command fuck it all sideways. But you? You didn’t run. You didn’t hide. You tried . You flagged the threat. You acted. You survived.”

A long silence. Then, finally, her voice, quiet, but real. “I remember their faces. Every night. Every line of code.”

“Then we make it count,” he said. “We finish this. We end it.”

She nodded once. A sharp tilt of chin.

Nash started the car. He cleared his voice. “Thank you…for last night, and for coming back. I know it wasn’t easy.”

They crossed over a bridge, the water below dark and menacing. Grace shivered.

“You okay?”

“Bridges remind me that I can’t swim, and yes, I see the irony. You’re a SEAL. I might need some lessons.”

He grinned. “I’m the man to teach you.” Was she talking about a future here…between them? Ya, Allah , that made him hope.

They drove the last few miles in silence. But it didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt like the first step back.

As they passed the first checkpoint, Nash felt it. Not with his eyes. Not with his ears.

With the part of him that had survived too many bad corridors in too many risky countries. The security drone above them tracked left, then stuttered. Paused.

It didn’t break patrol pattern. Not enough for anyone untrained to notice. But it hovered a second too long over Grace’s shoulder. Watching. Marking. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t twitch. Just filed it away like a live round in a chamber.

Machines didn’t hesitate. Not unless someone, or something , told them to.

When they shed their coats, Grace headed right to the console desk, opened her laptop, and started typing away.

He cleared his throat. She didn’t miss a beat. “Yes?” she said, her voice just a tad warmer than yesterday.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your flow, but can I just get a rundown of what you’re doing so I’m not standing here like leftover coffee?”

She almost laughed, and his chest warmed. “I never have leftover coffee. Bite your tongue. Caffeine’s my ride-or-die.”

He chuckled at her validating and clever compliment. She shifted her shoulders as if his laugh had touched her. Dammit, careful, buddy. Don’t spook her again.

“Sorry. I’m so not used to people,” she added. “I’ve initiated a data trace. Hang on for the results.”

Grace narrowed it down in fifteen minutes, ten of them spent cross-referencing a string of internal project codes against black-budget allocations that didn’t exist on paper.

Nash watched her work, hands in his pockets, his body loose but alert. There was something strangely calming about her precision. She didn’t ask for help. Didn’t explain what she was doing. She just moved through the system like it was hers and the rest of the world was intruding.

But when she found something, he knew.

Her spine straightened. The silence between them shifted.

“There’s a physical terminal inside that annex,” she said, closing the laptop with a soft click. “Local-only access. Which means they don’t want it connecting to the wider system. Someone’s hiding something.”

Inside the elevator, Grace looked like she was preparing for another jump. Her stiff body with those locked shoulders, wide eyes on the LED panel above the door, pissed him off.

His whole body tensed in response her.

He reached out. Then paused. Didn’t grab her. Just set his hand gently at the small of her back, the lightest pressure possible.

“I’ve got you,” he said, voice low.

She didn’t move. Didn’t flinch either. Just stood there breathing like she’d forgotten how. She turned slightly, just enough to glance at him from the side. Her eyes didn’t thank him, not exactly. But they held something warmer. Something soft. Like a door nudged open without a sound.

The elevator dinged at their floor.

When the doors opened, she just walked out. Head high. Shoulders back. But he saw the tremble in her hand when she swiped her badge.

The annex was quiet. Fluorescents buzzed overhead. Terminals blinked on standby. Grace headed straight for the main panel, her fingers flying across the touchpad with practiced ease.

Nash hung back, giving her space. Watching her slide into her element like a blade into a sheath.

This is where she belonged, he thought. Not buried in audits. Not hunted by ghosts. Here. In the code. In control.

Later, they stopped at the breakroom, not the full mess. That was down on the main floor. Grace needed caffeine. Nash just wanted proximity. He watched her set up with a mug of coffee and her laptop at a small table near the vending machines.

“Want something?”

“Plain chips,” she said. He walked over to grab her snack, cash already in hand. Inserted the dollar. The machine whirred and then spit out every single bag of chips except the one she’d asked for.

Nash blinked.

“Okay…” he muttered. “That’s weird.”

Grace’s head lifted. Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell—" she said quietly. “That’s strange.”

He stared at her. “Malfunction?”

“Could be, but the only bag of chips left in the machine is the one I wanted. Maybe a pranking joke?”

Nash ran a hand down his jaw, unnerved despite himself.

The lights above the machine flickered once, then held steady.

He dropped the extra bags on the counter and returned to her table, sitting across from her.

He should’ve let it drop. Should’ve kept the moment light. “Why did you change your mind?” he asked.

She looked up and said, softly, “You really want to know?”

Nash nodded once.

“There was a picture of you… and your team in your file,” she whispered. “Riggs, Marroquin, Kobayoshi, Stone, DeLeon, Klein, and Milner.”

He froze.

“Riggs left behind his wife and two daughters. Marroquin was getting married to his high school sweetheart.” Her voice wavered. “Kento ‘Superman’ Kobayoshi is still missing. Presumed dead.”

She reached across the table, barely a touch. Just the soft brush of her hand against his. But it burned.

“That’s what I got out of your file.”

Nash swallowed hard. His chest ached. His hand curled beneath hers, thumb brushing along the edge of her palm.

He wasn’t the only one haunted.

When they walked out together after their shift, the sky had gone flat gray. Snow still drifted in wide, lazy spirals, softening the world into something too quiet to trust.

He didn’t say anything as they crossed to the car. Let her settle in first. Let the silence stretch. The kind that hopefully reassured her that when he asked a question, it wasn’t small talk.

He barely breathed when she reached for her seatbelt and clipped it into place. A simple act. A declaration.

She was still here.

Just don’t scare her off again, he told himself. No pressure. No pushing. Just… pace yourself, Rahim. Give her air.

He started the engine.

Grace looked at him, her expression unreadable.

“It wasn’t just what you said, Nash,” she said softly. “It was your pain. You gave me that gift. You let me see that we share something real and profound. I couldn’t leave and let you down.”

The words landed like a weight, equal parts warning and compliment.

He smiled, but didn’t press. Didn’t reach for her hand. Just let the moment settle between them like falling snow.

“I’ve been…locked up ever since…,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. “I was desperate to change your mind. Not for me, my pain, but for them.”

She nodded once. “You humbled me, Nash.”

He turned back to the road, his hands tightening on the wheel.

For the first time in months, Nash Rahim felt like he wasn’t chasing ghosts.

He was chasing the truth.

With her.