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Isaiah kept from recoiling, but just barely. He was Elmer like the glue, not like the lame cartoon character who couldn’t shoot rabbits. But if Marchande had deviated from the script, that could only mean one thing—he’d noticed Isaiah was broken.
That was bad. He and Isaiah went way back, had covered each other in some nasty cesspools of the world, and they were more than friends. They were brothers of the heart. All five of them were. How much worse was it to fail not just yourself, but your brothers too?
“Only because I am funny,” he reminded Tristan without letting on how deep the slight had dug into a tender place inside. Better to brush it off until he could figure out how to manage this new twist. If the others had figured out that Isaiah was useless, it sped up his get-out-of-dodge timetable. “And not funny-looking, like your hairdo.”
Marchande sneered at Isaiah’s reference to his man-bun. He’d grown out his hair in the eight months since they’d been discharged and the guys liked to razz him about it, Isaiah included, because come on. The man’s sleek blond hair was held together in a topknot with a ponytail thingy like the kind that chicks used.
“Really? Tell us a joke,” Cassidy said, her fascinated gaze still lingering on him as she rearranged her caramel colored hair behind her shoulders. She was a pretty woman but in a generic sort of way. Of course, it would be hard for her to stand out next to a bright streak of a woman like Aria Nixon.
“Jokes later,” Marchande insisted a little too sharply.
“Jokes are better in the moment,” Isaiah muttered but shut up only because Hardy had asked him and Marchande to do this job. He needed to take the suggestion and do it. At least for right now, until he figured out how to tell Caleb that not only was Isaiah not capable of keeping the team together, he was taking the first chink out of it by leaving.
Isaiah got to work and hammered some stuff while working side by side with Cassidy, who always seemed to gravitate toward him for some reason. Mostly he just tried not to pass out from lack of air. Sure his panic attacks were a defense mechanism, a gift from Syria. The Navy shrinks back in California had laid all that out for him nice and clear in case he’d been confused about why his chest got tight all the time even when he’d just been watching TV or walking on the beach near the base.
Texas was supposed to make it better. It hadn’t. Because Isaiah was the problem, not the locale. If Caleb hadn’t g
iven him this barn project, he’d already be working on his exit strategy, but he respected Hardy more than he needed to breathe.
The townspeople who’d voted for him clearly loved Caleb Hardy. Everyone did. He was as honest and forthright as they came, the kind of guy who was first in line to do the right thing. If you ever got confused about which choice to make, you could always ask What would Caleb do? And that was usually the best answer.
What Hardy would do in this moment, if he was here, was get on Isaiah’s case for not figuring out how to help him get the guys in order. As the mayor, Hardy had a lot of empty official town positions to fill and some SEALs at loose ends who need new marching orders—Marchande, for instance, who’d been tapped to shape the new fire department but couldn’t see his way clear to agree yet.
Instead of jumping into the role that Isaiah had always filled—either helping the team stay unified or gluing someone back together after a tough day—he was trying to figure out how to cut himself loose. To give up the team he loved but couldn’t stay with.
He couldn’t keep spinning these plates forever. He had a feeling they were all about to start crashing to the ground.
Two
That night, Isaiah went up to the rooftop patio of the old hotel where he and the other guys had taken rooms. On his second day in the old mining town, he’d accidentally found the stairs to the roof behind a multicolored door at the end of the hall. It stuck a little, but with a good dose of curiosity and elbow grease, it had sprung open to reveal a dark passage leading upward, full of spiders and other unknowns.
Once his pulse had started tripping with excitement over the find, of course he’d had to see where the staircase led—to the roof, naturally, where a patio of sorts spread out the entire perimeter of the hotel. Dead leaves and a stray branch or two littered the mostly barren expanse. It hadn’t been used in a long time, if ever. Isaiah could easily imagine it becoming one of those places swanky hotels in big cities boasted, with lights strung across poles and a mahogany bar in the corner that served frou-frou concoctions to scantily clad women.
But he’d have to tell someone about it for that to happen. No one else seemed to know it existed, or at least he’d never encountered anyone else, and he wasn’t in hurry to share it.
Isaiah spread out the old blanket he’d stashed in the corner under a weathered board with bent, rusted nails lining the edge, then stretched out to practice his breathing.
He’d spent more than a few nights up here, staring at the swirl of black and starlight when he couldn’t sleep. Which was most of the time lately. His brain was constantly on blend mode, chopping through images of the kids that had died in al-Sadidiq. That was one of the hardest things about that op gone wrong. Innocent lives had been taken. Isaiah had helped make that happen. Accidentally, sure. It would be nice if that qualification mattered.
Creak. He snapped his head toward the door, just in time to see Serenity Force ease it closed on squeaky hinges, her long gray hair easily discernible in the weak moonlight as she joined him on the roof.
So much for solitude. He didn’t mind though. Serenity was cool. She’d regularly penned letters to the team while they’d been overseas, somehow becoming more than a pen pal and morphing into a surrogate mom, first to Hardy and then eventually the rest of them. None of the five of them had family to speak of, so Serenity had filled a gap and then some. When Hardy had announced he was driving to Superstition Springs to help Serenity fight the imminent destruction of the town she loved, Isaiah had been the first one lined up at the door, ready to leave on a moment’s notice.
Meeting Serenity in person had strengthened the bonds formed via letter. And she’d given the SEALs a place to land after Syria, which he appreciated more than he’d ever be able to say.
Which didn’t mean he shouldn’t try. He patted the blanket to indicate she was welcome. “Come to check out my tree fort? You’re the only girl allowed.”
Serenity laughed but he could tell his comment pleased her. “Aren’t you a sweet boy. How did you find this place?”
He shrugged as she eased down onto the blanket, her knees popping at the joints in a reminder that she was nearly twice his age. Or so he’d surmised without asking because that would be rude. But it wasn’t a stretch to assume that she was at least old enough to be his birth mother, not that he’d know anything about her, age or otherwise, since he’d been thrust into the foster system as a baby. Looking for the exit had long been his way of coping with a bad situation, and he had a lot of practice at leaving. What kind of insanity was it to have hoped he’d eventually find a place he could stay when history had taught him that moving on was his lot in life?
“I opened a door,” he said easily. “Hope it’s okay to hang out up here.”
As the owner of the hotel, it would be perfectly within her rights to tell him this area was off limits.
“Of course,” she insisted immediately. “This is your home for as long as you choose to stay. I love that you’ve created a place for yourself.”
Had he really though? What kind of place could he have where he wasn’t providing the glue for his team as they battled bad people on a daily basis?
