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CHAPTER 11
Samantha
Seventy-two hours.That was how long Frank—who’d made me call him Dr. Sloane while I was his “patient”—sidelined me. Doctor’s orders were to stay in my room resting, listening to music or podcasts, meditating, sleeping. No screens. No stress. No team interaction except for communal meals, during which everyone was forbidden from discussing my attack, the current mission, or anything else remotely important.
If only my overzealous doctor had prohibited a certain sexy former Green Beret from sitting next to me at every meal, inquiring earnestly about how I was feeling, and watching me eat every bite of my Frank-prescribed bland diet, all the while calling me the impersonal nickname “Doc.”
Frank’s overprotective bullshit might drive me to within an inch of my sanity, but Evan’s lukewarm-to-ice-cold routine would be the death of me.
On Monday afternoon, halfway into my three-day sentence, Frank stopped by my HQ apartment/holding cell to tell me he was as sure my team would enforce his directives as he was positive I would try to break them, that duty called elsewhere, and so he was leaving. I gave him half an hour to clear the building, then climbed out of bed and peeked through the drawn blinds to the parking lot. His rented silver SUV was gone. With a relieved sigh, I did a series of invigorating yoga stretches, slipped on a pair of sneakers, then left my quarters to get back to work. And ran straight into Li and Kessler sitting at a card table positioned just outside my door, playing poker.
“Back to bed,” Kessler demanded.
“Sloane is gone,” I answered. “We don’t have to follow his orders anymore.”
“But you do have to follow mine,” TJ said as he rounded the corner. He was carrying snacks. And he wasn’t alone.
Evan followed bearing bottles of water. I glanced back at the table and registered the two empty folding chairs.
“Do the four of you plan to camp out in the hallway until dinner time?” I asked.
Li grinned. “That was Evan’s idea. And then Cynthia suggested poker.”
“Which I’ve lived to regret,” Evan said. “She’s won every hand.” His silky smooth voice slid its way down my spine and brought my entire body to attention.
I nodded, unable to break his gaze. “That’s what you get when you try to bluff someone in the top two percentile of humans when it comes to reading body language and facial expressions.”
Evan quirked an eyebrow at Kessler. “Seriously?” He glanced at TJ and Li. “That’s why everyone else folds so early?”
Kessler scowled at me. “You’ve ruined my hustle.”
Evan slid into his seat, a sly smile on his face. “Now that you’ve had your fun, we need to play a game that gives me a chance to win back my week’s paycheck from you.”
“Sounds like you’re all having fun,” I said.
I didn’t need to add “without me.” It was pretty damn clear they didn’t miss my company now that my...whatever-he-was had joined them. It made sense that he fit in better than I did in an action-oriented espionage team, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. This was my team, not his, and even if I ended up leaving them soon, I would mourn the loss. I had thought they would, too. Now I wasn’t so sure.
I closed my door and headed back to my bedroom. I slipped on noise-canceling headphones and pulled up an audiobook on my phone, then lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. While the narrator’s rich baritone voice washed over me, it didn’t soothe or excite or intrigue me. Not like Evan’s voice, which managed to do all three of those things at the same time. I huffed and shifted and tried to get comfortable, but I was crawling out of my skin. I was annoyed with TJ and Kessler and Li, but I was livid with Evan.
Which made no logical sense.
I sat up straight in my bed. This really was about emotions, an idea I’d considered yesterday and then dismissed. But it was hard to deny the truth in the light of my reactions. They weren’t logical. They weren’t rational. They weren’t something I could acquiesce to when I was called on to save lives. But no matter how hard I tried to contain them with stoicism, distant relationships, or a roster for my love life, for Christ’s sake, they were a river always running just below the surface of my consciousness. Some combination of my concussion and isolation from HEAT and a night with Evan—especially that last one—had conspired to blow a hole in my defensive wall and send the pent-up well of terror and rage and sorrow pouring out of me.
I tossed my headphones onto the nightstand, punched my pillow, and threw myself back down onto the bed. I railed against the unfairness of the distance between my team and me, of always being the outsider among them, of holding their lives so precariously in my hands. I folded in on myself and ceded all control. And for the first time in years, I cried.
* * *
Evan
Early Wednesday morning,after an intensive workout with Penn in the gym, followed by a hot shower, I stopped into the team kitchen and grabbed a plate of huevos rancheros, courtesy of Jensen. After a few seconds of thought, I decided the eggs might not be enough, and besides, I hadn’t tasted them yet so couldn’t vouch for Jensen’s culinary skills being better than his bartending ones. I scooped up a bowl of oatmeal and berries, then followed Penn and Jensen to the SCIF on the second floor, all of us carrying our breakfasts with us. The rest of the team minus TJ and Red were already there. I wasn’t totally unhappy to see the group. In the three days since they’d taken me into custody, I hadn’t completely forgiven them for dropping their guard while Red had stepped into danger, but I had developed a slight, grudging respect for them.
I shook my head. I had to start calling her Doc in my head as well as in my speech because even thinking about her as Red was just too damn intimate. It made me remember things I’d done with her and to her, things I wanted to do again, things we hadn’t had time to do during our too-brief night together, but that I still wanted to do very, very badly. I put my brain back in charge of my thinking before I developed another raging hard-on, the kind I’d thought would be cured by a night with her but hadn’t. TJ had assigned me to an efficiency room right across the hall from hers, which probably didn’t help matters when I was alone in my bed at night, thinking about her alone in hers, and about the extension to our agreement she had offered, which I had to resist if I had any hope of keeping my distance and getting out of here with my emotions under control.
Jensen elbowed my ribs so hard I gasped. “Phone,” he said, and from the look on his face I guessed he’d already asked more than once.
I handed over my personal device and stepped into the secure room. I took the same seat as I had during the first meeting with TJ. That placed me beside Sparks and across the table from Li, Kessler, and Alder. Penn sat on the other side of his logistics partner.
After greeting Penn, Sparks nudged my arm. “If you need to borrow a few bucks after Kessler’s clock-cleaning yesterday, let me know.”
