Page 148 of Dangerous Mission
This is when I do reach out and snag her.
My arms are way fucking long and she probably thought she was out of range, but I grip her wrist in a lose ring formed by my long fingers.
No need to use force. She’s easily a hundred-fifty pounds lighter than me and she’s got nowhere to go. I’d chase her down in four seconds flat.
Or maybe I’d just chase her away so I wouldn’t have to ever look at her again. But I’m more honorable than that.
“Hold on a hot minute. We’ve got questions.”
A look of alarm transforms her face, blanching her pale color even more and I realize she’s looking up at a 6’6” stranger with a scowl that’s been known to scare grown men so bad they piss their pants.
A lot of people.
And some begging for their life too.
For a fraction of a second I feel human like I never do during interrogations of tangos, and I feel sorry for her.
“Look, I’m not going to hurt you.”
She tugs her hand free—I let it go with my hand stinging weirdly from the contact.
Okay. Allison Westerly is not an apparition. This is not a bad dream, but it is a nightmare. She’s warm, and delicate, and fucking with my head seriously hard.
She looks even angrier now as she wraps her arms around herself again, pinching her black raincoat to her middle. “You and your people need to stop looking for me.”
Taking my time to look her over, I take in all of Allison Westerly, the woman our team refers to by the initials MZ. The target we’ve been hunting for weeks. She’s a walking,talking page right out of my past that makes me realize just how fucked up I am.
I really am dead on the inside and I hate her for reminding me.
When I looked at the photos in her file, I tried to ignore that she was very, very similar to Hope’s likeness.
This isn’t similar. It’s…unthinkable.
A shudder rolls through me, leaving behind a longing so destructive, things inside of me creak and break like rotten timber that can’t hold the weight of my existence any longer.
But I’m not so fucked that I don’t see that she’s suffering. Scared too. Alone. Caught up in something if our intel is right.
Not that we have much. The woman isn’t just the ghost from my past. She’s an enigma, so elusive a whole damn team of SEALs haven’t been able to locate her. Until she locates us.
“Are you alone?”
There’s not another person in sight that isn’t part of our team or associated with the dangerous cave diving rescue we were about to attempt to find her.
More elusive silence follows.
I press, “Do you have a guard?”
She blinks at me, her soft green eyes widening a fraction, before she flicks her gaze away. “I um…I did. Not now.”
“You’re not going anywhere then.”
A swirl of panic flares behind her eyes. Her voice rises an octave and the image of that frightened deer returns to my brain.
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think you understand. We’ve beenhired to make sure you’re safe and right now I’m looking at a woman that’s ten pounds thinner, a whole lot paler than her photo, and skittish as fuck. She’s also alone in a country with dangerous rebels. So you can forget about us stopping this mission until we know what’s going on.”
This time she meets my gaze and there’s something blazing there. Anger?
