Aiden frowned, hoping she didn’t mean what he thought she did. “Here?”
“Yeah. In the Neighborhood.”
Damn. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. She’d become attached to The Neighborhood.
“No.” He gentled his voice. “I’m only working with the Shadow Mountain teams until the current situation is resolved. Once that happens, we’ll move on. We’ve talked about this Demi.”
Her sigh sounded soft and mournful. “I know. And I’m not trying to force anything on you. But it would be nice to have a house or even a cabin here for when we visit. It’s so beautiful, and you have family. Plus, I’ve made some good friends. If we built something in The Neighborhood, we’d have our own place to stay when we came back to visit.” Her tone sharpened. “Because no matter where we land, we will return to visit.”
“True.” Aiden agreed. He had no problem with visiting.
“You’ll think about it, then? Building a home here, I mean?”
“Sure,” he said, already thinking about it. She was right. Now that they were both chipped for entry into The Neighborhood, there was nothing preventing them from coming and going. Besides, Kait and Demi would insist on frequent visits. In which case, staying with his sister would get old. Having their own place on standby would be a relief. “Okay. How about this? We’ll build our own place here. But it would be for visiting, we won’t be living here full time.”
Her smile seemed to light up the darkness. “You’ll talk to Wolf about getting us some land?”
Aiden nodded. It shouldn’t be difficult to convince Wolf to assign them a block of land. His brother owed him big time with all this Benioko nonsense. He grimaced. Ask the ghost shaman this…ask him that… No wonder his dreams were so whacked.
“Do you want to talk about this latest dream?” Demi asked as though she’d read his mind.
He hesitated. He hadn’t told her about the Harbinger, or what they’d done to the ship and all those poor bastards on board. He’d been afraid she wouldn’t understand. Most civilians didn’t understand the hard choices that had to be made during battle situations.
Killing in the line of duty was one thing. She already knew he’d taken lives to protect others or protect himself. But those deaths had been terrorists, murders, criminals. The Harbinger was a different situation. The crew on board were innocent of serious criminal activity. They were bodyguards and ship staff. He doubted there were even any other Stone Agers on board, other than Oura. The Stone Agers stayed away from each other. That was why they were so difficult to identify. Oura wouldn’t have invited other members to live with him.
Hell, everyone on board that doomed vessel had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Demi murmured, her tone sleepy again.
Considering Kait worked on base, it was likely his sister would hear about the Harbinger’s fate from someone, and Demi would find out soon after. Kait and Demi didn’t keep secrets from each other. He frowned, shifting to face her. It would be better if the news came from him first.
“I’ve got a hypothetical for you.”
“A hypothetical? Demi repeated sleepily. She yawned. “Hypotheticals are best discussed in the morning after a pot of coffee?”
Aiden ignored her protest. “Let’s say you run across a ship full of people who are infected with a fatal, highly communicable virus. A virus that can penetrate personal protective equipment. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing—if you come into contact with an infected person, you get infected, you incubate the virus, and then start infecting everyone around you.”
Her eyes intent, Demi pushed herself up. “This hypothetical sounds an awful lot like the bot plague everyone is so worried about.” She reached out and gently stroked his cheek. “Is your hypothetical scenario about what happened on your last mission?
Aiden caught her hand and brushed his lips against her knuckles.
“Yeah.” He dropped the pretense. “We had compelling evidence one of the original bot bombs, like the weapon that took out Karaveht, was on a ship anchored in San Francisco Bay. Our plan was simple. Scale the hull, locate the weapon, and disembark. Easy peasy.”
Christ knew he’d done that exact insertion dozens of times in the past.
“But the people on board were infected?”
“Yeah.” Aiden lifted his lips from her knuckles, but kept hold of her hand. “We knew halfway to the site something weird was going on.” He explained what the drone footage had shown, the pros and cons of the choices facing them, and then their final decision to sink the boat.”
Silence fell as he finished talking. She took some time to digest what he’d told her before leaning in and wrapping him in a hug.
“It horrible what happened to the crew on that ship. But you had no choice. You couldn’t risk them getting to shore. You did what you had to.”
To his surprise, something loosened inside him at her words. Or maybe it was because of her strong arms and warm hug. He hadn’t expected to need her absolution. But apparently, he did.
“Was your dream about the ship and its crew?” she asked against the side of his neck, her breath a humid puff against his skin.
“No, it was about Benioko.”
