There was nothing more in her words than what had been said in the press release. It wasn’t top secret like the rest of the mission. Mac hadn’t given her some inside news. What she didn’t know was that I hadn’t even wanted to attend the award ceremony when they’d given me the medal. But Mac had reminded me how disrespectful it would have been to the ones who hadn’t come home if I didn’t show up. It would have disrespected the service they had loved and given their lives for. He’d been right. I didn’t have to wear the damn medal. I didn’t have to be proud of it, but I did have to show up.
What I really would have been proud of was bringing them all home alive.
The tears burned harder, and I couldn’t do it. I grabbed her hips, closed my eyes, and tucked my forehead against her stomach. Breathing in and out. Trying to find a sense of calm again. The calm I needed whenever I went out on a mission.
She pushed her fingers through the short strands of hair I hadn’t had buzzed in far too long, running them along the back of my neck and my shoulders and returning to my hair. It hadn’t been sensual. Not the words or the touch. But sitting there tucked up against her wearing one of my T-shirts with nothing on underneath it, knowing if I lifted the edge of the shirt just an inch, I’d see her sweet valley… It was going to be my undoing.
I’d forget everything I’d promised myself and Darren. I’d lose myself completely to her earthly force. I was almost ready to jump, anyway. I was almost ready to find out if I could pull her from her nightmares by repeating what we’d done at Tristan’s when my phone rang. It jolted us both from the touch which hadn’t been an embrace and yet was the closest I’d been to another human being in decades.
She backed away, sitting on the edge of the bed, and I pulled the phone from my back pocket. “Yeah?” I grunted into it.
“The front desk got a letter,” Marco said on the other end. “It was from Fiona.”
“What did it say?” I asked, looking over at Dani as she drank slowly from the water bottle.
“It asked if Dani liked the ipecac syrup,” Marco said.
Crap. We’d learned about ipecac syrup in one of the hundreds of hours of training we’d been through. It was, in and of itself, relatively harmless. It would cause vomiting and sometimes diarrhea. In larger doses, it could be fatal.
“She was fucking there?” I was about to lose my shit. I’d been there. I’d been watching the entire fucking place. There hadn’t been one thing that had stuck out. Not one thing. I had the woman’s face memorized. Hair too perfect a shade of red to be real. Dark eyes. Medium height. Small, oval face. It was the eyes you couldn’t really change—not even in a disguise.
I hadn’t seen her.
Self-hate rolled through me. I hadn’t protected Dani at all. You failed once and you got tossed out of almost any training as a SEAL. You had to be perfect. In sniper school, you had to hit ninety percent in impossible situations, or you got tossed out. I was batting zero for two now with Dani’s safety. I’d let the woman get close enough to place a knife in a chair, and then I’d let her get close enough to drug Dani’s drink. She’d said it tasted funny. That was the fucking ipecac.
But something at the back of my brain was niggling. A sixth sense I’d learned to rely on more than my sight or smell. A sense that was telling me I was missing a piece. A shadow that was looming that I couldn’t quite put into form yet.
“Was there anything else in the note?” I asked.
Marco took a deep breath. “It said, next time, she wouldn’t hold back.”
This was insane. There was no way I could protect them in these situations. Too many openings, too many people. It wasn’t a fucking excuse; I couldn’t make an excuse for not doing my job. But I also knew something had to change. Something drastic. Otherwise, Dani or Brady was going to be seriously hurt, and at this point, the gun was directed at Dani’s head. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I’d stick my dumb, big-ass body in between her and whatever was coming.
“We need to meet. All of us. We’ll be up in the penthouse in ten minutes,” I said curtly.
I hung up and looked at Dani. She was still pale. What she needed was rest.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Fiona was where?”
No hiding anything from Athena. She was too smart, caught on too quickly.
“At the restaurant.”
The hand that held the water bottle fell, tipping and allowing it to spill on the floor. I stepped closer and pulled it from her fingers.
“It isn’t the stomach flu?” Dani asked. “What was it? Is it something…”
She swallowed hard, jumped up, and headed for the bathroom. I followed, but it was all dry heaves now. She had nothing left to give. She sat back on the floor, legs crossed under her, the T-shirt barely covering her bottom.
“It was ipecac syrup,” I said, squatting down next to her. “They used to give it to people who’d swallowed poison as a way to get them to vomit. It isn’t life-threatening.” Unless you’re given too much. But I didn’t tell her that.
“I’ve never even met the woman.” Dani was shaking her head at the improbability of it.
“It’s easier for her to strike out at the person replacing her than the person she loves.”
Dani grumbled sarcastically, “That’s not love.”
I nodded. “It’s not, but in her twisted head, it is.”
