“Fuck!”
“Good way of phrasing it.” His friend punched the line with another rough breath. “And once he connects the dots from the girls back to the guys who led the mission that took him down…”
“Hell.”
He didn’t need Zeke to fill in the rest of that scenario. The statements they’d taken from Sage and Rayna, as well as the aid workers they’d rescued, painted a vivid enough picture of the man’s disgusting depravity. Now that King was sitting on his ass at Sea-Tac FDC, he had lots of free time to scratch that sordid itch—with a revenge fantasy that started with recapturing Sage and Rayna.
“I’ve already taken this to Franzen,” Zeke continued. “He’ll be interfacing with the Feds on this, who will hopefully get the message and put a lockdown on who King gets to interact with for the foreseeable future.”
Garrett’s heart took a swan dive into his gut. “But he wants us to bring the girls to the base, doesn’t he?”
“Hell no! King—well, Rambo Righteous—had at least a dozen guys in on the weapons racket. They probably know the place better than we do.” It sounded like Zeke got up himself. The drone of a distant television came over the line. “The girls go nowhere near the base. We’re also on clamshell status on telling them anything. In case—” His friend coughed uncomfortably. “Well, in case they do get taken again, the less they know, the better.”
Just hearing the words caused a haze of rage to sneak at the edges of Garrett’s vision. It was a direct contrast to the scene he looked out on from the den window. The neighborhood sparkled in the morning sun, and the snowy heights of Rainier were radiant in the post-storm gleam. None of it made a dent in his tension or eased the lock of his teeth as he answered Z. “That is not going to happen.”
“I happen to heartily agree, my friend.” His friend’s heavy footsteps sounded on the line. After that, a discernible flicking sound. A cigarette lighter. It wasn’t surprising. Z only smoked when he was too tense to do anything else, and this situation likely qualified for that. “Hawk, I know this goes without saying, but it’ll make me feel better. Don’t take your eyes off Sage.”
“Check the box already, man. I assume you’ve got the scope on Rayna?”
“I’m running a gauntlet of her seven brothers to do that, but yes.”
“Call me later.”
“Check.”
He hung up with Z and, with phone still in hand, made his way back to the bedroom. Yeah, it had only been ten minutes since he’d last been in here, but this time he needed to see her, to touch her. To assure himself, especially now, that the last three days hadn’t been a dream he’d wake up from, back in Bangkok, drenched in cold sweat, and jamming his finger into a ring between his dog tags.
He stepped into the dim room, crossed to the bed, and took care to lower slowly to the mattress. He dipped the thing with his weight anyway, which gave him extra incentive to pull gently at the covers. He’d leave as soon as he saw the soft curtain of her hair and the soft contours of her face…
Which weren’t there.
“Sage?”
He murmured it at first, certain she’d buried herself really deep in the mountain of covers—which didn’t move even after he jabbed at them.
“Sage.”
He ordered it now, stripping the whisper from his voice as he swept the linens off the bed. The empty bed.
“Fuck! Sage!”
This was the part where he was supposed to wake up. This was the moment where he jolted out of the nightmare and faced the grief. But he didn’t wake up. The bad dream and the shitty reality were one hideous thing now. She was really gone.
Chapter Eight
Silence. Blessed, glorious silence.
Sage had swum the lake many times but never just enjoyed its serenity. She’d always been in too much of a hurry, plowing through the water in a hard breast stroke, revved by thoughts of what she had to do that day, of things she had to organize, of paperwork to complete, and orders to carry out on base. The exercise had always been satisfying but never fulfilling—just another task to cross off the list.
She’d never simply turned over on her back like this and floated. She’d never let the sun warm her face, the breeze flow over her skin, or the water embrace her like a giant swath of liquid velvet…
“Sage!”
So much for metaphors about velvet. Garrett’s bellow might as well have been a bear’s claw ripping through that plush fabric.
She flipped over and gave him a little wave. At first, a smile brimmed to her lips despite his savage tone. Dear God, he was a magnificent sight, even far away on the shore. All those missions he talked about had bulked him in all the right places. His gray tank, emblazoned with ARMY in black letters, was tight against his broad chest. His baggy black shorts hung to the middle of his tree trunk thighs, leaving plenty for her to ogle below that. Even his calves bulged with muscle.
Her expression fell as he stomped into the water, sending a furious spray in his wake. Was he really coming in after her?
“Shit,” she muttered, swimming to the dock. By the time she got there and climbed the ladder at the end, the boards were shaking. Garrett had launched onto them from his end and now marched toward her at a pace resonating somewhere between pissed drill officer and agitated Highlander. She picked up her towel with fingers that trembled despite the summer morning.
“Uh…hey.” Maybe if she pretended he wasn’t pulling a marauding gorilla act, so would he.
No such luck. He halted when he got three feet from her, his glare as scorching as a blow torch. “What the hell are you doing?”
“The last time I checked, it was called swimming.” Sage nodded at the lake. “This big body of water here? You can get in it and float around, and it feels really good. You should try—”
“Are you joking about this?” Forget the blowtorch. His stare went utterly black. The dark energy curled through him, tautening those muscles into a frightening sight. “Damn it, Sage! Do you know what I thought when—” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Did you even think to leave a note?”
Her confusion ramped into irritation. “I swim a lot in the mornings, Garrett. Or at least I used to, in the days when I didn’t have to rise every day before sunlight so the rebels, the pirates, the insurgents, and the slave traders wouldn’t find me. This seemed like a nice way to ease into normalcy.” She tugged the towel tighter and started back up the dock. “Whatever the hell ‘normal’ is with you anymore.”
“Wait!”
She didn’t alter her stride. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—handle another second of his chest-beating bullshit. How had she considered this stuff even kind of cute during the trip home? When he’d called her on the flirting act with Ethan and then pulled rank to sit with her instead, she’d labeled the protectiveness kind of cute. She’d outright adored him for it once they got to Sea-Tac and the waiting ocean of media, especially when a lot of the reporters followed them to dinner with Mom, Rayna, and her friend’s small village of a family. She’d been grateful for his blistering glares and dictatorial orders then. They’d been appropriate then!
Not now.
Definitely not now.
She looked out over the water. Just a few ripples remained on the jade and blue surface, reminders of the first peaceful moment she’d known in the last year. But the shimmers were fading fast. Too fast.
“Sage. I said wait.”
She hated herself for stopping. The ire soaked the words she turned and spat at him. “Right. The same way you stopped and waited when walking out on me at the embassy?”
Remorse flashed across his features. It got burned away the next second, as usual, by the overbearing jerk he pulled on more comfortably than those shorts. “Damn it. I’ve explained myself for that. I’ve eaten ten fucking hats with you for that. Don’t go piecing that one together on me again, sugar.”