Until the next second, when he pulled back with a harsh grunt. He wheeled away and spat the F-word like it was going to get pulled from the world’s lexicon forever.
Her heart dove back into her stomach. Searing heat invaded the back of her eyes. She fell back to her heels, shaky and unsteady.
Dead end.
Again.
Garrett locked white knuckles to the mantle. Sage curled similar fists into her lap. They remained that way through interminable minutes, frozen at opposite ends of the rug that might as well have turned into a chasm, in a silence just as deep and divisive.
The doorbell rang.
Garrett threw a questioning glance to her. Sage shook her head. Neither of them was expecting anyone. She rose, wiping her cheeks as she did, and joined Garrett as he went to the door.
“Surprise!”
The couple on the front stoop exclaimed in unison when Garrett opened the door. The woman’s pixie-like features were enhanced by a cute contemporary style of her black hair. The man was at least a foot-and-a-half taller than her and looked so much like a bearded version of Garrett that an outsider would’ve taken him as Garrett’s dad. But he wasn’t.
The tension in Garrett’s body tripled inside ten seconds. Sage was proud of him for forcing a smile and extending his hand in greeting.
“Uncle Wyatt.”
Chapter Thirteen
The last time Garrett had been this uncomfortable, the squad was on recon in an alley in Aleppo, and they’d spent the night getting silently sized up by a group of local kids. They’d had to consider every damn move they made, turned into star specimens on one of life’s stranger petri dishes, whether they liked it or not.
Wyatt was giving him the same spare-no-details scrutiny.
The man hid it better than the Syrian kids, but Garrett felt every turn of the man’s mental focus knob just as acutely. To anyone else, he simply appeared a proud uncle shooting the shit with his nephew in front of the backyard fire pit, sipping on a beer, enjoying the sunset. It was a fa?ade and they both knew it. Garrett was pretty damn sure that if he asked, the man could tell him exactly how many egrets were out on the water, as well as which ones were there for food and which ones were trolling for a hump.
God only knew what specifics Wyatt had gathered about him in the moments he’d been too stunned to watch his composure. After the initial shock of their greeting, Sage had welcomed the couple inside. The second the door was shut, Wyatt pulled him into a gruff guy hug—the first heartfelt contact he’d had from the man in ten years. The move shaved off that much time from his spirit too. For a few awesome minutes, he was a Wyatt-worshipping puppy again, showing the man around their place, bragging about the new grill he’d put in himself, which was filled with cobwebs because he hadn’t used the thing in the last year. What would’ve been the point?
Sage instantly decided that the webs wouldn’t do. She’d declared a family barbecue was in order, and it was happening tonight. Garrett, still giddy, had grinned and agreed—until his fiancée hooked arms with Aunt Josie and started making lists for their food-shopping trip. That was when the ten years slammed back in again, along with the shit that made those one hundred twenty months feel like twice that much. The memory of King’s shrewd leer at Sea-Tac. The regular updates from Zeke, confirming that the girls remained a hot ticket on every bounty hunter’s list, despite King’s solitary confinement status at FDC. And damn it, that too-close-for-comfort house call made at the base this morning by King’s minions.
Garrett snatched the list from Sage inside of five seconds. When she gave him a glare poured of solid sass, he’d been ready with arched brows, along with the command that he and Wyatt would do the shopping. She’d nicked the list back, declaring that her house arrest didn’t have jurisdiction over a food run chaperoned by his own aunt—and further, how their dinner had to be something more than cold cereal, frozen pizza, and peanut butter sandwiches. He’d been busy trying not to be an overprotective asshole to formulate a decent zinger.
So here he was, faking his way through the guy-bonding commercial, trying to numb his anxiety with the beer in his hand while pondering Wyatt’s purpose here. He didn’t buy the excuse Josie had spouted—that they’d seen the news coverage about Sage’s miracle rescue and couldn’t sit still about it—but the conversation wasn’t exactly lending itself to the Wyatt and Garrett Open ‘n’ Honest Hour. So far, they’d talked sports, smartphones, and the newest Michael Bay movie, executing a perfect waltz around their emotional bear trap. Now, the safe subjects were thinning out, and the silences stretching longer.
And the man who sat four feet from him seemed a more distant stranger than ever before.
Maybe, he mused, it was time to kick their conversation inside. The numbing savior of ESPN was just a dozen steps away.
His cell danced across the redwood table with an incoming call. The peppy dance song blaring from the device told him it was Sage. As he reached for the phone, Wyatt flashed him a sympathetic smirk. Seemed Josie programmed her own ring tone into his cell too.
“Hey, sugar.”
She stopped herself in the middle of a laugh. A smile tugged at his lips despite the status of his nerves. Letting her out of his sight might be playing havoc with his stress levels, but it was damn good to hear real joy in her voice again.
“Hi there, Sir Hero!”
He chuckled. “Right.”
“It’s true. You are my hero.” She let out a long sigh. “You always will be.”
His laughter slipped. The second sense he’d been honing on Wyatt launched a redirect at her—more specifically, her mushy words and slurred pronunciation. “Sage, are you a little juiced?”
A spluttering giggle came through the line. “Maybe. Just a little.”
“At the base commissary?”
“Ummm…maybe we’re not at the commissary anymore.”
“What?” It shot out of him like a twenty-five-millimeter bullet. “Sage, I told you this trip was fine as long as you and Josie went to the commissary.” After the incident with King’s goons this morning, both Ethan and Zeke had confirmed the base was beefing up security patrols, credential checks, and license plate scans. Adding all that up, he’d finally relented to Sage’s enthusiasm, figuring an hour’s trip to the commissary would be the safest solo trip she could make. Now, she’d just tossed safe to the roadside. Damn it!
“Don’t yell at me,” she blurted back.
“I’m not—” He lurched to his feet, trying to get in a deep breath. “I’m not yelling. So where are you?”
“The seafood at the commissary sucked,” she babbled on. “I should’ve known. They never have good prawns. God, I can’t wait to have these prawns tonight, baby. They’re huge! Really amazing! Wait’ll you see—”
“Sage. Where. Are. You?”
“The Market, silly. Where else would we get great prawns?”
“The Market.” He muttered it as his chilly unease turned into the ice of dread. “Pike Place Market?”
“Now you’re yelling.”
“Damn straight! I told you to go to the base, only the base, and now you’re downtown, shopping with half the goddamn world?”
Her answering laugh dug into him like razor blades. “Yeah. I’ve been naughty. You’ll probably have to spank me.”
“Not. Funny.”
“Well, Josie thought it was. So did Rayna.” There was scraping on the line, as if she turned her head. “Didn’t you, Ray?”
He sank back into his chair, frowning in confusion. “Rayna? She’s there too?”
“Yeah! Isn’t that great? We just bumped into them! They’re gonna come for dinner too, okay?”
“Them?” The air slowly returned to his lungs. That didn’t mean it still wasn’t painful to breathe, but the extra oxygen to his head helped with clarity. “Who’s with her?”
He prayed for one specific word in answer. At last, God heard him.
“Zeke.”
“Thank fuck.” He pinched his nose. “Baby, let me talk to him.”