I snap my eyes back to Saint, leveling him with the coldest of glares.
“You’re going to get us and everyone we left behind killed.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What do you think will happen the second she slips and calls you that when you aren’t in private? You know just as well as the rest of us, if the right person hears and sees your ugly mug, there will be no going back. And the second they start digging into you, they start looking into us. The only reason we’ve been successful in staying fucking dead is because we keep ourselves in the shadows without attachments!”
“You think I would be that reckless with you three? Let alone the people who I loved and left? LET ALONE with Olivia and Riley!” I roar the last part, feeling all of the rage and pent-up frustration I’ve felt since we started this conversation rushes to the surface.
“I think you got a taste of sweet pussy and can’t think straight.”
I’m around the island with his neck in my hand, his back against the wall, and my face breathing down on his. He matches me almost inch for inch, but I have him on build. He won’t get the best of me until I want him to move. So I hold his gaze, both of us with anger and frustration riding the surface of our skin like a cloak.
“I got a taste of fucking life again,” I level out in a deadly calm. “I got a taste of a future that made my heart come back online for it. I held that woman in my arms while she drooled on my chest, her girl on my other side with her little feet digging their way into my gut, and I felt like I had finally found the reason that I gave up everything. It, for the first time in my life, didn’t feel like I had sacrificed everything the day I left my home. It felt like I had been given a second chance, one that meant I did the right thing all those years ago when I let the people who meant the world to me believe I had died. It wasn’t for just them, it was because she was waiting for me. You tell me how that isn’t thinking straight?”
The heat in his eyes simmers and he just looks at me.
“That woman wouldn’t so much as blink if I asked her to do that in private only. You know damn well she’s a good woman. And if you would think about why you’re really acting like this, you know you would do the same thing if you found someone who gave you the gift of life after being a dead man for so long.”
I let him go and turn back to face the others. Both of them showing nothing but understanding in what I just shared.
“You ready to hear what I know about Ray now?”
“Dick,” Saint mumbles, fixing his sweatshirt. “You have to push me against the hard-ass wall?”
“You have to be a fucking asshole about something that you didn’t even take the time to ask about?”
He holds up his hands.
“Look, I’m sorry, but you can’t blame me for questioning this. You’ve shown no interest in any woman since we started this unit.”
“She isn’t just any woman. Not sure what else I can give you to make you realize that.”
“Man, you know we were told this was okay when they set us up here. Encouraged even,” Evan states to Saint.
“Said we would hide better with a family,” Hunt adds with a scoff.
“Yet none of you mother fuckers have a family and we’re hiding just fine.”
“Doesn’t mean we haven’t wanted one, brother,” Evan continues. “Just because you’re scared of finding more doesn’t mean we haven’t been waiting for the moment when we find someone worth living again for.”
“Shit,” Saint breathes, shame written all over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
Evan shrugs, but the pain is slashed on his face. He doesn’t talk about it a lot, but his chance to disappear came when a car accident stole his wife and child at the same time he
“died.” He left behind a large family who felt that loss a lot harder because it wasn’t just him.
“Long time ago,” he mutters, looking down at his hands.
“Still sorry.”
“Can we talk about Ray?” Evan asks, clearly done with this conversation.
I move back to the other side of the island and toss them each over a folder. It’s not thick, but it contains what we’ve been waiting for.
“Surveillance footage of Ray Graves leaving Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a week ago. Confirmed from both facial recognition software and voice confirmation during his chat with the gate agent. From what we could gather, he was coming from a flight leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport, but he hasn’t been staying in Paris or our contacts would have picked him up on CCTV already. Best we can tell is he’s been jumping around Europe for the past month so much that we lost track of him. Staying under the radar well enough not to get picked up on camera. Mafia’s after that fuck, so it’s not us he’s hiding from. He has no idea we’re after him. But, it’s clear he’s trying to get back to get the money that he knows Olivia and Riley have, that will clear the path for him to start funneling guns back into the states and we can’t let that happen. Last shipment ended up in a mass casualty gang war in Chicago.”
“What’s the plan when he makes contact on US soil?”
“The flight he boarded landed in Rome. He caught his tail ten minutes into his travel from the airport. We’re watching, but the thought is that he’s making his way back to Boston with a few distraction flights. I suspect he’s looking for a private charter at this point. His money might be running out, but it’s not all gone yet. He needs to get here, undetected, in order to make his move and get what he needs from Olivia.”
“And,” Hunt starts with a deep breath. “What exactly do you think he plans on doing with Olivia?”
I lean on the counter and look at each of the men who have made up my team. Men who I trust with my life, and in turn Olivia and Riley’s. Men who I’m proud to have been living the life of dead men with.
“I think he’s planning on taking Riley and forcing Olivia’s hand with a ransom demand.”
Equal heated words are grumbled on under of their breaths.
“Not anything we can do other than stick close. One of you at the shop every day. I’ll stick close to Olivia and Riley. We do what we need to do to get Ray, and I do what I need to do to make sure the girls who restarted my heart aren’t harmed.”
We continue to make small talk for a bit, catching up on sports and the women who Hunt and Saint met at the bar the other night that turned their backs into a mess of scratch marks. Those two, not sure why, but enjoy sharing way too much. It isn’t until I’m shutting the door on them that I realize what felt so wrong about my space this morning. Something that I didn’t notice because I was too busy focusing on Riley’s doll shit in the corner to see anything else.
I see it now though.
And it sends a chill through my veins.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I mutter, walking over to the bookshelves.
Right there in the center, where it’s stayed for over twenty years, is the jar that meant the world to me: both the old and new me. The jar that I watched my family cry over as one of the most loving men I ever knew mourned his friend … me.
Only this isn’t that jar.
That jar is moved a little farther back, but not to hide it. No, it was moved back so that another could take its place. Identical in every way. Only perfect and new, not handled with so many touches and too many years of deep rooted sadness.