The worst part was that, even though they knew Xavier Harrington was involved in the theft of the nukes—and that he’d almost certainly brought them to New York—they still had no idea where to turn next.
They’d gone from Incirlik to Zagreb, then Surinda to Odessa, and finally Moscow to New York, yet they were no closer to finding the stolen nuclear weapons than they’d been at the beginning. On top of that, Brielle was no closer to finding her brother, either. She didn’t want to let her mind go there, but it was getting harder and harder to believe Julian was still alive.
“We could check out Harrington’s other facilities,” Genevieve said, distracting Brielle a little with her hopeful expression. “He has at least a dozen different office complexes spread throughout New Jersey and New York. We might get lucky.”
Jake shrugged. “It won’t hurt to try, but I find it difficult to believe Harrington would have cleaned up his tracks so well at his corporate headquarters but left evidence behind in other places. He doesn’t strike me as a careless person.”
Everyone agreed with that, including Brielle.
A little while after that, the conversation turned to the one topic she noticed always seemed foremost in the STAT team’s mind—food. Not that Brielle could blame them. She could definitely go for something to eat. While Sawyer and Hudson wanted to simply order pizza, everyone else wanted to get out of the house for a while.
“I’m tired of takeout,” Harley added. “Let’s go to a restaurant for a change.”
“And then do some grocery shopping afterward,” Misty suggested. “We have no idea how long we’ll be staying at this safe house, and there isn’t much in the way of food here.”
Brielle thought Caleb would be the first one heading for the door, so she was surprised when he wandered back into the kitchen. She walked over to him.
“Aren’t you coming out with the rest of us?” she asked.
He shook his head without looking her way, eyes trained on the cabinet he’d just opened. “Nah. I don’t feel like going out. I’ll find something to eat here.”
Brielle threw a quick look at Misty, who nodded and urged a curious Forrest out the front door, saying she’d grab takeout from the restaurant.
“You should have gone with them. The food options are limited here,” Caleb said, taking a box of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet.
How did she know he’d find peanut butter? He was like a peanut-butter-sniffing bloodhound. Or peanut-butter-sniffing werewolf, she guessed.
“I’m fine with peanut butter and crackers if you are.”
She frowned when he turned his back to her, focused on opening the box of graham crackers and ignoring her completely. For some reason, the idea that he didn’t even want to look at her hurt more than it should.
Sighing, she walked over to the fridge to grab two bottles of water. It didn’t exactly go with peanut butter, but the other option was some generic-looking beer in a can, which she flat-out refused to drink.
After the night they’d spent together in Moscow, Brielle had been so sure there was something between them. Something she hadn’t allowed herself to even consider as a possibility. She’d tried to talk to him about it the next morning when they’d woken up in each other’s arms, but before she’d had the chance, Jake was knocking on the bedroom door saying they had to move fast to make the flight to America. Between the long flight and then the mission at the UN conference, they hadn’t been able to talk since.
Considering that Caleb was acting like he wished she had gone out to dinner with everyone else instead of staying with him, maybe she’d been wrong about there being anything between them. Hell, maybe he was regretting getting involved with her at all.
They stood at the kitchen island in silence, taking turns using the same butter knife to spread peanut butter on the crackers, the loud sound of their crunching as they ate becoming more uncomfortable by the second. Finally, Brielle couldn’t take it anymore. Shoving the knife into the jar of peanut butter, she picked up her bottle of water and turned to leave the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you stop when I told you to?” he suddenly asked from behind her, the soft, almost tentative tone of the question making her stop and turn back around to look at him.
“What?” she said, more to give herself time to think about what his question meant than anything else. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard him clearly.
“When you started following Harrington and I told you to fall back,” he said, the words a soft growl as he paid an inordinate amount of attention to the peanut butter sandwich he was busy making out of two crackers. “I told you not to follow him out of the main lobby. That it could have been an ambush. But it was like you weren’t listening to me at all. Even when I practically shouted at you to stop. You just kept going. And it was an ambush.”
All Brielle could do was stare and pray her jaw didn’t fall open to leave her standing there looking ridiculous.
“What?” she asked again, not proud of her total lack of loquaciousness. But truthfully, she was baffled right now. She honestly had no idea why he was going on about something that had happened hours ago.
“Brielle,” he whispered, her name slipping out in an anguished tone as he finally lifted his head to look at her. “You could have gotten yourself killed. You nearly did.”
It hit her then what was going on, and she was almost embarrassed that she hadn’t figured it out before. This was why Caleb had been so grouchy since they’d come back to the safe house. It had nothing to do with Hudson betraying them and the possibility there was a tracking device underneath the CIA agent’s skin.
Caleb had been worried about her.
It was childish, but Brielle couldn’t stop the surge of happiness that spiraled through her at the knowledge that men didn’t get worried about another person’s actions like this unless they really cared.
Caleb cared about her.
Brielle almost laughed she was so giddy. Until she saw the utter devastation on his face. Her heart plummeted into her stomach, and she stepped closer to him, only keeping herself from throwing her arms around him by the strongest force of will.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching out and placing her hand gently on his chest. His skin was warm through his shirt, his heartbeat steady. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I freely admit that following Harrington was the dumbest idea ever. But I haven’t heard from Julian in almost two weeks, and the idea of letting the only man who might know where he is get away without learning anything…” She shook her head. “I simply couldn’t do it. I had to take the chance for my brother.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she knew Caleb wouldn’t understand. Not after all the stories she’d told him about Julian and his colossal number of screwups. Hell, sometimes she wondered why she kept risking everything for her brother when it was his own fault for getting into these situations in the first place.