She compressed her lips, trapping the secret inside once again. But a tear trickled from the corner of her eye, unstoppable.
“Oh fuck, sweetheart.” Oz cupped her nape and drew her a step closer. He dropped his forehead to hers, and she closed her eyes and shut off her senses so she didn’t feel the tremble in his fingers on her neck or breathe in his wonderful manly scent.
Will I ever see you again?
She couldn’t utter the words and sound as pathetic as she felt.
She could be strong. She expected nothing less than the bad-ass side of herself to step up and take charge. She’d survived so much, including a kidnapping. Surely, she could get over losing the man she loved a second time.
* * * * *
“Fucking hell.” Oz gripped the steering wheel and glared at the street stretching before him. Why did he feel like he was abandoning Rose?
“Goddammit,” he added to his string of cusses. His jaw ached from clenching it so hard. Last time he’d tried to leave her, he’d lied to himself, told himself she wouldn’t be safe hidden away in the back of that hotel. What excuse could he come up with now? Nobody would suspect Rose would be staying with the Warrens.
“I had to do it. I had to leave her there.” He hadn’t even driven away yet.
He tightened his grip on the leather wheel, wishing he could snap it in half, but the steel remained intact, much to his frustration.
He’d hurt her. He was a fucking bastard—but he’d never told himself different. The Guard was his life and the only family he’d ever have. He couldn’t risk bringing Rose into this lifestyle, though the woman knew enough about them now that she needed her mind wiped clean.
That look in her eyes… Fuck, he’d never get the image out of his head again.
He ground his teeth and started the vehicle. He drove to the end of the block and then cut across to the next street. When he rolled past the Warrens’ home a second time, he slowed. Go inside and tell her you fucking love her and always have.
Jamming his foot into the gas pedal, he sped by instead. This time he made the block without turning back and instead pointed the Humvee north. His people needed him. They had work to do. Not only would he finish this for Rose and return her to her world, he would clear Lars too.
The two problems bounced around his head as he drove, but his brain circled back to Rose far too many times for his peace. Not having her next to him felt like his right arm had been severed from his body. His gut ached to get her back.
Hours later, he pulled into the parking lot of the cathedral. A lump formed in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow it. He might be back home, but he felt more lost than ever before. His life, always his own, had somehow been plucked from him and handed to a beautiful blonde with eyes he could melt into forever.
He sat there for so long that eventually Roman appeared at the driver’s window. Oz finally cut the engine and stepped out of the vehicle to face his man.
“What the fuck’s going on, Oz?” Roman never held back a thought in his head.
“Just thinking,” he muttered.
“Looked pretty intense. Let’s go inside and you can share.”
Wordlessly, Oz strode to the side door of the church. Just breathing in the scent of wood polish on the pews and seeing the colorful stained glass reflections on the hardwood floors gave him a feeling of homecoming.
But fuck…Rose.
“We just received a call that Frisco’s got a bead on the whereabouts of that ship your ward was meant to be on. It’s headed—”
Oz cut Roman off. “I need a minute.” He slipped into the private chamber and closed the door. The dim interior shrouded him in a measure of comfort he didn’t deserve right now.
He walked over to the table where he and the faithful members of The Guard gathered to discuss cases just like Rose’s. While deserving of happy endings, those people never quite seemed as real as Rose did.
He clutched the table edge and bowed his head. For years, the church served as their haven, and over time, he’d found a bastardized spirituality founded on his own beliefs about how people should be treated.
The way he’d turned on Rose, telling her in few words that she meant nothing to him, should get him nailed to a damn cross. I have no excuse for my cruelty. I’ve been a coward.
Roman opened the door enough for his big frame to enter through and then closed it again. Oz didn’t raise his head.
“What the fuck happened out there, Oz?”
He dragged in a deep breath and then sighed. Silence pervaded the space, making his own heartbeat too loud.
“I’ve never seen you like this.” Roman approached the table Oz still bowed over.
He had no words to reply to his man.
“Did you fail? Was your ward killed?”
Oz snapped his head up. He couldn’t answer such a question, let alone let it enter his head. “No,” he grated out. “She’s at a safehouse in Virginia.”
“Ah.”
Neither spoke for another long minute. Roman pulled out a chair and sank to it. The ornately-carved wood creaked under his two-hundred twenty pounds of pure muscle.
At last, Oz pushed away from the table and shoved his fingers through his hair. “We’ve got work to do. Tell me about this lead of Frisco’s.”
Roman eyed him, but didn’t immediately speak.
Oz waved a hand in irritation. “Whatever you want to ask me—don’t. Just tell me what I need to know.”
“All right.” Roman leaned back in the chair, folded his arms and began to fill in the cracks of what Oz already knew. When he got to the part about a couple members meeting the ship in Venezuela, dragging the ship’s captain off, and doing whatever it took for them to gain the answers they required, Oz felt some of his tension stretch tighter across his shoulder blades.
“Who employed the captain?”
“We tracked it back to a millionaire in Dubai.”
Oz’s stomach lurched. “That’s where the bank account is.”
“We know. Madeline located the account and accessed it. She traced the transactions all over the place. One transfer came from Sydney, Australia, and then a day later, the CIA located some of those arms stolen from that ship in Sydney Harbour.”
“So we’ve got our ring. We have some names.”
Roman nodded. “Doesn’t look as if that pilot is innocent.”
“No.” Rose was wrong about Baynard, but as soon as she hit upon that bank account with Baynard’s dead father’s name on it, she knew it too.
“She got caught in the middle, dug up the wrong bones. But it looks as if this can be an easy fix. We already handed over the captain of the ship in Venezuela to government authorities.”
“Were the accounts frozen?” Oz asked.
Roman shook his head. “We want to see what else rolls through those accounts and where they’re coming from.”
“The head of it all isn’t Baynard. Greed just made him turn on his country.”
“No. The person we need to find approached Baynard with the idea and recruited him. We need to find him.”
“Get Baynard in for questioning tonight.”
“He might be difficult to reach. The Navy has high security around him.”
Oz leveled a look at Roman. “When has that ever stopped us?”