Page 69 of Talk to Me

For now.

“You wanted to be briefed,” Locke said without preamble or avoidance. In our respective worlds, information was power, gossip was currency, and ignorance a death sentence. We did her no favors holding back.

“Yes, please.” She took a sip of her coffee and it transformed her whole expression to something resembling orgasmic. Not something I should have focused on so I down a mouthful of the bitter brew. It definitely braced a body.

Glancing from Locke to Remington then to Patch, I realized they were all waiting for me to start. “I finished my last mission, took me a few days to get clear where I could call in. You didn’t answer.” I lifted my shoulders, because the fact she didn’t answer was a clarion call to battle. “It took me some time to work up the transport, but I headed back—immediately.”

“Similarly,” Remington stated. “Your lack of answer alerted me to an issue. It took some time and resources, but I made my way to the States and Colorado.”

“Same,” Locke said. “Probably shouldn’t admit that I’d been filing away little things you said and did, but—finding you was more important than personal privacy. I knew some people, had some sources. Did some tracking. The fact all three of us were looking though, created some conflicts.”

While locating her place in Estes Park shouldn’t have been so easy, I doubt it would have been without our personal knowledge of her. Our skills. The horror crossing her expression as we detailed finding her place and I found the first kernel of regret in having violated her privacy.

“I’d apologize,” I told her. “But finding you was more important than maintaining distance. As it is, I am sorry it took us as long as it did to track you. First, we had to find out who’d taken you and that—required more than what we all knew. We found the signs of a struggle—and the drives you kept as backup.”

“None of us were altogether keen on sharing, but the fact that potential assassins tried to eliminate us on the same evening told me we’d irked someone.” The faint note of smugness in Remington’s tone was deserved. We had, in fact, been targeted. He had also been the one who warned both Locke and myself.

“Chances were they picked us up at your house,” Locke said with no more apology in his voice than I’d offered. “Makes sense that whoever took you would want to know if a cleanup team would come after them.”

Expecting a trap and triggering a trap were two different things. The fact the trap had withdrawn to hit us after we separated also said they weren’t prepared to deal with us as a group. It could also suggest they weren’t clear on our alliances.

Wise.

We weren’t clear on them. Except where Patch was concerned. As Locke picked up the threads of the story, including invading the MD Outfitters facility to get data and to search through their files, I kept my gaze on her.

She cradled the coffee mug in her palms, almost self-soothing if I were to guess. It was taking me some time to reconcile this damaged wisp of a woman to the vibrant warrior who’d tracked me through war zones. The confidence she wore like a cape, wreathing her voice in the kind of siren song I needed when I’d had to wade into fields of blood.

Despite the “fragility” brought on by the dark smudges beneath her eyes, the tautness to her lips, and the way her hands continued to white knuckle even as she forced herself to calm, I would never mistake the very gentle and feminine air of her for anything other than the definitive badass she was.

“That brought us to the swamp,” I said, catching the threads easily. “We worked out a plan. Remy to cover our exit, I would go in and handle the muscle while Locke took care of their security—you managed to undercut that plan by already being on your way out.”

“Sorry,” she murmured with the wryest of expressions. “Not sorry.”

No, I didn’t expect her to be sorry. “Survival is always the first rule.” For just a moment, our gazes locked and I read the absolute understanding in her eyes. Of course she understood. She’d been my first call after I’d gotten out of a prison in some backwater where a miscalculation landed me for three weeks.

I’d been tortured then too.

I understood the shadows drifting in and out of her gaze. They would be there for a while. They might not ever go away. Killing every single person that laid a finger on her might help.

But it was a plan for another day. Right now, however… “We need to know who it was that had you. That was a black site. Covert. No identifiable marks. Tucked away from prying eyes.”

The level of security alone suggested government if not military contractors.

“I’m more interested in why the three of you decided to work together,” she said. “You are all far more likely to be loners…”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Locke said, smiling for the first time since this conversation began. “We are civilized.”

“Are you?” The challenge rolled off her tongue in a retort to Locke, but her gaze flicked to me.

“Sometimes,” I answered. “Where you are concerned, however, no. As long as you were missing, I’d work with the devil himself to get you back. These two were hardly that bad.”

Remington actually snorted and Patch couldn’t hide her smile behind her coffee swiftly enough. “You know, I think Locke might take that as a challenge.”

“Maybe,” Locke responded. “Then again, we’ve clearly proven we’d work with the Muppets if we had to in order to get you back.”

Muppets?

I glared at him, but Patch laughed.