Honor Reclaimed (HORNET #2)

Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Seth never joined her.

By the time she realized he wasn’t going to, the bedroom was empty. His gear was gone.

Phoebe stood in the center of the room, towel clutched around her, hair dripping onto the carpet, and replayed the last ten minutes in her mind. He’d been sweet and almost playful when Marcus knocked on the door.

So what changed to make him leave without a word?

As if she didn’t know.

Damn. Phoebe grabbed some clean clothes and made quick work of throwing them on. She was out the door in the next instant, hair still dripping.

She shouldn’t have opened her mouth to tell him about the article. At least not yet, but he’d looked so content lying next to her, playing with her hair, and she’d been overcome with a choking guilt. Her timing was shit, though, which was the only reason she’d pulled back from telling him. She couldn’t hurt him like that only hours before he left to put his life at risk.

When she made it to the briefing room, she found the team suited up, readying enough gear to wage a small war. A tremble jangled down her spine at the chorus of clicks from around the room—magazines snapping into weapons, bullets into chambers.

Oh God. They weren’t supposed to be leaving for another few hours. “What’s going on?”

“Mission’s a go,” Gabe said, barely pausing as he shouldered his weapon and strode by her. “Let’s move, gentlemen.”

The team filed out.

“Wait.” Phoebe grabbed Seth’s hand. Sure, the men had been training incessantly for this raid, but she couldn’t suppress the bone-deep fear that gripped her. She stood on her toes to press a kiss to his mouth. “Please be careful.”

He gave a tight smile, and then he was gone without promising a thing.

Phoebe sank into one of the plush chairs at the paper-strewn table, and the wall of screens at the front of the room flickered to life. Helmet cams, she realized when she spotted Seth on one. They were on the roof, climbing into the helicopter, and their voices came from a speaker somewhere as each of the men checked his radio. Her heart clenched at Seth’s matter-of-fact, “Radio check, over.”

Please let him be safe.

“Ms. Leighton.”

She stiffened at the sound of Tuc’s voice from the door. “Mr. Quentin,” she said, but didn’t look away from the screens and watched as Seth ran through last checks of his gear. “Why aren’t you out there with them?”

“Wish I could be. Unfortunately, I have one of those recognizable faces and according to the tabloids, I’m on my yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, sipping cocktails with a certain supermodel—I forget which one is supposed to be my flavor of the week. Still, I’d hated to disabuse anyone of that pretty notion.”

Of course. Couldn’t have the tabloids knowing about his secret second life as a mercenary. A sour taste filled her mouth, but she decided not to comment.

Tuc strode in and picked up a keyboard. Seconds later, Seth’s helmet cam came up on the big screen. “Better?”

As Seth strapped himself into the helicopter, the camera began to shake with liftoff, and she felt sickening apprehension. Could she really sit here and watch him do this? No. But was she going to leave this room until he was safe again? Absolutely not. She would be with him every step of the way, even if it gave her a heart attack.

Needing a distraction, she glanced over at Tuc. “Back in the village, you knew me before we met. How?”

“I have my ways.” He flashed his Hollywood smile and nodded toward the cameras. “So. You and Seth?”

On screen, Seth took a photo out of his vest pocket.

Oh, no. She couldn’t watch him handle Emma’s picture with such tenderness again. Not when the memory of making love with him was so fresh in her mind.

She spun to face Tuc. “Is that a problem?”

“Could be.”

Phoebe studied his expression, trying to read between the lines of his vague response. His eyes remained fixed on the screens, but she sensed a tension in his jaw, a tightness that belied his casual demeanor.

“You know about my history with Seth,” she said, not a question but a statement of fact. “About the article I wrote.”

Tuc’s gaze flicked to hers briefly before returning to the screens. “I make it my business to know things, Ms. Leighton. Especially when they concern the people I work with. You haven’t told him yet, have you?”

Her stomach clenched. She looked back at the screens, watching the Afghan landscape unfurl beneath the chopper as it carried Seth further away from her with each passing second. “No. I started to, but…”

“But you chickened out.” There was no judgement in Tuc’s tone, just a statement of fact.

“I was trying to protect him. He doesn’t need that weighing on him right before he dives headfirst into danger.””

Tuc set down the keyboard and leaned against the table, arms crossed. “And if something happens to him out there? If he doesn’t come back? You really want your last conversation to be a lie by omission?”

Her heart seized at the unthinkable possibility she’d been trying so hard not to contemplate. She scanned the screens until one of the helmet cams landed on Seth. His face was stoic as he checked his weapon again, and a cold sweat raised chills over her skin. “I didn’t want our last conversation to be a fight. I didn’t want him to hate me. I already hate myself enough for the both of us.”

Tuc’s expression softened, fading into something more genuine, more human. He placed a hand on Phoebe’s shoulder, the gesture both comforting and firm. “Listen, I’ve been in this game a long time. I’ve seen what secrets can do, how they can fester and eat away at a person. And when they finally come out, and they always do, the fallout is nuclear.”

Thinking of the suitcase bomb, she winced. “Bad choice of words.”

“Hm. I don’t think so.”

She looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were blue, but a less intense color than Seth’s. More of a sky blue compared to Seth’s vivid cobalt. Cool and calculating and full of an unsettling wisdom. She felt exposed under his stare. “You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Tuc said without a blink of remorse. Heartless bastard. “That is, unless you plan to. If you’re sleeping with him, he deserves to know.”

She opened her mouth to say that she did plan to tell him when the timing was right, but no sound came out. It was a lie anyway—she could admit to herself she was never going to tell him. Look at how many opportunities she had already passed up.

She shook her head. “I can’t. I just… can’t bare the thought of hurting him more than I already have. When I wrote that piece, I didn’t know him. He was just another juicy, tragic story. And now?—”

“Now you do,” Tuc finished. “Which is why he deserves to know before things progress any further between the two of you. He’s already on unstable mental ground.”

“God, I hate how you guys all think that. He’s not any more unstable than Ian. Or what about Quinn? Because that guy’s got some serious baggage. And you can’t tell me Jean-Luc doesn’t have a Disneyland of issues he’s trying to rid himself of by sleeping his way through the world’s population.”

Tuc smirked. “You think so highly of them all.”

“I do,” she shot back. “But Seth’s not any more broken than the rest of them, and I’m sick of hearing everyone tear him down time and again.”

“And what about me? Am I broken? Do I have issues?”

She snorted. “You’re the poster child for issues. You have a classic case of Hollywood child star syndrome, but instead of partying your way in and out of rehab, you’ve ramped the entitlement thing up to a whole new level of crazy.”

“Maybe,” he conceded with a little one-shoulder shrug. “But I save people.”

“You move people around like chess pieces. All this?” She waved a hand at the room with its high-tech gadgets. “This is you playing God, and it’s disgusting.”

Tucker’s blond brows lifted. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I did like your father’s movies, though. Hated yours.”

“Ouch,” he said without even a shade of indignation in his tone. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I hated them, too. I never wanted to act. It was expected of me because that was my father’s profession. But all this, what you call me playing God? This is what I’m good at. Strategizing, maneuvering. I use it to save people, to give good men second chances. What exactly do you do, Ms. Leighton?”

With that, he set down the keyboard and left her alone.

Fuming, she pushed out of her chair to follow and give him a piece of her mind. Yeah, she’d done some unethical things in the past, but that did not dictate her worth. She’d done a lot of good since then, and if he thought he could get away with diminishing that good all because?—

She stopped short, hand outstretched to shove open the door.

Oh, was she a gullible idiot or what?

Tuc had said that on purpose, knowing it’d piss her off, and she’d feel the need to set him straight. He didn’t think she should be watching the mission, and this was his way of distracting her.

Manipulative bastard.

Well, he had said he was good at strategy. No doubt about that now.

She about-faced and stalked back to her chair. Seth’s helmet camera showed the guys all standing, Quinn by the door with his hand through a loop in the ceiling. He tossed a rope out of the helicopter and waved an arm. The first man grabbed the rope and jumped. Seth went third in line, and she held her breath until his feet were on the ground, his rifle in hand, and he was moving toward cover.

Relief flowed through her in an exhausting wave, and she sank back into the leather seat. This was going to be a long night.

Behind her, the door opened.

“Didn’t work, huh?” Tuc said with a note of resignation. He handed her a mug of coffee and then settled into the chair beside hers.

“Almost,” she admitted and blew across the top of her mug before taking a sip.

“Can’t blame me for trying. You don’t need to watch this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I suppose so.” He faced the screen and raised his mug to his mouth. “Jesus, I wish I was there.”