Honor Reclaimed (HORNET #2)

Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

The debriefing sucked. The whole mission had sucked, and now they were back at square one. All because Seth had frozen up again.

If this didn’t seal his fate in Gabe Bristow’s eyes, nothing would.

He left the war room ahead of the rest of the team, needing a shower to wash away the stench of failure. Needing…

Phoebe.

Yes, Christ, did he ever need to see her.

As he waited for the elevator, Tucker Quentin emerged from the stairwell at the other end of the hall and approached like a tornado cell rolling in over the Iowa plains, dark and forecasting death. Seth made an effort to project fuck-off vibes. He didn’t need another ass-chewing when he still hurt from the last one.

If Tuc noticed his vibes, he didn’t care. He slapped a manila envelope against Seth’s chest. “You need to see what your girlfriend’s been up to.”

Seth caught the envelope before it slid to the floor. “What?”

But Tuc had already stormed away, shoving into the war room with enough force that the door banged against the wall.

The elevator opened, and Seth stepped inside, the sour taste of dread coating his tongue. He stared down at the envelope. He shouldn’t look. Should just toss it out. Like old wounds, some things were better left unopened.

The car stopped at the living room, most likely where Tuc had been before he decided to use the stairs. Seth jabbed the button for his floor again, but a picture on the big-screen TV across the room caught his attention.

“…Afghan presidential candidate Jahangir Siddiqui has so far refused to comment on these allegations…”

What the fuck?

He nipped between the doors before they closed and crossed the room in several long strides to stand in front of the screen.

“Sources at the embassy,” the reporter continued, a hint of excitement thrumming through the grave overtones in his voice, “say the evidence against Siddiqui is too strong to ignore, and they expect the current Afghan administration will have no choice but to respond. So far, no nuclear weapons have been found.”

Phoebe.

Jesus Christ, what had she done?

Heat flashed through his body, but the anger didn’t last as cold fear washed over it, and his knees went to rubber bands. He sank to the coffee table and only remembered the envelope when it dropped from his numb fingers and landed with a soft whap at his feet.

He stared at it for a long time before finally moving to retrieve it. He opened the flap, upended it, and the article that spilled out threw him back in time to one of his darkest moments after his rescue.

Lies.

So many lies.

But lies twisted to make sense.

And Phoebe had written them.

Phoebe hesitated as she neared the room she’d shared with Seth. She’d done exactly what he’d told her not to—she’d taken Zak Hendricks’s information public, and now Siddiqui’s face was spreading across the major news outlets like wildfire. Even though she’d told her source to keep her name out of it, she wasn’t naive enough to think that meant she was safe. She had to leave Afghanistan. Probably should also go into hiding, at least until Siddiqui was caught.

But all that was in the future.

Right now, in this moment, she had to face Seth. And say goodbye.

The thought carried her feet the rest of the way to his door, each step closer filling her with an aching desperation to touch him one last time. She wished she had time to make love to him again, make one last sweet memory she could hold close when the ache of missing him got to be too much. Because she would miss him. Probably for the rest of her life.

Unless…

What if he felt the same way? Of course, he was going to be angry at her right now, but what if he wanted this thing between them to continue? It wouldn’t be easy with her in hiding and his job sending him across the world, but maybe they could make it work. Even if it were just a physical relationship, she’d live with that. Better than not having him in her life at all.

Hope took root and blossomed in her heart.

His door was already ajar, and she pushed it open the rest of the way. He sat on the end of the bed, still dressed in his combat gear, smeared with dust.

And he held Emma’s picture. Once again, he’d turned to the ghost of a woman who didn’t even love him anymore. A woman he claimed not to love.

Phoebe’s steps faltered as a sob welled up in her throat. She viciously choked it back, but a dismayed squeak of sound still escaped.

His head snapped up.

“I’m sorry,” she said, backing toward the door. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Keep pretending her picture doesn’t bother me.”

He gazed at the photo still clutched in his hand, guilt filling his face before he carefully blanked his expression. Didn’t that just underline the stark fact she’d never be as perfect as his idealized version of Emma? She’d never measure up to the pedestal he’d placed the woman on. And even as much as she cared about him, probably even loved him, she would not destroy herself by trying to live up to Emma’s memory.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“You’re right, I don’t.” The words whipped out, barbed with anger she suddenly couldn’t control. “I don’t understand why you are so hung up on a woman who cheated on you, who was warming another man’s bed when you were over here fighting through hell. A woman who left you almost as soon as you returned to the States and got engaged before you even left the hospital. What is so great about that woman? What makes her so perfect that you have to carry her photo around?”

What makes her so much better than me? She wanted to scream it but didn’t. Even so, the question clogged the air between them like a toxic smoke.

His jaw tightened. “She’s all I have.”

Phoebe flinched. Oh God, that hurt. “No, she isn’t. Don’t you get it? You have me.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up a manila envelope and flung it at her. It slapped against her chest, but she didn’t manage to catch it before it slid to the floor. Papers spilled out at her feet and every cell in her being turned to solid ice.

The headline. That damn headline.

HOW HEROIC IS THE “HERO” SNIPER? MURDER, CORRUPTION, AND THE COVER-UP OF THE DECADE.

“So, Phoebe, want Want to explain that, Phoebe?” he demanded. “Or should I call you Kathryn Anderson? Imagine my surprise when Tuc handed me that envelope, and I found out the woman I’ve been sleeping with not only lied to me about her name but also publicly raked me over the coals.”

Tears blurred her vision and coursed down her cheeks. “I didn’t lie about my name. It’s Kathryn Phoebe Leighton. Anderson was my married name.” A ball of pain grew in the back of her throat, and swallowing became an impossible task. “And I—I was going to tell you.”

He scoffed. “Yeah? When? After you fucked me into submission?”

“No!” Sick to her stomach, she hugged herself and searched for the right words—something, anything to explain. But, really, what was there to explain? She neglected to tell him something he’d deserved to know. “I’m sorry. Seth, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. To hurt…us.”

“I knew all along you were hiding something. Should have trusted my gut.” He laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “There was a lot of shit said about me and my team, and I was able to overlook most of it, but that article? That fucking article was the worst because it made sense. It was all bull, taking my men’s deaths and twisting them into a political agenda, but it wasn’t sensationalized. It was laid out like fact, and people believed it. Omar Cordero’s wife believed it, and to this day, she won’t speak to me. Because of you, I never got a chance to tell her that his last words, his last thoughts, were of her. And now you’re at it again—taking Zak’s reports to the media. Did you twist them, too? Make Zak look like the bad guy?”

Phoebe raised a shaking hand to her mouth, each new word hitting like a physical blow. “No, I wouldn’t—I didn’t say a word about Zak. I was just trying to stop Siddiqui.”

“Yeah, well. He’s not going to be president now, so there’s that. But he still has the nuke, and now he’s gone to ground, so you only succeeded in stalling him. And pissing him off.”

“You’ll find him.”

He made an ugly sound of derision. “It’s not my job to find him.”

Seconds ticked by, and Seth didn’t seem inclined to say more. He stood and crossed to the opposite side of the room, rolling his shoulders as if to shake her memory off. It was a completely dismissive gesture. No, not just dismissive, but a nonverbal I never want to see you again .

Phoebe didn’t blame him for his anger, but after everything they’d shared, it couldn’t end like this. All these vicious words couldn’t be her last moments with him.

Trembling, she chanced a step forward. “Seth?—”

“No.” He whirled and pointed a finger at her face. His lips pulled back in an ugly sneer. “Do you want to know what makes Emma so much better than you? She never lied to me. Yeah, she started dating another man while I was gone, but she thought I was dead, and Matt was there to help her through the loss. When I came home, she told me flat out that she had fallen in love with him and wanted to marry him. And, yeah, maybe I had trouble coping with the break-up, but that’s on me, not her. She’s not a liar, not a cheater, and, even better, she never poisoned a whole population’s views against a man who was too sick and injured to defend himself.”

She winced but took another step toward him.

“Stay the fuck away from me.” He shouldered past her but paused in the doorway to glance back. A shutter slammed closed over his expression. No more hurt. No more anger. His eyes turned glacial. “If I ever see any of your names on another article about me or my men, you’ll sure as fuck hear from my lawyer.”

Her knees gave out, and despair dragged her to the floor. “Kathryn Anderson is dead.”

“Good.”

And so, she realized, was Phoebe Leighton. At least as far as he was concerned.