into a living area. This floor of the Jameson building holds a handful of personal apartments, which some of the single guys live in, the kitchen where we have large team meals and get-togethers, and a plush living area complete with comfy couches, recliners, and a big-screen TV. I’ve heard Kynan throws a hell of a Super Bowl party here.
Glancing at my watch, I see I have another fifteen minutes before I need to be downstairs for my morning meeting with Kynan, where we’ll go over his schedule and my duties for the day. I make myself a cup of coffee, nab a maple donut, and sit at the kitchen island, surfing my phone. There are already three texted pictures of Avery from my mom, and I examine them with a grin for a few moments while I nibble at my donut.
The refurbished freight elevator arrives on the fourth floor, and the gate slides open. I don’t even bother glancing up from my phone, figuring it’s Kynan coming up for a donut and some coffee.
“Hey, Kynan,” I say as I flip back to the first photograph of Avery blowing a little spit bubble. “Check this out.”
I lift my head, turn the phone to hold it outward, and gape in shock at the man who just came off the elevator. He’s carrying a large military duffel over his shoulder.
Malik Fournier.
We’d only met once before—the night before he and the team left on their mission—but the changes between that man and the one standing before me now are significant.
Malik was a big man, and he’s still incredibly tall. But he was brawny when I’d met him before. Packed solid with muscle he’d appeared to know how to use. The man before me is much thinner, although I imagine he’s gained some weight back over the last almost two weeks he’s been at his parents. His cheeks are slightly sunken in, and his eyes have dark circles under them. Perhaps it takes longer than two weeks to catch up on the sleep he surely missed while being held prisoner.
I know it was bad for him there since I had asked Cage to give me all the gory details when he returned to Pittsburgh after the rescue. He’d balked at first, but he’d finally caved. That’s because Cage has become an incredibly close friend over the last several months, and he knows more than anyone how much I’ve tied this rescue of Malik to the final peace I need to move past Jimmy’s death.
Cage had told me all the details. After he’d finished, I’d wished he hadn’t. I just can’t imagine how anyone survived that type of experience.
And yet… seeing him standing before me now—not back to normal but still so very strong in his own right for surviving captivity—and it affects me the way I knew it would.
It’s a balm to my soul, knowing what an absolute miracle he is to have survived. While it doesn’t make Jimmy’s death any easier to accept, it definitely replaces a portion of my grief with a genuine happiness that Malik has overcome practically the impossible.
We stare at each other for a long moment, then Malik’s gaze drops to my phone. “Cute kid.”
CHAPTER 3
Malik
Of course she’s a cute kid. She’s a product of Jimmy and Anna, and they were an extraordinarily good-looking couple. I’d only met Anna once before the mission, and that was at a Jameson get-together for drinks the night before we flew out. I’d been working and training with Jimmy for almost a month, but I’d never met his wife before that night.
I know all about the little girl facing me on the screen of Anna’s phone. From the moment I’d been rescued by my Jameson teammates, I couldn’t stop asking questions about everything. I made Cage recount to me in painstaking detail everything he knew about Jimmy and Sal’s deaths so I could compare it to my own recollection. How they died and how their bodies were recovered. Sal bled out from a bullet wound to his femoral artery while Jimmy died from a shot to the neck.
The guilt for those two deaths is crushing to me, and there’s nothing I can do to assuage it. Perhaps that’s why I’m overly curious about Anna and her baby, Avery. How does a woman survive losing her husband and bearing his baby all within a matter of weeks? As I stand before her right now, seeing an easygoing, welcoming smile on her face, I have