agendas. Constituents only saw the packaged message, not the behind-the-scenes ugliness and machinations it took to get there. And when a clear abuse of power went against the wrong side of his mercenary heart, he couldn’t turn away.
“Do I have Yara to thank for Congressman Douche not pressing charges?”
Kade huffed in slight exasperation. “No. But she would have intervened.”
Yara was Kade’s fiancée and their last client as PMCs. The CIA had hooked them up with the Saudis to do a targeted assassination of the humanitarian aid’s hosts, but the op ran into a snag.
Kade fell in love.
It all turned out for the best, and Declan was one hundred percent behind his friend’s decision to break the contract with the Saudis. Getting trapped in a foreign country as hostile as Yemen was no picnic. Declan and a few other contractors loyal to Kade got thrown into a Yemeni jail controlled by the rebels. And yet he’d been more in his element in that dank prison than he’d been in the Loudon County one.
The traffic on the DC beltway was stop and go, amplifying the silence in the SUV.
“I wish you had come to me instead of taking matters into your own hands,” Kade said finally.
“The man is a pedophile. He was making a fifteen-year-old student squirm—”
“And you decided breaking his nose was the answer?”
Snapshots of the other afternoon came back to mind. The congressman was meeting with the student council from a high school. One of the students was a pretty cheerleader. Congressman Douche had no business putting his hand on the curve of her ass regardless whether she was wearing a short skirt.
The first time. Declan took notice and gritted his teeth, telling himself it was an accident.
The second time. He was clenching his fists.
When it happened yet again, the girl flushed and flinched away from the politician. The damned congressman grabbed her arm and was speaking to the girl in a sickening skeevy voice.
Declan saw red and before he knew it, Tomlin was on the floor with blood all over his face.
“Didn’t mean to put the company in a bad light.” He stared out the window.
“Fuck the company,” Kade growled with such vehemence, it pulled Declan’s gaze back to his friend. “I told you to get help. You’re having trouble transitioning into civilian life and I get that. Fuck. Do I get that.”
“The congressman wasn’t an ideal client.”
Kade smirked. “No, he wasn’t. No immediate threats against him to feed the adrenaline junkies in us. He doesn’t really need a bodyguard, but it makes him look important. We wouldn’t have taken the job if it wasn’t a favor to Yara’s dad.”
The traffic began to move and Kade changed lanes as their exit came up.
“Let’s stop playing the politics game, shall we?”
His friend cleared his throat but didn’t respond. It was a gesture Kade was doing more lately when he didn’t know how to broach a subject. Transitioning into civilian life wasn’t easy on him either, but he had Yara to keep him centered.
As for Declan, he didn’t need a woman. He’d figure this shit out eventually. Or maybe the JAG would lift the restrictions on them and let them take jobs where they were needed.
Kade made the turn into the exit leading to Declan’s condo. “How about the Hollywood game?”
“What?”
“I know you used to live there, Roarke.”
“And I left for a goddamned reason.”
“Whoa there, buddy.” Kade laughed but threw him a shrewd look. “I know you changed your name from O’Connor to Roarke before you got accepted to Ranger school. At the time I checked, your records were sealed by the military.”
“And yet you never pried, so why bring it up now?”
“It’s relevant.”
“I’m not going back there.”
“Hear me out.”
“No.”
But his friend wasn’t easily dissuaded. This was confirmed when Kade parked the SUV instead of dropping him off at his condo. Declan lived in a maintenance-free high-rise building in Reston. The two-bedroom unit was enough for his needs given a job could send him across the country at a moment’s notice.
Since it was late in the evening, the front-desk concierge had left, so Declan punched in his code to open the glass doors of the vestibule that led inside the building.
“You like the area?” Kade asked as they stepped into the elevator.
“Yeah.”
“How much is it costing you?”
Declan told him how much then asked, “You and Yara plan to stay in Manhattan?”
“Both her office and ours are there so it makes sense, but we’re thinking of getting a place in Brooklyn.”