Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,29

stirred, her throat going tight. “This was Patty’s favorite mug.”

Thor watched her, his blue eyes warm with concern. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose a friend.”

Samantha took a sip, swallowed hard, willed herself not to fall apart, not to cry. “Did you lose friends in combat?”

He nodded. “Three guys I served with in Afghanistan, three good friends, were killed during my last deployment. We were tracking down a high-value target through an area with lots of opium poppy fields, and we hit an IED.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Thor’s gaze dropped to his coffee, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight. “I was blown clear. I had some shrapnel wounds but nothing serious. But three of my friends were killed. Mads and Felix died instantly. Lars died while I held his hand. I lied to him. I smiled and told him everything would be okay.”

Samantha’s throat went tight again. “You tried to comfort him.”

“Yeah.” Regret clouded Thor’s face. “There was nothing else I could do. Lars was ripped up. He was…”

“I’m sorry.” Could she possibly be more thoughtless? “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s really none of my business. I don’t mean to dredge up dark memories.”

“It’s okay.” Thor smiled, a sad smile. “You didn’t dredge up anything. That memory, the grief—it’s always with me. But I’ve had time to make peace with it. You haven’t.”

Tears blurred her vision. “How do you make peace with it? I don’t know why she died. I didn’t get to say goodbye. She was okay one minute and then…”

Thor reached out, brushed a tear from Samantha’s cheek. “Eventually, you quit asking all of those questions, the ones with no answers. Why them? Why not me? Could I have saved him? You accept that it hurts, that they’re gone, and you keep going.”

Samantha sniffed, nodded, grief a knot behind her breastbone. “Can you… Can you help me change a lightbulb?”

Thor carried his dinner tray to the small conference room, where he, Segal, and Jones could speak without being overheard. He took a seat, the scent of spaghetti and meatballs making his mouth water. “Where’s Dr. Park? I didn’t see her in the galley.”

“She took a tray to her room.” Jones had taken over her security detail after lunch and had escorted her back to the station at the end of her shift. “She’s pretty down about her friend’s death. She wants to pack up the woman’s things so they can be shipped back to her family in November.”

Thor knew from experience how tough that was. When Lars, Felix, and Mads had been killed, he’d cleared out their lockers and gotten their personal belongings ready to send back to Denmark. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

He dug into his spaghetti. “Segal, how did it go with your new friends today?”

“Their names are Vasily, Vlad, Dmitri, Oleg, Pavel, Iosef, and Maksim. I beat Vasily at pool and darts, and Oleg beat me at chess.” Segal leaned in, a grin on his face. “Get this—chess is banned at the Russian bases down here. Some guy got so angry after losing a game that he put an ice pick through the winner’s chest. It wasn’t the first time that a sore loser stabbed someone over a chess game.”

Jones winced. “An ice pick?”

Thor wasn’t surprised. “I met with Hardin today about Jason and that damned blog post. Hardin told me the Russian scientists are heavy drinkers. You know what else he told me?”

Segal and Jones looked up from their plates.

“He says he got several complaints that one of us got lucky last night and kept the entire berthing area awake. He made it clear that it can’t happen again.”

Jones shifted in his seat. “Yeah, man. I get it. Sorry.”

Segal jabbed a meatball with more force than was necessary. “If it happens tonight, I’m knocking on your door, brother.”

Thor waited until he’d finished chewing to ask his next question. “What else did Vasily have to say? I hope you talked about more than chess.”

Segal pointed at Thor with his fork. “He asked a lot of questions about you. He asked about Cobra and Dr. Park, too.”

“He was interrogating you?” Jones laughed. “Weren’t you supposed to be interrogating him?”

“You’d be surprised what people give away when they think they control the conversation.” Segal wiped his mouth on his napkin. “Vasily is dying to know what we took from the wreckage and why it was so important that we risked our lives for it. He’s not stupid enough to ask directly,