But that was also why she was in such excellent shape.
Still, when she got back inside the box of pain, she threw her sandbag back into the pile with far more force than necessary.
“Well,” she said, eyeing Jonas the way she might any enemy combatant, “this has been delightful. I feel super close. Let’s do it again.”
She headed for the door of the gym, ready to go back to her cabin and take a breather between her workout space and the briefing. Just a little moment to recalibrate.
“Bethan.”
She remembered, suddenly, how she’d reacted out there in that terrible desert to her name in his mouth. It was worse now. It felt more intimate, here in an empty gym with only the fog outside as a witness.
“I never thanked you,” he said, his voice low.
Bethan’s hands curled into fists, and maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her that this man, who was the catalyst for so many things in her life—Ranger School, for example, and because of that, Alaska Force—should be the only person who could manage to get to her these days. The only person she saw regularly, that was. She’d been waiting for his hold on her to fade, but it had been years.
Maybe it’s not going anywhere, she was forced to acknowledge.
And she didn’t try to hide the fact that she was clearly fighting off her temper when she turned around to face him.
“You didn’t,” she agreed. “Because you’re not thankful. You’re furious.”
“I wouldn’t use that word.”
“And I really hope you’re not about to insult me by thanking me now, as if throwing me some bone you don’t even believe in is going to make me feel better about something that I don’t feel bad about.”
Maybe he sighed. Maybe he said her name again. Neither was acceptable, so Bethan kept going.
“I don’t have a problem, Jonas. You do. Maybe that’s something you should figure out, but leave me out of it while you do, because I’m here to do a job. I don’t need to be a part of your therapy sessions.”
She expected the usual stonewalling. He was Jonas Crow, who could disappear while you were looking straight at him and make you question whether you’d ever seen him in the first place.
Instead, he nodded. Curtly. “Fair enough.”
And she wanted to stand there a moment. Express her extreme surprise that he was suddenly being reasonable about something when that was so unlike him. But if she’d learned anything in the military, it was how to spot a tactical advantage when it presented itself. Not to stand around congratulating herself out of that advantage.
So even though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she turned around again and walked—sauntered, really, because she refused to pick up her pace in case he interpreted that as an emotional reaction on her part—away from him.
And the fake attempt at a long-overdue conversation he didn’t want to have and she’d given up expecting to have years ago.
By the time she made it to the briefing, she had all her usual defenses back in place, where they belonged. And she’d made a vow to herself.
She was done with the Jonas thing. She would quit him the way people quit cigarettes—cold turkey, no matter how it hurt. She would treat him like he was a piece of furniture, or a wall. No need to look at him. No need to worry about him. No need for him to claim all this real estate in her head.
This needs to be over, she told herself, again, as she walked into the meeting.
Everyone who wasn’t out on an active mission was crowded into the lodge in the big, lobby-like main room where they entertained clients and gathered themselves. The place was all frontier chic, as Bethan’s friend Everly liked to call it. Comfortable, masculine couches, wood and stone, and Pendleton blankets. Everly was not here today, because while she was married to former SEAL Blue Hendricks, she was not herself a member of Alaska Force.
Besides, Everly had said once, I work remotely so I don’t have to sit in meetings anymore.
Bethan smiled at Blue as she took her usual place, standing against one wall. She would have preferred to sit closer to the big stone fireplace, but she didn’t allow herself unnecessary comforts while she was on the job. Too easy to get soft. To melt into complacence, and the moment she was complacent, she risked becoming average.
And average was unacceptable. Excellent was her average. She viewed it as failure.
She was aware of Jonas, drifting into the room like smoke and standing apart from the rest of them, as suited the Alaska Force ghost. But Bethan didn’t allow herself to look in his direction.
Isaac came in from the hall that led to the various offices and command centers, Oz in his wake. Bethan stood straighter, because neither one of them looked happy. Oz sat down in his preferred seat, flipping open his laptop. Isaac frowned at the tablet in his hand.
And suddenly the big flat screen on the wall was filled with the face of the scientist she’d personally helped deliver to his safe house in Montreal yesterday.
“Some of you will recognize Dr. Tayo Sowande,” Isaac said.
Bethan caught herself looking at Jonas and pinched herself on the thigh. Viciously.
“Yesterday, after extracting his sister from Chile, we picked him up in Portugal and took him to a safe house in Canada.” Isaac looked out around the room, his sober gray gaze making Bethan’s stomach drop, because that was bad news. The whole room knew it—she could feel the air go taut. “The extraction team was concerned that the operation was a little too easy. And sure enough, it was. Because he’s gone.”
Four
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Jonas clipped out from his usual position in these briefings—or anywhere else. Back against a wall, egress points identified and in view, and ready to make his exit at a moment’s notice.
Something he’d learned as a kid and that the service had only refined.
“The client called in thirty minutes ago,” Isaac said, nodding at the screen. “After hearing nothing from Dr. Sowande or his sister all day, he went over to the safe house to check in on them. His expectation was that following their ordeal, they were both taking some time to recover. But the safe house was empty.”
“No sign of forced entry or struggle,” Oz said before anyone could ask the question. “It’s as if neither one of them was ever there.”
Jonas went back over every detail he carried around in his head about this particular operation. “The client is a highly placed academic with ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Could Sowande have decided the safe house wasn’t as safe as advertised?”
Though he’d been there when the scientist and his sister had walked through the little house. They hadn’t seemed anything but grateful. And deeply exhausted. Their reactions had been in line with what he’d expect to see in individuals who’d been through a traumatic experience and were wrestling with the possibility of hope—not runners.