Jag hitched a shoulder back, implying his invitation for her to step over and join him. Once she did, her eyes widened at the digital pin in the map on his pad. “France? Paris?”
Jagger leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “They call it the City of Light, yes? Maybe this is fate already giving you a sign.”
Jayd let out more air, turning the whoosh into a sigh. The exhalation was threaded with an energy she had not allowed herself to feel all day.
Hope.
“From your lips to the Creator’s ear, my friend,” she uttered at last.
No. Not uttered.
Prayed.
Chapter Two
They said Paris was the easiest city in the world to get lost in.
But it was here that Max Brickham always found a few things. Most notably, himself.
“And it’s too damn early in the day for that mush, asshole,” he muttered under his breath, happy when his booted footfalls covered for his hushed decibels. The polished wood floor of the Louvre Museum’s Denon Wing also cooperated, turning his determined pace into resounding echoes that made their way up to the curved skylights.
But his senses were blended into sentimental smoothies from the moment he entered Gallery 77. The sensory slush worsened as he continued on, nearing the sole reason why he’d stayed an extra day in the city.
A smile prodded the corners of his mouth as memories tugged the edges of his psyche. Years ago, when he’d first stood before Delacroix’s iconic painting, Liberty Leading the People, he’d been visiting the city with Zeke Hayes. By then, a lot of shared missions had forged his and Z’s friendship into something deeper. They weren’t a couple, but the term bromance was too fucking trite. What was it called when a guy had seen damn near every skeleton in your closet but stood by you anyway? So yeah. Whatever that was. Zeke was the guy who got it all. Who understood most of it and accepted what even Max didn’t. Not back then.
Most importantly, he was also the only person Max knew who’d gazed at this painting and didn’t see just a gal with great tits tromping over a pile of dead bodies.
He’d seen exactly what Max had.
A barricade that had been demolished. A group of people who dared to think beyond their norms. Rebels who’d declared freedom from the rubble. Even the nobility in their pain.
After that, Zeke and he had left the Louvre and wandered the city for hours. Talking about why they’d thought the same symbolic stuff about the same piece of art. Talking about other symbols too. Insignias like the Dominance and submission triskelion. About black leather chokers with specific symbols, and the people who wore them. About the shield of ownership, and the people who wore those. A secret language they both knew but had been terrified to admit to. Them. A pair who’d been through some dank shitholes together, confessing things that only came out when death was closer than life, but still without learning those incredible details about each other.
That night, when they ended their walk at the Place de la Bastille, they shook hands and agreed on the next level of their friendship. They became business partners. The Bastille Seattle, providing a safe, sane, and luxurious environment for the city’s kinksters, would soon become a reality.
Though he still cherished the memories from that night, he was itching to move on again. As in, getting all the way back home. But the Bastille Club, and the freedom it granted to his own dark side, was still half a world away. And the growing crowd in the gallery was getting too damn close. Closing in on him, several bodies at a time, until he practically shoved his way clear of the throng, moving away to suck in huge, hard breaths.
Too late.
More memories barged in on his senses. This time, not the pleasant kind. The darkness was no longer composed of tourists, school kids, and art nuts. It became floors of dirt, walls of rock, and blackness filled with helplessness.
And horror.
The terrible, inescapable horror inside his mind. Of what he’d watched there. What he’d done there.
No. No. No.
He was conscious of the litany spilling from his lips in a rasp as he pushed down the hall like an overeager newb in field training.
“Not now,” he gritted at his raging pulse and dizzy vision. “Not now.”
But adrenaline and imagination hit his bloodstream like hydrogen and oxygen. Mixing. Combusting.
Spiraling into full panic.
He clamped his teeth, struggling to hide the surge.
His heart rate doubled. His balance faltered. Sweat broke out from every pore.
“Fuck,” he choked out.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Without another crowd to elbow aside, he applied the same force to the rioting neurons in his mind. “You’re okay,” he muttered. “This is Paris, not Bamiyan. Not Bamiyan. You’re okay, you big wuss.”
Goddammit.
When would this bullshit end? It had been nearly four years since his first panic attack, three since he popped smoke from the big green military game and left black ops for good.
But had he?
Because wasn’t he the one to jab up a hand when old field buddies needed special help with off-the-grid missions? Wasn’t he doing it before the payout was even discussed? Wasn’t the rush of the risk better than a month’s worth of anxiety pills, calming him in ways he couldn’t explain? And wasn’t the shitty aftermath worth it?
Probably best to defer on answering that one.
Because this assignment had come with one hell of an Aftermath. Capital fucking A.
Logically, he could trace the reason why. Hadn’t been the money—a sweeter than sweet deal, thanks to the contract being for renowned billionaire Reece Richards—or even the team setup. He couldn’t have asked for a better squad than his buddies, former feds Sawyer Foley and Dan Colton, as well as badasses Mitch Mori and Kane Alighieri from Richards’ private security team. But despite their thorough prep and expensive gear, the op had cost Mori his life—as Alighieri, his husband, had watched.
So yeah, a reason like that.
Aftermath.
The kind that clung ruthlessly to a guy.
And here was the evidence, on high-def display across his whole mind.
Yay fucking yay.
No fucking way.
He fought back again. Compelled himself back to the mumbled affirmations. “You’re okay. You’re not there. You’re right here. Sunlight. Civilization. Sanity.”
No more darkness or piss or fear.
Most especially, no more stone walls.
As he emerged from the main pyramid into the full sunshine, a deep inhalation helped to drive the thought home. As he sucked in another, he willed the rays to sink in deeper, through his close-cropped skull and tense neck, to the places he needed them most. The drops of his bloodstream that were still a wild river ride. The atriums and ventricles of his heart, still a deafening rock concert.
“Breathe, damn it.”
Finally, finally, it seemed to be working.
A little. Not enough.
He walked across the museum’s main courtyard, heading for one of the wide reflecting pools. Water was his favorite natural relaxer of choice, as he’d learned during extensive therapy sessions with Doc Sally at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. She’d helped him determine that it likely stemmed from growing up in downtown Emerald City and escaping the ugliness of the south side by watching sunsets over the Puget Sound. Images of those waters were what his mind called forth the most during those black, life-changing hours deep beneath Bamiyan. That night, hundreds of hours long, in which he’d finally given up on ever seeing the sun again…