Trav turns back to me. “We’ll let you rest some more, and I’ll come back soon.”
“Do you know when I’ll be allowed out of here?” I ask.
“Whenever my doctors say so.”
“Your doctors?”
“You work for me now.”
“Wait … what?”
Iris’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah, what? He’s not … and …” Iris tilts his head at me, making him look like a confused dog.
“On my request, the military gave you a medical discharge while you were in a coma,” Trav says.
If he’s not military, then … “Who are you?”
Iris laughs. “We’re your knights in shining camo. And you were our damsel in distress, it seems.”
“Kill me now. Please,” I deadpan.
“Rest up,” Trav says. “Rehabilitate. Take a few months to get strong again. Then you’ll meet your new team.”
New team … No more military … This all feels wrong. I want to protest and ask if I get any say at all, but everything in my head is jumbled, so I don’t think anything would make sense even if I got answers. I need to process everything first.
“We’ll speak again soon.” Trav walks toward the door, and Iris follows him.
At the last minute, Iris turns back to me, his dark eyes shining in amusement. He looks so put together, his black hair slicked to one side, his tight T-shirt stretched over his muscles but tucked into his tactical pants neatly. He looks nothing like the walking disaster I knew from basic training.
“Saint?”
I stare at him expectantly.
“You’re welcome.” He backs away with a smug smile on his face.
Yep, he may look put together now, but ten years have done nothing to change Isaac Griffin’s attitude. And I still find him as attractive as ever.
Chapter Three
Iris
It’s a traffic clusterfuck as the team all try to pull into the driveway at headquarters at the same time. I cut off Atlas’s Mustang and laugh at him in my rearview mirror.
Team meeting days are usually a bore unless we’re assigned new missions, and I’m really, really, really hoping Trav has something new for me. Something fun.
The last exciting thing we did was pull a blast from my past out of that sandbox, and that was months ago now.
It was after we’d gotten him back to Darbardeh, to a military hospital where they stripped him of all his gear that I saw his face. Then I had to check his tags.
Golden boy, Brock “Saint” Harlow. I almost couldn’t believe it.
He was insufferable during basic. He thought he was God’s gift, and no way would he ever be caught doing the wrong thing. Hence why we all called him Saint. He was fast, strong, kissed the COs’ asses, and he was the favorite of all our superiors. It makes sense he went into black ops. He was unstoppable back then.
Seeing him in that hospital bed day after day was hard because he seemed like a shell of the man I knew ten years ago, but almost dying in a desert will do that to a guy.
I haven’t seen him since he was recovered enough to move to a rehab facility. I want to ask Trav about him, about how his recovery is progressing, but I also don’t want the huge neon sign flashing above my head that says, “I had a major crush on him back in the day even though I hated him, and I’m excited for him to join the team.”
He may have been my rival, a bigger show pony than even me, but I admired the fuck out of him. Also helps that he’s got the full-on Captain America good looks with light ashy hair and blue eyes. He’s the walking poster boy for an all-American stereotype.
I pull into the next available spot at HQ and get out of the car.
Zeus catches my eye from across the parking lot, and oh, it’s on. We both run for the steel-reinforced concrete door—the kind of shit bank vaults are made of. Some people call Trav paranoid, but he does whatever it takes to keep Mike Bravo and all our secrets safe.
Headquarters is an L-shaped compound in the San Gabriel Valley, about forty minutes outside LA.
A coded gate outside the concrete fence to this place only gets you to the gravel parking lot. Then we have to pass through the vault-like door with our own individual access code so Trav can keep track of who’s coming and going.
Security cameras are mounted all over the place, and I’m sure Trav’s watching us as Zeus and I try to beat each other inside. We’re competitive, what can I say?
He was a Marine. Most of us are ex-Army. It’s a whole us versus them friendly competition we’ve got going on.
I get to the door first, but Zeus is at my back, pulling at my clothes to try to hold me at bay. We wrestle, and we’re so busy trying to beat each other, we don’t notice when the others all punch in their code and enter.