swift kick in the balls. His breath caught and the darkness threatened to take him under…
Then his phone buzzed and up popped a text from his team in Arlington.
Right. Work. The mission. That was all he had left now.
He scrolled through the message, trying to take it in past the buzz of regret in his brain.
The Reapers, the present danger, was all that he could grasp.
He just hoped he didn’t destroy everything else in the process.
18
“Go! Go! Go!”
Levon heard himself give the order as the Harper’s Forge PD—operating under his command for this operation—spilled into the building. He took the lead and, once they were inside, directed his men to fan out with a few sweeps and chops of his hand. They had planned extensively for this bust; Levon hadn’t given his go-ahead until he had been certain every last one of the operatives could do it blindfolded. Even then, they had to wait for the SSoF’s approval for the raid before they made any definitive moves.
Approval came today.
They secured the location and took down the Reapers they found with remarkable quickness. His men were under strict orders to treat any teenagers they discovered with kid gloves—scare the hell out of them, but go easy. Charges would be pressed if necessary, but given what they’d learned from Franklin, Levon knew that a lot of the students involved had been motivated mostly by fear, due to threats from the established gang members. They’d get leniency in exchange for their testimony.
The hardened gangsters—the ones who had brought this trouble to his hometown—were going down hard.
“We’re lucky you were here.” The police chief shook his hand when they met between squad cars. “We owe you guys at the SSoF a debt of gratitude.”
“Don’t mention it.” He meant it. He wasn’t trying to play it stoic; it really was that simple. Wherever the Southern Soldiers of Fortune were needed, they would go.
“Hey!” Brandon Fischer, another one of the guys on his team who was in town for the bust, approached him and clapped him on the back. “Come out and get a drink to celebrate!”
“I have paperwork—”
“Like hell you do! It can wait!”
Levon smiled gratefully at the invitation but declined again. The closest bar in town was the Rusty Spike, and he worried about running into Olive—before realizing it was idiotic to expect to see a pregnant woman in a bar. But the memory of her would be everywhere, just as it had been no matter where he went in this town, permeating every corner, swimming in every drink delivered to the bar top.
The same problem would dog him home, too. He didn’t want to go back to his empty house and sit in the presence of a ghost. Instead, Levon dropped by long enough to pick up his laptop and a few mission notebooks, and left for the tiny office space the SSoF had been renting out in town.
He had barely used it, preferring instead to take notes and provide dispatches as he went; but the tiny little rented box provided a reprieve from having to go home.
But he couldn’t stop thinking of Olive. And with every handwritten report he read over—slowly and laboriously—and every word he typed, Levon realized there was no escaping her. She was a part of every memory he had built over his past weeks here, and a frequent factor in his mission report. She made appearances in every paragraph as he detailed her assisting where needed, and lending help that had ultimately proved invaluable. He couldn’t have done this without her.
He was in love with her.
But they weren’t right together. She’d said so herself. It was unfortunate, but it was a thing that happened. Right? They were incompatible in all the ways that mattered most, and Olive had been smart enough to see that. No wonder she had left.
“Knock, knock.” Brandon poked his head in and discovered Levon squinting at his screen. “Jesus, dude, you’ll strain your eyes! Turn a light on! Better yet, take a load off!”
Brandon was young. He considered himself everyone’s friend and his behavior bordered on insubordinate at times, but Levon let it slide; while they hadn’t worked together long, he had seen that the kid never defied an order, and his good-natured approach to everything was great for morale. Still, he wasn’t sure how he felt about Brandon invading his Fortress of Solitude now... not until he noticed the two frosty, unopened beers in the operative’s hands.
“Thought I’d bring the party to you,” Brandon explained as he dropped down onto the office’s couch.
“I appreciate it more than you can imagine.” And he really did. Levon rolled his desk chair over and they popped the caps off.
“Well, I think I can imagine.” Brandon took a long sip off the neck of his beer and shrugged when Levon raised an eyebrow. “It’s Olive, right? At first, she was half of what you talked about at every check-in. But then, it was like she dropped out of the picture. You guys separated?”
“We were never officially together,” Levon said. Though you could have fooled me.
“That’s rough, man. I’m sorry.”