The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security 3)

“Since you’re four months fucking pregnant,” Luke continued, voice hard.

“I waited until you stopped the killing.” The voice was closer. “Which I could’ve done. Viking women gave birth on the battlefield, Luke, and I’m much tougher than they—”

She stopped speaking at the same time the gravel stopped crunching when her voice got nearer and nearer.

It was an abrupt knife through her words, the ensuing silence. I guessed it was when she saw me.

The pain was coming back quickly now because I was beginning to sicken with the realization that this was real. How was it that I was having a more violent reaction to being saved than when I thought that I was still being tortured?

“Baby.” Luke’s voice immediately softened, all of the previous anger leaking out like my soul did through the cracked pieces.

His voice was broken too.

I didn’t want to open my eyes now.

Because his voice told me he saw something on Rosie’s face.

Pain.

Because of me.

“Polly,” Rosie croaked.

More gravel crunching.

I smelled her perfume.

My hair moved and a soft hand trailed across my forehead.

It took all of my strength to open my eyes.

The pain came back then. With Rosie’s tearstained face.

All of it.

The outside and the inside.

I looked behind her, not at the people around her. No, at the yawning desert around us. It was dusk or dawn. Did it matter if the day was ending or beginning? Maybe it used to.

Not anymore. Endings and beginning were the same now.

Meaningless.

“We’re in the desert,” I whispered. “I’ve always liked the desert. It’s a nice place. A nice place.”

And then I was gone.

One Month Later

Heath

They were in the conference room.

The one he couldn’t walk into without the chill of what felt like someone was walking over his grave.

But every step in a place that he’d existed in before was a step over the dead remains of his life a month ago. Before he’d died the second he opened the doors to that truck. Saw her chained, bloody, brutalized beyond belief, beyond comprehension. Wearing his torn fucking tee shirt. And wearing nothing on her face.

The woman who wore her heart on every inch of her body, in her expressions was wearing nothing. That hit him as hard as her physical injuries. And they hit him pretty fucking hard.

He hadn’t lost that much of himself in those two seconds in three tours in the desert.

No war could take from him what those moments took from him.

And though she was back, she wasn’t back. No, he couldn’t even find comfort in the fact she slept in his arms every night and he woke to her every morning because it wasn’t her. Not really.

So everywhere he went, when he had to leave her, when he forced himself to leave her, it haunted him with what was there before.

The conference room was the worst because that was where they got the news. That’s where they finally got her location and he hoped, like a stupid motherfucker that they’d find her.

Whole.

That was the last place he entertained the idea of an unbroken Polly.

So it was fucking torture to sit at the same seat he’d sat in one month ago.

But he did it. He welcomed torture. He needed pain, he craved more of it. Because he could never go through in a lifetime what Polly lived through.

They met here once a week. Well, all of them did, the women included. But the men met every single fucking day since it happened, usually with a member of the Sons of Templar either by Skype or in residence.

The whole club had come when Polly had been found.

As a show of solidarity more than anything else.

They’d been out for blood, of course, but Heath and Keltan’s men had spilled it all. Including Craig’s.

He’d wanted to make it slow, painful. Agonizing. But he couldn’t waste time killing someone when it was more important to bring Polly back to life.

It hit the Sons too, what happened to Polly.

Scarred them.

And they had renewed motivation to try and end Fernandez.

The energy Heath had left to spare was spent on that.

But this meeting with the women was for everyone to coordinate their shifts. Their shifts with Polly.

She had not been left alone since it happened.

Not even for her benefit, she hadn’t made a show of not being able to be alone, hadn’t made any kind of show, hadn’t shed a fucking tear. But not one person who knew and loved Polly could stand the thought of leaving her alone.

Her friend Rain was with her now.

Every single person she’d helped, she’d given to, had been around. Dropping off some scary and meat-free food. Crystals. Prayers. Affirmations. All sorts of shit. People who loved her, whose lives she’d touched wanting to show her she wasn’t alone.

Heath had hated how much she’d given to people before, because he was selfish. But he was so fucking glad of it now.