Capturing the Commando. Colleen Thompson

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СКАЧАТЬ way to do this,” he swore through gritted teeth. “With or without your help.”

      She shook her head. “You’re not the only one who knows a bluff when she hears one. You wouldn’t have risked snatching me off a crowded street if you thought you had a shot without me. But before you risk both our lives on some half-baked raid against what you and I both know will be a well-fortified, heavily guarded compound, there’s something you should know. Some information I have that your amateur-hour investigation didn’t turn up.”

      Though he bristled at being called an amateur—especially considering how he’d caught her off-guard earlier that day—Rafe clamped his jaw shut to hear out what she had to say.

      Would it be another lie, like those she’d spun online in her bid to snare him, or was it possible she might be seriously considering helping him?

      TIME TO TREAD CAREFULLY, Shannon warned herself as apprehension knotted in the hollow of her stomach.

      Nothing she did, nothing she said, during this crisis could be more dangerous than the news she had to give him. Unwelcome news that might easily spark the ugliest of reactions in a man who had already crossed so many lines.

      But however many laws he had shattered, however many oaths and regulations he had sacrificed, she still sensed a core of honor in him. A set of rigid values he placed above all bureaucratic rules.

      Here’s hoping that not punching a woman is part of that code. After reinforcing her courage with a deep breath, she lobbed her opening volley. “It’s about your sister’s husband, Garrett.”

      Rafe snorted in disgust, contempt written in his green eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try that divide-and-conquer bullshit on me, too.”

      She leaned slightly forward, determined to cut through his distrust. “Listen to me, Lyons. Your brother-in-law… We think he’s had a girlfriend, a lover, these past six months. A woman he met online and—”

      When Rafe jumped to his feet, she jerked back, then cursed herself for reacting. For showing she’d been physically intimidated, when all he was doing was getting up to pace the room.

      Yet she couldn’t force herself to relax, for there was nothing safe about the wild energy crackling through his muscles, or the warning, low as a growl, in his voice when he spoke.

      “Don’t you dare sit there and try to play me,” he said. “Don’t imagine for a minute I’m that stupid.”

      She sat back, scarcely breathing, waiting for his anger to wind down. But he was only getting started, his temper revving to the red zone.

      “Do you know Garrett was the one who found her?” Rafe demanded. “Can you imagine what it did to him, a guy like that, who’s worked in nice clean offices his whole life and doesn’t even like to think about where his chicken dinners come from, walking into that hell he saw? I’ve seen some horrible things in war zones, but the idea of what he found that night—Lissa left—left like some animal had torn into her…”

      He swallowed audibly, his voice choking down to silence, the silence that so often marked the helpless rage of the survivor of a loved one’s murder. Seeing it, Shannon was haunted by the echo of her own pain, her impotent eight-year-old fury, after her father was gunned down.

      If she had been a grown woman when it happened, a woman qualified to fire automatic weapons and trained to deliver a crushing blow to a man’s most vulnerable targets, would she have taken the law into her own hands as Rafe was doing now? If she had had a chance to save some part of her father, would she have been willing to sacrifice anything she had, even her own life, as Rafe would to reclaim Lissa’s daughter?

      “Listen, Special Agent,” Rafe said grimly, “you haven’t lived with Garrett these past two weeks, haven’t heard the way he wakes up screaming about the blood. You haven’t watched the guy break down and sob her name, listened to him retching in the bathroom. It’s killing him, killing both of us to think of—”

      “People feel remorse.” Shannon’s voice floated to earth as cautiously as the feathery pink seed of a mimosa. “People can feel regret when they’re faced with the consequences of what they’ve set in motion.”

      He spun around and crossed the room in two steps before grabbing her by the arms with hands as hard as vises. “Not Garrett. I know him, know him well enough to trust him to take care of the most important person in my life. And now you have the freaking nerve to accuse him, and you think I’m going to stand here and listen to you do it?”

      Heart leaping in her chest, Shannon could do no more than stiffen, frozen by the knowledge that she might have pushed too hard. Might have assumed too much about who this desperate man was, and what he would or wouldn’t do to her, despite his need for her cooperation.

      He could kill her with his bare hands for the insult she had offered. Almost worse in her mind, he could try to break her will. Considering both his training and the places where his missions had taken him, he would be well acquainted with dozens of methods of coercion, from beatings that wouldn’t show to the kind of torture that would scar her soul forever.

      Not him. He could never…

      Yet despite her efforts to convince herself, she could feel her body recoiling, could hear the trembling of her own exhalation. Her head throbbed with the effort of containing boundless terror.

      My father didn’t show fear, not even when that drug lord shoved the muzzle underneath his jaw. And my brother wouldn’t, either, so I’ll be damned if I will, no matter what he does.

      The Ranger let go of her and looked away, then resumed his pacing.

      To prove she wouldn’t be cowed, she forced herself to speak again, to swallow past the hard lump in her throat. “There’s more, Rafe. More we found during our investigation.”

      “Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he asked. “I damned well don’t want to hear this.”

      “If you don’t want to hear it, then you’d better gag me.” She shrugged, struggling to look as though she couldn’t care less. To look like a strong woman in a tough spot, rather than the quivering mass of nerves she felt like behind the mask. “Though you’ll have to admit, that would probably put a damper on the team-building aspect of this operation. Even more, I think, than leaving a goose egg on my forehead or these bruises on my arms.”

      His gaze flicked to the reddened fingerprints on her forearms, and a troubled look passed over his face. Raking his hand through his black hair, he shook his head and said, “Fine, then. Say whatever it is you think you have to tell me. I won’t promise to listen—but you don’t have to worry that I’ll hurt you for it.”

      Shannon wouldn’t bet her life on that, then realized that in a way, she did with her next words. “The weekend before Lissa’s murder, Garrett played golf with his neighbor. The same neighbor who mentioned he was about to fly to California with his family, leaving his Ford Explorer locked up in the garage.”

      Rafe stared at her, the color draining from his face. “The same SUV the killers stole and drove to Florida? You’re telling me that this guy told him about it?”

      Relieved beyond measure that something she had said had sunk in, Shannon nodded. “Garrett knew,” she said. “Knew it would take days for the theft to be discovered. And more than that, his neighbor gave him a spare house key and asked СКАЧАТЬ