Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (4 page)

Fuck, he was so handsome. It was unfair. Mostly, it was unfair because he
shouldn’t
be handsome. His bright blue eyes were set too close together, and when he was under strain, his nose dominated his mouth. The scruffiness of his short, unshaven beard obscured the sharp definition of his jaw. He wore an undershirt and a henley, then a button-down over those. They’d serve him well, considering the fall chill that came and went, but Kat suspected they had another purpose—to obscure the concealed weapon at the small of his back. She knew what to look for.

His golden hair was longer than she remembered, when his renewed, consistent presence in her dad’s life—a year after Evan dropped her—had raised her suspicions. Katsu had been sure there was something more than “the occasional mission” going on. So she’d poked. And investigated. And looked places she wasn’t supposed to…such as the safe in her father’s office.

He shouldn’t have taught her safe-cracking the summer after her sophomore year of boarding school if he’d really wanted things to stay private.

So she’d learned about Command Force Alpha. Evan and her dad. Both of them up to their eyeballs in the deepest of deep-cover ops. CFA’s mission of intervening as soon as local crime syndicates became international threats meant they could be as gone as ghosts within minutes.

She wished she didn’t feel this aching, ripping pressure that her ribs could barely contain. Evan should have kept her dad safe. “I hate you,” she whispered.

“No, you don’t.” He had folded his arms over his wide chest, but now he put out a hand. “You hate this situation. Now come on, Kat. Let’s go.”

If she were still living under the misapprehension that her father was a run-of-the-mill Marine, she might be happier.
Might.
Now, however, she’d rather not be in the dark any more than necessary.

Maybe she was more messed up than she thought, because once she unfolded herself from the chair, she swayed. She needed Evan’s big, bold hand to hold. He had calluses along the tips of his fingers and across the base of his palm. He worked hard.

Worked hard at killing and keeping the world safe.

Her shudder turned into another sway when her knees loosened. Evan scooped her up, one arm under her knees and the other across her back. She startled, trying to push away from his broad chest, but he wasn’t letting her go. Pushing him was like pushing concrete.

“Put me down,” she sputtered.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“What the hell does that matter?”

He strode away from the ICU, through the double doors Alex Faust held open. She curled an arm around Evan’s neck, but only so she could get leverage for one last look at her dad. He looked…thin. Normally he was one of the sturdiest, most robust men she’d ever known. Now he was lost in a shadow land. She pressed fingertips to her mouth and blew him a kiss he would never see.

She ducked her head as the door closed behind them. God, it was hard to keep the tears from dropping when the whole of her brain chanted
don’t die don’t die don’t die.
She adored her father. There was no shame in saying she was a daddy’s girl, not when that man was Nicky Stafford.

If he died, she’d go off the rails. She was already halfway there.

Evan carried her down the elevator and righted her only when they reached the Lexus. Her toes tingled inside her ballet flats, but she resisted the urge to grip his shirt for support.

“I’m serious. When did you last eat?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. I had a hot dog after my interview. Then I was too worked up for anything else. Maybe a sandwich around ten last night?”

“We’ll take care of that.”

Her nose wrinkled. Her stomach was a snarled mess. “I can’t eat.”

“I don’t recall giving you an option.”

A half hour later, they’d left Mass Gen in the rearview. She hadn’t needed to give him directions into Southie, which wasn’t surprising. He’d grown up there, splitting time between his maternal grandmother and Senator Sommers. The surprise came when he turned the car into her neighborhood. And he knew which street was hers. And which building
and
which apartment.

It was downright creepy when he used a key on
his
ring to unlock the front door. Maybe it was for the best that she knew CFA had issued that key or else Evan would be top of her I’ve-got-a-stalker list.

“Go pack a bag,” he said in that voice that had no give. It was an order. Not a rudely framed suggestion. An order. “I’ll find us lunch.”

“Good luck with that.”

“I can manage.”

She wrapped her arms around her torso, tucking the fingertips of one hand into the leather of her belt. With the other hand she tapped her teeth with her thumbnail. She never
bit
her nails, but she flirted with the idea. Lots. “How long will I be gone?”

He walked into her small kitchen. He immediately touched the light switches, but at least he didn’t seem to know which one connected to what. Had he known every inch of her place, she would’ve been more creeped out than reassured. Before finally finding the overheads, he flipped on the purple-piping backsplash. “What the hell is that?”

“I like it,” she said, defensiveness rising.

“It’s purple lights. Over the stove.”

“Remember the part where I said I like it?”

He looked at her with momentary bewilderment. She wasn’t used to seeing that expression wrinkle his brow and turn his finely carved mouth slack. “But…how do you see what you’re cooking? When it’s done?”

“I don’t cook much.”

He examined the small space, which was an ode to disorganization. Five weeks of mail was stacked up on the right side of the counter, as if
she
were the super spy who left town for months on end. Cases of soda and a couple bottles of booze were piled haphazardly next to the stove. “I can tell. Planning a party?”

“No.” She walked away. There was only so much criticism she could take about the way she lived. Two blows were plenty. “How long, Evan?”

In the space between them, the air simmered with his annoyance. He could suck it. He was Evan. If he meant to keep an eye on her for some nebulous reason, she had the right to call him by his name.

After all, she used to gasp it in his ear. He’d been the man to teach her that orgasms given by another person had little in common with masturbation. With emotions that went deeper than mere lovers, she’d fallen eighteen-year-old head over heels.

“Pack for three days. Things are low-key, so we can come back if there’s any reason to extend the situation. I find it unlikely though.” He stood in the middle of her small living room, arms loose at his sides, craning his head from her giant flat-screen TV to the L-shaped black leather couch. The cushions were piled with sweatshirts she would shed upon coming home, and a blanket she’d been working on deconstructing. Then there were dozens of folders from her freelance translation work. “I’d sit and wait, but…”

“Move whatever you want. Sorry it’s a bit of a mess.”

She was always trying to get organized, to get her shit together. She
wanted
to. But it was hard without the structure of full-time employment. Most of her hours were spent trying to nail down another assignment—or sharking up a few hundred to pad her accounts. It wasn’t the life she wanted, where a steady paycheck and regular hours meant routine…meant safety and peace of mind.

“Kat, this is more than a bit of a mess,” he said with exasperation. His chin jutted toward the seat in the corner. Somewhere along the way, it had been overwhelmed with her latest scores from the comic book store. “It looks like a Comic-Con exploded in here.”

“It’s Loki, right?” She cocked a hip, a bitter and thin smile coming up on her mouth. She pointed at the life-sized cutout she’d finagled from a guy who worked at the local movie theater. “It’s too much. I knew it was. In the scheme of my decorating… Well, fine. Let’s talk about my decorating, since we
can’t
talk about where and why Dad was shot.”

Evan’s expression shut down. His eyes went from bright blue to cool. His cheeks were lean and tight. The scruff on his jaw spoke volumes. He’d been traveling with her dad for days, staying at the man’s side when Kat didn’t have the right to be there. When she didn’t even have the right to know what was going on.

“Colonel Stafford was on an official mission.”

“Yeah. I get that. I’m going to pack a bag. Maybe you could shut the hell up about my housekeeping skills?”

“I care about what it says about the rest of your life. I found you in a
pool hall
yesterday.”

“I know exactly where you found me.” She bared her teeth. “I was making good money there, and your little flashy arrival means that place is off-limits for a while. Luckily there are plenty of other pool halls in Southie, or how would I fund my coke habit?”

His eyes went wide, then narrow. Kat laughed. At least there was that. Hers was a bitter, cold laugh, something that a dime-store villain might choke up, but it wasn’t more tears threatening to claw out of her raw throat.

“Jesus wept, I’m kidding, Evan.”

He lifted a single eyebrow, his mouth pinching as if he’d licked the wrong end of a snail.
As if there’s a right end.

“I wouldn’t know that automatically, Kat. It’s been a long time.”

She wanted to drop into a puddle in her bedroom and press her forehead to the cool wood of her floors. Curled up in a ball, she would be safe and her father would get well again and she could cry until her eyes shriveled.

But not in front of Evan. Not in front of anyone. She was the colonel’s daughter. She had a duty—even to herself—to keep it together. Housekeeping disasters aside, and her never-ending search for the right job, she couldn’t afford to give in to the crazy worry and pent-up pain that threatened to burst out. She wouldn’t survive if it did.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice strangled. “It
has
been a long time. You don’t know me at all.”

Chapter Four

Evan would be exaggerating to say he’d seen war zones less cluttered than Katsu’s apartment, but not by much. She lived in chaos. She ran wild in pool halls and God knew where else. What did that say about her state of mind? Was this the unconscious result of her upbringing, marinated in uncertainty?

That didn’t explain where along the way she’d lost her near-compulsive need for order. She’d been that way four years ago. Room: neat as a pin. Clothes: folded with precision that outdid upmarket clothing stores. Appearance: elegantly cool porcelain doll.

He’d enjoyed that about her. For six precious weeks, she’d taught him the difference between looking like a doll and behaving like a red-blooded woman. That was her true nature.

Something had snapped in the years since. A nauseating feeling said he’d had something to do with that. If he suggested as much, he’d probably get a roundhouse kick to the face.

Evan didn’t bother to sit down. He’d never be able to climb out again. Mudslides offered more purchase than the debris, paper, magazines, empty soda cans, tissue boxes and clothing of various cleanliness that covered her couch and leaked like a nuclear spill onto otherwise beautiful hardwood. He knew she put together a decent living using her translation skills, both for local clients and online. The expensive, gentrified condo was within her price range, but a maid wasn’t? And was a freelance life how she really wanted to utilize a degree from Harvard?

He shook his head. His job wasn’t to dissect her and piece her back together again. His job was just keeping her safe until what had happened in Minsk was settled.

Evan intended to make that happen, if only to get some closure. He’d been recruited to CFA about a year after Laurie, one of the team’s founding members. The former SAS captain had exuded a quiet confidence that led to their easygoing yet sincere friendship—a friendship Evan dearly missed.

First Laurie. Then the colonel.

Evan didn’t need Gemma Calloway, the CFA psych profiler, to know he developed cases of hero worship like nobody’s business. Being raised by a slimy-ass millionaire who’d used Evan and the military as sympathetic talking points for his first successful senatorial campaign…yeah, not much to admire there.

“Ready,” came a falsely chipper voice.

Katsu stood in the doorway to her bedroom. Evan hadn’t dared go in there. It was probably another HAZMAT-level disaster area, with the added torture of her bed at its center. Hearing the shower turn on had dragged a groan from his dry throat.

She held an oversized camouflage duffle bag in both hands. The straps were so long—or she was so short—that the bulging bag almost rested on the floor. Her hair was towel dried and combed straight. Her shirt was a bright yellow V-neck. The lace of a candy-cane-red bra poked out here and there. Although she could look like a doll, she didn’t have the figure of a Japanese woman. Photos of her mother, Tamiko, showed a woman who was graceful and thin like a ballerina. Katsu had a hell of an ass. He remembered grabbing hold and pressing their bodies together. She’d always moaned, then smiled, when she realized how turned on he was.

Her rack was astonishing. She wasn’t any bigger than a scant C-cup, but her petite frame accentuated their lush fullness. So did that goddamn red bra and skintight top. “Thank Grandma Stafford for my curves,” she used to say. He’d simply marveled at genetics and his own dumb luck.