Chapter Fifty

Ghost

R ushing out of the break room and down the hall, she didn't stop. Not at the elevator and not at the restroom.

" Safiya ."

She kept fucking going.

I kept following.

Through the emergency exit, into the stairwell, and up a flight. She didn't stop until she'd pushed through the roof access door and stepped out to the heliport.

Then she spun on me. "Are they all like me?"

Every inch of her tortured expression was another stab wound. "Some things I will never tell you, for your own safety."

She fired the next question. "Are those their names?"

"No."

"Their aliases?"

I wouldn't have used them if they were. For her safety and theirs. "No."

"They all call you Ghost," she accused.

The urge to put my hands on her, to feel her pulse point against my skin was fucking consuming. "They do." They didn't know me as Grayson.

"Then what were those names you called them?"

I didn't have to put it together. She was going down the same path she had on the Solace, but I wouldn't lie to her. "I have to call them something, Safiya."

"Pet names? Nicknames?" Her voice broke. "Terms of endearment?"

I didn't answer.

The wind whipped at her hair. The hurt, jealousy, and anger whipped at her, and she sucked in a breath before giving me her back.

My burner vibrated, but I ignored it.

She spun back to face me. "Who are you? Really?"

I quantified. "Then or now?"

"Now."

Her husband. Legally. "Grayson."

Her chin jerked toward the door we'd just exited. "When you collected all of them?"

"Ghost."

"A SEAL does not collect women."

"You're right." Not correcting her verb choice, not telling her why I'd purchased all the women, I gave her the one truth I could. One she deserved. "I wasn't a SEAL then or when you met me."

Her expression darkened. "I do not understand. You told me you were a SEAL. You knew how to—how to do what you do."

"I was a SEAL. Right until before I met you."

"You said you were in the military."

"You called me American military. Technically, I was. I didn't correct the tense or circumstance at the time." Now I was. "When you met me the first time, I was paramilitary."

Wind in her hair, cityscape and ocean behind her, they amplified her beauty and her anger. "I know the word, but I do not know what you mean."

I gave her the sanitized label. "Paramilitary Operations Officer, Special Operations Group, Special Activities Center." For one fucking Op. "I was Ground Branch."

Her dark-eyed stare held. So did her question.

I gave her a shortened version of the recruitment speech I'd been fed. "Direct action missions, unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, close-quarters combat, hostage recovery, military and intelligence recon, covert operations." Then I gave her the truth. "Spec Ops, Black Ops. Tertia Optio."

" Tertia Optio ?"

"Latin for the Third Option. When the first two options aren't feasible."

"Which are?"

"Diplomacy and military action."

She frowned. "But you were a Navy SEAL."

"I was." Before that fucking brunette profiled my shit and sank her teeth into me.

"So this… paramilitary is not the military?"

"No. SAC is CIA."

"SAC?"

"Special Activities Center."

"That is what they call unconventional warfare ? A special activity?"

"The government likes their sanitized labels and acronyms." Fucking alphabet soup.

"But you do not do this now?" She glanced at my shirt as if she was looking into the past. "You never wore a uniform."

"No, I don't, and Ground Branch doesn't wear uniforms."

She caught on. "So that no one will know who you are."

Or see you coming. "Yes."

"That does not sound… safe."

There was nothing safe about anything I'd done. Then or now. "Operatives' safety isn't mission objective." Not how I was recruited and initiated. "If compromised, the US Government denies all knowledge of your mission and existence."

She blinked. Then her arms crossed as if she were hugging herself, and she turned away from me again. "You may leave me alone now."

Not fucking happening. Not until this conversation was over. "That's not going to happen, Safiya."

The access door opened, and November glanced up from a laptop.

"Not now," I warned.

"Time sensitive," he warned back.

Fuck. "Go."

He glanced at Safiya, then me. "HVT OTM, position not a lock."

"What does that mean?" Safiya demanded, turning around.

I translated. "High-value target on the move, opportunity to intercept at their current location is time sensitive." I glanced back at the hacker. "How long do I have?"

He looked between me and Safiya. "Not long."

Goddamn it . "Exact parameters."

"Fleet's temporarily grounded due to the incoming weather." He focused on his laptop. "Ceiling's still at a thousand feet. You can make it in the helo. Sending coordinates now."

"Copy." My burner vibrated, and I glanced at the text with GPS coordinates, but the hacker didn't leave. "What else?" I demanded.

November met my gaze head-on. Then he showed his hand. "You may have company."

I didn't comment. I fucking stared.

November started to retreat.

"Any vacancies?" He'd get my meaning.

"Affirmative. One."

"Hold it," I ordered.

"Copy." November quickly typed on his laptop. "Two floors below the offices, east unit. Door's unlocked." He glanced up. "Anything else?"

"Negative."

Without comment, the hacker left.

Safiya spoke, but her anger had turned to resignation. "You are going after someone else."

I turned and studied her face. "Do you remember your first swim lesson?"

Color flushed her cheeks, but her jaw was set. "When I almost drowned or when I was too frightened to go under the surface?" Her gaze and voice dipped. "Or when I wore a swimsuit for the first time?"

"You didn't almost drown." She'd panicked. "I would never let that happen." And it wasn't a swimsuit. It was bikini I'd bought for her. One she still wore because she never used the money I gave her to buy anything that wasn't an absolute necessity. She'd also opened a separate bank account and had been needlessly squirreling away money for years. "I'm referring to the end of the swim lesson." But that fucking bikini. Jesus .

She looked toward the ocean. "When I clung to you in the deep end because I was afraid and overwhelmed?" Her voice pitched to this side of embarrassment. "Yes, I remember."

"After." But that was one of my favorite memories. It was the first time she'd reached for me.

She glanced back, and I saw my point register, but she avoided saying it. "You said we were done. I did not understand that you meant we were done for that day's lesson."

"No, you didn't."

"I was young," she defended.

I waited.

She closed the loop. "I told you I would not be done until I swam how a bird flies and the sun took its final sunset."

I ruthlessly fell in love with her that day. "It's not our final sunset, Safiya."

"You already swim how a bird flies," she quietly argued.

"I have to finish this."

Her inhale caught my conscience as she turned toward the view, and the anger I knew she was still harboring surfaced. "For you or for the women?"

"Neither." For her. But I wouldn't insult or burden her with a truth that I owned. "Look at me."

"You are responsible for this." If she were any other woman, she would've spun around, and her words of anger would've been thrown at me. But Safiya wasn't any other woman. Turning, her voice more reserved than if I was someone she'd never met, she gave me her dark gaze with a stiff posture. "I used to want to tell you that you cannot save everyone, but in this, you are responsible for all of it. They came for me because of you. The women are here because of you. I have been in hiding for eight years because of you." Then she delivered her terminal blow. "I cannot carry your darkness anymore."

"I'm not asking you to." This was never her fight.

"That is exactly what you have always done. Every day of every week, year in and year out. This life, you—it has been a never-ending, one-sided game of chess. You tell me which moves to play. You demand when I push the pieces. You control the board, and you take from my soul. I am merely your pawn."

The irony of her using that word on me wasn't lost, but she was wrong. Pawns were weak. The profiler was the trigger, Feralyn was the gun to my head, but Safiya had been the bullet.

She was the entire goddamn firefight.

My drive to be the best, a profiler, anger, revenge, a fucking terrorist—it'd all gotten me here. But a dark-eyed girl who'd herded sheep and risked her life for mine, she was my reason.

My North Star.

The one place I sought refuge after every purchase.

Safiya Savas was my fucking home.

I owed it to her to finish this. But if I stopped for one second to acknowledge the full weight of that right now, then I'd also have to acknowledge what was standing broken right in front of me.

No terrorist or war had done this to her.

I had.

The woman I'd told myself I was saving, I'd only dragged her down with me, and I didn't have one valid excuse. The traffickers who'd taken Feralyn were dead before I'd gone back for Safiya. I wasn't an acronym or an operative. I didn't work for the government or belong to the military. I'd held a gun to a profiler's head eight years ago and made damn sure I wasn't a fucking pawn. Then I'd gone dark, became a ghost, and she was the fallout.

I didn't save her.

I didn't give her freedom.

I'd taken her and spread my infection. I'd kept her because I wanted her hunger, her fear, her desire. I wanted to feed her, fuck her, and tell her she deserved the world. Tell her she'd saved me—for eight fucking years she'd saved me. She deserved more than the world. She deserved peace, but she wasn't going to get it from me, and now she knew it.

"I'm sorry." I wasn't. Not for this moment, or any of the others I'd stolen from her. But everything else? I was fucking penitent.

For ten seconds, she said nothing. Then her shoulders squared, her spine straightened, and her gaze drifted. "The storm is here."

"You'll be safe at AES. Take the elevator down two floors from the main office and go to the east unit. It's a private apartment. The door's unlocked."

Pivoting, no eye contact or acknowledgment of what I'd said, she about-faced and gave me a view I was complicit of as I watched her disappear into the building.

Thunder rumbled, and I should've fucking known.

A girl from Turkey and the weather.

I'd never had a shot at harnessing either.

Resigned, I headed to the helo.