Off the Grid Read online

  John nodded. For once it seemed they were on the same page. Well, at least he and her boss were on the same page. But if it kept her from putting out more of those stories, that was fine by him.

  She opened the door, and he felt the strangest urge to stop her again. To not let her walk away. But he was in hiding, supposedly dead, and he had to keep it that way.

  She turned. He assumed it was to tell him good-bye. But he should have known better. She had to get in one last parting shot.

  “Brandon was your best friend. How can you let them do this? How can you let them sweep this under the rug and allow his death—his sacrifice—to go unacknowledged?”

  His muscles went rigid, his fists curling into tight balls at his sides. “I don’t have a choice. If Brand were here, he would be the first one to agree.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I have no way of knowing that, as he’s not here to disagree, is he?”

  John didn’t say anything. What could he say? It was the goddamned truth—no matter how much he wished it were different.

  “I used to wonder if there was anything you really cared about,” she said. “I guess I know the answer.”

  Ironically, Brandon had said something similar to him once. John had thought it might be true. But when the door closed behind her, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Seven

  Colt Wesson was drinking whiskey and shooting pool at McNally’s Last Chance Saloon. This place had been his favorite hangout between deployments, when he’d been on this coast to see his then wife, who was CIA. At the time he’d been stationed in Honolulu with Team Nine. Ironically, living in different time zones had been the least of their marital problems.

  He’d had bars like this in every city when he’d been on the Teams, although this one in DC held some particularly bad memories.

  Not much had changed around here. McNally’s had the same red vinyl booths, dark “mood” lighting, ancient jukebox playing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and other depressing country classics, peanut shells on the floor that only seemed to enhance the stale-beer-and-smoke smell—management apparently hadn’t gotten the message that you couldn’t smoke in bars anymore—and local barflies occupying the stools in front of the wooden bar from midmorning until last call.

  The hard-living-looking regulars had given Colt the usual “Who the fuck are you?” stare when he’d walked in, but something about his expression had them turning back to their drinks quick enough.

  Either that or they remembered him. He’d occupied one of those stools quite a few times in the dark days around the breakup of his marriage a few years ago. It had been the only place he could escape, though from what he didn’t know. Himself maybe? For that “last chance” the name promised?

  He supposed he’d gotten both. But not without a lot of whiskey and one-night stands.

  McNally’s was a good place for the latter as well, as the gritty dive-bar atmosphere attracted a certain kind of female clientele. Tough, no-nonsense women who had been around the block a few times and were happy with exactly what he had to offer: a good, hard fuck. Which is why when he wanted to get drunk and laid—preferably in that order—before shipping out tomorrow, he’d found himself at his old haunt. Screw the memories.

  He was already halfway toward his first goal when a decent prospect for the second sauntered her way toward him. Sadie was about thirty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and had a smoking body that looked good in the skimpy clothes she wore to show it off. She had on a tight and very low-cut shirt that gave him a nice view of a pretty killer rack. Yep, he had to say that so far he liked what he saw.

  She clearly did, too, as she’d taken the first opportunity after he’d lost at pool—twenty bucks, but he’d been distracted—to console him by planting herself in his lap.

  They would have been off to a very promising start if she hadn’t ruined it.

  “So, what do you do, Colt?” she asked, taking a swig of her Miller Light.

  The questionable taste in beer didn’t bother him. It was the conversation. “Government hit man.”

  She laughed, assuming he was kidding. “What do you really do?”

  He liked the way she nestled her bottom against his growing erection enough to answer. “Sanitation.”

  Same difference—getting rid of the trash.

  She looked mildly disappointed, which struck him as odd, given their present location. Sanitation was a good, steady union job. There weren’t many working-class neighborhoods left in the DC area, but this neighborhood near the old rail yard was one of them. Although if the new housing development he’d noticed going up nearby was an indication, it wasn’t going to stay that way for long. Hipsters were the new yuppies of gentrification.

  “I thought you might be military,” she said.

  Off-the-books military, but he was surprised she’d guessed. “What made you think that? My clean-cut, all-American good looks?”

  She laughed as he’d intended. He was about as far from that description as you could get. Long-haired, scruffy, and dark—except for the light eyes—with some kind of ethnic mixed in there somewhere. Kate had always thought one of his grandparents or parents must have been Italian, but as Colt didn’t have any of them to ask, he could be Mexican or Middle Eastern for all he knew—or cared. His looks had never been a problem. It was everything else. The black cloud, the mean temper, the surly attitude, and the lack of a heart, to name a few, according to his ex.

  Why the hell was he thinking about Kate?

  He knew why. Because he’d seen her last week for the first time in three years, and he’d been on edge ever since.

  Which pissed him off. That ship had sailed—and sunk in spectacular fashion. She’d cheated on him with someone he considered a close friend. As he didn’t have many of those, it was a big deal. The fact that Colt had pushed her to it, or that they’d barely been married at the time, didn’t matter. Even if he were the forgiving kind—which he wasn’t—that kind of betrayal was unforgivable.

  Sadie was looking at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know. When I saw you, you reminded me of a Ranger I dated once.”

  Well, nothing killed the mood like being mistaken for an army boy.

  She shrugged. “With all the bases around here, we sometimes get military guys in here.”

  Colt had lost interest and would have eased her off his lap to resume playing pool if he hadn’t looked across the room and seen something that made his entire body—and everything inside it—still.

  Fuck me.

  He must have said it aloud, as the woman on his lap laughed and said something that sounded like “you sure don’t waste time,” but he wasn’t really paying attention. His focus was on the woman who’d just walked into the bar and was standing there staring at him, completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the bar was doing the same thing to her.

  But Kate had always been oblivious to the effect she had on those around her—especially men. It had been part of her charm. And part of what had drawn him to her, since God knew she was pretty much the opposite of the kind of woman he’d ever thought to marry. Not that he’d really ever thought he’d marry.

  She couldn’t have looked more out of place if she tried. The first time he’d seen her he’d had the same thought as he had right then: What the hell is she doing here?

  Before he’d moved to the “Special Assignments” department of Task Force Tier One—the secret unit within JSOC that was nicknamed CAD (as in control alt delete)—he’d been chief of SEAL Team Nine. They’d been downrange at a shithole forward operating base in Khost, Afghanistan. He and the guys were sitting around shooting the shit while waiting for a CIA briefing from some new hotshot analyst, and in walks this icy blonde in a fucking skirt and heels, looking sexy as hell and pretty much like a girlie tropical frozen drink to a bunch of guys who’d been dying of thirst in a desert. He was sure he wasn’t the only