Off the Grid Read online

  And that track didn’t have anything to do with him or the torture of their sleeping arrangements.

  “If you ever get tired of saving the world, you have a brilliant future as a tour guide. I guess you’ve seen a good part of the Baltic countries now: Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Russia. I hear Sweden is beautiful. Ever been to Stockholm? What about Estonia?”

  Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the relaxing of his guard after a long, exhausting day. Or maybe it was just his ease of being around her, but John almost answered before he realized what she’d done.

  Russia.

  His eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he eyed her over the candlelit table. Why had he chosen this place anyway? It was too damned romantic! “Well, if things at the paper don’t work out for you, you have a hell of a future ahead of you as a lawyer.”

  She blinked innocently, which he didn’t buy for a minute. “What do you mean?”

  “You are good at asking questions with lots of facts not in evidence.”

  “What facts are those?”

  “I never said I’ve been to Russia.”

  “You didn’t need to. Where else would you have gone from Vaernes? I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were in Vaernes for a week or two right before those satellite images of an explosion in Russia were taken.”

  She’d done it again. More fact assumptions. “What makes you think I’ve been to Vaernes before I went there to save your sweet little ass?”

  She put down the wineglass she’d been sipping from all night. She wasn’t much of a drinker. He’d had most of the rest of the bottle himself.

  “Nils recognized my picture of Brandon,” she said. “If my brother was there, I know you were there, too. The reason that I was leaving the bar with Nils that night was to talk to a friend of his who’d transported you guys to a shooting range while you were there. His name was Johan. Do you remember him?”

  John was good and pissed off and didn’t bother trying to hide it. “Unlike your young Norwegian friend, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a low-cut top and tight jeans to get me to spill my guts, Brit.”

  She had the nerve to smile at that. She tried to hide it, but he saw it. Damn her.

  There was also something calculating in that smile that scared the crap out of him. He’d thrown down that gauntlet without really thinking about it. There were ways she could try to press him that he wasn’t so sure he could fend off.

  They sure as hell didn’t teach how to resist spilling information under sexual duress by a woman he could barely resist even in the best of circumstances. Great. He had his own personal Mata Hari.

  He was relieved that she let it go.

  “The way I figure it, Vaernes was where you launched the mission. Probably by helicoptering or flying to the coast to hop on one of our subs in the area. Getting to that part of Russia isn’t exactly easy, but my guess is you either parachuted or swam in. Given how good you guys are at swimming, my money is on the latter.” She paused, completely unfazed by his expression, which had darkened to good and black by then. “Am I warm?”

  He was practically seething. Warm? She was on fire. That was pretty much exactly how it had gone down. She was only missing the submersible launched from the sub. “We aren’t going to do this, Brit.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really need you to corroborate. I’ve got enough to go on already. I wonder what I’ll find when I look into what subs were in the area at that time.”

  The goddamned Internet! That kind of information was too easily available.

  John wanted to shout, but he forced his voice to a low rumble. “Have you forgotten about what happened in Norway? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten, but I’m not going to put this aside until I find out the truth about what happened. What kind of reporter would I be if I let someone intimidate me so easily?”

  “A breathing one,” he snapped. “You keep talking about the truth as if it’s this great panacea. But this quest you are on isn’t going to give you what you are looking for. It isn’t going to bring your brother back—or your parents. It’s just going to get more people killed.”

  “You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me why.”

  “You just need to trust me.”

  “When you won’t trust me?”

  Their eyes held. He wasn’t sure who looked away first.

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” she said dejectedly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at what you do for a living. Your entire life is cloaked in secrets.”

  His jaw practically cracked his teeth were clamped so tightly together. “For a reason.”

  “So you say. I know all about the ‘need for secrecy to keep America safe’ arguments—I heard them enough times from Brandon. But I’m not as ready to trust the government as you are. Secret government is the antithesis of democratic government. The press is a big part of what keeps our government in check. Free and open, remember? That’s the real red, white, and blue. So I’m not going to take anyone’s word for anything until I know what happened.”

  “There’s a bigger picture here that you aren’t seeing. Sometimes the greater good requires secrecy. It’s a balancing act between national security and the free flow of information. You can’t have a very effective military or national defense if your enemy knows what you are doing. I wouldn’t be able to do my job in the open.”

  “But that’s just it. There isn’t a balance. Much of our military action has shifted to secret warfare now— covert ops by special forces rather than traditional ground forces. You may need secrecy to function, but I question whether you should be functioning at all. I bet most of the American public would be surprised to hear the level of military action being undertaken by our Special Forces around the globe right now. We should be given the right to ask questions about whether this is what we want. Congress is supposed to make war, not the president or some general at the Pentagon.” She gave him a hard look. “But even if I accepted what you said about needing secrecy to do your job, you aren’t operating in a vacuum. You have to be willing to answer for your actions after the fact, and the government has to be held accountable for what it does in our name.” She paused. “Such as an illegal covert operation to Russia.”

  To protect the US from something potentially far worse. But he didn’t show any reaction to her statement that was really a question.

  John heard what she was saying—and he didn’t disagree with all of it—but he knew constitutional principles weren’t all that was at work here. She might believe in freedom of the press, but that wasn’t what was driving her. It was misplaced guilt and the fear that the same thing that happened to her parents would happen with her brother’s death. That justice would be denied.

  But John wouldn’t let that happen. Someone would pay for what had happened to Brand and their seven other teammates. Justice might be delayed, but it would come.

  “That’s the problem,” he said. “It isn’t after the fact.” He gave her a solemn look. “This isn’t over.”

  When it was, he would tell her what he could. She deserved to know the truth.

  Whatever the hell the truth was.

  * * *

  • • •

  Brittany didn’t expect John to understand. She and Brandon had fought enough about his job as a SEAL for her to know the arguments. But strangely, it seemed as if he understood a little—or at least he wasn’t as vocal as her brother had been in disagreeing with her.

  “Thoughtful” wasn’t a word that she would have attributed to John Donovan, but maybe there was more depth to him than she gave him credit for.

  There she went again. Inventing feelings for him and fitting him into that silly, unrealistic, fantasy image she had of looks-like-Mr.-Bad-Boy-on-the-outside-but-is-actua