Page 102 of Travis
Chapter 26
Travis
I’d planned to call. Video, the way I’d done all my Warrior Security meetings, except when I was hiding bruises and said my camera was down.
My face on their screen, everything controlled, everything at a distance I could manage.
But somewhere between picking up the phone and dialing, I’d put it back down. These men had been looking at me through a screen for three years while I lied to their faces. They deserved better than another screen.
Sera had walked me to the garage. She hadn’t tried to come. Hadn’t argued about it or offered to be there for support. She’d just put her hand on my chest and held it there until my heart rate was something she could accept, and then she’d stepped back.
“I’ll be here,” she’d said.
The drive across Garnet Bend took thirty minutes. I drove by the tiny town—the place I’d called home—all the time on the wayto missions, but that was usually in the middle of the night. I rarely paid attention to its charm, to the old-fashioned buildings surrounded by the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
I didn’t pay much attention to it now, either. I couldn’t.
I drove onto the Resting Warrior Ranch property, hoping that no one was monitoring the cameras right now, that no one would see me. The Resting Warrior guys would have just as many questions as to why I was out of the house as my teammates would. By the time I pulled up in front of the Warrior Security office, hives were spreading across my chest, and my hands were trembling against the wheel.
I’d called the meeting an hour ago. Routine, I’d told them. Something I wanted to run by the team. They’d be in the conference room by now, gathered around the table, the main screen waiting for my face to appear on it the way it always did. The way it had multiple times a month while I sat in my control room and performed the version of myself they believed in.
The version that never left his house.
I got out of the car and walked to the door, taking one calming breath before opening it. It didn’t work. I went inside and headed down the hall to the conference room—something I knew because of studying schematics when I helped design the electronic flow of the building, not because I’d been here in person.
Beckett was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the table. Coop was across from him. Hunter sat at the head, scrolling through something on his phone.
The main screen behind Hunter was dark, waiting for my call.
Beckett saw me first, almost tipped his chair over from the shock. It hit the wall behind him as he stood up. “What the fuck.”
Coop jolted, stood up too. Hunter didn’t move, but something shifted in his face that I’d never seen before. Not surprise, exactly. Hunter didn’t do surprise. But close.
“Travis.” Beckett was already coming toward me. “What the fuck are you doing here? Are you okay? Did your house burn down? What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’rehere.” He stopped about four feet away, his eyes moving over me. I knew what he was seeing. The hives climbing my neck above my collar. The sheen of sweat I couldn’t control. The way I was holding myself slightly off-center because the wound along my ribs was ten days healed and still pulled when I stood straight.
“You look like shit,” Beckett said. “And you’re shaking.”
“That’s the agoraphobia.”
“The agoraphobia that keeps you from going outside.” He said it slowly, like he was trying to figure out some puzzle. “Which you went outside to get here.”
“Sit down, Beck.”
“Sit down? You’re standing in our office. You don’t stand in our office. You don’t stand anywhere that isn’t your house.” He looked at Coop, then Hunter, then back at me. “Is that what happened? Your house did burn down, didn’t it?”
“No. I?—”
“Is someone dead? Is this a someone-is-dead situation? Because that’s the only reason I can think of that you’d?—”
“Nobody’s dead. I need to tell you something, and I’m not doing it through a screen.”
The room changed. I watched it happen. The concern on Beckett’s face reorganized itself into something more guarded. Coop sat back down but his posture was different. Hunter’s hands stayed flat on the table.
“Sit down, Beck,” I said again. “I need you to let me get through this before you respond.”
