Page 68 of Out for Blood
Tyler’s hand presses more solidly along my lower back.
“You want to know what scares me?”
I don’t answer.
“It’s not the carnage you leave behind.” He replies, completely composed. “It’s that you stopped feeling guilty about it.”
My airway closes up unexpectedly, he’s right.
That’s the thing I can’t outrun, no matter how exhausted I am.
Not what I’m doing, but how it feels like second nature.
I let my eyes fall shut and wish I hadn’t.
Marie enters my mind first. Then Sofie.
Memories of the last time I saw them replay behind my eyes.
Bile threatens to spill out of me.
We still haven’t found them, but I refuse to leave them buried in the dark.
Every operation we hit in Turks and Caicos starts the same way now, hoping that this will be the one.
Every hidden room, every locked basement, and every survivor we manage to save.
I keep hoping the next door we kick open will lead us to them, and every time it doesn’t, the ache inside me deepens while relief settles in right behind it.
Tyler notices the shift in my face immediately.
His expression darkens.
“But I need to know something.”
I already know what he is about to ask before the words leave his mouth.
We face each other, our eyes locked.
“Are you finally ready to go back to Florida?”
Florida still lives inside my bones like a disease waiting for the right moment to spread, but I’m not ready.
“No. I still have unfinished business here.” I pick my Glock back up, and I clip another magazine in and push the button as another target comes, we both push our earbuds back in.
Then I unload until it’s empty.
We both take an earbud out and Tyler takes my Glock from me and puts the safety on.
“You’re thinking about them again.”
I laugh humorlessly under my breath.
“When am I not?”
He’s greeted by my silence since there is no answer to that.
Marie and Sofie live inside every mission now.
