In the Crossfire (Bloodhaven) (13 page)

“Thank you,” said Isobel.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, wispy tendrils escaping its hold to curl at her temples. It hadn’t been in its usual thick braid when she’d returned tonight. The smell of shampoo was jarring because it wasn’t hers. A generic brand. She’d cleaned away all evidence that she’d killed a man, removed all subtle indications of her colleagues’ lost lives and limbs.

“You had to sacrifice your afternoon and almost all of your evening, being here,” she continued. “I know it had to have set you behind. Rest assured you won’t have to deal with this again. Well, at least for the next two weeks—”

“Stop.”

She stopped.

Liam closed his eyes, regretting his harsh tone. He could never get it right with this woman.

“It’s no trouble,” he muttered, softening the words.

“You don’t like people. I get it.”

“I don’t don’t-like people.” Life would be far easier if he didn’t like her. But he did, far too much, and life was the last thing from easy. “I just . . . have trouble . . . being around them sometimes.”

Her soft snort made his lips curve. Yeah, it was an understatement, all right.

He stole a glance at Isobel. Her eyes danced with humor. He dropped his disconcerted gaze to the tip of her chin, before drawing lower to the base of her throat. Her pulse beat there, strong and sure.

“You’re surprisingly fun to needle,” she said unexpectedly.

Liam frowned.

“Should I thank you again for staying over? Tell you how much I really, really appreciate it?”

Now he scowled.

“I owe you one, Liam. Two, even. Oh, thank you
so
much, Liam. It means a lot to me.”

“Bloody hell, you do it on
purpose.
”

Isobel smiled, not denying the charge.

Liam stared, nonplussed. The few people he’d encountered on the road had either given him a wide berth or were excessively polite in order to avoid his notice. Now, all in the same day, he found himself being teased by both a teenage girl and a grown woman.

They had no compunction for his tender ego, he thought dryly.

“You don’t handle gratitude very well. I mean, I truly
am
grateful, but it’s fun piling it on and watching you squirm.” Isobel shrugged. “Would you prefer I treat you with kid gloves instead?”

“No, bare skin all the way.”

He couldn’t believe he’d said that. He should just go back to not talking. Ever.

He glanced at Isobel. She was staring at the side of his head. His ear, he realized belatedly.

“They really do turn red,” she murmured.

Hell.
He was going to strip a hide off that cub.

Liam rubbed the back of his neck. He’d prevaricated enough. He’d asked to speak to Isobel for a reason.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For that comment? We’ve both heard—and used—far coarser language, Liam.”

“Not that—”

“For consuming two bowls of Naley’s chili? Hey, finish the third and I’ll give you a medal.”

“Dammit, woman, will you let me finish?”

Golden-green eyes twinkled at him in the light of the moon. Despite himself, Liam found his mouth twitching with the urge to smile. He immediately put on his sternest impression, not because it suited his mood, but because it instantly brought an indulgent grin to Isobel’s face.

He hadn’t expected Isobel to be the teasing type. She was always so calm and composed.

“Do you give Naley this much grief?”

“More. You’re getting off easy, wolf. A cat takes whatever fun she can get.”

Liam kept his eyes on the thin wisps of clouds steadily drifting their way across the moon. “I’m sorry for what I said. Yesterday morning.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Ah.”

“I shouldn’t have said it. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t mean it.”

“I know. I guess. . . . No, I know.” She shook her head. “I just assumed we were going to pretend it never happened.”

“Were we?”

“We were. Then we’d endure a couple of awkward weeks around each other before reverting back to square one.”

Liam recalled the chill he’d felt since they’d last parted. The hollowness wrought by her absence. He couldn’t have endured two weeks of that.

He heard Isobel shift next to him.

“I’m sorry too,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious about your scars.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I forget to stop being the uniform. I meant no offense. It’s what agents are used to, you see.”

“What, you giving offense?”

Liam glanced over in time to see Isobel’s amusement.

“It might amaze you to learn I’m considered the more diplomatic among my colleagues. There’s a reason I get sent out as liaison rep. No, I meant cataloging each other’s scars. Seeing whose are most impressive.”

Liam was silent.

Her amusement faded. “Sorry. I didn’t mean. . . . Your injuries must’ve been brutal.” She cursed. “I’m mucking this up.”

He shook his head. “Compared to how often I . . . say the wrong thing around you . . . you have a long way to go before catching up.”

Isobel laughed softly. “I suppose.”

He looked down at his wrists. Scratched at one dark red furrow with his fingernail. He kept his tone casual. “How much do you know?”

“About your scars?”

“About how I got my scars.”

“It was during the war. I know that much. You were unmarked when you first signed up for service.”

She made no apologies for looking up his file in the first place, and he made no objection. They’d both known she was bound to do so. He was just surprised his file hadn’t been more detailed than that.

She cleared it up for him. “Much of your file was redacted.”

He could feel her eyes on him. He refused to look at her.

“Will you tell me about it?” she asked gently.

He’d rather choke. He was already halfway there. “No.”

“Why?”

He didn’t want her to know about his captivity. The things he’d done. The price he’d paid.

He didn’t want her to stop looking at him in the same way anymore. He didn’t want her to stop trusting him in Naley’s company. He didn’t want her to stand up and leave, to shun his company on her front steps as they studied the night and listened to the whispers in the breeze.

“Liam?”

“I don’t want you to know.” The words came out harsher than he’d intended.

Hazel eyes held steady on him. “Do you think I’ll judge you? Do you think my own hands are free from blood? What the hell do you think I did today?”

Liam shook his head. “What you did—what you do on an everyday basis—you do for the common good. To take out rogues and factions. To avoid another damn war. Necessary evils. My own—”

“Don’t paint the Council in such a perfect, luminous light, Liam,” Isobel cut in sharply. “There’s a reason it’s imbued in secrecy. There’s a reason we agents are given the side-eye. You don’t know about the ones we take out. The ones whose names you never hear again. The innocents who had to be sacrificed. All in the name of preserving the peace.”

“You wouldn’t allow an innocent to be sacrificed.”

“Are you that certain? Best tear down that pedestal you’ve put me on, Liam. I never asked for it to built.”

He glared at her. “Have you ever killed someone you knew was innocent?”

She returned his glare.

“Have you?”

“Casualties are inevitable.”

“Have you directly—
personally
—killed somebody who did nothing to deserve it?”

She hadn’t. Her lack of reply confirmed it. Her lips curled in a snarl. “Do you think me so blind to the Council’s actions? Were you blind to your unit’s?”

“Yes,” he bit out. “I was.”

He’d been so blind in the beginning, truly thinking he was doing his duty. That there’d been a purpose to their actions, to the orders they’d carried out. He’d remained blind until the blood and screams had clawed the scales from his eyes. Until he’d heard the humans’ desperate pleas for mercy. Until he’d been captured and forced to witness his comrades’ torture, and to endure his own.

Until they’d turned on each other while their captors watched with glee.

Liam was on his feet in an instant, pacing rapidly, ready to crawl out of his skin. He whirled around and glared at Isobel, who sat there as still as stone.

“You don’t set out targeting innocents,” he bit out. “I did. I was the best tracker in my unit. I led my team straight to the human detachments, blindly following orders, simply because we were at fucking war. I led the charge to where they hid and I watched them burn.”

And later, when he’d been a prisoner himself—when they got their hands on him—they’d made sure he bloody paid for it.

His fists clenched at his sides. Somewhere deep inside he was shaking, and he knew that if he stayed for much longer that tremble would travel outward, pushing through the surface so violently he was bound to rip himself apart. He’d say something he’d regret, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.

“I have to go,” he said, backing away.

Isobel didn’t move. Her face, usually deceptively calm and void of emotion, revealed everything now. He’d said too much.

His feet took him swiftly down the drive, right to the front gates where he used his code to exit the premises and disappear into the darkness.

Liam’s ears pricked at the faint tread of footsteps. He lay there unmoving in the midnight shadows, staring up at the weathered rafters above his bed. The presence silently approached his cabin, gliding forth on dewed grass. Seductive winter smoke steeped into his senses.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Then he got up and pulled on a pair of jeans. He started to reach for a shirt, but after a moment he let his hand fall. Pointless to want to cover up like a shy virgin. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t already seen him in broad daylight.

He padded to the doorway. Isobel’s small, curved frame stood there in the dirt clearing.

“I expected you to be out running,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

So she was aware of his wolf loping around the premises at night. Liam shook his head.

She studied him. “Should I apologize?”

Another shake of the head. “Still my turn.”

“Tell you what: let’s just call a truce and forget who’s sorry for what. Skip this whole dance.”

“Dance?”

“I pry, you bolt, we come back to position. It’s a repetitive waltz. Why don’t we. . . . Let’s just fumble through this together, all right? I won’t take offense if you don’t. You can snap at me all you want. I can take it.”

Liam expelled a breath. “Why would you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why would you take it? You don’t take crap from anyone, so why tolerate it from me? I don’t want those kid gloves.”

Her eyes glinted in the dark. “If I were employing kid gloves, I’d let you keep bolting. I don’t care if you blow up at me, Liam. I don’t care if you just. . . .” She huffed, started to turn away. Then she spun back to face him. “Just stay, Liam. Stay and yell. Throw a chisel. Something. You can have your space, all the space you want. But don’t ever feel like you have to run, like you have to spare me. ”

He swallowed. He stepped away from the cabin, stepped closer to her.

“You’ve never pressed me on my past,” he observed, voice low and rough.

“You know I looked up your file.”

“Which had redacted sections. Yet you never demanded to know what it hid. Why is that?”

Something flickered in her eyes, but her voice was quiet when she spoke. “We’ve both done things in the line of duty that we can never share. I have my secrets, Liam. It was only fair I let you have yours.”

He let out a slow breath. “You think it’s so easy? A matter of keeping our own secrets?”

“No, I know it’s not.” She glanced away. “My father served in the third war.”

He traced her profile. Feminine, classic, limned in moonlight. Dipped in steel.

“Even after all this time, he still won’t speak about what he went through, at least not to me or my sister.” She paused. “He took up a diplomatic post after his service. He’s been stationed the world over, taking our family with him. He’s taught me a lot over the years. About honor and dignity, about taking a stand when all you want to do is break.”

Liam shifted, watching the myriad of emotions dance across Isobel’s face. For that moment in time, she’d let down the impassive mask she wore so well.

She returned her gaze to him. “My father has his medal framed on the mantelpiece, but he still won’t talk about what he went through.”

It took a strong, forceful man to raise an equally strong, forceful daughter. Yet apparently he, too, remained haunted by his past. Couldn’t escape even after all these years.