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Sydney came to his side. Her grin was gone. Her shoulders brushed against his.
Logan’s watchful gaze noted that light touch. His eyes narrowed, and he blew out a hard breath. “Mercer had intel that an American pilot was being held. A man with strong ties that could potentially be…manipulated by the group holding him.”
“What kind of ties?” Sydney asked.
“Military ties to a covert team.” Logan’s shoulders straightened. “To our team.”
Gunner’s heartbeat kicked up.
“I saw the hostage earlier.” Logan’s hands were clenched. That wasn’t a good sign. Not good at all. His gaze came back to Gunner. “I got the visual confirmation that we needed.”
Why wasn’t he just coming out and saying—
“The hostage…it’s Slade.”
Sydney’s body swayed next to him, and Gunner automatically reached out, wrapping his hands around her shoulders.
Then he froze.
Slade?
“He’s thinner. His hair’s longer. He’s got a beard and a limp but…it’shim.”
“Slade is dead.” Sydney’s voice was hushed.
Logan’s gaze drifted to her. “No, he’s not.”
“We buried him.”
Gunner felt like ice was wrapping around him. “We put a tombstone over an empty grave.” He stepped toward Logan. “I saw him die. I was there.” This couldn’t be happening. “There was no pulse,” he growled out the words. “I checked. There was no surviving the hits that Slade had taken. With that much blood loss…”
He’d been dead.
Because Gunner never would have left him if he thought his brother had still been alive.
“I saw him, Gunner. I. Saw. Him.” Now Logan raked a hand through his hair, and Gunner realized just how agitated the team leader was. “The features are the same. Hell, I’m not one hundred percent on this…we’d need DNA for that…but the intel Mercer has…what I just saw…it looks like him.”
“G-Gunner?” Sydney sounded shocked. Lost.
He couldn’t look at her right then. Because he was afraid of what he might see in her eyes.
He’d had her beneath him on that bed, been inside her…
While his brother had been held captive in a camp.
Slade’s fiancée.
“We’re going to do more recon tonight. We don’t have time to waste. We need to use the darkness while we can,” Logan said. His voice was stiff. “Syd, I’ll need you to get working on the satellite imagery. We’ll all go in to sweep the area. Then we’ll plan for extraction at 0600.”
Extraction.
His brother’s extraction.
The silence in the room was too heavy.
“Gunner, I want to talk to you alone.” Logan’s words held the snap of command.
And Gunner realized he was staring at Logan, but seeing nothing.
But he gave a rough nod and turned toward the room’s door. He brushed by Sydney—can’t look at her yet, can’t—because he didn’t want to see the regret in her eyes.
She loved Slade, not him, and to find out that he might still be alive, after everything, had to be tearing her apart.
Logan shut the door after them. They were in the hallway. Alone. There was no sound from the room behind him.
Nothing at all.
“You gonna be able to handle this?” Logan whispered.
This? Finding my brother? Losing Sydney? Gunner nodded. “I’ll get the mission done.”
Logan grabbed his arm. “I saw the way you looked at her. I know you were with her in Baton Rouge.” His voice was a bare whisper of sound. “Man, I’m so damn sorry.”
Sorry that Slade was alive? They should be celebrating that miracle. Sydney would be celebrating.
And Gunner was glad. His brother’s death had weighed on him for two years. They’d fought just before Slade’s plane went down. Fought because…Slade knew how Gunner felt for Sydney.
Gunner had known that Slade didn’t deserve her. He’d caught his brother cheating on Sydney, twice. He’d threatened to tell her the truth.
“You don’t deserve her.” That had been his snarl to Slade. But the truth was…
Neither of us deserved her.
But it looked as if one of them would still get her.
“Mercer wanted you on this mission because Slade’s your blood, but the boss didn’t know about you and Sydney—”
“There is no me and Sydney.” He forced himself to say the words. There couldn’t be a he and Sydney. Not now. Maybe after the mission, maybe after—
Stop lying to yourself.
His dream had ended, just as he’d known it would. But he’d just wanted more time with her.
More.
“Gunner…”
He shrugged away from Logan’s hold. “We’ll do the mission. We’ll get him out—if he’s Slade, if he’s someone else…we’ll get him out, either way.” Because that was what they did.
The mission.
Always.
He hated the pity in Logan’s eyes. He’d rather have seen the guarded mask come back.
“She wants you,” Logan said.
Gunner stiffened. “She wanted to marry him.”
Maybe it’s not him. But Logan wouldn’t have said that he thought it was, not unless the evidence he had was compelling.
Logan exhaled on a rough sigh. “We go out in an hour.”
Gunner’s head jerked in a nod.
“Gunner—”
He held up his hand. “Let’s just get him free.” That was all he could think right now. Do the mission. Save the hostage.
Let everything else go to hell.
“Okay.” Logan’s sigh was rough. “But you’re to stand back on the actual extraction, got it? You’ll provide the cover for the team.”
The way he always did. Shooting, killing, from a distance.
“I’ll need you and Syd to survey the area more. When I left, it looked like they were bringing in more men.” He paused. “Are you going to stay in control?”
Sydney was the only one who could make him lose control. Sydney…who wasn’t his.
“Yes.” He didn’t want the word to be a lie.
And maybe it wouldn’t be.
He didn’t walk back into the room with Sydney then. He walked down the hallway, went outside.
I shouldn’t have touched her. I should have stayed away.
Because now—now he knew what he’d be losing.
What he’d lose, even as he found his brother again.
I’m sorry, Slade. Because he’d just taken the one thing that his brother loved most.
HER EAR WAS pressed to the door. The resort might be fancy, but the room doors were thin, and Sydney could hear every word that Gunner and Logan said.
There is no me and Sydney.
The words hurt her, pounding through the numbness that had surrounded her ever since Logan had said that Slade might be alive.
Alive? How was that even possible? Gunner had been so sure that he was dead, and she’d seen Slade’s injuries. Too many injuries. Too much blood.
Slade had been dead. She’d been sure of it. If he hadn’t been…
We left him alone? For two years?
A tear trekked down her cheek, and once more, she heard Gunner’s gruff words echo through her mind.
There is no me and Sydney.
Chapter Three
Gunner wouldn’t look at her. Sydney crept quietly through the jungle, stepping so that she wouldn’t so much as snap a twig, and she was too aware of the silence that came from the man behind her.
Cale and Logan were scouting on the west side of the area. She and Gunner were alone on the east side. The chirps and calls from the insects and creatures in the dark jungle drifted in the air.
And no sound came from Gunner.
She stopped. Took a deep breath, and turned to face him. “Say something.”
The moon shone down on him, but she couldn’t read his expression. Like Logan, Gunner was too skilled at hiding what he felt.
“Are you happy? Stunned? Talk to me!” Didn’t he realize that he was her best friend? When she had a secret to share with someone, she always went to him.
He was her rock.
Her…lover.
Slade’s alive.
“It was a mistake,” Gunner told her. Her heart slammed into her chest. “You don’t think it’s Slade?” Her voice was quiet, so she stepped closer to him. So close that she could feel the seductive warmth of his body. “Logan’s wrong and—”
“We were a mistake.”
Her body trembled, but she kept her chin up. She kept her eyes on him only because she wouldn’t break there, not in the jungle. Not in front of him. “Is that really how you feel?”
She didn’t feel that way. Being with him had been the only thing that seemed right in her world.
Something that felt so amazing, no, it couldn’t be a mistake.
“It won’t happen again. We won’t be together again.”
A bullet wound would probably hurt less. Actually, she knew from personal experience that it would. “It might not even be him.” Her hoarse voice. But it was true. She’d given up on Slade, put him to rest and moved on.
“And if it is?” Now Gunner was the one to take a step toward her. “I left him. I thought he was dead. If he was alive, for all this time, do you know the hell he would have been put through by his captors?”
She didn’t want to think too much about that. She couldn’t think about it now.
“I’m his older brother. I was supposed to keep him safe.” Disgust tightened his mouth. “Not screw his fiancée.”
