EMILY’S HEART THREATENED TO POUND right out of her chest. Ryan was here—and he was threatening Ian because of her.

Part of her wanted to run up the stairs and hide. And part of her wanted to fling herself into Ryan’s arms.

Logically, she knew there would be no flinging. She knew he was murderously angry, and she knew she had to stop him before he did something irrevocable. Something that would be her fault.

“Ryan!” she shouted, stumbling down the stairs as the abaya twisted around her legs. She caught herself before she fell, grasping the edge of the wall and scraping her hand in the process.

Heads whipped around to look at her, but it was only Ryan she saw. His blue eyes clashed with hers, and she nearly recoiled from what was contained in them.

Anger. Hate. Relief.

And loathing. God, the loathing.

“I’m okay, Ryan,” she said, her voice shaky, her stomach twisting and rolling as bile rose in her throat.

“Jesus, Flash, let the man go.” Chase spoke this time. He held out a hand as if he were trying to calm a rabid dog. “She’s here. She looks fine to me. This isn’t what we’re here for, and you know it.”

Ryan didn’t move for a long moment. And then he dropped his knife to his side and shoved Ian away. “I fucking know it,” he growled. “But we have a result, don’t we?”

Ian turned around and touched his throat. There was blood on his hand as he drew it away. His eyes sparked with fury, but he didn’t do anything about it.

Emily was glad for that, because she knew that every man here was overloaded with testosterone and a hair-trigger temper at the moment.

“If you’re going to attack a man with skills equal to yours, you need to kill him before he fucking kills you,” Ian growled.

Ryan ignored him and advanced on her. Had he always been this big? This formidable? He towered over her, and his expression hadn’t softened one bit. Her stomach bottomed out.

“You went willingly. After…” He shook his head, his jaw hardening as he gazed down at her. He practically vibrated with anger. “I can’t believe you left like that. Do you know how worried Victoria’s been? How worried we’ve all been?”

Emily lifted a hand, but he recoiled from her as if he couldn’t bear for her to touch him. Hot tears pressed against her eyelids.

“I was trying to do the right thing—”

“The right thing?” He looked at her disbelievingly. “The right fucking thing wasn’t leaving people who care about you! It wasn’t leaving my bed in the middle of the night without a fucking word!”

She heard the clearing of throats and a muttered curse, and it hit her that he’d just revealed something that would have been better off kept secret. For his sake, not hers.

“Not here,” she said fiercely. “Not now.”

He took another step toward her until he was nearly pressing her into the wall. “When? Fucking when, Emily?”

“Don’t yell at me!”

He stepped back, his nostrils flaring. He flexed his hands at his sides as if trying to work off some tension.

Emily’s body quivered with adrenaline. Her head swam, and the heat inside her abaya intensified. Her stomach churned as bile rose in her throat. She put a hand on the wall as the buzzing in her brain grew stronger. Why couldn’t she shake this feeling?

Ryan’s expression changed. He didn’t look angry now. He looked… concerned.

“Emily? What’s wrong?”

“I… I… don’t… know…”

He was the only thing she could see. Everything else faded until his face filled her vision. She felt his hands on her shoulders—and then she felt nothing at all.

---

“Emily!” Ryan caught her as she crumpled to the ground. Then he swung her up into his arms and whirled on the men standing there.

“In here,” Ian Black said, pushing open a door and walking into a room.

Ryan followed on his heels. It was an office, but there was a mattress on one wall. Ryan sank down and gently placed Emily upon it.

“She needs water.”

Ian pressed a cold bottle into his hand, and Ryan twisted off the cap before pouring some on his fingers and patting her face. Then he snatched the black head covering off and freed her hair. The golden mass was matted with sweat.

He pressed his fingers to her jugular and took her pulse. It was strong, but too fast.

“Take the abaya off,” Black said.

Ryan wanted to growl at the man and tell him to go away, but he didn’t have time to worry about anyone else. Instead, he peeled the fabric up Emily’s body and then lifted her and brought it over her head. She was wearing a thin T-shirt, a pair of camouflage pants, and jump boots underneath. She had a waterskin strapped to her back, and she was armed with an HK45CT, which surprised him more than it should.

He’d never thought of Emily as a warrior, no matter that she’d lived with the Freedom Force for three years or that she’d been in battle the night she’d killed Zaran. Of course she would be weapons trained, but she was supposed to be separate from this violence, innocent and happy as she went about her life. That was how he thought of her.

Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to be here.

Ryan removed the pistol and cleared the chamber before ejecting the clip. He set them on the table nearby before he proceeded to pat Emily down with more water. Someone shifted the fan that was in the room until it blew on her.

Emily moaned and Ryan stilled.

“Emily? What’s wrong, honey? What can I do?”

She didn’t answer, and he patted more water on her skin.

“What’s wrong with her? You fucking chewed her ass out, dickhead,” Ian Black said. “And I think you probably gave away more information about the two of you than you intended in the process.”

“Shut up, Black,” Ryan growled. “If she hadn’t been here with you, you’d be dead.”

Black snorted. “Really? Before you managed to torture her location out of me? This is why she couldn’t tell you, asshole. That whole alpha-gorilla thing you have going must have scared her shitless when she thought about it.”

“Stay out of this, motherfucker. If not for you, she wouldn’t be here.”

“Flash.”

Ryan glanced up at his team commander. Matt wasn’t looking too happy at the moment, but then again, nobody was.

“Emily made a decision to join him,” Matt said. “And she’s not the reason we’re here.”

Ryan could only blink. Not the reason? Maybe not, but now that he had her in his sights, he wasn’t letting her out of them again.

“We can’t leave her here. We can’t leave her with him.”

Black rolled his eyes. “If you want to find out where those hostages are, you’d damn well better leave her here. She’s the one making contact, the one who’s going to find out their location for us.”

Ryan couldn’t speak. Rage rolled through him. The kind of rage that made him want to smash something—or someone.

He was pissed at Ian Black. At Emily. At himself for being so stupid as to get involved with her in the first place. He’d convinced himself she was this helpless little thing who needed his strength and his friendship.

He’d let himself care, and that was the one thing he knew he shouldn’t have done. Because caring made you vulnerable to hurt.

He stood and glared at Black. “You don’t fucking care who you put in danger, do you? She had a life in DC, a life away from all this shit—and you brought her back into it. What did you promise her?”

Black didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “A chance to clear her name.”

Ryan took a step toward him, ready to pummel the man for lying to her. If it were possible, Mendez would have done it. Ian Black had lied for reasons of his own, but Ryan wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“Ryan.”

Emily’s voice was soft and shaky, but her eyes were open. She gazed up at him with glassy brown eyes, and he sank down on the mattress beside her, pushing her hair back off her forehead with a tender gesture. Too late, he realized what he was doing and dropped his hand away.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Her apology kicked him in the gut. “He lied to you, Emily. He can’t do what he said. You need to go home and go back to school.”

She moved her head from side to side on the pillow. Telling him no. Rejecting him.

He stiffened.

“You and Victoria want to cocoon me in Bubble Wrap and keep me from living my own life. This is something I need to do. I’m not leaving until it’s finished.”

“It’s not safe here for you. You know that.”

“It’s not safe for you either. For any of us.”

Ryan got to his feet. She was a stranger to him in so many ways. The woman he thought he’d known—the soft, sweet, sometimes confused woman—was nowhere in evidence. This woman was determined and stubborn.

But so was he. He turned to Ian Black and Matt, who’d come into the room with them.

“We need to call Mendez and get her on the next transport out of here. She can’t stay.”

Matt didn’t look happy. He also didn’t look like he agreed, and that was enough to make Ryan nearly burst a blood vessel.

“Can’t do nothing about it, mon ami,” he said, his Cajun accent thickening for a second. “She’s here and she doesn’t want to go. Our mission is to extract the hostages, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Emily was sitting up now and holding a hand to her stomach. She didn’t look as green as she had a few minutes ago, but she didn’t look well either.

“She’s sick. She needs medical attention.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Emily said, her eyes blazing hot. “I’m not sick. It’s just something that comes and goes. I got too hot. I’ll be fine in a little while.”

Matt frowned as he looked at her. Then his gaze landed on Ryan again. “You heard her, Flash. Now let’s get down to the business we came here for, which is finding those hostages.”

Ryan felt like he’d landed in an alternative universe. After two months of worrying about Emily, wondering where she was and if she was safe, he’d found her again. But she wasn’t the same person. She didn’t want his opinion. She didn’t want to tell him her problems or listen to his advice the way she once had.

Two months ago, she’d come to him and said she had to be with him, just once. Said he was the brightest spot in her life. Then she’d snuck out of his apartment while he’d slept and she’d left the country with Ian Black. He’d felt betrayed, angry, confused.

He’d gotten a handle on those feelings in the past two months. But the lid had snapped off today, and everything was churning in his gut right now.

He’d told himself on the long flight here that he would find her again. That once he had Ian Black in his sights, he was getting an answer no matter what he had to do to get it.

But he hadn’t expected to walk into Black’s compound and find her with little effort. Hell, until a few minutes ago, he’d even let himself believe she wasn’t here willingly. He’d believed she’d get on a plane as soon as he found her and go back to DC gratefully.

She didn’t look grateful at the moment. She looked upset and miserable.

“I was just telling Ian that my contact didn’t come to the rendezvous today,” she said to Matt. She didn’t look at Ryan, and it stung. “He’s not ready to divulge that info yet. Not without more incentive.”

“You aren’t going out there again,” Ryan said. “It’s too dangerous.”

All three of them looked at him. Matt’s jaw was set in a hard line. Emily looked furious. Black was the only one with the hint of a grin on his face. Ryan wanted to wipe it away with a solid punch.

“I make the personnel decisions around here,” Black said. “And I say she goes. Unless, of course, she decides she’d rather not. Emily?”

Her face was red as she lifted her chin. “I’m going. I’ll try again tomorrow. I’ll keep trying until we have an answer.”

Black went over to his desk and fired up the combat-hardened laptop sitting there. “We’re working with satellite imagery to try to find where they might be, but so far we don’t have anything concrete to go on. There are some native tribes in the area that camp out in different locations—the Freedom Force could be with one of them, but we can’t go blasting our way into every camp to look. If we do that and we have it wrong, the word will spread. We won’t have a chance of getting those people back alive if that happens.”

“Agreed,” Matt said.

But Ryan couldn’t get on board with the conversation. He was too invested in the fact that Emily had run away in the night and now she was ignoring him. It just didn’t compute.

“So what was all that in my apartment?” he said. “Lies? Why bother? Why come to me with your bullshit about wanting to be with me?”

“Jesus,” Ian Black said.

“Flash, not here, dude,” Matt added. “Not now. I already have to tell the colonel—don’t add fuel to the fire.”

Emily dropped her gaze from his as she fiddled with the edge of the abaya lying on the mattress. He waited for her to look at him, but she didn’t. And he suddenly knew he’d be waiting for a long fucking time. Whatever had happened between them in DC was over.

“Yeah, all right, I get it.” He turned toward Matt. “Unless you need me for this, I’m going to go find my bunk or something.”

Matt looked sympathetic, which didn’t help soothe the bruised feeling in Ryan’s chest.

“Go ahead. Tell the guys we’ll meet in an hour.”

“Copy that.”

He didn’t mean to look at her again, but like Lot’s wife, he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, but his heart felt like stone as he walked away.