She froze.

From outside, a woman’s voice called, “Tucker?”

And then a man’s: “Macy?”

Neither of them was familiar.

She scrambled back near a small table beside the bed. There was a small drawer underneath that held her loaded Beretta. For the first time since she arrived at Hawaii, she thought about using it. Her hand moved automatically, drawing it out and steadying it on the doorway.

She stood silently, fixing her gun sight to entry, her hands deadly still.

When the footsteps came closer, she forced herself to take a deep breath. And to hide the gun. She lowered the Beretta to her side, and then tucked it behind her back. “Who’s there?” she called. It was her best attempt at a calm and pleasant voice, and not the ravings of a gun-toting paranoid delusional. She didn’t always have to greet strangers with a gun. That wasn’t normal. And it definitely wasn’t healthy.

“Hello?” she called again. But no one answered. The footsteps had also gone quiet. She moved the gun over to one side, so she could reach it even faster, and made her way out of the hut, moving slowly and listening to every sound. Over the waves, she thought she heard voices again, muffled and indistinct. When she stepped down into the breezy darkness and into the sand, she saw three figures standing at the edge of the campfire light. They were bathed in dark orange and barely recognizable. But she recognized Tucker’s voice.

That was all she needed.

She felt safe again. She felt normal.

For a moment, she thought about returning back to the hut, at least to slide the gun back into the drawer. She could then return to greet their guests as a normal, unarmed person. But Tucker’s voice reached her, calling her over cheerfully. “Come on,” he urged. “Get over here.”

A man and woman stood next to him. Macy had never seen them before, but they stared back at her with familiarity, and with warmth. All three were smiling, walking now into the light of the fire, everyone warming up together as they met, introduced to her and shaking her hand. The woman first, Mira. And then Jackson.

“I guess you could say he’s my boss,” Tucker said, “checking up on my vacation. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s inaccurate,” Jackson said.

“What is? You’re not my boss?”

“No, you’re not on vacation.”

Mira grabbed Jackson’s arm. “Come on, play nice.”

Jackson pulled his arm free and wrapped it around her, pulling her tightly against his side.

“I’m on vacation,” Tucker said, walking over to Macy.

“Damn right he is,” she said, first smiling to him, and then looking suspiciously to Jackson. “You didn’t come here to take him away, did you?”

“Only sort of,” Jackson said.

“How’s that?” Tucker was now standing behind her. Macy leaned back against his chest. Both couples staring down the other.

“I’m not taking him far,” Jackson said.

“We’re in the middle of the Pacific,” Macy said. “Everywhere is far from here.”

“Not the mainland. That’s pretty close.”

“Mainland USA?” Tucker said.

“No,” Jackson said. “Hawaii. The big island.”

Macy and Tucker, at the same time, breathed out a relieved, “Oh.”

“So the vacation can continue,” Mira said, smiling at Macy. “I know that’s what I’m doing. He thought he could come here without me.” Another dirty look to Jackson.

But Jackson kept his easy smile. “See? It’s perfect.”

Macy hadn’t ever met the man, but from what he’d heard from Tucker, whenever Jackson said something was perfect . . .

“It usually isn’t,” Tucker said, laughing. “Perfect to you was almost a death sentence in New Orleans. Remember that?”

“I remember New Orleans was what got you your stripes.”

“Guys?” Mira said.

The subtle command was quietly understood, Macy enjoying the efficiency of Mira getting them to shut up about work. She smiled again at Macy, shrugging her shoulders.

“You’re right about me not being the boss,” Jackson said, pointing to Mira. “That’s the one you’ve got to look out for.”

Finally, they laughed as a group. Real laughter. They were still strangers to Macy, but somehow, just through two minutes of knowing them, they felt a lot less strange.

“So,” Tucker said, throwing the last log onto the fire. “Are you ever going to explain what the hell you’re doing here?”

They sat on blankets in the sand, the two couples on one side of the fire, the blackness of the ocean on the other. And for a while it was silence, everyone seemingly mesmerized by the sound of the waves, the crackle of the fire. Macy could understand; it had hit her particularly hard when she’d first arrived: the feeling of peace.

Jackson and Mira, coming all the way from the nation’s capital, must have felt similarly.

“Part of what she said is true,” Jackson said. “If I ever had a reason to come back here, we wanted to be sure it was as a couple. The other part, the reason, is for work.”

“A mission?” Tucker asked.

“Maybe not a mission, per se. But there’s something going on at Hilo Harbor. Smuggling. Something you guys know a bit about.”

Leaning against Tucker, Macy could feel his body shake with a chuckle as he said, “Someone’s trying to smuggle American fugitives through shipping containers?”

“Something like that,” Jackson said.

Tucker frowned. “And you need Macy to go, too?”

She pulled away from Tucker. “Who said I wanted to go?”

“Right,” Tucker said, laughing. “Who said we wanted to go?”

“I thought,” Jackson said, “that you might be interested in this particular mission. Given it has certain connections.”

Tucker’s gaze sharpened. “What connections? Is it something to do with Macy? I thought she’d been completely pardoned.”

Jackson smiled. “Of course. She’s completely safe. The key for that whole thing to work was to get the government on board. In return, I promised them I’d check something out.”

“Wait,” Macy said. “I thought it was—”

“They did,” Jackson said. He smiled at her and laid a hand on her arm. “You’re safe, truly. I just may have had a hand in making the right people get off their ass and do what should have been done years ago. I owed you that.”

Macy fell silent. She needed a moment for that. Jackson had been key in saving her ass the first time, when he’d stopped a corrupt mission commander sending in the team that was slated to kill her. That he’d intervened and saved her life again was almost too much to wrap her head around. “I thought it was an initiative from the new president.”

“Maybe to an extent,” Jackson said. “But I may have given him your name. Told him a few hard truths about exactly what fucked-up crap had been done to you in the name of the USA.”

Macy didn’t know how to feel about that. Just when she finally thought she’d found her feet, her world had been tipped on its end again. How was it possible that someone she barely knew cared enough to save her life? Twice?

Jackson shrugged. “It’s what we do. Plus, even if I didn’t owe you, I would have done it for Tucker. DARC Ops is more than just a security business. We’re family.” He looked over at Tucker. “Figure that out yet?”

Tucker grinned and raised his hand, saluting Jackson. A small gesture, but one that she could tell said everything. She supposed she should thank Jackson, too. For now all she could do was stare at him, still shocked that he’d done so much, that he’d pulled so many strings just to help her. Little, insignificant, fugitive Macy.

“As you know,” he said, “our situations were linked. They weren’t the same, of course. But we’re on the same side. We’re fighting the same people.”

“And we’ve just had a major victory,” Tucker said.

And that was the last anyone really said for a while. The rest of the time, before their guests returned to a hut down the beach, it was just the sound of waves, wind, and the silence in between.