SATURDAY. CHINCHA ALTA, Peru.

A knock on the van’s window startled Adam from sleep. He pushed his hat up and peered at the figure standing outside in the pale, morning light.

Kyle’s frown was a line of darker shadow.

Great.

Just what Adam needed. More questions.

He unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“I’m not going to ask.” Kyle tapped his knuckles on the van.

That was the best thing anyone had said to him since before beginning this trip.

“Zain and Abigail were able to make some connections. Come on.” Kyle turned and strode toward the other suite about twenty yards from Heidi’s crash pad.

Adam got out of the van slowly, his muscles protesting after hours in that damn seat. He’d tried telling Kyle that putting him in the same room with Heidi was a bad idea, but Kyle was determined to give them the opportunity. She’d made it pretty clear after years of avoiding Adam that she wanted nothing to do with him. What had happened when they stopped talking, well, that was historically how things went down when they were tossed together.

He caught up with Kyle halfway across the lot.

“How’s your dad?” Adam asked.

“Not good.” Kyle grimaced and glanced away. “He won’t live till the end of the year.”

Kyle rarely said much about his old man. Adam had met the guy once. It’d left an impression on him, and not a good one. He had to wonder if things hadn’t gotten bad until he was in his latter years, or if he’d always been this way. For Kyle’s sake, Adam hoped it as a new development.

They entered the suite that had become the team’s headquarters. A couple spare beds did double duty as work stations since counter space was at a premium.

“Hey, lover boy.” Riley grinned at him.

Adam directed his gaze at Kyle’s laptop sitting on the coffee table.

Someone was going to have to check on Heidi at some point. It needed to be him. He hadn’t expected her to come looking for him, which was why he’d sat in the van where he could watch the door. However their relationship played out, her safety was still his number one concern.

Grant, the Lepta Team leader, carried another laptop over to join them on the sofa.

“We can be out of the country in about six hours if we load up soon,” Grant said.

But where were they going?

Adam needed more information, some clue as to who was behind this threat. Otherwise they were running to run.

“I finished double checking those vaccines. They’re all made by this company.” Kyle gestured at the slick website for a pharmaceutical company filling his screen. “Zain and Abigail were able to use the CDC team’s list of outbreaks to create a pool of data. Some of these were devastating, but others were cured pretty fast. All by these people, Sorkin Pharmaceuticals. Abigail says the time from outbreak to vaccine was impossibly fast for them to have a product ready for market.”

“This company is working with them, then?” The idea churned Adam’s stomach. Creating sickness for profit. It wasn’t the first time drug companies had found a convenient way to make a buck, but this was all kinds of wrong.

“It’s possible this whole thing is a pharma company racket to make money.” Grant shrugged. “We see some fucked up stuff working for people like this.”

“Then why not cure the others? Why let them go?” Kyle asked.

“Figuring this out ain’t our job.” Grant shut Kyle’s laptop and set his on top of it, the screen open to a couple flight options. “Where do the clients want to go?”

“Taking them anywhere doesn’t solve the problem. There’s still a threat out there,” Kyle said.

“We were hired to rescue her, right? We’ve done that. Figuring something out on this scale? That’s a...Department of Justice problem or something. That’s bigger than us. The best thing we can do is get Heidi and her people home so they can go to the authorities.”

Kyle glanced at Adam.

Technically Grant was right. They should take what they’d learned to the government and let them sort it out. Heidi would no doubt be happier without him around. There were a few problems with that.

“Come on, where are we going? Atlanta?” Grant scrolled down to a flight with a layover in Atlanta.

“They don’t have enough proof that there’s a mole in the CDC,” Kyle said.

“Looks to me like they do.”

“The CDC isn’t going to admit they’ve been compromised because that would undermine their work—everywhere.” Adam’s miserable pastime was keeping tabs on the CDC. He knew more about it than he had business to.

“What else do you want us to do then?” Grant glanced from Adam to Kyle.

“We go talk to the head of that company, Sorkin Pharmaceuticals,” Kyle said.

Adam nodded. What they needed was an undeniable set of facts they could present to someone higher up the food chain. Whatever happened after that needed to transpire fast, or else Heidi’s life would continue to be in danger.

“I thought all we were doing was rescuing Heidi and leaving.” Grant’s typical frown deepened.

“When is it ever that simple?” Kyle pushed to his feet. “I’ll go brief Heidi. Let the others know we need to get on the road soon. It’ll take us a long time to get to Mumbai.”

“Let me talk to Heidi.” Adam needed to at least see her before they retreated to their corners for the duration of this mess.

Kyle nodded and turned toward the bedroom where the two CDC doctors had crashed last night. Adam bought himself a few moments by filling two cups with coffee before braving the short trek from one suite to the other.

He knocked on the door and waited.

For all he knew she’d slipped out and left them all while he’d been sleeping. How many times had she run away from home? The only difference then was that she always ran to him. Now, she was running from him.

The door cracked open, and she stared up at him with one eye.

“We’re moving out soon. Thought you’d want this?” He held out the cup of black coffee and waited.

She considered him for a few, long moments before letting the door go and accepting the beverage. She’d showered and changed into the clothes he’d brought for her. It was all standard stuff, yoga pants, t-shirts, slip on shoes, but he’d picked the colors.

“And?” she asked.

“Traced vaccines back to a company. Going to pay them a visit.”

“That’s it?” She wasn’t asking about the plans.

He stared at the ground a moment. Before he’d known the differences between girls and boys, he’d known Heidi would be important to him for the rest of his life. He’d grown to love her, maybe to the detriment of his happiness. He wouldn’t change it. She was worth loving even if he lost her.

“You’ve made it very clear where we stand. I’ll let you know when we’re leaving.”

“That’s all you ever do, you know? Leave.” Heidi hauled back and slammed the door.

Adam blinked, replaying those words in his mind.

What the hell?

Him? Leaving?

Had she forgotten the period between their wedding and now? And he was the one who left?

Adam would never understand women. It was like Heidi had attained a certain age, and then poof. Everything he thought he knew about her vanished and she became some stranger he had no hope of understanding.

He turned and stared out at the parking lot.

Him leaving? When?

She’d understood that marrying him still meant he would be deployed. Nothing changed that. What the hell had he done to piss her off so badly?

Adam glanced over his shoulder at the door.

The only thing he could do was the same thing he always did. He’d wait her out. Eventually she’d lay everything on the line and chew him a new asshole, or they were done. He wasn’t sure which he wanted anymore. There’d been a day when he’d have thanked her for the new asshole if that meant he could wrap his head around Heidi’s woman logic. Now he just wanted things sorted between them even if that meant they were over.

SATURDAY. FLIGHT FROM Lima, Peru to Madrid, Spain.

Heidi stared at the digital map showing the plane’s progress over the Atlantic toward Europe. They’d have a layover in Spain, then one in France before their final leg to India. All total they would spend over a day traveling. She wasn’t a stranger to long flights. Most of the transports she flew on weren’t this comfortable, either. The difference was the man sitting next to her in the middle row seat.

Adam had his elbows tucked in tight, feet stretched out as far as he could. Despite his size he did the best he could to take up minimal space. She’d sat next to men half his size that weren’t as considerate. It shouldn’t make her think kindly toward him, but it did. He didn’t mean to hurt her, it was just the way things were. She wasn’t sure that could be fixed either.

They hadn’t spoken a word since taking their seats. The group was spread out through the plane in pairs with the closest several rows away. She had to wonder why Adam had chosen to be near her. What he thought this would do for either of them. Despite his tendency toward silence eventually he would speak. She dreaded that moment.

After all these years, she still wanted to see him fight for her. Just once. But he wouldn’t. Adam favored the easy way out. That was why she’d never pursued divorce on her side. If he wanted to be free, he’d have to at least work for it. She wasn’t going to crucify herself on his account if he couldn’t be bothered to care about her.

She hated who this tenuous situation made her. This spiteful bitch she’d become was all to get a rise out of him, some sort of reaction, but she got nothing in return. It just went to show that she’d been the one to love him, not the other way around.

The urge to move, pace, had her sliding her feet back and forth on the thin carpet.

Heidi leaned forward and peered at their row partner. The man had sat down on the plane and promptly fallen sleep.

“Need out?” Adam asked.

“No.” She blew out a breath and sank lower in her seat.

How many hours until they touched down? Last she’d seen it took around twelve hours to get to Spain from Peru. That was a lot of time.

“We going to talk about last night?” Adam asked.

Here it went. The talk, or whatever it was. Despite knowing how this was going to go, she could feel hope building. Those pieces of her that had always seen Adam as her hero banding together, waving sweet memories like banners.

“We were both under a lot of stress. We—I—reacted. There’s nothing else to discuss.” She kept her stare on the map, her hands in her lap. She would not cry.

“Bullshit.”

Heidi flinched at the word. She glanced at the tiny window. Was it possible for her to fit through that? Falling to her death had to be less painful.

He leaned closer until she could feel his breath on her neck. Her throat constricted, and she watched his reflection in the glass, the curve of his cheek as he spoke.

“Tell me one thing, why not cut me loose? If you’re done with me, why not say it? Why not tell me to stop reaching out?” he asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Every now and then she’d get a Christmas card, flowers on her birthday. There was no rhyme or reason to the gifts. Every time they wrecked her world. She managed just fine to only torture herself a little, but when she got a card? Or worse, flowers? That destroyed her. Those were supposed to be nice gestures, but they weren’t what she needed, and how could she ask for that one thing when she knew he’d reject her? She could keep going, fueling herself on anger and hope so long as he was still attached to her, even tenuously.

How did she begin to answer that question?

Heidi couldn’t tell him the truth, that even after leaving her time and time again, she still loved him. She wanted the fairy tale with him, full of dysfunctional passion. They weren’t perfect people, but Adam was the one good thing she’d had going for her. Giving up hope on him, on their farce of a marriage, would destroy her.

Adam eased back, giving her space.

She blinked rapidly, willing the tears to dry and her heart to harden. A plane was not the appropriate place for this conversation. If she opened her mouth, if she spoke, eventually she was going to burst into tears.

Was this how she wanted to live?

She’d grown up learning how to love Adam. Letting that go meant giving up an integral piece of her soul. She was afraid to do that, to figure out who she was without him.

A tear trickled down her cheek.

Shit.

She wiped it away and closed her eyes.

There were two options. Sit here in silence and continue going the way they had since the day they were married, becoming strangers. Or, she could give him some piece of honesty and see where he took it. Adam surprised her sometimes. Not often, but now and then he did, like the day he’d asked her to marry him.

He’d made the offer from a practical standpoint. There were benefits he would never use that she could. Of course, she’d seen it differently with visions of princess ball gowns and pink, puffy hearts. She’d led with her heart while he thought it all through.

Deep down, she was afraid of losing him, but the reality was that she didn’t have him to lose. The only thing she had were memories, and he couldn’t take those from her.

“I didn’t ask for a divorce because I didn’t want one.” She kept staring at that digital plane inching across the ocean.

Adam turned his head that gaze of his boring into the side of her skull.

The words bubbled up inside of her, but she clamped her lips shut. If Adam wanted a conversation, he’d have to work for it. He didn’t get to rip her heart out with zero effort.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Of course he didn’t. He’d have to be in love with her to get it, and she was the only idiot here with her heart on the line. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“Why are we just now seeing each other if you didn’t want a divorce?” he asked.

“That’s a good question.” She had no sensible answer for him.

“Heidi...”

“There isn’t a neat answer I can give you. Neither of us were on the same page when we got married, and things kept getting more complicated as time went on.” Thinking about that first week alone still made her insides ache.

“How could things get complicated when I wasn’t there?”

The hair on the back of Heidi’s neck rose and her skin went cold. Her stomach tightened into a ball of rage and ice rolled through her veins. She turned her face toward him and the rest of the plane faded away.

“How? You want to know how?”

“Yeah.”

“Adam, if you don’t understand that, I’m not sure you’ll understand any of it.”

“Try me.”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. It wanted to go to him, to lay her pain out for him to comprehend, so he could apologize and comfort her. Her head knew better. Wanting him to love her was like asking the moon to be the sun, day to be night.

“I will admit I wasn’t in the best place after my parents killed each other. When you suggested getting married, my head didn’t hear all the practical reasons why it was a good idea. What I heard was that the one person who’d been there for me wanted to keep being there for me. Now, don’t say anything yet. I’m not done.” She held up her hand and Adam closed his mouth.

If she was doing this might as well go all in, right?

“I married the man I loved while you were doing a nice thing for me. I get that now.”

“That’s not—”

“I’m not done.” She could feel the pent up hurt and anger boiling over to the point that her palms were sweating. “I didn’t hear from you. Not once. And you don’t get to say we were deployed, it was dangerous, or any of that other secret bullshit. When I stopped waiting to hear from you, to know if you were okay, I started talking to other wives. They might not get to hear from their husbands very often, but an entire deployment? You know how embarrassing it is to have to give your in-laws a letter for your husband because he never told you where to send them? The way they pitied me?”

She shook her head and swallowed the old hurt down. When they were doing their on-again-off-again dating, she’d understood not talking for months while he was away. She’d still written him letters and given them to his parents to send when they deemed it a good idea, silly, inane things with no strings or expectations. Just something to take his mind away from what he was doing for a bit.

“Months went by. School helped distract me some, but it was too late. The wives knew. They all talked about me, about my husband that didn’t call or write or even care. That was when I doubled down and finished my under graduate. If you were going to pursue your dreams, then I was going to focus on mine.” She’d made sure that by the time Adam came home, she’d sold her parents house and was across the country doing her PhD.

She turned to study Adam’s profile. He’d leaned forward and picked at his thumb, as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. That was where she rated for him, below nail gunk.

“I kept thinking, maybe I’m wrong? Maybe he does love me. Maybe he’ll come find me and we can be together, but you never came. You never showed up. Flowers and cards aren’t they same. They aren’t you.” She’d given this man so much of herself.

Maybe she was hard wired to pick someone bad for her. After the way her parents had killed each other, the evidence was there. She should have seen the writing on the wall. But Adam had taken her heart long before that. He’d taken her heart without a fight, so why should she ever expect him to fight for her now?

“I’d like to use the bathroom now,” she said.

ADAM WATCHED HEIDI duck into the lavatory. His mind was a blank, white space. In the span of a few minutes she’d taken his understanding of their relationship and erased everything he thought he’d known.

He dragged his hand across his jaw.

Maybe she does love me?

He’d never stopped. Heidi was a part of him, knit into the very fabric of who he was. From the moment he’d sat down in that theater with plans to kiss her she’d been the only person for him.

The lavatory door remained securely fastened.

He knew a retreat when he saw one. This was classic Heidi. Stir it all up then run away. He’d interpreted that maneuver to mean she was done with him or them, that she didn’t want to wade too deep. All this time, it’d been a test he was failing because he didn’t know he was taking one.

Fuck.

The drink cart was coming. If he didn’t get up now, he’d be stuck here for however long it took the attendant to move on to the next section. Adam had waited years to understand Heidi. He wasn’t patient enough to let the cart go by.

He stood and stepped over the sleeping man into the aisle. His legs protested the hours of cramped sitting between the night in the van to now. The short walk to the bulkhead where the lavatories were nice, but not his priority. He stood as close as he could get to the door, with his mouth at the crack.

“Heidi? Come out of there.” He pulled on the door.

The drink cart rolled past him, blocking off the path back to the seat.

He closed his eyes, his memory supplying enough moments of Heidi crying for him to fill in the silence.

Neither of them were perfect. They’d both fucked up. He could easily say that there wasn’t anything he could have done. He’d been deployed. That was the bloodiest stint overseas he’d done in his life. When he’d returned home, his screws hadn’t been all that tight. The truth was he’d been afraid of reaching out to her while he was gone, unsure that she wouldn’t change her mind. As long as they didn’t talk she couldn’t break up with him, which meant he had a wife to go home to when it was all over. Except he’d been in the wrong.

“You’re right about some of it, but not all. Come on, Hi.” He tugged on the handle again. “Don’t make me take this door off its track.”

The latch clicked and the Occupied sign switched to Unoccupied. He pulled the door aside. Heidi stood there, her cheeks dry but her eyes red.

He took her hand and backed into the galley area. There was no privacy for a chat like this. They either did it here or at their seats.

Heidi leaned against the floor to ceiling cabinet and he braced his hand on the wall, caging her there with his body.

Where did he start?

“Marrying you wasn’t being nice. It was selfish. I knew that you were leaving. You were going to go to a fancy school and leave me behind. I didn’t want to lose you. Which is why I never reached out. You couldn’t leave me if you couldn’t talk to me.”

“What?” Heidi’s mouth worked silently. Deep lines furrowed her brow and her lashes worked in double-time. “That’s—that—”

“That’s stupid? I know.” He was well aware of his convoluted thinking where she was concerned. “I thought about you every day. I still do. I had to give you space. You needed to focus on school, not me. I guess that became my standard.”

On the surface, people had remarked about how unstable Heidi was, what a wild child she could be. What the peanut gallery hadn’t known was that they were a lot alike. Adam was just better at hiding his crazy.

“I did come to see you once after I got back. I told myself not to, but the next thing I knew, I was on the road driving north. I was...damaged. I got to the school with no idea how to find you. Did you know that was how I found out you changed your name? The registrar was about to kick me out when I figured, what the hell, why not try my name?”

Adam shook his head. He must have terrified that poor woman. He’d been in his truck for days, probably hadn’t showered or shaved.

“I picked up some flowers before I went by your room, but you were already gone. Someone said you were outside, and they were right. You were out in the grass, on a blanket with a study group, I guess. I’d never seen you smile that much. You were...happy. And showing up like that, I was a reminder of everything you’d gotten free from.”

“You gave the flowers to Lucy, the girl across the hall from me. She said some guy had given them to her. She’d thought he’d been dumped.” Heidi’s eyes were wide, her skin pale.

“I decided then to give you the space to be who you wanted to be. I knew I wasn’t good for you then, not the way I was, so I left. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, but...” He swallowed and glanced away. That was one of the worst deployments he’d had. The people they’d lost were his friends, guys he’d known since SEAL training.

“I didn’t want space. I’ve never wanted space.” Heidi flattened her hand against his chest but didn’t push him away.

He stared into her stormy gaze. This whole time they’d been doing what they thought the other wanted. They’d put themselves through hell because they were bound to suffer alone, and all this time they could have been together. It seemed as though he were standing on a precipice, the toes of his boots hanging off the ledge, his body ready to pitch over the edge into something new and more than a little scary.

“Excuse me?” A flight attendant gestured at the aisle behind her. “I need to ask you to please be seated.”

“Sorry, sure,” Heidi mumbled.

Adam caught her hand as it slid down his chest and wrapped his fingers around her palm. She glanced up at him once, as though she were making sure he was really there, before they made the short walk back to their seats. Once they’d crawled over their row mate and were buckled back in, they lapsed into silence. The plane shuddered and rocked. The pilot made a brief announcement about turbulence, but Heidi didn’t say another word to him.

They had a lot to think about. So many missed opportunities.

“What now?” he asked.

“I don’t honestly know.” She turned her face and studied him. “We’re two different people. What we want might not work out.”

Adam reached over and took her hand. He hadn’t thought he’d be free to do that without a fight ever again. She squeezed him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Let’s take care of India first, then we can take some time and figure it out,” he said.

His words were a lie.

Now that he understood Heidi’s methods he wasn’t going to let her retreat again. He was going to bore his way into her life, and this time he wasn’t leaving.