He was immediately hard.
“Uh, sorry,” he murmured, turning at a ninety-degree angle from her and diverting his gaze to the floor.
She gasped. “Shit. Do you realize you make, like, no noise when you move?”
He scrubbed his hand over his hair and willed his libido under control. This was the damn problem in a nutshell. “Sorry. Old habit.” He caught movement in his peripheral vision but didn’t let himself look.
“Yeah. My dad was the same freaking way.”
And there went the erection.
“It’s so nice out, I was worried I’d be too warm in long sleeves. Did you need something?” she asked, stepping into the office in a short-sleeved shirt. With a flash of her hands, she twisted her long hair up on top of her head and used a band to hold it up off her neck.
He gave a tight nod and forced himself to focus despite the fact that the lacy bra remained visible through the white V-neck. “I need to apologize.”
Emotion flickered over her expression, but she just looked at him.
“I was an ass and I didn’t mean—”
“Look—” She shook her head and stepped to the door. “Let’s not do this. Okay? I’m not going to lie, you hurt my feelings. But, in the end, it was a good thing. Because you reminded me I need to stay focused on Charlie. I can’t be distracted by anything else. So don’t sweat it.”
Voices sounded from the living room, and Nick frowned. The words should’ve given him relief. She’d let him off the hook and wanted bygones to be bygones. But there was that damn boulder again. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.”
Anticipation filled his gut as they entered the living room. Standing in the middle of Shane, Easy, and Beckett was Derek DiMarzio, looking about a hundred times better than the last time Nick had seen him. His brown hair had grown out to the length of his jaw, and his shoulders appeared bulkier under his shirt. Hell, he looked downright fit and healthy, maybe even like he had a bit of a tan. Most noticeably, he was standing on his own two feet. Or, presumably, his own foot and a prosthesis.
Nick walked right up to him and held out a hand. “Thanks for coming, man. You look great.”
Marz wore his trademark smile, just one watt dimmer than a full-on grin, and returned the shake. “I feel great. Nice to see you. Thanks for giving us a reason to get back together.”
Rixey felt the unspoken sarcasm radiating from the other three, but he let it go. Hard not to feel a healthy dose of positivity and gratitude in the face of someone like Marz, who had suffered the most catastrophic injuries of any of them yet seemed to have the best attitude.
“Come on in. Grab some slices and let us catch you up.”
“I just dumped my gear there,” he said, pointing to a stack of cases by the front door. “That kosher?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Marz crossed to the kitchen with barely a limp, and Rixey wasn’t ashamed to admit that emotion threatened to choke him up. He looked at the other guys and realized they were watching Marz, too, and in that moment they were united in their admiration for the teammate they all remembered lying in pieces on the war-torn ground. Nick had been the closest to Marz and Murda when the grenade had shot into their position. Marz had seen the writing on the wall a split second before his teammate and had shoved him out of the way. The explosion had taken both men down, Murda’s leg mangled and Marz’s gone from below the knee.
By that time, Rixey had already taken two rounds in the lower back, but Marz’s leg had fountained blood. So Nick had dragged himself over, torn the Afghani scarf he’d bought at a bazaar on base from around his neck, and balled it against the wound. Their medic had already been taken out, so Shane had gone to work on the pair of them while Nick had pitched in how he could. Easy, Axton, and Harlow had provided them cover, but only Easy had survived.
Man, Rixey had done them all a disservice by dropping off the face of the earth. All this time, they’d needed each other. They’d needed to know how everyone was doing and handling the multitude of shit hands they’d been dealt. They’d needed to draw strength and determination and resolve from the one place that had always given them those things—their team. Damnit all to hell and back. He had failed them.
When a man wore the Special Forces tab on his uniform, he held himself to a higher standard. Marz was clearly living up to it. Nick wasn’t.
That changed now. No more excuses. No more burying his head in the friggin’ sand. No more cutting himself off.
Marz opened a lid and grabbed two slices. He turned and looked at them all. “What?”
The question flipped a switch in the rest of them. Suddenly they were all making small talk and gathering around the chow.
“Nothing,” Nick said, joining him at the bar. He handed plates to Becca and the other guys. “Marz, I want you to meet Becca Merritt. It’s her brother, Charlie, we’re looking for.”
Nick saw the momentary calculus flash through Marz’s gaze, but it was nothing Becca would pick up on. “Becca. Wish we were meeting under better circumstances,” he said.
She smiled, right away more at ease around Derek than she’d been around the others so far. “You, too.”
Once everyone had food, they took up spots around the living room, the guys filling the couches and chairs and Becca and Marz kneeling on the floor at the coffee table despite everyone’s offers to give up their seats.
Rixey caught Marz up on the details of what’d happened before his arrival, then asked everyone to report on what they’d learned in the morning.
“We canvassed Charlie’s street and talked to some neighbors, though the man who lives upstairs wasn’t home,” Shane said, looking at Becca. She nodded. “No witnesses, but one person told us Charlie cabbed everywhere. It’s not a neighborhood where cabs regularly drive through looking for fares, so he would’ve had to call. There are a lot of taxi services in this city, but assuming he went with one of the bigger ones, we’re talking about doing follow-up with eight to ten.”
“He got rid of his car a few years ago. He didn’t use it much and didn’t like that it made his movement easy to track.” Becca looked at Marz with a twist of her lips. “He could be a bit paranoid.”
“Not unusual among hackers, especially good ones, which it sounds like he must be if he’s making a decent living white hattin’ it.” She frowned, and Marz added, “Meaning hacking for nonmalicious reasons. Getting paid by corporations to do it for security testing.” All this was right up Derek’s alley. Computer security, surveillance, and investigations were some of his specialties. He liked tech and he liked toys and he liked to talk about them and explain them until your ears bled with an utter lack of understanding. But you went along with it because he was scary brilliant. “So, we need into phone records, dispatch records, what else? Credit card records? Any of his equipment available to scan?”
“No,” Becca said. “All his machines were gone. Or taken.”
Marz pursed his lips. “I brought some high-powered gear, but a lot of what we’re talking about is usually subpoena territory. What’s the thinking?”
Rixey filled him in on what Miguel had learned and met Becca’s fretful gaze, knowing she was worried about them on this point. But it couldn’t be helped. “We’re off the grid on this.”
Derek nailed him with a stare, his brain clearly chewing on the idea behind his dark brown eyes. “Given everything that’s at stake, I’m okay with that.”
With Marz, things were always that easy. And it helped that he had the skills to make it happen, with or without permission.