Ryker
Coding myself into our condo, I try to roll my head to work out the kinks in my neck. The loud crack seconds after the door opens makes Wren yelp, and she barely holds on to her laptop.
My heart skips a beat. Seeing her curled up on our couch, working, is the best sight to come home to. “Sorry, sweetheart,” I say as Pixel leaps up and starts yipping as she runs circles around me. “Hey, furball.”
Wren’s smile staggers me. Every day, I wonder what she saw in my eyes when we met. “You’re home.”
“Damn right.” I pull her into my arms, letting her wrap her legs around my waist. “Missed you.”
“Obviously,” she says with a laugh.
My jeans are suddenly painfully tight, and the scent of her, all that honeysuckle and heat, means we might not make it to the bedroom. “Can you take a break?”
“Almost.” She lowers her head and kisses me, her tongue tracing the seam of my lips. I yield to her demands, nipping at the corner of her mouth before she pulls back. “Ford needs the target’s location before he loses the light. I’m close.”
“Where’s the target this time?”
As she returns to her computer, I head for the fridge for a beer.
“Uzbekistan. Grab me one?” Wren’s fingers fly over the keyboard. “I’m close. Tracked him through five different relays and half a dozen countries. But he’s good. Really good. Or he has someone good on his team.”
Uzbekistan. Not far from Hell. The hiss as I open the beers reminds me I’m free. Safe. With Wren in our condo in Seattle. Not back in those caves. This job brought back some painful memories, and I rode the edge of the darkness inside me the whole mission.
“Ford’s there now?” Dropping down next to her, I hand her the beer, then let Pixel settle herself in my lap. Stroking the pup’s fur, I let myself relax for the first time since I left fifty-six hours ago.
“Yep. Holed up in some flea-bag motel on the outskirts of Qarshi. And pissed off about it.” She gestures to her screen, and I peek at her chat window.
Ford: How many rats can one motel hold?
Wren: You want me to calculate the volume of a rat?
Ford: Fuck, no. Just get me out of here.
Wren: Stop complaining, you’ll get your intel faster. Watched pot and all that succotash.
“Succotash?” The laugh that rolls through me eases the last of the tension behind my eyes and reminds me just how fucking lucky I am. Even if I can’t keep up with all the odd words Wren uses in place of more conventional curses. “I love you, little bird.”
Her fingers still on the keys, and she peers up at me, a soft smile tugging her lips and her jade green eyes dark. “I love you too. And I’m glad you’re home. Tell me about your mission.”
I ramble on as she works, and amazingly, she listens to every word and still manages to trace the asswipe Ford’s tracking. “West is okay?” Wren asks.
“Yeah. Three against one and frogman still comes out on top with only a black eye and a single bruised rib.”
“And you?” Searching my face, she huffs quietly. “Don’t answer now. But tonight…talk to me?”
How does she know? That if I peel back the lid on the darkness, I won’t be able to put it back and let her finish her work?
“I can read you, Ry. Some day, maybe it’ll stop surprising you.” With a quick squeeze to my thigh, she returns her focus to the laptop and shakes her head. “This is so weird,” she mutters. “Every single layer of encryption on this data has an extra piece of code that makes no sense. It doesn’t do anything. But it’s obviously important. This guy’s too good to put garbage in his code.”
Glancing over at the screen, I choke on my sip of beer, take Wren’s laptop over her sputtered protest, and stare at the string of letters and numbers I know better than my own birthdate.
94820RJT008000
“Holy fucking shit. He’s alive.”
“Ry? What the heck is this? Who’s alive?”
I have a hard time forcing the word over the lump in my throat. Six years. Six years and eight months.
“Ripper.”