Stephanie Tyler - Unbreakable

He hadn’t been sure what he’d find left of the bayou when he’d returned; he’d been overseas when Katrina hit. He remembered watching helplessly with the rest of his team as the levees broke and the devastation that followed. He’d always consider Louisiana to be his home, since he’d first found peace here.

He’d left that peace behind each and every time he left the state. This time had been no exception.

“Hey, are you eating without me?” Avery asked in a sleepy voice. She looked tousled and flushed in that way only good sex could make you look. And it was a good look on her.

“I saved you some. You looked too comfortable to wake.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. He handed her some of the plates of the late-night snack food so she didn’t need to get out of bed and she ate happily.

And still, she hadn’t asked him a single question about where he’d been, why he’d left. Unlike the Avery he knew, and that sat uneasily in his gut.

After several minutes of silence, he felt her hand on his arm. She was tracing some of his tattoos. “You told me once that tattoos can be like a résumé.”

“Should be,” he corrected. “A lot of them are just people doing it for the wrong reasons.”

“So what are the right reasons?”

“They’re supposed to be a map of your life. Where you’ve been, where you’re going,” he explained.

“So all of yours are personal?”

“Yeah. Very.” He waited for the interrogation to begin, but instead, she simply continued to trace down his arm with her finger and then, after a long moment of staring at them like she was trying to memorize them, she turned back to her food.

* * *

Avery was still drunk—partially on Gunner—and everything was all jumbled in her mind. All the questions she wanted to ask mixed with the fact that she wanted him to stay, needed him to stay.

She stared at him while he watched the city out the window.

Had he come home to his wife dead? Was he accused of murdering her? Who set him up? And why?

Billie knew none of the answers and she’d admitted that she’d never had the courage to bring it up to Gunner. She’d wanted to make him feel safe, which meant not bringing up the past, and Avery understood that.

It made Avery think about her mother, who’d also loved a dangerous man. Darius had brought nothing but pain and eventually grave danger to both her mom and Avery herself.

But if she regretted it, she never actually came out and said that. She’d smile, probably without realizing she did so, whenever someone mentioned that New Orleans made people do crazy things.

It certainly had made Avery do crazy things, and looking back over the past several months, she could honestly say she had no regrets, especially none trying to find Gunner.

“You’ve been okay?” he asked. That certainly made more sense than her questions about his tattoos. At least he must’ve thought so, and she steeled herself from saying anything stupid like “not without you” and instead forced out “Keeping busy.”

He nodded, a small frown furrowing between his brows. She didn’t mention the sale or the fact that she’d packed his clothes and put them in storage. Didn’t ask where he’d been or what he’d been doing.

Because she’d been the one to practically order everyone to take their time off and make a decision. You couldn’t pull off a team like S8 half-assed. And she was going to honor Darius and Adele if it killed her.

Grace agreed. Avery knew she’d have the support of the woman who she was sure would be her sister-in-law at any moment. Grace credited Darius and Adele with saving her life. But Avery knew what the men in the group had been through, especially Dare and Key.

She knew Jem would be the first one back. This was his kind of gig.

Is it yours? She never even had to ask herself twice, but she’d taken the time off anyway. She’d kept up on what was happening around the globe, pleased with herself at being able to pick out things she’d have skimmed over without a second glance a year ago. She was in tune with the mercenary culture, could pick up subtle clues. She even found a publication that advertised the need for highly skilled bodyguards.

She knew all about the black ops groups that used the moniker private contractor. And she did all of that in the month that Gunner was gone, because otherwise she’d simply sit around all day in her underwear, eating cookies and being depressed.

She still sat around in her underwear eating cookies and being depressed, mind you. But at least she was being productive at the same time.

But she’d always had a thought in the back of her mind, when she’d sent everyone away, that if just one of them didn’t return, this wouldn’t work out. Together, they fit like the perfect pieces of a puzzle.

And you’re keeping the fact that Gunner ran from you a secret.

She lost many a night’s sleep over that, but something in her gut told her he’d be back. He just needed time, she’d reason. He had to deal with seeing his father again, having them all know what an evil man he’d been born to.

That had to be weighing on him, even though the Gunner she knew was a total one eighty from Richard Powell.

He made love to her again. When it was over, she didn’t ask him to stay. She wouldn’t beg, not for that, at least, although his touches did have her begging.

When she woke, she was alone, wrapped in Gunner’s scent—dark, spicy. All man.

Was it going to be like this, Gunner coming and going between jobs? Or would he never come back?

Had she misjudged things that badly?

* * *

Leaving Avery behind at the hotel wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but it ranked high on the list of things that ripped his goddamned heart out of his chest. It was nearly dawn and the streets were clearing of the nighttime players who would yield to the day soon.

The night was where he’d always been most comfortable. That’s when he and his mom used to travel, when he would do Landon’s jobs, when the Navy utilized the SEALs most. He hitched a ride to the airport so he wouldn’t leave a trace of himself in a cab, and with a hat pulled down low on his head and a bag tossed over his shoulder, he looked like any random hitchhiker.

The man in the big old truck dropped him at the edge of the airport, and when Gunner stepped into the terminal, he felt the change go through his body.

He boarded the plane under the name James Smith with the ticket purchased for him. First class. Only the best.

He gave a small snort and felt the flight attendant’s eyes on him. He looked up and accepted the beer he’d asked for. She’d written her phone number on the napkin.

Any other time, he would’ve found time to start getting to know her on this flight. But now he couldn’t pull his thoughts from Avery.

His life story was full of holes, and that was the way he liked it, the only way to ensure his safety, from both the law and people who wanted him dead.

It was the only way to keep those people who wanted to get close to him away too. Whoever knew the full story was in grave danger.

He thought about Grace, how he’d been put out to pasture at Landon’s to make room for her. He was so grateful to her, and so sickened at what she’d had to go through.

If you’d been there, you could’ve made things better for her. He would’ve found a way, somehow. Maybe they could’ve escaped together and avoided all this shit.

He hadn’t wanted to discuss any of this with Grace, though. At first, he was too much in shock at what had happened and then he didn’t want to burden anyone with it.

He was exposed because of Section 8. And now, because of him, he’d be as equal a danger to them as Richard Powell ever could’ve been, if not worse.

Arriving on that island was a death sentence. Traveling the world with his mother had, at times, been uncomfortable and even terrifying, no kind of life for a young child, but she’d loved him. He was sure of that.

He’d burned her file when Landon had given it to him when he’d turned seventeen. It was his birthday present, along with a new semiautomatic made especially to calibrate with Gunner’s hands and eyesight. Custom, Landon had told him proudly.

Gunner sketched along the back of the magazine, in a small space of white along the side of an ad. He’d liberated the pen from the security guard, along with his cash, just to prove that he could still do shit like that.

It had been a long time since he’d stolen. A long time since he’d had to. But last month, he’d closed down his bank accounts, routed the money to Mike and Andy, the two men who’d helped him more than he could ever repay with no explanation, and just like that, Gunner had been gone.

It was that easy. Too easy. The past three weeks had been spent preparing for the job he’d finish tonight. A quick turnaround, but he’d thrown himself into it. Had little choice in the matter. And since he’d been unable to completely break from Avery, hadn’t found the strength to cut off all ties, he’d come back. He wasn’t sure yet if that had made things better or worse.

He’d take twenty-four hours to mourn. Then it would be time to move on.

He watched her through the front window of the restaurant. Billie Jean was talking to customers, hand on her hip, laughing and lecturing. Earlier, she’d been meeting with Avery. He’d have given anything to have listened in on that conversation, but he had no doubt as to the topic.

The fact that both women had been sharing information . . . well, that could be very good or very, very bad.

He’d taken several pictures of them together on his cell phone, labeled them James’s women. He took a few more of Billie now and then tucked his phone back into his jeans.

He had two more to track down, but decided to spend extra time here with these two. They were the most interesting and this town was where James seemed to have the most ties that he hadn’t been able to cut, no matter how many enticements to do so he’d been given.

Maybe he just hadn’t been given the right kind of enticements recently. Because now that James was back in his grasp, he wasn’t making the same mistake in letting him go again. Not ever.

* * *

The night was warm, the water Caribbean clear, and Gunner sluiced noiselessly until he reached shore. The water rose to erase his footprints along the packed sand behind him like magic, and under the full moon, he walked straight into his future.

He liked working alone. No one to count on him, no one to disappoint. Maybe no man was an island, but he’d gotten himself pretty damned close once before, and he’d get there again in no time.

He had no choice.

She let you go. Didn’t even protest when you got out of bed and left. And he knew she’d been watching.

He knew the memory would remain like a fresh scar, reopening every time he brushed up against it.

Three weeks to plan this job, to lose himself in the minutiae of something that was, in fact, like riding a bike. He recalled every single time he’d done this before, including the last big fuckup.

Before that, he’d never fucked up this part of the job. This part had always been perfect and he was determined to keep it that way.

He unzipped the top of his black wet suit and let it hang behind him. His body dried quickly in the night air, but he refused to shiver, held his body ruthlessly in check.

Landon said he’d find Gunner, that he should just continue walking the beach. Gunner did for ten minutes before he knew Landon was close by. Another half a minute and he spotted the man standing alone in what looked like the middle of nowhere.

Then again, he’d always been able to sense evil.

Some men were born with that presence. Others cultivated it and fooled most people by substituting confidence in its place.

“You’ll never be better than me.” Landon’s final words before putting him into the car with the men who would beat him nearly to death.

He was sure Landon had spotted him first, though, and that pissed him off.

They were a quarter of a mile from the nearest houses that dotted the beaches here—most of them vacation homes, expensive, rarely used. This was one of the many perfect places to live for anyone who didn’t want scrutiny from neighbors or the law.