I wasn’t one to hide what I did, but I sure as fuck kept the details to myself. Not out of shame, though. Who I let inside my body was absolutely no one’s business aside from my own.
Lexa shifted. “At least oneof us is getting a little action between the sheets. Aside from Claire that is. Shaun though…” Her next words were on the tip of her tongue when the five of us paused and collectively held our breath.
Our eyes fell upon Shaun making his way down the aisle of the jet with us locked in his sights.
“All good down here, ladies?” His attention lingered on me a fraction longer than the others.
“Oh, we are all just fine n’ dandy down ‘er, Shaun,” Nevada drawled in her thick southern accent.
“Not as good as you, though,” Mac cut in with a fucking smirk that I wanted to wring her neck for.
Shaun folded his exposed forearms across his chest and narrowed his focus on me. I shook my head subtly to let him know I hadn’t told them shit. Then he shrugged to the girls. “Assume what you want.”
“We’ve had to, since Hallie won’t give us the deets. Care to fill in the blanks?” Jade called from behind us.
Shaun’s gaze found mine again and held secrets only we would ever know about. He sniffed sharply and addressed the girls. “I don’t fuck and tell.”
With that, he turned on his heel and strode down the aisle with five sets of eyes watching his ass as he headed into the cockpit.
“Well, daaayum girl, you go talkin’ about fine Italian ass when there’s a fine American one right there,” Nevada drawled.
I scoffed and leaned my head against the headrest. The plane rocked gently as the engines whirred to life and everyone began to settle into their seats for the long journey home. Barely a minute passed before I caught Mac studying my profile in my peripheral vision.
“Now what, Mac?”
“Claire’s seriously gonna have your ass.”
I snorted. “I can handle Claire.”
Chapter Two
Hallie
I sat beside Tiffany in the underground surveillance room—her domain—and bit back tears as I stared at the surveillance footage.
“It can’t be,” I whispered.
She paused the recording and zoomed in. “If it’s not, the resemblance is insane.”
“I know. Zoom in on her hand.”
Tiffany did as I asked, and my heart dropped. “It’s her.”
She never took that ring off. Ever. But why was she in Cape Town? She swore to never go back. It was why my parents split up years ago. My teeth ground together as I searched for answers with the intel that simply didn’t add up.
She was in Portland one day, then gone the next. She had disappeared without a trace aside from one hastily scrawled note. With access to limited resources while in the army, the main reason I’d declined another enlistment was to search for her. My heart told me that something was amiss; South Africa held nothing but suppressive experiences for her. It was the last place I expected her to show up.
I’d been with Phoenix Force for over a year and a half now, and Tiffany was permitted to work on personal endeavors while we waited for our next assignment. She’d scoured the world for me in search of the tiniest hint of Mom’s whereabouts.
Her expression scrunched as she looked to me. “Do you know the man she’s with?”
“No. He’s not familiar at all.” I shifted closer to study his facial features. With an angular brow, a rounded nose, and dark skin, his appearance wasn’t anything unusual for a middle-aged African man.
“If it isyour mom, he’s been with her almost every time she had shown up on surveillance.” She clicked a couple of buttons, then the frozen image of a White middle-aged man appeared onscreen. “How about this man?”
“No idea either.”
She hummed. “The way his hand is on her back suggests that he’s more than a bodyguard. I know you haven’t seen your father since you were little, but are you sure this isn’t—”