Time was running out and Parker didn’t know what to do. She just knew she couldn’t stand there and watch the two of them have a pissing contest. Parker had no problem gambling with her own life if it came down to it, but she would never put the lives of so many young girls, who had no idea what they were getting into, in jeopardy. If there was even a thread of truth to what Milo said, she had to do something.

“If that’s the case then you need to get back to the palace ASAP,” Parker said calmly.

“Will you listen to yourself?” Garrett shouted. “You’re doing it again. You’re letting yourself fall for his lies. We don’t have one shred of evidence that says he won’t go running back to Fernandez and help him kill us.”

Milo stepped closer to Garrett and pleaded with. “I let both of you down, and I know that. You have no reason to believe me when time and time again I let you down. Garrett, you were my best friend. My only friend during a time when no one gave two shits about me. Give me a chance to make this right.”

Parker moved to Garrett’s side to try and calm him down but he stepped away from her. She tried to hide the hurt she felt because she knew Garrett was in just as much turmoil.

Garrett saw the belief in Milo’s words written all over Parker’s face, and it opened up old wounds inside of him that he thought he had laid to rest. Once again, Garrett was on the sidelines watching his former best friend get the girl. Only this time she knew exactly how much Garrett loved her, but her choice was still the same.

“If you want to take his side, be my guest. But I won’t have any part of it,” Garrett told her.

“I’m not taking anyone’s side, Garrett,” Parker pleaded with him. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and take away the hurt she knew he was feeling, but all of a sudden it didn’t feel appropriate. She was so confused by everything going on around her that she didn’t know what to believe. She wrung her hands together nervously as she looked back and forth between Garrett and Milo while they stared each other down. Regardless of the fact she no longer loved Milo, he’d still been her best friend at one time. She wasn’t a hundred percent certain she trusted everything he said, but she felt like she needed to give him a chance to prove what he said was true. She had never been the type of person to pass judgment on anyone, least of all the people she cared about. Garrett was wrong. She wasn’t falling for Milo’s lies. She just wanted to know the truth. And to do that, she had to show Milo she was willing to listen.

“I want to hear what else he has to say, what other information he can give us. If he really is who he says he is, he can get us what we need,” Parker explained, leaning her body closer to Garrett’s. “All of this can finally be over.”

Garrett knew nothing he said would change her mind. He knew they didn’t need Milo to nail Fernandez, but Parker didn’t trust that. She didn’t trust him and his team to do their job. She’d rather put her faith in a man who almost ruined all of them. Garrett felt like he’d been punched in the face instead of Milo. He was disappointed in Parker and disappointed in himself. Maybe Garrett was overreacting, maybe he was letting his emotions cloud his judgment, but hearing Parker say that all of this could finally be over made him wonder if she was including the two of them in that statement. He needed some distance. He needed to clear his head and let Parker do whatever it was she needed to. He would meet with the new SEAL team and take care of business on his own. He wasn’t a complete ass though; he wouldn’t let her do this alone. He would tell Brady that their team was now completely at Parker’s disposal.

With his decision made, Garrett began walking backwards away from her.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said, turning his back on her, rounding the corner of their villa, and disappearing from sight.

Parker watched him go, too pissed off to try and stop him. He claimed to trust her and to love her, but at the first sign of trouble or conflict he walked away.

“I’m sorry. I can’t say that enough,” Milo said quietly from behind her.

Parker had been staring after Garrett for so long she almost forgot he was there.

“You should be,” she told him as she turned around. “If you knew I was with the CIA, you should have known that I could help you.”

Milo shook his head. “I couldn’t tell anyone. I had strict orders. The less people who knew, the better our chances. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, Park.”

He grew bold, stepping up to her and brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. Parker pulled her head away before he could touch her anymore. Even if what he said to them tonight proved to be the absolute truth, she wasn’t the same person that Milo left all those months ago. She wouldn’t be able to fall back into any kind of relationship with him easily, even one as simple as friendship. There would always be complications between them that no amount of time or understanding could fix.

“Don’t,” Parker warned him.

Milo quickly pulled his hand back and shoved it into the pocket of his pants.

“I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s so good to see you, Parker.”

Parker shook her head and took a deep breath, but Milo spoke before she could say anything.

“I know this is all confusing and you’re pissed and I don’t blame you. But I just want you to know that I love you. If I could go back and change everything I would. It kills me that I had to leave you, to make you believe I was dead in order to make this work. I hope you can see how sorry I am and maybe someday we can get back to―”

“Milo, stop,” Parker interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut to ward off those awful memories and holding her hand in the air to silence him. “Just because you’re here and you’re claiming to be one of the good guys doesn’t mean we can all just go back to the way things were. It’s not the same anymore.”

“But it can be. We were going to get married and have a life together. I still love you. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you or wished I could be with you. If you can just forgive me, we can go back to that,” he pleaded.

“No, we can’t. Milo, we’re in the middle of trying to take down the leader of this country. Someone who has been exploiting teenage girls for his own gain for God knows how many years. And even if that wasn’t the case, even if we were home and you suddenly showed up out of the blue, it still wouldn’t change anything.”

Milo looked panicked now. He began to pace back and forth in front of Parker while they still remained in the alcove of the villa.

“Okay, I get it. You need time. You need to let things calm down and then we can talk and work things out.”

Parker shook her head in disbelief. He still wasn’t getting it. She knew now was not the most appropriate time to put everything on the table when they had work to do, but nothing would get through to Milo unless she was blunt.

“Milo. I don’t love you. Not that way. Not anymore. Maybe not ever,” Parker admitted softly, trying to soften the blow by easing up on the anger and looking him in the eyes with sympathy. She shouldn’t be concerned with sparing his feelings, but it was in her nature. She didn’t know how else to behave.

Milo stopped pacing long enough to laugh. It wasn’t the laugh of someone who just caught on to the joke. It was the laugh of someone who couldn’t believe what was happening; it was maniacal and disturbing.

“That’s your anger talking, Parker. Once you calm down and realize that I’m here, and I won’t ever leave you again, you’ll come to your senses.”

Milo started pacing again, muttering to himself under his breath. Parker didn’t like the way he was acting. She had no idea what he’d been through or the extent to which his undercover assignment had affected him, but one thing was certain: Milo was not behaving rationally.

Parker slowly reached behind her back to grab her gun when she suddenly realized it wasn’t there. Garrett had taken it from her when she was aiming it at Milo.

“I’m not stupid you know?” Milo said. “I saw the two of you. You were holding hands when you got here. Whatever you’ve done with him while I was gone, it’s okay. I don’t care. You were lonely and he was there. Now that I’m back you don’t have to do that anymore.”

Parker quickly glanced around, wondering why tonight of all nights, there were no other patrons of the resort walking around so she could signal them to get help. She cursed Garrett for his stubbornness and wished he wouldn’t have walked away. She had a feeling he’d be better equipped to talk Milo down from whatever ledge he was standing on, having done it plenty of times while the two of them were growing up.

“Milo, listen to what you’re saying. Nothing is okay between us and it never will be. I love Garrett. He’s not just someone I passed the time with after you were gone. I know this isn’t going to be easy for you to hear, but I’ve loved him from the first moment I saw him. It’s always been Garrett and it always will be. You were my friend, and I thought I was doing the right thing by staying with you and planning a future with you. But it wasn’t fair to either of us when my heart always belonged to someone else,” Parker explained.

“YOU’RE LYING!” Milo yelled as he stalked towards her. “You’re just confused. You’re still in shock.”

Parker moved backwards but found herself stopped by the wall of the villa next to her and Garrett’s.

“Milo, take a deep breath and calm down. I need you to focus on Fernandez and what’s really important here. We can talk about all of this at another time. Right now you need to remember what we’re here for. What you spent all this time away from us for.”

Now that Parker was cornered Milo was able to get closer. He nodded his head, seeming to calm down and agree with what she was saying. Parker relaxed thinking that maybe reminding him about the mission had centered him, but she shouldn’t have let her guard down.

“You’re absolutely right,” Milo said quietly, a serene look taking over his face. “I can’t lose focus. Not now. Not after everything I’ve done. Thank you for reminding me what I’m here for.”

Parker didn’t have any time to think about the way Milo worded his statement and no time to prepare for the needle that was quickly jammed into the side of her neck. As a syringe full of sedatives was emptied into her bloodstream, her last conscious thought before the world went black was that her time had just run out.

Chapter Twenty-One

By the time Garrett rounded the corner of the row of villas he’d managed to cool down somewhat. He was so lost in thought he ran right into Brady.

“Where’s Parker?” Brady asked as he picked up the cell phone he’d dropped when Garrett had come barreling around the corner.

“Talking to Milo,” Garrett growled. “What’s going on? Did you find out anything?”

Brady took a step past Garrett to peer around the corner and saw Milo and Parker talking in front of the Villa about a hundred yards away. Satisfied everything looked okay, he moved back in front of Garrett.

“I called a few of my contacts and word on the street is there was a very top secret, unofficial mission here in the Dominican involving someone from our SEAL division. It was an undercover operation that had been in place for at least six years. There was never a paper trail because it was not a government sanctioned mission, so we can only go by word of mouth at this point. About a year ago, critical information about the mission was leaked and supposedly, the undercover SEAL was compromised. According to the official reports, Milo was sent to the Dominican at that time to clean up a ‘routine mission that went awry.' At least seventy-five percent of the report is blacked out. There was definitely something in that report no one was supposed to know about. My contacts believe Milo was the undercover agent the entire time, and that the government needed to send him to the Dominican in an official capacity to solidify his cover as a double agent. Obviously the information they have wasn’t obtained legally, so they had to go through several channels to get it. I don’t have concrete evidence Milo is telling the truth, but I trust these guys, and they wouldn’t tell me something they didn’t believe to be accurate.”

Garrett paced back and forth in front of Brady and tried to make sense of everything he just learned. Garrett trusted Brady and if Brady trusted his contacts, Garrett had no choice but to believe the information he found, even if his gut was telling him something wasn’t right, that everything was falling too easily into place after weeks of hitting dead ends.

“So Milo was telling the truth,” Garrett muttered as he stopped his pacing. He didn’t expect an answer from Brady; he just felt the need to say the words out loud to see if it changed anything.

It didn’t.

“I decided to err on the side of caution anyway,” Brady explained. “Captain Risner sent us a few of the boys from SEAL Team four. I did some training with them early on in my career, and they are all good men. I currently have them stationed at the entrance of the resort. If Milo leaves, they’ll follow him. Vargas and Conrad are canvassing the area to make sure Milo came alone.”

Garrett went to reach into his pocket for his cell phone to get a status update from his men when he realized he still had Parker’s gun in his side holster from when he unarmed her. A feeling of dread washed through him when he realized he’d left her unarmed, alone with Milo.

“Shit,” Garrett cursed as he looked down at the gun and then quickly turned to go back to Parker. He stepped around the corner and stopped in his tracks at what he saw.