“Yeah, but the cancer’s catching up to him. He doesn’t give a damn. Keeps a cigar clamped in his teeth like a Rottweiler with a bone practically twenty-four hours a day and says it just means he’ll get to see his boy and wife all the sooner.”

“Now I know where Eddie got his stubbornness.”

And his bravery. He’d thrown himself on a grenade to save three other team members.

Dale shifted, bringing them back to the present. “As far as this woman goes, do I know her, or do you prefer to keep her anonymous?”

“You might have seen her, though she usually wears a mask on the public floor.” Max hesitated, but it wasn’t due to concerns about Dale’s discretion. He was anticipating his reaction, which meant he was being chicken shit. “She’s my boss’s secretary.”

“Shitting where you work, Ack Ack. Problematic.”

“Yeah, but I’ve already run through worst-case scenarios. I’ll be the one to clear out if it goes sour. I won’t let that be an uncomfortable place for her. I know I tend to be protective, but…” He shook his head. “She’s a tough woman, but K&A, the club, the life she has here, it’s been carefully constructed and reinforced. I see Matt watching me a little bit closer these days, and not just because he’s a protective son of a bitch when it comes to the women he considers part of his world. It’s like he has intel about her he can’t share, and he’s gauging whether I’ll be able to handle it when I figure it out. And I think I’ve already figured out a piece of it.”

“Well, preparing for the unknown is something you’re trained to do. Sounds like you’re already pretty deep with this woman.”

“Not fully. Still playing in shallow waters, a couple quick trips to the deep end. But I’m ready to go deeper. I want to go deeper.” Max met the other man’s gaze. “She calms something inside me, even as she also stirs it all up. I didn’t expect that to happen, not with Amanda and everything else, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be significant, wherever this goes.”

Dale pursed his lips. “Okay then. For what it’s worth, I’m not getting any alarm flags from what you’ve told me. If you need me, I’m here.”

“Thanks.” Max rose, his mind already resting easier from the simple reassurance. “Have to head to work, but I’ll come back this weekend. Help you build that swing set before the gangbangers run off with the lumber you have stacked out here.”

“Sounds good. Tell Matt he can’t hide behind his wife’s pregnancy anymore. I expect him back for poker third Thursday. He better bring a healthy wad of cash.”

Max grinned. “Cut the man some slack. He’s got two demanding women in his life now. And God knows, one is more than enough.”

“I’ve seen Savannah. If ever she gets too demanding, I’ll be in the front of the long line to pick up that slack.”

“Yeah, and you’ll lose that other leg.” Max waited a minute, saw Dale’s blue-green eyes sharpen. The Master Chief knew what he wanted to ask. Max always asked about it. But Dale still waited for him to voice the question.

“The other thing…anything new on that?”

“I’d have told you first thing if there was any verified intel.”

“Yeah. Roger that.” Max lifted a shoulder. “Just got a funny itch lately.”

“Might want to get that cleared up before you and your lady get more involved. They don’t tend to appreciate that kind of thing.”

“Suck me. Respectfully.” But it was an absent comment as Max lingered in the doorway. Dale cocked his head.

“You heard anything from the teens at Dana’s church?”

Max volunteered regularly there, helping out in the soup kitchen and with maintenance. It had been a natural evolution from his job as Dana’s primary driver, but it was also a strategic position to form bonds with the kids who inhabited that rough area. Dale’s neighborhood rubbed edges with it.

“Nothing yet, but if he ever surfaces and comes back, I’m feeling pretty sure they’ll be the ones to find out about it first and let me know.”

“Good. The other guys are keeping track of things in Mexico and Colombia. He’s been buried deep for all these years. He’s either piss-scared of you, acquired a new identity better than we can detect, or he’s dead. Drug dealing doesn’t lend itself to longevity.”

“Yeah.” Max nodded. “Thanks, Dale.”

“Keep your head and ass down.” The man opened the case of beer and threw him one. “Take this for a snack later. It’s New Orleans, after all.”

They parted amicably enough, but Max could feel Dale watching him cross the backyard. Fucking intuition could be contagious among those who’d served together, and he’d probably just raised Dale’s antennae. He’d meant what he said though. He appreciated Dale helping him with intel, but that’s where he wanted his Master Chief’s involvement to end. When he finally paid this debt, it would be his ass alone on the line.

* * * * *

As Max held the door for Dana, ensuring she was comfortably situated in the limo, his phone beeped. Closing the door and moving up to the driver’s door, he called up the message.

Since you passed the first evolution, I have another for you. If you’re not planning to DOR yet, come to my house after work today. There will be pizza. -J

For some reason, a T-shirt logo spoofing the Star Wars movies came to mind— Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies.

Max shook his head at the note. An evolution referred to an event in the SEAL training schedule. He needed to get her away from the Internet. That thought led to a pleasing idea, one he mulled over as he took a seat behind the wheel. Dana shifted onto the padded seat behind him, curling her fingers into the shoulder of his coat, playing with the hair at his nape. “Are you sexting while on official K&A business?”

“Since when are you official K&A business? You’re the punishment for my many sins.” He flicked at her nose with a finger and she wrinkled it at him, swatting his fingers away.

“So I hear you and Janet are seeing one another.”

He shouldn’t be surprised. He wasn’t sure anything happened at K&A without the five-man team mysteriously and instantly knowing about it, which in turn meant their wives knew about it.

“She’s just using me for sex.”

“I fully support that. I just wish I could see video.”

He chuckled. “Do you ever behave?” When she gave him a smug smile he caught in the rearview mirror, he pulled into traffic. “So how did things go today?”

“Pretty good. We’re set for Tuesday’s spaghetti dinner, and the revival at the end of the month should be a great event for the community. Reverend Morris is still doing cartwheels over the fact the Godspeed Players will be performing for it.”

When he braked at a stop light, she brushed her knuckles along his cheek. It was an unexpectedly tender gesture that drew his gaze back to her. As she usually did when she wasn’t at home, she wore sunglasses that concealed her obvious blindness, but the bemused curve of her lips gave him an indication of her mood.

“You deserve to be happy, Max. You do realize that, right?”

That was a loaded question, one that twisted things deep in his gut. His mother had deserved happiness. Amanda had deserved it. Who decided who deserved what? Maybe it was just all a big game to that faceless deity.

A SEAL was trained not to fail. If he experienced a setback, he figured out how to turn it into a win. He never quit. But how did you turn your mother’s brutal murder and a gang rape that left your sister brain-damaged into a win? He’d been halfway across the world, playing the hero, thinking home would always be there. In the course of one bloody afternoon, home was gone forever.

The bitterness, the grief, broke him. He couldn’t go back to being a Navy SEAL because of Amanda, but it wouldn’t have mattered. During those first horrible months, he’d no longer been fit for duty. Though fellow SEALs like Dale tried to get him back on track, he pushed them away with a vicious anger. It was Matt Kensington who broke through, by proving to him that it wasn’t his fury poisoning him—it was his fear.

Maybe Dale had spoken to Matt, instigated the job offer. However it happened, Max needed employment in the area and Matt Kensington offered him the limo job. At first it had been simple, straightforward—just get the guys in their fancy suits to meetings with other guys in fancy suits. No problem. Then one day Matt told him he was going to have a new responsibility, chauffeuring Peter Winston’s fiancée.

Dana was a decorated Iraq veteran who’d been blinded, scarred and had her hearing nearly destroyed by a bomb stuffed in a plastic soda bottle. Cochlear implants had improved the hearing and Peter’s unlimited financial resources had fixed a lot of the scarring, but that didn’t matter. Max hadn’t wanted the job. He didn’t want to be in a situation where he had to protect someone that vulnerable. Not now, not ever again.

With Dana’s slim hand on his shoulder now, Max remembered the first day he took her to her church. Peter had helped her into the car, so the first time Max actually touched his new charge was on the curb in front of the building.

When he opened the limo door for her, a shaking had started deep in his belly and moved out to his arm, affecting the hand he extended to her. The episode came on him so suddenly, his body was drenched with sweat in a blink.

He was about to jerk back, close the door in her face, try to pull his shit together. Hell, forget that, he was going to radio Wade and tell him they needed to send over another driver. He’d just lean on the door until his replacement got there, no matter how much she beat on the window. Before he could do anything as absurd as that, Dana had reached out, looking for his hand. Her fingertips brushed his thigh, an intimate touch that might have sent another woman recoiling with a stammered apology. Instead her palm flattened on him, registering how he was shaking.