Page 51 of Bonded in Death

“You worked with him?”

“I was a medic.”

Before Eve could slap back at that, Roarke murmured to her, “Easy. Summerset, you can’t protect him now. Eve needs to know, whatever you can tell her. His family needs to know who did this to him.”

“His family.” Now it was fear that shot out of him. “He has a wife, children, grandchildren. They have to be protected.”

“This isn’t about his family. It’s about his team. And Jesus Christ, were you part of that team?”

“I was a medic.” Then he shut his eyes. “Old habits die hard. I was a medic,” he repeated, “and worked with Gio, and others, for the Underground. In the last few years of the wars, we made a team of twelve. The Twelve, each with our skills, our purpose. We made a unit, forged a bond of the sort nothing, I think, but war can forge.”

“What did he do? Rossi?”

“His work was cyber and communications. In the last few years we had a base, deep below a church. Fully equipped and operational.”

“Why Wasp? Code name?”

“We only referred to each other by code names. This was our protocol. He was Wasp, as he could find his way through any crack, and sting before you knew he was there.”

“You have all the names. Who was Rabbit?”

“Sylvester Farr—colonel, retired. He was the only professional soldier in The Twelve. The de facto leader. He was about the age I am now, so older than the rest of us. He died peacefully. Fifteen years ago. Nearly sixteen now.”

“Hawk.”

“Leroy Dubois. A mechanic also skilled with explosives. He died in ’26.”

“Fawn.”

“Alice.” His hand reached up, drew the chain from under his shirt, and the wedding ring it held. “Alice Dormer. She was my wife.”

Eve knew love, and understood, as Rossi’s widow had said, it could and did outlast death.

“I’m very sorry. I’m sorry I have to dredge it all up, but I do. Your wife was with the Underground?”

“Fawn, we called her. She looked so gentle, and was, had been. Gentle, harmless. And she was fierce. She was a teacher, and we met when I came to her school, after the terrorists had bombed it. She was hurt, bleeding, but the weeping was done for her. She wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop digging, and pulled those young, broken bodies from the rubble.”

Because he needed it, Eve gave him silence, and waited for him to say more.

“We saved some. And some we saved because she wouldn’t stop. Her hands, raw and bleeding, but she wouldn’t stop. I fell in love with her while we worked on those innocents, in the blood and the stench and the cruelty, we fell in love.”

“What happened to her?”

He stared down at his brandy, then lifted his gaze, steady and even now, to Eve. “She died on May 18, 2026, with Hawk—with Leroy Dubois. Heroes, they died heroes. And they died victims of treachery, betrayed by one of us.”

“Who?”

“We called him Shark, and he proved well named. Conrad Potter. He was a cop, one who’d been in the military, in intelligence. He was a traitor who betrayed his comrades for money.”

“Was?”

“He died. Not then, and not by my hand. Wasp found him first, and broke some fingers fighting him. Was stabbed, had ribs cracked, but like Alice, he wouldn’t stop. Gio wasn’t a fighter, not a hand-to-hand man, but he found him first.”

Slowly, Summerset sipped more brandy.

“He might have killed Potter. Possibly, though he wasn’t a killer. But I stopped him. I thought, this is for me to do. It’s for me to kill the man who killed my Alice, killed the mother of our baby. Who killed my friend.”

“What stopped you?” Roarke asked.

---