Page 7 of Declan's Hope

“Hardly,” Declan had said before tipping it up. He’d then ordered three more and downed those in quick succession for good measure.

Nothingknocked him on his ass.

That was the last thing he remembered.

He took a chance and slowly opened one twitching eye to his darkened bedroom and hazarded a glance toward his window where a quarter-moon shone through. Then he closed it shut tight again and covered his head with his blanket.

The phone rang again and he frowned. With how badly his head hurt, frowning seemed to be all he could do. Who could be calling him in the middle of the night? Then a sobering realization registered. That wasn’t his regular ringtone. So he threw off his covers and rolled out of bed to search the floor for his jeans—eventually finding them in a pile with his boxers and t-shirt by his bedroom door.

The ringing stopped again as he pulled his secured phone from his jeans pocket then let them drop to the floor before making his way back to his bed. He grimaced at the time displayed on the screen—10:27.

Damn, I must be getting old if this seems late.

He waited for the phone to ring again as he sat. It had to be the colonel—or Duncan as he’d insisted they all call him.

None of them did.

When their former commander had first approached what had once been his Elite Squad about going to work for him, they hadn’t been prepared for what the job would actually entail. Declan had assumed they would offer protective services to individuals like businessmen, visiting dignitaries, maybe a celebrity or two. And that is what they did—for the most part.

The rest?

It was more than he could have imagined. The colonel had been into some deep, covert shit the last few years of his civilian career, and his contacts in that world had poured from the woodwork when they’d discovered he’d ventured out on his own. When the first of those jobs had come up, Declan had asked the colonel if he might be stepping on his former higher-ups’s toes.

The colonel had just given him a half-grin, saying, “If I am, they’ll just have to keep them out of my way or risk having them crushed.”

So far, the colonel had crushed a lot of them.

The phone rang again and he winced at the bright EPA letters flashing on the screen before he swiped to answer. The colonel hadn’t really thought through the whole acronym thing. But once their stationary had arrived it had been obvious they now shared their initials with the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Carter here.”

Then he attempted to stand at attention, even though the colonel couldn’t see him, at the other man’s flat, “Get squared away. We go dark in an hour.”

* * *

“How’s the head?” Cal all but yelled in Declan’s ear from where he sat next to him at the EPA’s conference room table. Declan jerked and sputtered into his third cup of coffee in less than thirty minutes since leaving his bed.

“Not funny.” Declan glared at the other man’s smirk as he set his cup down, then swiped his hand through his dripping beard.

“It kinda was,” Garrett said with a snicker from his seat across the table.

“Just so ya know,” Declan said, his bleary eyes going back and forth between Cal and Garrett, “I hold both of you complicit in my current condition. And you.” He squinted and skewered an unrepentant-looking Solace sitting next to Garrett with a narrowed-eyed glare. “When you least expect it—”

“You look like shit.”

Declan cut his wavering gaze over Garrett’s head to a frowning Colonel Sheppard striding through the conference room door. He sat up straighter. Their boss had dressed in black tactical gear to match the team’s. And that was all it took for the aftereffects from several kamikazes to no longer matter. Whatever they were about to dive into couldn’t be some random operation. The colonel wouldn’t be accompanying them otherwise.

The rest of the Elite Squad—something they still referred to themselves as—must have had the same thought as they each visibly tensed.

“Are you up for an assignment?” His boss sounded about as skeptical as he looked as he set several folders down at the head of the table.

“Yes, sir.” He might look like shit—he definitely felt like shit—but that wouldn’t be keeping him from doing his job.

The colonel’s hard, pale blue eyes narrowed on him for a moment before he nodded. “I’ll trust you know your limitations.” Then he glanced at Solace. And if Declan hadn’t been paying such close attention, he might not have noticed the slight softening in his gaze when he addressed his friend or the barely there blush in her cheeks. “Take a folder and pass the rest, please.”

Declan’s eyes widened just as the colonel noticed him, well, noticing, and slammed down his expression to one of disinterest as he sat. Declan glanced at Solace who had closed up too, only clearing her throat as she took the top folder before passing another to Garrett and sliding the other two over to him and Cal.

Cal had mentioned something about undercurrents and slips of the tongue where Duncan and Solace were concerned. At first he’d dismissed the notion, but now…

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