Page 58 of Brawler
Emily’s jaguar. Sombra.
The name threaded through his gut, heavy with meaning, so much meaning for her.
Then the devastation hit, swift and cold. That magnificent footage sealed it. She wasn’t just logging spots in a jungle. She had captured something extraordinary, a mother and her cubs alive against impossible odds, and he was about to strip it all from her.
Her laptop. Her SD cards. Her field notes. Every hour she had poured into this work, every sliver of data that tied her to her sister’s memory. Today, all of it would be taken away. His job demanded it.
Anxiety pressed sharp against his ribs. Not fear for himself, not even fear of losing the team, but fear of what this would do to her. She had clawed her way into this green hell to protect and prove the resilience of something wild and precious, and now the burden fell on him to be the bastard who erased it.
He looked at her, her face lit by the flickering screen, awe shimmering in her eyes. Tucked against his heart, beneath the layers of duty and grit, a reluctant, aching admiration settled in. She had done this. This slip of a woman, with her battered laptop and stubborn fire, had captured the ghost cat and her cubs on film. She had seen what no one else had.
He was going to take it away from her.
The realization scalded him.
Emily’s hand hovered above the keyboard, knuckles white, her breath snagging like the footage had punched through her chest. He could feel her willing the trio onward, her body vibrating with the same feral tension as the mother on screen.
The jaguar slipped into the green dark, cubs tumbling after. Silence cut the moment in half.
Then men burst into view. Boots, rifles, shapes of violence sweeping the ground the cats had just vacated. Their voices barked through the recording, harsh and too close.
Brawler’s jaw flexed. His protective instincts surged hard and fast, the same way they did in the seconds before a firefight. Notjust for the team. For her. For those cubs. For the wild she had tethered herself to.
He started to rise, opened his mouth to speak, but she grabbed his forearm galvanizing him. “There’s more.” Her voice was compressed, filled with something he hated hearing. Violence…it was tinged with his world.
She pressed a button and the footage advanced a day and a half. She stopped it, and it resumed in normal time. In the distance, he heard the faintwhop-whop-whopof chopper blades, and his gut clenched. The helicopter came into view, hovered, and Emily’s hand flexed, her eyes hollowed out. Thewhooshof an RPG, that hated sound of a grenade carrying with it devastating destruction. It hit the chopper’s tail rotor, and it spun out of control, slamming into the ground. Men were already moving, guns ready, pulling out bloodied Marines. It was clear the pilots were dead, and the fuckers left them where they’d died. His fists clenched, and Emily let out a soft breath. She turned to him and he went to his knees, pulling her against him.
“I heard it on the news, but I barely paid attention to it. Those were the missing Marines. You weren’t just searching for that drone…the missiles. Those men…” Her voice caught, and she just pressed against him, trembling.
He cupped the back of her head, fingers firm, anchoring her against him. Her breath shook through his shirt, warm and uneven.
“War is ugly,” he murmured, voice low and rough, threaded with the kind of honesty that never made it into after-action reports. “Brutal and inhuman. We’re here to set things right, as we always do. The UAV, the hellfires are important. National security. We’re black, under radar, all of this has to stay classified.”
He paused, the weight of the moment pressing close, then gentled his hold, his thumb stroking once through her hair. “But we’re here for those brothers who went missing. Thanks to you, we’ve found them. We can get them out of here.”
He eased her back, cupping her face in both hands, tilting her chin until her eyes met his. Her lashes were damp, her mouth trembling, but she held his gaze.
“You did that, Emily,” he said, steady and unflinching. “With your goddamned amazing instincts. With your persistence. With your willingness to trust us.” His thumbs brushed the heat of her cheekbones, grounding her in every word. “You helped us possibly save those Marines.”
Her breath stuttered, caught between disbelief and something deeper, something sharper. She searched his eyes as if waiting for the catch, the caveat, the moment he would dismiss her contribution as accident or luck. But there was nothing there except that sincere steadiness and the rasp of conviction in his voice.
Her throat tightened. “I hope we find them alive,” she whispered, the protest faint even to her own ears. “I was just…trying to finish what I started.” Her hand trembled against his wrist, fingers curling like she needed the anchor. “I didn’t even know…”
The words trailed off, hollow with awe and fear in equal measure. What he was telling her, what he saw in her, was bigger than jaguars and data cards. Bigger than proving she wasn’t the girl who had walked away and left her sister unguarded.
Her chest squeezed, tears pricking her eyes. “I never thought anything I did would matter like this. Not in your world. Not life and death.” She shook her head, a wet laugh breaking free, more fragile than amused. “You…you make it sound like I belong here. Like I’m not just some complication you have to drag around.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She dropped her gaze, but his hands stayed firm on her face, steadying her like she was something worth holding onto.
His thumbs brushed the wetness at the corners of her eyes, a touch gentler than his voice. “Complication?” he rasped, the word grinding out like gravel. “Hell no. You’re the reason those Marines, if they survived, are going to go home to their families. Don’t ever think you don’t belong, Shortcake. Not after this.”
For a beat, the cave held nothing but the sound of her uneven breathing and the steady drum of his heart under her palms. The admission cost him, she could see it in the tightness of his jaw, in the way his gaze burned through her like he’d just handed her something he didn’t give lightly.
Then the weight of reality snapped back in, sharp and unrelenting. He drew in a breath, released her face, and the softness hardened into command.
“Gather your stuff. We’re leaving, now.”
His voice had dropped into that flat, lethal register she was already beginning to recognize, the tone that didn’t bend, didn’t soften, didn’t allow for debate. He turned, shoulders squared to the cave mouth, then halted mid-stride. When he looked back at her, her stomach sank.National security…has to stay classified. Oh, God. No.
