Page 66 of Red Hunt

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a sip of water. Was that what I wanted? Another chance? For us to be together? I looked around. Hadn’t I chosen this lodge for its remote location? To get away from people and find peace?

I watched Blake and Peter, who thoroughly inspected the war room.

Not only had the team grown and Carter was ready to settle down, but I’d changed. My goals and dreams had changed. All because of Milli. I’d found a woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I’d fallen in love with Milli.

Wait, what?

My breath shuddered at that thought. I mulled over the words, their taste in my mouth. Love—spend the rest of my life with her. I waited for a sense of panic—anything to tell me what I was thinking was wrong—but nothing. Settling down, spending my life with Milli—it didn’t unsettle me, didn’t faze me at all. It felt inevitable…right.

She was the one for me. That realization settled deep into my gut. It calmed a part of myself that had always been restless, urging me to move on.

I jumped up. I needed to go see her.

Now.

“Ready to go get your girl?” Peter grinned when I nodded.

“Looks like this one is a lot smarter than we were,” Blake said and patted me on the back.

“Though it would be better for us to take the lead. You hang back until we got a hold of the situation and give you the all-clear.”

Yeah, just because I realized I loved Milli, didn’t mean she was anywhere near even considering love, or me, or loving me back.

40

MILLI

Alan had dropped me off at home even though he wanted me to join him and Jessie at their farmhouse. But I needed to be alone. I’d never watched one of the videos they’d taken of me. Never thought I would. I got enough memories, nightmares, and flashbacks to take me back without needing to have a visual reminder. But they’d been out there. I’d stumbled upon that particular one a couple of years ago. Strangely enough, those bastards didn’t even care to change the filenames.

I’d been snooping around the house, waiting for Max to come back from his run. When I entered the room, I was immediately intrigued by the plaque on the door, the top-of-the-line equipment, the map of a network infrastructure on the wall. I realized this was some kind of IT operation. I just wanted to know how good they were. Well, not good at all, it seemed like, because I could bypass the lock and break into the computer in a heartbeat thanks to my trusty thumb drive with a myriad of scripts on it and the bag of tricks I’d learned in recent years. I just wasn’t prepared for what I’d found. Wasn’t prepared to recognize the file. I was sure it couldn’t be. That was why I’d opened it. That was why I’d started to watch it. Only a couple of seconds were enough to take me back there, enough to suck me into that abyss.

I wiped at the tears still streaming down my face. Swallowed against the bitter tang in my mouth.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been so happy. If I hadn’t let my guard down so completely: waking up next to Max, our lovemaking… I had never felt so good in my own skin, so cared for, so cherished. The higher the high, the steeper the fall. The greater the pain.

Boy, did it hurt.

I heard footsteps on the stairs. Did I forget to lock up after Alan left?

Shit.

I inhaled sharply when Peter and Blake barged in as if they were a herd of raging bulls.

I braced myself. But who was I kidding? I had no defenses. I was weak.

“Why isn’t Alan here?” Peter barked, his tone full of accusation.

“Because I asked him to leave. I want to be alone, so please leave.”

Blake shook his head, then settled down beside me on the sofa.

“No can do, Milli.”

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. They needed to know what had happened, needed to know what kind of monster Max was, and the only one who could tell them was me. Even if that meant having to reveal my past. Even if that meant I needed to talk about what I had found.

“Max isn’t who you think he is.” I choked. Tears threatened to fall again.

“No, listen, Milli. Max isn’t who YOU think he is,” Peter interjected and hunched down before me and grabbed my hand. “Max is part of an organization called Sec Ops Group. All the guys you met yesterday are. They’re fighting trafficking mostly, but they’re also hunting cyber criminals. Like child pornography, for example. What you saw…that’s Max’s job.”

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