You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(33)

“I’m the only one with a set of videos devoted to how I watched my team being killed. I bet the Agency’s played them over and over.” Many soldiers had been guests of the jihadists but not many had gone through what he had. They hadn’t been a guest of the Caliph, as he called himself.

“I got captured,” Deke said, settling into a chair. “I still have the scars. I was tortured for almost nine weeks they tell me. I lost track of the days. My team found me, took out the little prison I was in. I still think about it a lot. Ace was taken for longer. I think that’s why he keeps to himself a lot. Not me. I wasn’t allowed to do that. I got home and my damn sisters wouldn’t leave me be. They covered me in babies. Yeah, five sisters can make a lot of damn babies. I tried to tell them I wasn’t safe, that I could hurt them, but they just kept handing them to me. One of them would go to sleep and I’d find myself rocking another. Somewhere along the way I figured if I was okay around those tiny things, I probably could control myself enough to work again. You’re not the only one, man.”

He’d had no one to come home to. “I’m the only one your unit is monitoring.”

“That’s not true,” Malone said. “We monitor a lot of people. Hell, we monitor ourselves half the time.”

“Yeah, well, your boss has a hard-on for me. He’s a f*ckwad with serious issues.” He didn’t get why Ten had it in for him. He’d never met the man before he’d come to McKay-Taggart. He could understand being monitored, but this felt personal, and Jesse couldn’t grasp it.

Deke snorted. “Look, Ten might be a little paranoid, but you have to understand what’s sitting on his shoulders. Your boss can focus on his team because most of the time the damn world won’t explode if Big Tag makes a misstep. That’s not true for Ten. Taggart made a choice. He chose to walk away and concentrate on his own shit. Ten can’t. He was raised to do this job, and he was raised to believe that he’s all that’s standing between the US and all of our enemies.”

“That’s a bit arrogant,” Simon interjected.

“Is it?” Malone asked. “I think a man like Ten has to be arrogant. Do you have any idea what he’s sacrificed for this country? You ever seen the man with his shirt off? I caught him once coming out of the shower. There’s a reason he doesn’t work out with the rest of us. His back is a ruined mess. Looks like brands. Maybe iron pokers. It looked like one was sent straight through him. He’s got matching marks on both sides. So don’t think the man doesn’t know what pain is.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve all got issues.” He really didn’t care what Ten had been through. He couldn’t right now. Maybe later he would find some well of sympathy, but he was tapped out for the moment. “So did you know Phoebe was his sister?”

Boomer sat up. “The hot chick is his sister? Shit. I was thinking about hitting on her.”

“Think again because I’ll make that massive knot on your head look like a tiny bump,” Jesse threatened. Damn it. He had to start thinking before he spoke. “Or hey, give her a try. Maybe she won’t be as cold for you.”

“Really? You’re going to play it that way, Murdoch?” Naturally Phoebe chose that moment to walk in. He watched as she moved to the conference table. They were right. She moved with ease and grace now. Had anything at all been real about her?

He just shrugged.

She sank into the chair beside him and sent him a stare that every man who had ever been involved with a woman knew meant trouble. “So now I’m the ice queen? Could you figure out which kind of evil I am, please? Because before I was a slut.”

“I didn’t say that.” He’d never once used that word about a woman. It was ugly. No woman should be made to feel bad about her natural sexuality. He was an idiot, but at least he had a code. “I’m sorry if it came off that way. I was trying to figure out your relationship with Ten. I wasn’t calling you names. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you or anything. I was just trying to see how he reacted.”

Her lips curled up. “Apology accepted. It was smart, you know. It was a good play. Ten certainly wasn’t ready for it.” She turned to the other men in the room and her face went icy cold. “Who decided it was a good idea to raid an American company on American soil?”

The three of them looked back and forth, obviously not quite sure how to handle the new girl in the room. Malone finally spoke up. “That was Ten’s call. It’s Phoebe, right?”

“It’s ma’am to you. I might have spent the last year embedded but I’m still your superior, Malone, and don’t think I didn’t vet every single one of you. Just because you don’t know who I am, doesn’t mean I don’t know who you are. I know your names, your histories, and why you were chosen for this team. I also know that I chose you because you’re supposed to be smart enough to know when the time has come to tell the boss he’s lost his damn mind.”

She had a really sexy voice when she got all authoritative. He’d never minded a woman being in charge. He totally blamed his grade school teacher, Ms. Tucker. There had been so few children that she’d taught grades one through five, and she’d been the first female authority figure he’d ever had. She’d been sweet and kind, and she knew how to kick a little ass when she’d needed to.