Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(45)

Okada waved a brown bottle in her direction and said, “Wanna brewski, Cap? It’s warm and tastes like cat piss, but it gets the job done.”

Seriously. He said brewski. He talked like that all the time, like he was an extra in Animal House or something. Lilli thought it was charmingly dorky. “As delightful as that sounds, Okada, I’m gonna let you boys enjoy that on your own.”

Lopez tossed her a bottled water, and they got back to the game, which was competitive as hell but not serious at all. The guys trash talked and made sophomoric jokes. They also gossiped like they were at a quilting bee. Always remembering her role, Lilli still found a way to be in the mix with the rest of them.

This is what Lilli loved. She loved flying, she loved the adrenaline, the challenge of her job. She loved being good at it. Her job fulfilled her. But this, these guys, this bond—she didn’t need any family but this.

She would die for any one of them; she’d do it without a second thought.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


Lilli hiked back the seven miles to the Camaro. She threw her pack in the trunk and got in behind the wheel. She sat there, not noticing the heat in the black interior on this sweltering mid-July day, trying not to despair.

She hadn’t seen her target in almost two weeks. She was beginning to think her window had slammed shut on her while she wasn’t looking. Rick had no new intel for her, either. By the time he’d had confirmation for her, the target seemed to have disappeared.

Fuck, f*ck, f*ck!

Now Rick was in heavy search mode, trying to get a read on the new location—which meant that Lilli might be leaving Signal Bend. If things worked out according to plan, she would stay put for months, minimally, to avoid suspicious movements around the time of the kill—if, in fact, there was an investigation. But if the target had moved far, then she would have to follow.

She didn’t want to go. With every passing day, she and Isaac were getting more wrapped up together. If things worked according to plan, there was no reason Lilli would have to leave Signal Bend at all if she didn’t want to. She could do her actual job from anywhere, and a remote location was preferred. Although she’d only known Isaac a few weeks, Lilli understood that she’d stay if she could. She felt a bond with him that she had not felt before, not with someone who wasn’t blood.

Lilli had a fairly extensive sexual past, but she didn’t have a lot of experience with matters of the heart.

She’d had a couple of steady boyfriends in high school, and she’d ended her virginity with the second, but she’d never thought she was in love with either. Living the cliché, she’d gotten experimental and adventurous in college and had slept with rather a lot of people for a while, until she’d met Peter, a grad student. They’d been serious. She’d thought she loved Peter. But when he’d gotten a job at a college in New Mexico and moved away, she hadn’t even considered continuing the relationship long-distance. Within a couple of months, she’d more or less stopped thinking of him. So she’d been wrong—not love. Once she joined the service, her opportunities for romance dwindled markedly. She’d had a couple of entirely physical arrangements with other officers while she was in Afghanistan, meeting for righteous, rowdy f*cks when they could get R&R time together. But she’d never truly bonded with anyone.

What she felt with Isaac was something different. It reached a different place in her. She’d thought it was just something elementally physical, like their bodies were somehow more in sync than others, because she was drawn to him in ways that freaked her out a little. If they were in any kind of physical proximity, she found it very difficult not to be touching him. And maybe that was a lot of it, especially at first. But in these last couple of weeks they’d talked—not banter, but real talking—and she’d told him things she’d never told anyone. Things about her family, her mom. About her love for her father and how she missed him. Even some things about the Army.

She’d never talked about any of that with anyone, because she’d never had anyone to talk to before, no one she trusted to have that kind of power over her. But she did trust Isaac. She didn’t know what he’d done to earn trust she’d never given before, but he had it.

She hadn’t given him any more information about her target or why she meant to kill him, but she’d been tempted once or twice. She didn’t because to disclose would be to extend the risk to him. And to his credit, he’d only asked one more time, and when she’d refused, he’d let it drop. He trusted her, too.

She was in love with him. She hadn’t said it; she didn’t know if she could say it, but she was coming to understand the truth of it nonetheless. For the first time in the ten years since her father had died, Lilli felt like she could have a home.

Leaving Signal Bend would hurt.

Finally becoming aware of the heat in the car, her hair soaked and her t-shirt plastered to her dripping body, Lilli started the engine and drove back to Signal Bend, a despondent weight heavy in her chest.

oOo

She showered when she got home and dressed in black spandex shorts and a running top. She’d hiked 14 miles already so had no plans to run, but it was too hot for more clothes than these. Plus, she thought she might get in some yoga toward evening. One of the biggest challenges she’d faced being out in the country was the lack of a good gym. She was using yoga for all her muscle work. She’d found she enjoyed going outside with her mat as the sun was slanting low in the west, just as the cicadas were starting to sing, and finding some focus. She needed focus.