the road. Rebecca and Dmitry had disappeared through the trees in opposite directions.
Okay, now what? Zack glanced up to the sky, but even before a prayer could leave his lips, he knew exactly which way to run.
Zack took off after Rebecca. He gave up on stealth and went for speed. She was smaller, lither and better able to weave through the dense underbrush. He felt like a rhinoceros crashing after her. But she would never be able to beat the sheer strength of the adrenaline that surged in his veins. He caught up to her, slowly and surely. Then for a moment they were pacing each other, his feet just a few steps behind hers.
Zack’s hand reached out and brushed her shoulder, even as he dreaded the moment he was going to have to grab her and force her to stop. “Rebecca.” He panted. “Please.”
She stopped running. So did he. They stood there together, face-to-face in the forest, catching their breath. Her hands grabbed both of her knees, as her head swung down between her legs for a moment, panting. Then she swung her head back up, and he watched as dark hair cascaded around her shoulders, dancing like grass in the wind. His mouth went dry.
Rebecca’s hands rose up in front of her face in two small fists. He watched as her legs moved into the perfect lines of a fighter’s stance. Something inside his stomach lurched. He watched her take the pose he’d seen her take so many times before, back on the mats when they were so much younger and knew each other so much better. His heart remembered how there’d always been a slight smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eyes as she challenged him to a fight. Now, the look in her eyes was deadly serious and the curl of her lip almost trembled.
His heart sank down to the bottom of his chest. He leaned back against a tree, suddenly feeling all the fight leave his body.
“Aw, come on, Becs. Don’t look at me like that. I know this situation is crazy, and I can’t begin to imagine what’s going through your head right now, seeing me again like this after all these years. But I promise you, I’m on your side here. And no matter what, I’d never hurt you. Ever.” He ran one hand through his hair, suddenly conscious of all the white that had crept into it over the years. Then he glanced down at his chest and arms, feeling almost self-conscious about the physique he’d worked so hard to build. “I’m still the same guy you used to spar and joke around with back when we were younger. Only a whole lot older and in slightly different packaging.”
As he watched, something softened in the lines of her face. Her shoulders relaxed slightly. But still her hands didn’t drop.
“I’m not going anywhere with those men,” she said.
“Of course you’re not!” He chuckled without even meaning to at how ludicrous a thought that even was. Then he winced, as fire flashed in the depths of her eyes. She’d always hated being laughed at.
“You told me to go with them.” She leveled the words at him like blows.
“No, I didn’t! I told you to go around to the side of the van and fall flat on your face.”
“You never told me to fall down. You just kept making stupid, Seth-like comments about how clumsy I was and that I was likely to fall down—”
“Because I was signaling to you that I needed you out of the line of fire. I needed you to get around the van, drop to the ground, so I could take them out without risking you getting shot. But I could hardly telegraph my plans in front of them. So I was trusting that you’d get what I was saying.” His voice turned hoarse in his throat. “How could you not get that? What? Did you think I was just randomly insulting you, while your life was in danger, like some arrogant jerk?”
She raised her hands to her face. Her fingers pressed into the corners of her eyes, like she was fighting back tears. Oh, wow. She had. She’d been terrified, and in danger, and for some reason thought he was actually taking potshots at her. His head shook.
What happened, Rebecca? What happened to you? What happened to us?
In all the years she’d lived as a smiling face in his footlocker and as a memory at the corner of his mind, he’d focused on the good times. The mornings they’d gone jogging around the base together before anyone else was awake. The infectious laugh that would slip through her lips when he managed to surprise her. The way her fingers would brush against his arm.
But now, that final time he’d seen her, that painful moment he’d tried to forget, filled his mind in blaring sound and color. How she’d stood, just inside the shelter of the school archway, while the rain poured down around him. Smudgy lines of makeup making her eyes look even bigger. Her hair twisted around her head like something off a movie screen. And wearing some sparkling, extraordinary getup that had blown his mind and made him forget how words worked.
What are you doing here? Her eyes had narrowed. You missed me getting the trophy.
She’d been angry. Hurt. He hadn’t known why.
He’d looked down at his feet. I just enlisted.
An engine rumbled in the distance. The van was leaving. Rebecca’s fingers were still hiding her face.
His soldier’s mind reminded him that she was the stepsister of a man who’d stolen government secrets. The fact that Black Talon mercenaries had come after her and Seth had blown up the road to her property meant she was somehow involved, whether she knew it or not. And his own CO had suggested he simply take her to Timmins and let the police handle it. Yet, for one brief moment, all his heart could see was his former best friend—frightened, overwhelmed and desperately needing someone to wrap their arms around her, pull her into their chest and hold her tightly.
Even if right now that person couldn’t be him.
He stepped forward and reached for her hands. “I’m sorry. A long time ago, we had such an amazing connection. It was like we could read each other’s minds. It was wrong of me to just assume you’d get what I was saying back there or what I was asking you to do.”
She let him peel her hands away from her face. Her eyes were dark and brimming with questions.
“You didn’t even tell me it was you,” she said.
I was hoping you’d recognized me. I was hoping you’d know.
Maybe he’d even been hoping on some level that she’d never forgotten him just like he’d never forgotten her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Her fingers fluttered in his. But she didn’t pull away. “My real name is Zack Keats. I dropped the ‘Biggs’ when I enlisted. Keats was my mother’s maiden name, my middle name and the last name of the uncle and aunt who raised me. I was the last of their family tree. I am a sergeant with the Canadian Armed Forces. Trust me, this is hardly the way I wanted this reunion to go and there’s so much I want to tell you that I can’t. But ask me any question you want, and I promise that even if I can’t give you an answer, I will not lie to you.”
She stepped back and pulled her hands away. Then she crossed her arms, leveled a steady, unflinching gaze at him and asked him the one question she’d know he’d never be able to answer. The one question he’d spent his whole adult life hoping no civilian would ever ask him:
“Are you with special ops?”
* * *
Zack didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to. The split-second flash of alarm in his eyes was all the confirmation she needed. In a nanosecond, his facade was calm again, expressionless, like that of a man who’d worked very hard at learning how to hide everything he really thought and felt so very deep down inside, so that it never came close to hitting the surface.
“The Canadian Forces special operations are highly classified,” Zack said, almost mechanically.
“I know.” Just how I know that if you are special forces, you won’t be able to tell me. “But would it be okay if I told you a story?”
His eyebrows rose. “Go ahead.”
“When I was a teenager my best friend,