Backblast by Candace Irving (miss read books TXT) 📕

she'd slept, John had gathered them up and taken them somewhere to eradicate every last trace of that monster, so she wouldn't have to. In the process he'd managed to burrow himself so deeply into her heart she suspected she'd never be able to get him out. The only question left was…did she want to?

Three light raps on her door offered a reprieve—from herself.

Unless they'd come from John.

"Yes?" Great. The tears had shredded her vocal cords.

"Sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to wake you. I can come back." Yrle.

She cleared her throat and tried again. "That's all right, Chief. I'm up. Just give me a minute to finish getting dressed."

Finish?

Regan glanced down at the baggy Army tee that clearly did not belong to her. She hadn't even begun to dress. What's more, with her face as blotchy as it was bound to be after that silent crying jag, normal voice or not, there'd be no doubt as to what she'd been doing in here.

She retrieved her watch first, glancing at the time as she wrapped the olive-drab grosgrain band around her wrist and velcroed it into place.

0713?

Good Lord. She didn't know if John had accidentally or deliberately killed her alarm while he'd been cleaning, but she'd overslept by nearly two hours.

She pulled herself together and swapped the man's rumpled uniform tee for one of her own and a fresh set of the ACUs in her duffel. She was dressed—boots, credentials, thigh-holstered sidearm included—in under two minutes. Making a beeline for the sink, she blew through another two as she collected the items within and shoved them in her hygiene kit so she could brush her teeth, wash her face and French braid her hair.

She was folding up the length of the latter and securing it at the nape of her neck with several pins as she reached the door.

Yrle stood on the opposite side, patiently holding Regan's iPhone.

"Morning, Chief."

"Good morning, ma'am." Yrle held out the phone. "Here you go."

Regan retrieved her electronic lifeline—at least on dry land and near accessible, abusable cellular towers—and noted the crevices around the black case. Like her boots and her gear, her phone was devoid of blood. "Thank you."

The chief shook her head. "It wasn't me. Major Garrison stopped by my office a few hours ago with your boots and sidearm. He took care of that too. But I hadn't yet had a chance to copy the audio file of the interview, so I held onto it after he left."

Regan nodded.

"Ma'am?"

A slight shiver scraped up Regan's spine as the chief glanced over her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Make sure you change your password…immediately."

The shiver intensified.

"Why?" But she knew.

Riyad.

Durrani must have hexed her DNA juju before he died, at least where this woman was concerned, because the chief nodded. Then rechecked her six. Satisfied that no one was behind her, listening, she swung back. "You asked me to watch for anything usual."

"And?"

"I caught him with your phone after I'd finished with the audio file."

The shiver morphed into an outright chill. "Do you know what he was looking at?"

"Yes, ma'am. He'd accessed one your text streams. The one between you…and Major Garrison. I was on the phone with Ops, arranging the flight for Durrani's autopsy, when he came into the shack. He saw me turn around before I hung up and quickly returned your phone to my desk, so I got curious. When he left, I typed in your password and the stream was still open. He hadn't had time to close it."

Why would he even look?

The moment John had departed the ICU back at Campbell, he'd gone into mission mode. She hadn't heard from him since.

Unlike his ex, she hadn't expected, or really wanted it. She'd known that whatever he'd been sent to do was serious or Palisade would never have pulled him from her hospital room three hours after she'd woken from that coma. Hence, she'd wanted John focused on whatever he'd needed to do. So he'd come back in one piece. Without any more scars on his body, or his soul, to show for it.

She'd even admitted to their comms drought with Agent Riyad yesterday, right in this stateroom.

Either the spook hadn't believed her…or Riyad had intentionally set out to search for the texts she'd saved on her phone. The texts John had sent sixteen months ago in Hohenfels, when she'd been using him to investigate his houseguest for plotting a terror attack…right around the time someone had also followed John to that CID parking lot.

The chill spread into an ice-cold void that settled low and heavy inside her. Dread began to seep in, filling it.

What the hell did John have on Riyad?

And what did Riyad believe he had on John?

And there was the personal violation against her—from a fellow agent and so-called current partner. Add on the standard creep factor and the invasion of privacy to the rest, and she was seriously pissed off.

But to rain down on Riyad would expose Yrle. Something she refused to do unless the situation became critical.

Regan nodded, carefully smoothing her facial features, despite her lingering ire and larger, looming concerns. "Thank you, Chief. We'll keep this between us."

Relief filled the woman's eyes. "Major Garrison asked me to pass a message along, too. He said you have a meeting with General Palisade in the ship's wardroom at 0800. If you'd like, we can head there now so you can eat breakfast first."

Regan glanced at her watch. She had almost forty minutes until that meeting.

More than enough time for what she needed to accomplish.

She shook her head, ignoring the dull throb that was already arguing with her coming counter proposal. Caffeine could wait. "Where are the guards?"

"Corporal Vetter just left for chow. Staff Sergeant Brandt's in sickbay."

"What's wrong with Brandt?" The Marine had seemed fine yesterday during their interview.

"The sea state got to him last night. You know what they say: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. He was so dehydrated from throwing up, he finally crawled into Medical early this