Page 68 of Blake

His jaw was tight, and Blake could see the anger radiating through the usually calm man as he held Jack’s eyes.

“Yes, my only priority was, and is, to protect the team. Sometimes that means pissing off an individual.” Jack held up his hand to calm the immediate angry response from the team. “I understand it’s not nice to be kept out of the loop or come under a microscope. However, there were no obvious weaknesses in this team. Each one of you was chosen by me for your individual skill set and integrity, so to have to worm out a traitor was not an easy task.”

Lopez looked at Blake and then Jack. “How come Blake was brought in on it? Why not Decker as he’s the profiler?”

Jack was a fair and formidable leader, but he would not take kindly to being questioned in this way, so Blake, braced.

“I am not going to give you an answer to that, Lopez. What I will say is I had my reasons and you either accept that or you don’t. If any of you feel you can no longer trust my judgement or leadership then you are free to walk away. Make no mistake, I will be sorry to see you go, but I cannot run this team without full trust in my abilities and I will not be questioned over my decisions.”

Blake glanced around the room waiting to see if anyone walked. He would be shocked if they did but people reacted in different ways to betrayal.

“Anyone?” Jack waited a full minute, and no one moved. “Good. Now, let’s get down to the business of tracking this target.”

The rest of the meeting was loud and angry as the others tried to make sense of the situation they now found themselves in. Gunner had been a good man, an excellent operator, and friend to them all. None of them could understand what had caused him to turn on them. Blake had no doubt they would find him, and they would get answers one way or another.

Whether Gunner lived through that was not definite. Eidolon did not take something as serious as this lightly and as the men around him fizzed with fury. He knew it depended on which team member found him first whether Gunner kept his life or not.

When the meeting wound up two hours later there was still no set plan in place. They had agreed to meet Monday morning and review the last eight missions to see where Gunner may have been involved.

Now he just wanted to get home, pick up Grace, and take her for lunch. The last week with her parents had been emotional for her. Henrietta had been true to her word and admitted to Grace what she’d told him, doing so in front of her husband. There would be a long road ahead of them to get back to a place where they were a real family again, but they had made a start and despite his initial thoughts he knew they would make it.

Grace had so much love in her and she would be the glue that fixed that family.

He pulled into her drive and jogged to the door using his key to get in. He found the living room empty and called out to her. “Grace?”

“Out here,” she called, and he felt the smile tip his lips up. He moved through the kitchen to the back garden of her house and found her doing stretches with Evelyn.

“What you girls up to?” he asked as he sat in the rattan chair. He was enjoying the sight of Grace in the skin-tight athletic shorts and bra top as she bent over to stretch her thigh muscles.

She laughed catching sight of him watching. “Stop perving, Cal.”

He threw his hands up. “What? I can’t help it. I’m only human.”

“Well, go be human someplace else until I’ve finished this training session with Siren.”

True to her word Roz had every member of the Zenobi team working with Pax to get her up to speed with hand to hand and firearms. This was her second training session and from what he’d seen from her first, she was picking things up without any problems.

“How about I finish moving my stuff in here and then we go for a late lunch?”

Pax stood up and faced him giving him her full attention. “I say it’s a good plan.” She smiled before going up on tiptoes for a sweet kiss that made his dick twitch.

His hand on her hip he growled. “Minx.”

“What? I’m only human.” She laughed as he swatted her ass and chuckled.

“You are so gonna pay for that,” he replied with a stern look which only made her worse.

“Promises, promises.”

“Okay, enough you two. Let’s get the training done so I can go feel up my own man,” Evelyn said.

Blake drove back to his place and finished packing his shit in record time before going home to Pax so he could take his woman out for lunch then spend the night making love to her.

Epilogue

Five Years Later

“We need to go get the kids.”