Page 112 of Every Last Breath

She was strong and courageous, and he was the luckiest damn bastard in the world. She had a tough job, one he was starting to admire, and Novak wasn’t making things any easier. Emotion was a complication she couldn’t afford, and he finally understood why.

He wrapped gauze around her feet as best he could without making it too bulky to pull on her shoes. “Finding Novak is the most important thing and I know you need to clear your head of everything else to focus on bringing him down.” His gaze met hers. “I just want you to know that I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I’ve got your six out there. I let you down before when you needed me most. It’ll never happen again.”

“Thank you. For having my back, for understanding, for risking your life by helping me with this.”

“It’s the least I can do. I don’t deserve you. Or a second chance at happiness with you. But I hope one day you’ll forgive me.”

Her warm hand caressed his cheek. “I forgave you while I was held prisoner in a warehouse, forced to face the truth. It’s foolish to hold on to the pain. We’ve both paid for our mistakes. It’s time to move forward, but…”

She dropped her hand and lowered her head.

“There’s something I never told you.” She met his eyes. “I didn’t like going to your house and being around your parents.”

He blinked, caught completely off guard. “Why? My parents were always nice to you. My mother loved you.”

“I thought the feel of your house, the atmosphere, would be different from mine, but there was a similar underlying sadness. A heaviness in the air from all the secrets and pretending that everything was normal when it wasn’t. At the time, I didn’t fully understand it, but looking back, I see that our families were two sides of the same coin. I don’t know what a second chance would look like for us. What kind of atmosphere would we create together? We’re not the people we used to be. We’re both a bit damaged.”

“We have changed, but it’s like time has made us an even better fit for one another.” He took her hand in his. “Some scars don’t go away.” He ran her fingers along the jagged line on his face. “But they can all heal. If our love can survive the last nine years, it can surmount anything.”

The locker room door creaked open. “They have the threat matrixes loaded,” Harper said. “They’re waiting to go through them with you as soon as you’re ready.”

“We’ll be right there.” Maddox pulled away, easing to her feet, and went to the bench with the canvas bag. Nodding, Harper left.

The right words to convince her were lost to him.

They belonged together, always had, always would. They were inevitable. It was simple to him, but it wouldn’t be that clear-cut to her. For now, they needed to find and stop Novak. He needed to believe that the rest, they’d work through together.

* * *

Gray Box Headquarters, Northern Virginia

4:15 p.m. EDT

Maddox loaded her gun in her shoulder holster, clipping handcuffs and an expandable steel baton to the rig. She stuffed a tube of tear gas gel in her pocket and grabbed the anti-inflammatory pain reliever from the med kit.

On the way to the conference room, she popped the pills, washing them down with water. She nabbed a seat inside next to Cole and suppressed a sigh of relief as she got off her feet.

Cole rested a hand on her knee as he inhaled a couple of empanadas.

Doc hung up the phone in the back of the room and sat. “That was the CDC. An unidentified male with an Eastern European accent called and told them to prepare for large-scale containment of a facility that would soon be attacked by a smallpox weapon. He claims he’ll notify them of the location once it’s too late to stop it.”

Maddox’s stomach dipped, tension weaving in her chest.

“Why would he show his hand by contacting the CDC?” Cole sat up in his chair, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Wouldn’t he want this disease to get out and infect as many people as possible?” Reece asked. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s brilliant.” Maddox put her forearms on the table and folded her hands. “Makes perfect sense.”

Sanborn took a seat at the head of the table. “Enlighten us.”

“Novak made it clear to me he wants America’s punishment to be slow and drawn out. He said he wanted to rip out the hearts of the citizens by making them watch.” She met the curious gazes around the room. “When terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, it was the worst attack on U.S. soil. The imagery of those planes hitting the buildings played on a loop, devastating us each time we watched.”

Maddox swallowed back the sorrow that always welled whenever she thought of it.

“Now imagine a public facility where people have gone for entertainment gets quarantined because of a biological attack. No one in or out except the CDC doctors in hazmat. Smallpox-M takes how long to kill a person?”

“Five days,” Doc said.