Peter’s self-control snapped.

  “What do you want me to do?” he bellowed, bolting to his feet. “It’s my job, putting them in danger, and then getting them out of it! I’m doing all I can to find the men those bastards have taken, my men, Luke, who have been missing for months. So forgive me if I use everything Chad and the others can offer, if their advantage is the only one we have at the moment.”

  “It’s not an advantage! It’s a weakness, his hidden mark, because you’re exploiting it, knowing he won’t say no.”

  Peter breathed out, slowly, with control, pushing down the rage that was burning him from the inside.

  “His father,” he ground out through clenched teeth, “erased his mark to protect him from Eugene, and Eugene is dead. By this untested rookie’s hand. That was the sole purpose of Chad’s hidden mark. It wasn’t done to put him on the bench forever, to turn him into a coward, or to allow him to avoid responsibility. And it’s not the advantage I was talking about. His advantage is his brain, and he just proved it, again.”

  “I thought your job was to keep them alive, not help them prove a point,” Luke said, not backing down.

  A tremor ran down Peter’s spine, his voice coming out flat and tight, “I do not need you to tell me what my job is.”

  He’d seen bigger men scamper away at the sound of that voice, but Luke just stuck out his chin and regarded Peter from across the room with a stubborn look.

  “You’re angry because you know I’m right.” Luke turned and walked out the door.

  For a minute, the silence seemed deafening. Peter slumped into his chair and glowered at the door. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Skull.

  “Peter,” Skull’s deep voice sounded on the other end.

  “Everything going all right?”

  “Yes. Team Beta in position, got Dave’s car, ready to take the Commandos on a chase.”

  Peter nodded. “Good. Tell everyone to be careful. They have AKs.”

  A pause. “I’ll remind everyone to keep their distance.”

  “Call me if there’s any news in the next…” Peter looked at his watch, “two hours.”

  “I will.”

  The line went dead, and Peter put the phone down. His mind blank, he stared at the gun that Chad had left on the table.

  He got up and walked across the room, then picked up the gun, studying it with an absent frown. His hands moved of their own accord, and before he knew it, the AK was just a pile of metal on the table. There was only one part in his hand.

  He looked away as he weighed it on his palm, lost in thought.

  The magazine was empty.

  Chapter 17

  “Wake up.”

  Chad heard her but stayed as he was, sprawled on his queen-size bed with his eyes closed. She had made him get one, if she was going to spend nights in his room, and now wouldn’t even let him sleep.

  “I know you’re not sleeping. Wake up!” Pain whined. Her fingers wrapped around his ankle, trying to pull him off the bed.

  He groaned and rolled over on his side, then pretended to have fallen back asleep. Her impatient footsteps told him she had come to his side of the bed. Before she could get away, his arm shot out and hooked around her.

  “Hey!”

  He pulled her down, making sure her arms were trapped against her body. Then he threw the covers over his head and willed sleep to swallow him once more.

  “I’ve been waiting for hours,” she said. “Will you just get up?”

  She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, which only made him tighten his arm around her. There was a choking sound. Maybe she’ll pass out, he thought, drifting somewhere between dream and consciousness.

  Once more, her voice tore him out of his sleep. “It’s ten o’clock!”

  He didn’t hold back the growl that ripped from his mouth.

  “I understand that you had a stressful day yesterday, but you gotta get up eventually,” she insisted.

  “Night,” he muttered. “A stressful night.”

  She struggled to free herself, and this time, he didn’t hold her.

  He rolled over onto his back and opened one eye to find her standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed. “You missed breakfast,” she grumbled.

  “My God, how am I going to live with myself?” His arms flew up in the air in mock astonishment before dropping back on the bed as he closed his eyes again. “One less reason to get up.”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t go back to sleep.”

  “Why?” He looked at her face, so adorably frustrated for no real reason, and answered his own question, “Because you’re bored, I know, I know…”

  She grinned—that rare, sudden grin that went all the way up to her eyes; then climbed onto the bed with him. “Aren’t you curious what Rooney and Mark have found out? Get up!” She bounced on the bed, and Chad huffed, feeling nauseated already.

  After all the stress, what with the operation and Luke being mad at him, all he’d wished for was a good night’s sleep. Instead, he’d gotten insomnia. He’d spent hours watching Pain snore like a drunken pirate, the image complete with a black eye and a band-aid on her nose after her practice session with Marco. And when sleep had finally come, shallow and troubled, he dreamed of the Commandos, of their dark base, glowing control rooms, and countless rows of women in black uniform.

  He deserved a day off after a night like that.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked. Chad turned to find her stretched at his side, her eyes on him. “You gotta check up on Dave, too, you know.”

  Dave.

  He sighed, reaching out to brush his thumb down her nose, light as a feather. The bruises were almost gone, but she kept the band-aid on.

  “I forgot,” he murmured. Her hand wrapped around his. “All right. Gimme a minute.”

  He was still half-asleep when he knocked on Dave’s door and called, “Dave, open up, it’s me!”

  Silence.

  He leaned against the wall, curling his fingers into a fist before he rapped on the door again. “Come on, I’m waiting!”

  No sound came from the room. Chad straightened up. It was too quiet, like no one was even there. He yanked at the doorknob, but it was locked.

  “Dave, if you’re in there, and you don’t open the door in ten seconds, I’m gonna have to break it down.” His heartbeat speeding up with each passing second, he took a step back. Already, panic was filling every cell in his body. “Time’s up!” he yelled, and raised his foot for a kick.

  The door exploded inwards, and he caught Luke’s surprised face sticking out of the waiting room down the hall before he stormed inside. He took in the empty room and swore. The bathroom door was open, so Dave couldn’t be in there, and in the chaos of discarded clothes, weapons, and personal items, Chad instantly spotted an empty vodka bottle.

  “Dammit.”

  “What?”

  He jumped at the voice, turning to see Pain standing by the door. “He’s gone!”

  “What?” Her voice rose a couple of octaves, and she strode forward so she could see for herself. “How?”

  “I don’t know. You were the one who was supposed to look after him.”

  She spun around, eyes big in protest. “I did! He said he was sleeping.”

  Chad opened his mouth to yell another accusation but snapped it shut. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked around once more. Yelling at each other wasn’t going to help.

  He took out his phone and called Dave’s number, only to hear it go straight to voicemail.

  “So, I guess he wasn’t in the canteen?” he asked after a moment.

  Pain shook her head, looking calmer herself. “Why would he leave?”

  Chad lifted his shoulders but stopped when his eyes fell on the empty bottle again. He grabbed it and held it up. “He ran out of booze?”

  “What, the whole bottle? By himself?” She stared at him.

  “I don’t know. Does alcohol even work on him anymore?”

  “I don’t think so…” Pain frowned, before something flickered in her gaze, and she looked down.

  “Pain?”

  “Yeah?” She kept her eyes on the floor a second longer, but when she looked up at him, her face was blank once again. “No, seriously, I don’t know.”

  Chad pushed down his anger, knowing there was no time to argue with her about what she possibly did or didn’t know, or the reasons why she’d lie to him.

  “Let’s check the rest of the building before we jump to conclusions,” she suggested. “I’ll call the control room.”

  She dug into her pocket for her phone, then turned the speaker on once Rooney picked up. “Hey, can you see Dave anywhere in the building?”

  “Gimme a second,” Rooney said. “Hmm. There’s someone who looks like him in the hall… Nope, not him. Why?”

  “No time, Rooney, please just find him.”

  The hacker fell silent for a few seconds before saying, “Don’t see him anywhere.”

  Pain gave Chad a worried look. He grabbed the phone from her before she could hang up.

  “Can you check the logs from last night? Maybe someone saw him leaving?”

  “Okay, one minute,” Rooney said.

  A minute seemed like a very long time, and Chad paced the room as he listened to the rustle of papers on the other end of the line.

  “One-twenty-eight, Post One. No record of him coming back.”

  Chad closed his eyes. “Thanks.” He hung up and tossed the phone back to Pain. “How did he just walk out the front door at two in the morning? Why didn’t the guard stop him?”

  Pain frowned, turning the phone in her trembling fingers as she looked at him. “Because he didn’t have the order to stop him? We’re kinda trying to keep this whole thing about Dave a secret, remember?” Chad shoved his fingers into his hair. “Besides, it wasn’t like we expected him to leave. It seemed like he just wanted to be alone.”

  “So you’re telling me that last night, when the Commandos were all out there looking for him, he was out on his own, God knows where, with a bottle of vodka in him?”

  Pain winced. She put the phone in her jeans pocket and sat on the bed.

  “And why did he leave through the front doors? Why not use the tunnels or even the window?” He waved at the window before crossing the room to look outside. “If he was drunk, and he decided to go after the Commandos…” The words died on his lips as his gaze slid over the half-empty parking lot. “Son of a bitch!”

  “What?” Pain was at his side in a heartbeat.

  “He took my truck!”

  “What? Why?” She leaned forward, peering at the lot.

  It took Chad one second to realize exactly why. “Because Skull had taken his car to draw out the Commandos, and he didn’t have another one here.”

  “Wait, wait,” Pain said, gesturing for him to calm down. “If he needed a car, then he had a specific destination in mind. He said he couldn’t really use his power, and he’s not a fool to go after the Commandos with nothing. And if he did figure it out, he wouldn’t have taken the car. He would’ve left through the window, you’re right. But if he really did drink this bottle by himself, and he could still drive after that, then I think there’s only one reason for him to leave. He was either going to a bar, or—”

  “His apartment,” Chad finished for her. “He wouldn’t want to go to a bar. There’d be people there.”

  “Yes. But we should inform Peter and gather a search party anyway,” she said, heading to the door.

  “What for?” Chad’s words made her pause. “It’s not like they know where to look for him. I’ll go and bring him back. Peter’s got enough on his plate as it is.”

  “You sure?” She followed him with her eyes as he pushed the broken door aside and stepped through the doorway.

  “Yes. I’ll call if I need help,” he said, only to halt as he stepped out into the hall. “I need a car.”

  “Take Marco’s. He’s in the gym!” she called after him even as he darted to the elevator.

  He swung by his room to grab a jacket, and as he rushed outside, he bumped right into Marco’s shamelessly bare chest.

  “Good, you’re here,” he panted. “I need your car.”

  “Why? What happened?” Marco’s eyebrows crawled up. He dabbed at his forehead with the towel he was holding, as if trying to put them back in place.

  “No time, man. Keys?”

  “Inside. Not a scratch!” he yelled, pointing a finger at Chad.

  “Thanks!”

  Chad ignored the curious looks as he ran down the hall and through the elevator’s closing doors. His breath clouded before him when he stepped out of the front doors and spotted Marco’s GMC crew cab. The keys were in the sun visor, and Chad scolded himself and all of HQ for being so careless, before he realized that it wouldn’t have stopped Dave.

  Marco’s warning rang in his head again and again as he sped up the busy streets, barely restraining himself from running a red light every now and then. But once he arrived at his destination point, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  He didn’t have to go down to the underground lot—his black pickup was parked outside. Dave had simply wanted to go home and be alone for a while.

  The large vehicle dwarfed Chad’s own truck as he parked next to it and jumped out of the car. Reminding himself that he shouldn’t raise suspicion, he kept his feet from breaking into a run as he entered the building, smiled at the concierge, and reached the elevators.

  His heart kept thundering as he watched the glowing numbers in the elevator, and Chad reminded himself that Dave was all right, probably asleep in his bed.

  With a deep breath, he exited the elevator. His fingers danced over the electronic lock, the code imprinted in his memory, and finally, the door clicked open.

  “Dave?” Chad called, coming in.

  He stopped in his tracks. The place was trashed.

  He closed the door behind him, but his eyes were on the scattered furniture and smashed glass that covered the floor of the large living room. It looked like a tornado had ravaged here, sucking in every item from every cabinet, shelf, and table, before it smashed them to pieces and spat them back out.

  And then there were bottles, at least half a dozen discarded on top of the mangled remains of the designer furniture.

  “D-dave?” His voice shaking, he made his way through the chaos and turned right, to the bedroom.

  Dave was there.

  Chad let out a relieved sigh. He sprinted across the room, not caring what he stepped on, his eyes on Dave’s unmoving form.

  “Dave, wake up!”

  The relief that had warmed Chad’s heart just a second ago turned into shock when he grabbed Dave’s shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. He looked dead.

  “No-no-no…” Chad pressed his fingers to Dave’s neck. There was a pulse, but his gray face and the dark circles around his eyes turned Chad’s blood cold. “No way, you’re not going out like this,” he growled, hauling Dave off the bed and to the bathroom.

  Dave didn’t even stir as Chad dragged him to the big bathtub and swung his head over the edge, face down. He ran the cold water and grabbed the showerhead, pointing it at Dave’s nape.

  “Come on, wake up!”

  Seconds stretched on, painfully slow, as Dave hung from his hand unmoving, his black hair soaked and his skin even paler than before.

  Chad swore and pointed the showerhead at Dave’s face for a second, praying for it to work.

  It did.

  Dave jerked away, coughing. Thank God.

  “I’m gonna kill you!” Chad hissed. “Just let me finish saving you first, you fool!”

  Dave tried to free himself from Chad’s grasp, but he didn’t have a chance. Chad was already pulling him to the toilet.

  “You’re gonna toss all that liquor you’ve drunk, and don’t think that I won’t shove my fingers down your throat if you don’t do it yourself.”

  Dave didn’t need another reminder. His body heaved, and for a few long minutes, Chad just held him tight and thanked the heavens he’d gotten there in time.

  When it was over, he let Dave go and sat on the cold tile floor a few feet away. His panic receded, leaving exhaustion in its place. Dave fell against the wall and met his gaze. Anger. Of all the things Chad expected to see in his eyes, anger wasn’t one.

  “What are you doing here?” Dave mumbled, too weak to speak properly.

  “What am I doing here?” Chad stared at him. “You just tried to kill yourself, you don’t get to ask me that!”

  “I wasn’t trying to…” Dave trailed off, pressing a hand to his wet face. “I just wanted to forget.” His voice was barely a whisper, but Chad heard him.

  “I don’t care,” Chad spoke through his teeth. “I don’t care what you were trying to do. You nearly died, Dave. I’m taking you to Doc, now. Get up.”

  He stood, but Dave didn’t try to move.

  “No,” he said after a moment.

  “No?”

  “No,” Dave repeated. He got up, only to stagger past Chad and into the bedroom. “I’m not going back there. It’s all too much.”

  Chad’s temper flared, heating him from the inside. He grabbed Dave’s shoulder.

  “I wasn’t asking for your permission. I said I’m taking you home.”

  Dave shook him off, and when Chad grabbed his arm, Dave whirled at him.

  “And I said I’m not going!”

  Chad yanked him forward—and Dave pushed back.

  Chad’s vision blurred as he hurtled through the air, his breath knocked out of him. He hit the wall, the couch, and finally, the floor, the shield keeping him from breaking his bones. Oh, you didn’t…

  Whatever shred of care had held him back a second ago was now gone. He was on his feet and upon Dave in a flash.

  Dave’s back slammed into the wall, his reaction too slow. He sucked in a breath, but Chad’s fist was already flying toward Dave’s solar plexus. Dave doubled over, unable to draw breath.

  “You are coming with me, whether you want to or not,” Chad said, a finger pointed at Dave’s face as he laid him down on the floor. “Now, hold still, I gotta make a call.”