Free Own (Command Force Alpha #1) by Katie Porter Page A

wouldn’t feel it.
    “Evan,” she said, infusing his name with her exasperation. “Answering me would be really cool.”
    He pushed open the storm door, and then the porch door. The left half of the duplex was obviously occupied by a family with kids. Baseball bats and basketballs and a rusting bike gave that one away. The right side was empty.
    Naturally Evan headed for that door. “This is Lawrence’s place.”
    She jolted to a stop. “Laurie? Why? I thought he was still on assignment.”
    He ignored her probe, which sped her heart. She knew things about CFA agents that she shouldn’t, and Laurie Madigan’s status was one of them. Had something changed…?
    He didn’t have a key for this one. Instead, he slipped an olive-green case from his back jeans pocket and flipped it open. Maybe he’d only been issued her apartment key after Dad assigned him to guard her. That was somewhat reassuring. The bulk of his body shielded the flashing silver, but she knew what he was doing. Raking pins. It took him less than two minutes before he picked the lock and tossed the door open.
    “Get inside, Kat, before the alarm goes off.”
    She shouldn’t have obeyed. Breaking and entering was too much, even for her. This was five steps up from hustling in pool halls based on her too-innocent looks. But she stepped into the front hall, ignoring the chirp-chirp-chirp of the keypad next to the door.
    Evan ignored it too, crossing the entry in four bold steps and jerking back a painting of a hunting spaniel. There was another keypad there, and he punched in a sequence of six numbers.
    The chirping stopped, but Kat was far from relieved. “What are we doing here, Evan?”
    “The mission…” He paused, obviously ordering his mouth around whatever it was he was going to tell her. His eyes were frantic, something she’d never seen of him before. “Laurie was on assignment, but we lost contact with him about nine months ago. Now we have what may prove that Laurie’s dead.”
    “Dead,” she echoed. She locked her hands together. Her lungs felt like rocks.
    He shrugged, so tightly that his shoulders barely moved. His gaze darted away from hers. That was unusual. She was used to looking at Evan and finding him looking right back at her. Part of that was why she’d tried to avoid him for the last four years, the whole time she was in school. She hadn’t wanted to see all that… nothing reflected back at her. No feeling, as if they’d never done that stupid thing from Lady and the Tramp with a spaghetti noodle, there in a small neighborhood dive near Columbus Park. He’d gotten sauce on his otherwise pristine shirt, which had sent her into peals of laughter. He’d retaliated later when they took a pint of chocolate Häagen-Dazs to bed.
    Now… Now anything would do, even a complete lack of emotion, but that he avoided her eyes added power to his words. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t trying for some sick misdirection.
    Laurie was really dead?
    She swallowed back the nausea that had been a constant companion since learning of her father’s wound. “Then what are we doing here? Burning the place down so he never existed?”
    “That decision will be made soon.” His mouth twisted upwards at the corners, but only a fool would call it a smile. His eyes were still coldly blue. “In the meantime, I’m claiming a few things to send to his mother and stepfather.”
    She gasped. She couldn’t help it. She twisted her hands into fists, as if she could ever take down someone as big and trained as Evan.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I don’t know what that look means, but I have a mission and I can’t do it if you’re a mess.”
    “Shut up, Evan,” she managed. Anger was a fist of heat at the small of her back. “You can’t say something so perfect to me and prove you still have a soul, and then expect me to suck it up, on a mission like a good little jarhead.”
    “Something so perfect?” he echoed, looking