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

absolutely confused.
    He reached for her, holding her close, and she allowed it only because she was too frozen to do anything else.
    “Don’t you know what my greatest fear in the world is? Not knowing that Dad is dead. That he’ll be killed on a mission so far away and no one will ever tell me. One of your team will come in and clean everything up as if he’d never lived and breathed. But you’re going to set Laurie’s family free of that nightmare. It proves something about you. Something good.” She pushed away from his arms, fighting him now, her hands flat on his stomach. “In fact, this proves how much worse you were all those years ago. Jesus, you actually have a heart. I assumed otherwise, because why else could you dump me so quickly?”
    “I didn’t dump you. It had to happen and you know it. I had months of training and then a new unit, and you were on your way to Harvard,” Evan said, his voice dropping cold.
    “And you forgot where Harvard is? Or where Dad’s house is? You ran scared from an eighteen-year-old girl. Maybe because you couldn’t look me in the eye when you were through with me.”
    “Maybe because you were eighteen and I’d already done damage.”
    “Damage? Is that how you look back on us? I remember it being a helluva lot sweeter. Chocolate Häagen-Dazs sweet, if memory serves. Too bad Spec Ops pounded all that out of you.” She flashed him a look that perched between pain and anger. “I was devastated when you left, but it wasn’t just because you slinked out of my life without a word. It was because I knew the guy I’d spent a few unforgettable weeks with—my first lover, Evan—would never come back.”
    “I came back.”
    “Completely changed. I knew I’d never see that version of you again.”
    He stalked away from her. His legs were stiff as he marched into the living room. “If you don’t mind,” he called over his shoulder, “I have a task to see to.”
    “Of course you do. Namely dodging what I’m saying.” Kat followed. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
    “I don’t know. Laurie never had many family pictures. But there’s got to be something that will…that will make his parents happy.”
    She leaned against the original polished cherry wood of the doorway. Even with a year of dust covering everything, the place had once been well taken care of. Laurie’s home had original built-in cabinets, a radiator in a corner and cozy little rooms. If she didn’t know better, Kat would have thought he’d transported the flat straight from his homeland in England.
    Through the open doorway to the kitchen, she could even see a teacup that had been upended over a drying rack.
    “Maybe you don’t have a soul after all,” she said softly.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Evan looked up from where he’d been flicking through a short bookshelf, maybe searching for books with personal inscriptions.
    “You don’t understand. You and Dad and all the rest who head out into God knows where—you’ll never understand. There is nothing that will make his mother happy except Laurie coming home. And you won’t find that here.”

Chapter Eight
    Evan couldn’t stay in that house much longer. The ghost of Lawrence Madigan was in his mind and heart, if not roaming those tiny rooms.
    He turned away from the blaze of Katsu’s anger and ran his gloved finger across a few more book spines. His throat was filled with chips of granite. “Do you think this is any easier for me, Kat? He was my friend.”
    “So you raid his apartment? That’s the best-case scenario?”
    No longer able to keep his feelings bottled up, he stood and quickly closed the distance between them. She stepped back a pace. “Do you think Laurie left without sound reasons when he infiltrated—” He cut his words short. “The only choice we make in CFA is whether or not to do our duty, and we live with the consequences—including helplessness. The last time I saw him, he was climbing into