Beyond His Control

She wanted to shake him by the shoulders until his teeth rattled.

“Now, that’s something I can’t tell you,” he said, before bringing the bottle back to his mouth and draining it.

“You can’t tell anybody else about this. Do you understand?”

“Don’t worry about me…well, only make sure I get out of trouble. Detective Rumson always says you’re the only one in the D.A.’s office who can be trusted.”

She stared into the man’s eyes and wondered why she always felt as if there was no one in the world she could trust. “Are you sure there’s no word on where Susie is?”

Sammy shook his head. “But if I had to guess, the family got her. There’s no way to escape them.”

But Susie had escaped. For now she was well hidden, safe and sound. The day after she’d pressed domestic abuse charges against her husband, Ava had helped her get away from her husband, since Susie refused to put her faith in the more conventional witness protection program. Ava had told this to no one, and wouldn’t be telling Sammy, either.

It had been reported that Susie’s husband, a successful New York entrepreneur, was now the main suspect in her “disappearance.” Although Robert Mercer had been under investigation at the D.A.’s office long before Susie had come forward to speak with Ava.

Something bigger was going on here. Robert Mercer’s hands were always somehow clean, his business dealings perfect. Still, Ava would make sure Susie’s case was solid, one way or the other.

With the help of Callie, she’d also make sure Robert never got anywhere near Susie again.

Callie was a social worker with close ties to the D.A.’s office, especially concerning domestic abuse cases, and an ally who’d helped Ava assist more women in peril than she could ever have imagined.

Callie was part of the backbone of an underground railroad that helped women get away from their abusive mates and into a new life. A program run entirely by volunteers, including some of the most unlikely people Ava would have ever expected. And, as each woman had been helped, she’d become the next important link in the chain.

It was the most important work Ava had ever done.

You’ll be straddling the legal line, Callie warned her when she’d first approached Ava about helping those women the system had failed, the ones whose husbands weren’t prosecuted. The ones who’d rather escape than face their tormentor in open court.

With this case, Ava had crossed it. There was no turning back now.

FIFTEEN MINUTES FROM Ava’s house, Justin pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made the call he’d been dreading.

“Where are you?” Rev, his SEAL teammate, yelled into the phone, over the sounds of loud music. Which meant he was still in the bar, where Justin had left him and the rest of the team, including Cash, earlier in the evening.

“I’m, ah, in a situation,” he said.

“Yeah, we saw you leave the bar with that situation well in hand.” Rev chuckled at his own wit and Justin thought about hanging up now and saving himself.

“I had to go to New York,” he said instead, ignoring his better judgment not to give him details because it was all shot to hell anyway. He’d need his team—no, his friends—to know where he was, just in case. If he couldn’t trust them, he had nothing.

“New York? He’s in New York!” Rev yelled, and Justin could only pray that he wasn’t telling Cash. Anyone but Cash, because if Cash heard New York…

“Is this about Ava?” Cash demanded. Justin heard Rev grumbling in the background, no doubt because Cash mowed him down to get to the phone and dammit, Cash was supposed to be spending time with his girlfriend.

Cash was Justin’s best friend on the team—the one Justin confided in the most. The one who Justin had watched fall in love hard last year with a documentary filmmaker named Rina. And although Hunt and Rev both knew about his past with Ava, Cash was the only one who knew exactly how many regrets Justin still had.

“I thought Rina was in town,” he said, mentioning Cash’s girlfriend as if this was a normal, everyday conversation and he was not having to admit to being minutes away from facing his past.

“Her flight from Botswana got canceled. Engine trouble. She’s coming in tomorrow night. And don’t try and change the subject.”

“Turk called me. Ava’s in trouble. Big trouble,” he said finally.

“Yeah. Always is. And now, I’m sure you are, too.”

“Just put Rev back on the phone,” Justin said, without telling his friend that this particular brand of Ava trouble had the potential to be bigger and badder than ever. Cash did so, but Justin could still hear him cursing a blue streak. In Swahili.

“What’s going on?” Rev asked.

“Can you go to my house and make sure it’s tight?” he asked, because Rev was the security master of the group.

Rev was silent for a minute. “CG?” he asked, and yes, that was the code—code green—they’d developed for when something really bad was going down and they couldn’t say much about it.

“Yeah. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Probably by tomorrow night—late.”

“Consider it done,” Rev said. “Once I figure out why my car won’t start.”

Justin groaned and hung up, because, even though he knew Rev would take care of what he needed to, it wouldn’t come without a certain amount of high drama and last-minute tension Rev seemed to have a penchant for.

Justin turned the corner slowly, parked a few houses down from Ava’s. It was nearly one in the morning. He’d been able to catch a military flight that got him here inside of an hour. But first he’d do a quick sweep to make sure everything was all right before ringing her doorbell and making contact… when Ava, still driving that same Mustang convertible Turk and her father had rebuilt for her ages ago, pulled into the driveway.

Within seconds she was striding toward the front door of her house, dressed in a pair of well-worn but still formfitting jeans, a white, V-neck T-shirt and a pair of high-heeled black boots that were part sex kitten, part Harley mama and every man’s fantasy. Including his.

She’d been hot enough at seventeen to make him crazy. Apparently nothing had changed if the way his pulse was racing was any indication.

Spending any decent amount of time with her had always made him feel as if he should be hoisting the white flag of surrender, although he was never quite sure what he was surrendering to.

He could run fifteen miles in one shot without a problem. Uphill, in the rain and carrying a pack that weighed eighty pounds or with one of his teammates slung over his shoulder. Swim in oceans so rough that drowning sometimes seemed the easier option. Been shot at more often than he cared to remember and still, seeing her could take him down at the knees every single time.

He’d spent the better part of his eighteenth year bailing her out of various scrapes—and honky-tonks, telling himself he was doing it for Turk and Ava’s father the entire time. Gotten into more than a few old-fashioned, chair-throwing, window-breaking bar fights with guys who’d wanted to take her home. And done more than his share of locking her in her room so she could study and wouldn’t fail her classes.

He’d only made the mistake of locking her in and standing outside her door once. He’d been so proud of her two hours of straight study, without complaint, until he’d gotten a call from the police about a woman caught speeding. On his hog.

When he’d gone to collect her from the precinct, she’d been unapologetic. Just smiled and batted those eyelashes and he’d wanted to kill her. And kiss her, too. And she’d known it. Always had.

He was never sure if that made things better or worse.

Ava, with her fierce loyalty and strong sense of justice, even then, she probably could’ve helped him, but at the time…

At the time, he couldn’t face her. He’d called her from a pay phone outside the motel where he was staying and explained why he wasn’t at her graduation when, the night before, they’d rolled together on the floor of her room. When he’d nearly taken her for the first time—her first time. A night when he’d had to tell her he was marrying someone else.

He’d told himself that he called because he hadn’t wanted her to see the bruises on his face, to ask too many questions.

He called because he couldn’t stand seeing the look on her face, the one of disappointment that he’d never wanted to put there. The one he’d seen when she recalled her mother leaving, and then firsthand when her father died and again when Turk announced he was transferring to an out-of-state college on a scholarship.

He’d called because he’d been leaving her, too.

Now, from the safety of the car, he watched the sway of her hips, wondered if her hair still smelled like that flowery shampoo she used to use. Wondered if she still hated him as much as she had that night.

He’d find out soon enough.