“I’ve been living out of a duffel bag for a few years now, so it just feels strange to wake up every morning to the same view. But yeah, good. Good to be back with my brothers. A fresh start, maybe.”

She cast her gaze to him, and he was looking at her. Smiling.

Stop. “What do you mean a duffel bag? Don’t you have an apartment somewhere?”

A gaggle of Canada geese landed on the lake, their squawks loud as they rippled the water. In the distance, clouds hovered near the top of Denali, its hulk spanning the horizon in shades of blue and lavender.

“Naw. After I separated from the military, I worked for a few military contractors, doing security in Afghanistan, and then a SEAL I knew called and asked if I wanted to join up with Jones, Inc. It’s a global search and rescue team out of Minneapolis, but they also do some security work on the side. I’ve been with them about two years.”

“That’s how you ended up in Nigeria.”

“I was working security for a doctor who was visiting a couple of the refugee camps. He’d heard about the Boko Haram and was a personal friend of my boss, Ham, so . . .” He made a face. “I guess I get an F on that job.”

“Not without giving it your best A-plus shot,” she said and nearly reached to touch the scar, still red, above his eye. “And the doc is still alive, right?”

“Yes. But we lost our Nigerian translator. A guy named Moses. Good man.”

“Sorry.”

“See, I get making mistakes that cost lives.”

She met his eyes. He looked away.

He wasn’t telling her something, and the sense of it lingered inside her. But she wasn’t going to chase his ghosts. Not when she had no desire to talk about hers.

“Where’s the most exotic place you and your duffel bag have been?”

He laughed, and the sound of it reached inside and again shook the hold the darkness had on her. “Me and duffel. Well, I liked Key West a lot. That was where Ranger met Noemi. But I was still Delta back then. Since then . . . I dunno. Paris is beautiful. I missed a flight trying to make a connection in Charles de Gaulle and had to spend the night there. Took a cab around the city. Froze my backside off at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The lights of the city were glorious though.”

“I’ve never been out of the US.”

“Really?”

“Actually, the cruise was the first time I’ve even been out of Seattle, at least since I was a kid. My mother moved west after my father died, and we never really left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How did your father die?”