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you.” The man wasn’t going to change his mind about following her, so why waste her breath?
    Without allowing herself to look at him again she got behind the wheel, started the engine and steered out of the lot. Danny’s place was a twenty-plus minute drive from NSA headquarters in the opposite direction from her house. Gage stayed right behind her the entire way there. She shook her head at his protectiveness, although his actions didn’t surprise her. While she was relieved about not having to talk to him anymore tonight, it still made her heart flutter to know he cared enough to want to watch over her. She just had to be careful not to give him any false signals or allow him to charm his way back into her life, because at the moment she was feeling weak enough to let him do it.
    The cheap and slightly rundown apartment building where Danny lived was surrounded by blocks of others just like it. The wooden exterior’s paint was peeling and nothing had been remodelled since it was built in the 60s. Since he lived on government assistance and wouldn’t take any money from her or their father, this was all he could afford.
    Claire parked at the curb out front and climbed out as Gage pulled up behind her. She offered him a wave of thanks and he raised his hand in acknowledgement. Then to her surprise, he cut the engine.
    She stopped on the sidewalk to look back at him. Was he seriously going to sit there while she checked on her brother and then follow her home afterward? She sighed and headed for the frosted glass door at the apartment’s entry. Yeah it felt nice to know he still cared, but she refused to let that sway her. It wasn’t fair to either of them. She couldn’t live the kind of life he wanted.
    Facing the prospect of dealing with her brother in a few minutes only strengthened her conviction about never getting involved with a military man, let alone one in Spec Ops. Except Gage had slipped past her defenses so effortlessly she hadn’t been able to stop him. She absently rubbed a hand over the dull ache beneath her sternum. Sometimes she thought the pain of being without him would never go away.
    The interior of the building was in worse shape than the exterior. A whiff of stale, musty air hit her as the glass front door closed behind her. The ancient elevator always gave her the heebie jeebies so she took the stairs to the fourth floor. Stained and threadbare beige carpeting awaited her in the hallway, the stink of cigarette smoke permanently trapped in the fibers.
    At Danny’s door she paused to gather herself before knocking, calling upon her reserves of inner strength that Gage’s unexpected appearance had already depleted that morning. It took over a minute for her brother to open the door and when he did a stab of pain hit her in the heart. He stood there bare chested, wearing a pair of ripped cutoffs that didn’t do up beneath the belly he’d put on from a steady diet of meds, junk and no exercise. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, a week’s worth of growth on his face.
    “Hey,” he grunted and turned away for her to follow, running a hand through his mussed-up dark hair that could use a trim. A mass of scars ran the length of his middle and lower back, some surgical, others from the IED blast that had started this whole catastrophic roller coaster ride. Time had turned them pale pink, yet though his body had knitted itself back together for the most part, it was the damage hidden inside him that couldn’t be cured.
    Claire shut the door behind her, steeling herself. Just being here made her feel like the walls were closing in on her, as if the air was harder to breathe. The cracked black faux leather couch in the living room was strewn with fast food containers and of course there were the requisite empty beer cans that littered the coffee table. Beyond that the flat screen TV she’d bought him two Christmases ago was tuned to some god-awful reality show that surely signaled the demise of