link to the animals they’re working with.”
“Yeah,” he said, a slight hitch in one corner of his mouth, “it’s all about safety.”
“You’re right. It always is.” Dev gave Sloan a searching look and admitted, “Gordon started stalking me. I had only stood duty at the visitor’s center with him a couple of times, but he became fixated on me.”
“Did you want his attention?”
“God, no... Even Bella didn’t like him. And she likes everyone,” Dev said, giving her Lab a loving look, nervously stroking her head and neck. “I tried to stay away from him as much as I could, Sloan. But damn, it was like he was psychic. Bart could pick up on when I was going to be coming back to HQ. He’d always be around at those times and it started triggering my PTSD because he felt like an enemy stalking me. Wanting something from me...”
“Did you inform your supervisor?” Sloan asked. He saw her give a jerky nod.
“I went to him and he laughed it all off. Told me it was my imagination.” Dev glared at the wall in front of her for a moment, seemingly wrestling with escaping emotions. “I filled out a report on it, anyway. He deep-sixed it. After three months of no action, and Gordon following me around like a lost puppy, I put in for a lateral move to come out here.”
“Men protecting men?” Sloan wondered, watching her expression carefully because he could feel how upset Dev really was. Just talking about it was making her edgy and tense. How badly he wanted to get up, move around to her chair, pull it out and draw Dev into his arms. But that wouldn’t be wise because now he knew another man had done something bad to her. And for him to try to hold her could backfire. Dev might see him as a would-be stalker, too.
She grimaced and took a jerky sip of wine, wrestling with barely held rage. “Always,” she gritted out. “I did nothing wrong. I’m not a flirt. I wasn’t in a relationship. But that doesn’t mean I’m out trying to get a man, either.”
“Did your supervisor have a friendship with Gordon?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dev whispered, shaking her head. “One thing you learn real fast about Bart is that he knows how to lure you and then hook you with his smile. With the way he maneuvers you. God, he gets inside your head.” She touched her brow, her voice incredulous. Turning, she met Sloan’s hooded stare. “When I was in Afghanistan, I met plenty of CIA operatives. One thing I found out in a hurry was the way they ingratiate themselves with you in order to gain your trust. Get inside your head.”
Raising his brows, Sloan nodded. “It’s a basic CIA tactic to gain someone’s trust. Find out what they like, what interests them, and then they adopt the same likes and dislikes you have, so you’ll trust them. After all—” and his mouth hooked upward a bit “—it’s a human frailty to fall in with someone who is like-minded. Right?”
Dev saw the gleam of understanding in Sloan’s thoughtful stare. “Yes. That’s exactly what they did. I hated it. I saw it and I’d call them on it. And then—” she rolled her eyes “—I meet Gordon and he was exactly like that. He asks you a bunch of questions, feeling you out, and then he suddenly feels the same way you do on everything.”
“Was he possibly a CIA agent?” Sloan asked.
“I don’t know,” Dev uttered wearily. She sipped her wine. “All I know is that he ingratiated himself with anyone that he thought had power. I watched him do it. I recognized what he was doing.”
“But he was stalking you?”
“Yes... God, I hated it. I knew he had our supervisor in his back pocket. I knew if I went to my boss, he’d bury my protest and not protect me.”
Sloan slowly unwound from the chair, walked to the fridge and pulled out the bottle of wine. Coming back, he refilled her glass. “Come on, you need to eat something,” he urged her, catching her glum, dark-looking eyes. He wanted to do a helluva lot more than pour Dev some wine. She gave him a grateful look and sipped it. Then she picked up a piece of cheese with a small cracker, beginning to nibble disinterestedly on it.
Sloan felt good about the fact that he could affect Dev positively. But his mind spun with so many questions. Was she this trusting with everyone? Was that why Gordon had stalked her? Because she was gullible? As Sloan walked to his chair and sat down, he felt terror and sadness surrounding Dev. She had gone pale as she’d confided in him. There was a lot more to this, he realized. Dev was fragile. Despite her outward appearance of confidence, Sloan felt the wound she’d received, and it had done major damage to her as a person. Perhaps as a woman? He really didn’t want to think Gordon had raped her. Just the thought turned his stomach and tightened it into a painful knot. His fist flexed and Sloan forced himself to remain relaxed. After all, Dev was a dog handler, which spoke about her sensitivity, her all-terrain awareness. She wouldn’t have survived those deployments if she didn’t have that outer awareness every soldier, every dog handler, developed.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Dev. You didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
When she turned, her green eyes had a sheen of tears in them. It tore at his heart. Sloan could feel a huge storm of emotions bubbling barely beneath her control. Her lower lip trembled.
WHY DID SHE suddenly want to burst into tears? Dev blinked a couple of times, forcing back her reaction. Was it the compassionate expression on Sloan’s rugged face? The burning look of care in his narrowed blue eyes? The sensation of Sloan invisibly wrapping her within his strong, safe arms even though he was sitting several feet away from her, sprawled out, relaxed, but focused on her? The sensation was so real Dev closed her eyes for a moment, her fingers tightening around the slender stem of the wineglass. She hadn’t had that much to drink. But maybe her stomach was empty, so she was more susceptible to alcohol.
But the real truth, whether Dev wanted to admit it or not, was that she thoroughly enjoyed Sloan’s easygoing, comfortable company. He was the direct opposite of Bart Gordon, who reminded her of a wild animal on the prowl, hunting for his mate, willing to do anything to make her his. Her gut clenched and she kept her eyes closed, trying to will away the terror that never seemed to leave her. It would steal upon her at odd times. Unexpected ones. Like right now. She should be happy to be with Sloan because he always lifted her spirits. He was kind. Unselfish. Interested in her, but allowing her, from what she could sense, to pace whatever it was between them. He didn’t push her like Gordon had. He didn’t close in on her, making her feel claustrophobic, which she was. Maybe it was because on bad days when her father wanted to drink heavily, he’d push her into the clothes closet in her bedroom and lock the door.
To sit in that darkness...the dankness...the lack of fresh air. Dev lost count of how many times she’d cried softly so she wouldn’t be heard. Because if her father did hear her, he’d come and rip the door open, bellowing down at her, telling her to stop crying. Big girls didn’t cry, he’d scream at her. Suck it up. Wipe those tears away. And he promised to come back in a little while—which was hours later—and let her out.
Dev felt herself begin to unravel, lose control, and she couldn’t do that. Sloan really didn’t know that much about her. And he’d probably lose respect for her. In the Marine Corps, Dev had tried so hard to keep it together. But her commanding officer was an alcoholic, too, and it was as if she’d stepped back into being a seven-year-old shoved into a small, dark, smelly closet. The only light leaking in was beneath the door and she’d
