When we’d been together, Matt had always been easygoing and confident; he’d never been the kind of guy who was afraid to admit when he struggled or to ask for help. He’d been self-deprecating and affable, easy to handle.

I didn’t know about this guy.

He seemed reluctant to admit when he needed help, embarrassed by his fear, like the only way he could hold everything together was to act as if he was impervious to the world around him, as though exposing one chink in his armor would bring everything else crashing down. I understood why he felt that way, but I couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t let me in.

I walked back into the bedroom and handed him the glass of water. His face had regained some color, his breathing normalizing a bit.

“Thanks.” He put the glass to his lips, draining the water in a series of gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Was it the same dream?” I asked, trying to keep my tone gentle, figuring this was one of those situations that required more finesse than I usually possessed. “From Afghanistan?”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “No. It wasn’t.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He set the glass on the nightstand, ducking his head, rubbing his jaw. “Not really.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, I get that, and given what your dreams are about, I wouldn’t want to talk about them, either. But I really think you need to talk to someone. I’m no expert, but it seems like you have a lot of the symptoms of PTSD.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I know it’s hard with your situation,” I continued, keeping my tone measured and calm. “I know you can’t just go get the kind of support you need through the VA or something, but you shouldn’t go through this alone. You need someone to talk to. You can’t keep carrying all of this around inside you, not wanting to let someone in. It’s eating at you; let me help you.”

“I don’t want this to drag you down.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be like that. You know me. We’ve been best friends our entire lives, at least let me be your friend. I can handle whatever you throw my way. I want to be there for you, and if you don’t let me in, it’s just going to make this worse. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

He sighed, running another hand through his hair, his voice ragged. “I dreamed that I was in Afghanistan. In the pit again. But this time, it wasn’t my friends’ bodies dropping around me, the sky raining death. It was yours. Over and over again.” Matt reached out and squeezed my hand. “I saw your face. Your hair. Your eyes. Dead.”

I pushed back the fear. Given everything that had happened recently, it wasn’t exactly a stretch to imagine me ending up in a grave somewhere.

“I’m not going to die.”

The second I said the words, they ignited some kind of fury within me. We’d already had enough of our lives taken away from us, already paid a price we didn’t owe. I was done. Done being afraid. Done feeling helpless or powerless. I didn’t care what it took; I was going to take them down, each and every person involved in this.

Matt gripped my hand even tighter.

“I’m going to research some support groups, see if there are some informal channels that you can go through to get the help you need and still stay off the grid. Blair’s boyfriend goes to N.A. and A.A. meetings, maybe there are support groups or something like that—ones that are anonymous and not run through the VA system.”

For a moment I didn’t think he would answer me, and then I heard his voice, gravelly and low—

“Okay.”

It was just one word, but it felt like a building block that could form the foundation for our future.

“Thank you.”

He nodded. “What about you?” he asked, changing the focus. “What’s your next move here?”

“I’m going to dinner at my parents’,” I answered. “I need to get into my father’s office, and you’re just going to have to trust me. I can do this. I know you’re worried and scared, and I know the stakes are a lot higher than anything we’ve ever dealt with, but don’t try to shield me from this because I’m a girl and you think I’m weak. You never did that before and I sure as hell don’t want to be treated like that now. Maybe I don’t have tree-trunk biceps and thighs, but you know I’m smart and tough. I have this.”

Matt shook his head. “You don’t get it. I don’t think you’re weak. And it’s not because you’re a girl, either. But these guys are no joke. They’re professionals. They’re better at this than you are; hell, they’re better at this than I am. We need to be smart about it. You’re right, you are smart. So if we’re going to win this, we have to be smarter than they are. They might have the advantage of force, but we’re going to have to outmaneuver them.”

He was right. And just as he’d been trying to protect me, I realized that shielding my sisters wasn’t the answer, either. Jackie and Blair would be affected by all of this, and hell, Jackie had pretty much inspired this vendetta against my father. I needed to tell them all of it. Jackie had been gathering information on our father for years; maybe she had something that could help us.

We couldn’t do this alone. We were going up against the kind of power that didn’t play fair and always won. We needed every tool at our disposal.

“I need to tell my sisters.”

“Are you sure?”

“We need the help. I don’t like lying to them, figure they should know to be on the lookout if things get uglier than they already are. They’re his daughters, too. They deserve to know.”

“What about keeping them safe?” he countered.

“I think I can tell them without them getting involved.” I hesitated. “Are you okay with me telling Blair that you’re alive? I trust her. She won’t say anything, won’t give anything away. She loved you, too. She deserves to know that you’re alive.”

He didn’t answer me for a while, his gaze trained down at his hands. I worried that I’d pushed too hard and asked for more than he was willing or able to give. And then he took away my fears.

“Okay.”

Relief filled me.

“I think we should wait until we have a little more evidence before we tell them about my father, though. Right now we have suspicions and pieces of the puzzle, but we don’t have all of it. I don’t want to mention this to them until we know what we’re dealing with. Besides, I’m supposed to go wedding dress shopping with Jackie and Blair tomorrow. Jackie’s not close to her mom, so it’s really important to her that we’re there. I don’t want anything to take away from her big day.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Matt answered, his voice tight as though I’d coerced him into something he didn’t exactly agree with, but couldn’t see a way out of. “When is your dinner with your parents?”

“On Wednesday.”

Not a lot of time for me to figure out my strategy for getting into my father’s office, but hopefully I could come up with something.

Matt’s expression hardened. “I’m going to be close by for backup.”

“Agreed.”

“And if he seems suspicious at all, or if anything comes up, you have to promise you’ll get the hell out of there.”

“Agreed.”

“And if you’re going into that house, you’re going in armed.”

I laughed. “How am I supposed to manage that? I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think a gun is going to fit into the bodice of my cocktail dress.” In all fairness, though, considering how not-well-endowed I was, there’d probably be plenty of room.

“We’ll figure something out. And I want to take you to a shooting range first.”

“Am I going to war or going to dinner?”

“Is there a difference with your parents?”

Valid point.

“So do you have any secret Special Forces tricks that will get me ready to break in by Wednesday?”

He grinned. “I can show you a thing or two.”

I figured our talk and the glass of water had helped, because the next thing I knew, my back hit the mattress and Matt loomed over me, his mouth on mine, his body hard.