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trying to go back to sleep and got up, dragging on a pair of sweats. In the hallway, he paused by the closed door of Lyssie’s room. Tonight she’d let him pull her into his lap. But if she knew the things he’d done, she’d never have let him touch her.
    Turning away, he headed through the family room, out the sliding glass door, and strode through the gloom of night until he reached the locked studio. He punched in the code to unlock the doors. Once inside, Hunt flipped a switch, and the big space flooded in light, revealing his dark side.
    This was what he’d become.
    The big shelving unit held dozens of sculptures of war and death. It was the only way he knew to rid himself of the nightmares, and the emotions that broke through his control to boil up in his sleep. For his years as a sniper, he’d disconnected, gone cold. He hadn’t looked at his targets as human, but as a job he’d had to do. One that would safeguard hundreds and thousands of lives.
    That detachment came home with him and at first he couldn’t sculpt at all. Then he’d had the piss-ass luck to be in the mall when a shooter erupted into gunfire. Hunt had been armed and took out the gunman to stop the carnage. Once that was over, his nightmares started. Then all he could sculpt was the death and suffering lining his shelves in the studio.
    Shaping, carving and molding his nightmares into three-dimensional clay shapes wrung him out, forcing him to feel every bit of shock, revulsion, regret, fear… All of it that he’d refused to feel at the time he’d done the job. But there was one memory he’d never sculpt, his last mission as a Marine sniper. Hunt had been sent to track another sniper that had completely snapped and started killing. Rand Oliver was highly trained and exceedingly dangerous.
    And he’d also once been a friend.
    The mission had sucked. Hunt had hoped to get Rand to surrender. Instead, it’d come down to a shootout where only one of them survived.

Chapter Five
    Saturday morning, Hunt glanced at the laptop on the kitchen island where Sienna stared back via Skype. “No problems on Griff’s end?”
    “No. His team has arrived, everything is in place. If anyone is watching the kid, they’ll catch them. Do you really think this guy would be dumb enough to go after a kid?”
    “He went to the trouble of tracking the kid down and getting photos. I think he’s determined to get Lyssie by whatever means it takes.” No way would he let that happen.
    “Who?”
    Huh? Oh. “Alyssa. It’s an old nickname. Now that Alyssa and the kid are safe, start an investigation on Nate Madden. Everything you can find on him. From what Alyssa overheard, Madden approached her stepfather with this scheme. Her stepfather isn’t the threat.” Hunt knew the man vaguely; he’d been the kind of man who tried to own his wife’s success. No, Alyssa could handle Parker. It was Nate that caused that tingle on the back of Hunt’s neck. “Madden has invested serious time and effort into Alyssa and he’s not going away easy.”
    “On it.” Sienna took off her glasses. “I can’t believe you knew Alyssa Brooks and never said anything.”
    “It was a long time ago, Si.” He’d thought Lyssie had forgotten him and his family.
    “And yet you took her to your home.”
    “Don’t read anything into that.”
    “Too late. Gotta go.” She disconnected.
    Hunt shut the laptop and fought a groan. Sienna had lost her husband, Trace, in the line of duty. Now she filled the void by taking care of all of them—her husband’s friends. If she got it in her head that he and Lyssie should be together…
    Hell no. Hunt wasn’t going down that road again. He’d tried, seriously tried, when he returned from the Middle East, absolutely determined to return to civilian life and be normal, but he wasn’t and never would be again. All he had to do was recall the mall shooting six weeks after he’d come home. Desperate for normalcy, he began dating Rachel