by Elise Faber
The most obvious of which was why our source, whose meeting had been set up under the most careful conditions—coded message, untraceable cell phone, a location that was chosen and shared at the last minute—wound up with a bullet in his chest.
Two men. Two bullets. Two chests.
The only difference between the men was that one of the bullets had entered two inches higher, and thus mortality hadn’t been guaranteed.
Thankfully, the right man had lived.
My stomach clenched, the thought circling through my mind and filling me with guilt. Guilt because I couldn’t summon up more than a bit of disappointment that our source hadn’t made it out alive. And . . . more guilt because even if Dan hadn’t made it out alive, I would have compartmentalized his loss away and moved on.
Which just reinforced the notion that I was broken.
Reducing the man I’d worked side-by-side with to two inches.
And not even in a dirty joke sense.
But that was just it.
I was so messed up inside that I couldn’t have a normal relationship with a man. I couldn’t trust a man. Not now. Not ever.
I had accepted that long ago.
I might scratch an itch on occasion, but before my slip-up two years before, I had always picked men who weren’t . . . well, not like Dan.
Not dangerous or smart or able to peek over walls. Or, hell, he was stubborn enough to barrel through the concrete and brick and barbed wire. And he would barrel through, that was for damn sure. I saw the way he still looked at me, knew he’d be back in my pants if I gave him the barest indication it was what I wanted. He should be disgusted, but somehow, he wasn’t. He’d never lost his temper, even after I’d pushed him away in the most abrupt manner, and he’d always treated me with respect and kindness.
But I didn’t want him. That itch had been scratched. Our time was done.
Liar.
Okay fine, my vagina would be happy to get up close and personal with his cock again, but the rest of me—my brain, my sense of self-preservation, and my sanity—knew that I could never let anyone like Dan get close.
He saw too much. He was too good.
And he would want too much.
But more than anything else, he deserved so much more than me and my fucked-up past. I wasn’t capable of giving a man like Dan what he needed and—
This was why I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t function and do my job if I was so focused on my childhood, on what brought me to KTS, on the fucking black hole encased in barbed wire and concrete inside me. I needed to be cold and shut down, to not feel or remember anything, to think of only the next mission, the next job, the person I could save to make amends.
Enough.
Fuck, just enough.
Sighing, I glanced over Dan’s shoulder again and met Olive’s gaze. “He’s heavier than he looks,” I said. “You almost done?”
The doctor snorted. “You’re the strongest person I know, Ava,” she said, her eyes dropping back to where her hands were working. “But, for the record, I am almost done. I’ll just slap a bandage on, and we’ll call it good.”
“Is that what you call what you’re doing?” I asked dryly. “Slapping things around back there?”
Laila snorted.
“Pretty much,” Olive muttered with another plink into the pan next to her, another piece of debris she’d pulled from the bullet wound hitting the bottom of the metal container. There had been far too many of them for my comfort. A rapid plink-plink-plink while Dan had grown progressively paler.
And I’d been the only one to notice.
Which was a fact I was deliberately ignoring.
Because if I didn’t ignore it, if I looked too closely and admitted—even only to myself—that I might be too interested in Dan, might possibly care for him more than a fellow agent, I would be vulnerable. There was a risk if I looked into the razed organ that was my heart, I might see him as a friend . . . or worse, as a man.
And that could not be.
I knew it just as I knew the sky was blue.
The mere thought made my skin itchy and tight, like hives were just beneath the surface, readying themselves to erupt, and I felt my throat threaten to close as though I’d eaten a piece of cantaloupe—to which I was allergic. I had to force myself to breathe slowly, to not let go of Dan and sprint from the room.
Because no one could see.
He couldn’t see.
Well, at least the last was easy to prevent, considering he was unconscious.
“Okay,” Olive said, as I tempered the panic inside me. “Lay him down. I’ll double-check the bandage on his chest is good to go and then let him—and you—rest.”
Shifting him back with a nod, I knew I’d shower first. I was sweaty and dusty and covered in grime, and normally I would have already gone to clean up, but part of me hadn’t been able to leave the room, not until I’d seen my partner from the mission was okay.
Simple agent-to-agent concern.
Yup. That was it.
That was the only reason—
My eyes met Laila’s, and it was as if my friend had seen right into my mind and was cherry-picking my thoughts.
And her pale blue eyes seemed to shout, “Liar!”
Maybe I was a liar. But also, maybe that was the only way to get through life unscathed and safe and—
Fuck. Shower. Shut-eye. Then I’d be more like myself.
After Olive had moved the pan and leftover supplies, I carefully tilted Dan back until he was safely resting on the bed. A click had the side rail sliding into place and ensuring that he wouldn’t be doing any more diving from or over objects, and thus disturbing the treatment he’d just received.
The urge to flee was strong, but I forced myself to close the distance between me and Laila, to act like a responsible agent.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Fucking gibberish,” Laila muttered. “None of this adds up. This isn’t like the hard drives we recovered back in San Francisco. Those held copies of bank transfers and statements and accounts and showed the Mikhailova clan in league with prime ministers, arms dealers, several international policing agencies. That was good. We’re taking down really awful people in power, but—” She sighed and leaned back in the chair. “I don’t get why the source was so determined to meet. Nothing on here seems the least bit connected with them, nor does it seemed to be linked with the trafficking the higher-ups want us to investigate. It’s all just . . . inventory and invoices.”
I bent and studied the screen sitting on the desk. This, like all other satellite headquarters KTS had located around the world, was a formidable bunker. The entrance was hidden behind several layers of the most secure and technologically advanced protection KTS could provide, as well as staffed by a rotation of agents conducting business in this part of the world. But once beyond all of those walls and keypads and hidden doors with DNA scans, it was reminiscent of our home base in the northeast of England. Narrow bland halls, rooms lined up along either side. Most were sleeping quarters, each with a simple bathroom attached. But each satellite location also had a mess hall, an infirmary, and a technology center.
Laila, in this case, had opted to use the computer in the infirmary.
Mostly because she and Olive were good friends and had wanted to bullshit as they both worked, but also probably because she wanted to pester me.
Not that I minded. Laila had brought me to KTS, had helped me when I had no one else. There was a bond there, one that couldn’t be broken, not even by the black hole inside me.
“What kind of inventory?” I asked.
Laila sighed, her blond ponytail flipping over her shoulder as she turned. “That’s just it. The inventory on this is for produce.” She pointed at the screen. “All lettuce— cabbage, butter, romaine, iceberg, even fucking arugula. More varieties than I even knew existed, and they’re all there.”
Weird.
I leaned close, read the columns and saw tha
t sure enough, they were sorted by lettuce variety, and each variety was broken up into shipments. So many that my mind spun and my already tired brain blanked. I straightened, pushed up my glasses, and sighed. “Can you make me a copy before you go? I’ll dive into it once I’ve had some sleep.”
Laila grinned and handed me a flash drive. “Gotcha covered. Get some shut-eye.”
I nodded, headed for the door, pausing when Laila called, “Hey, Av?”
I stopped and turned back. “Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to wash that beautiful muddy hair.”
Olive snorted, even as Laila burst into obnoxious laughter. I snagged a towel by the door, balled it up, and launched it at my friend.
“You’re hilarious,” I muttered.
Laila caught the towel. “And you’re so pretty.” A beat. “And muddy.”
For fuck’s sake, I wouldn’t be living that down anytime soon.
Five
KTS Satellite Headquarters
Munich, Germany
14:22hrs local time
Dan
I woke as I always did—suddenly and with absolute stillness, mind absolutely clear and senses taking stock of my surroundings.
The room was quiet but not empty. I could feel the imprint of someone to my right. The person wasn’t moving or making noise, but I could sense their presence, feel the underlying human aura radiating across the room to prickle my nerves. Inhaling slowly, I caught the scent of disinfectant and of something sweet, almost fruity—
Ava.
Lids flying open, my gaze narrowed in on her.
She was sitting at the desk in the corner of the room, her wet hair slicked back into a ponytail that had dampened a U-shape on the back of her T-shirt. She was focused on the computer screen, the light from the monitor highlighting the gentle slope of her nape, the slender build of her shoulders. Fuck, I wanted to be able to stroke those soft, curving lines with my fingers, to trace them with my tongue. I was desperate to have permission to touch her, not just during a sparring session or for simple work purposes. I ached to touch her like a man would touch the woman he needed with every fiber of his being.
But she didn’t want that.
So I didn’t.
Biting back a sigh, I tore my eyes from her and forced myself to scan the remainder of the room. As I’d sensed initially, it was empty except for me and Ava. The tray of tools, the cabinets along one wall, the hand sanitizer mounted by the door all confirmed that I was still in the infirmary.
Silently, I propped my elbows beneath myself, readied to push up.
“Slowly,” Ava murmured, not turning from the screen. “Olive said you’re likely to be nauseous after the morphine.”
I didn’t startle. There was a reason I preferred to have Ava at my back. She was a damned good agent, so there was no surprise she’d sensed me using the same skills she’d honed over the years.
Of course, agent skills didn’t explain why I’d known deep-down it was Ava before I’d even opened my eyes.
That was something inexplicable.
That was the invisible string tying us together. The one that had been stitched into my soul from the moment I’d met her and had only strengthened over the years.
When I didn’t respond, she spun slowly in her chair. “You going to pass out again?”
Shaking my head, I pushed up. Slowly, because while I might be a stubborn pain in the ass in most situations, I wasn’t one to disregard sound advice when it came my way. And since my head was spinning and my mouth felt like some mythical creature had died inside it and was desperate to escape, Poltergeist-style, I inched up until I was in a seated position.
“No,” I said, once I’d made it. “What did Olive give me? Elephant tranquilizers?”
One side of her mouth hitched up. “Apparently, you’re a light bone.”
My brows drew down. “What—? Oh,” I added, the memories pouring back in. Light bone. Lightweight. Pretty hair. Mud.
She grinned, and it was such a rare gift that I felt my lungs momentarily freeze.
“Damn,” I said, cheeks feeling a bit hot, but knowing there was nothing to be done for it. “High, medication-buzzed Dan doesn’t have any game.”
“No, he doesn’t.” She shook her head, turned back to the screen. “Laila has threatened to change my call sign to Mud.”
I snorted.
“It’s not funny.”
I shifted so I could rest my feet on the floor. “It’s pretty funny.”
“Not so much,” she said, typing something on the keyboard. “Though your new name is hilarious as far as I’m concerned.”
Oh shit.
My stomach sank. “What are you talking about?”
“Come in, Boner.”
“Fuck no,” I said, carefully standing . . . and immediately wavering so much that I leaned my ass back against the mattress.
“You know the rules,” she said. “You don’t make the nicknames, you just—”
“—live with them,” I finished. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”
Cool.
From Wolf to Boner.
The chair squeaked as she turned to face me, and though she wasn’t smiling any longer, her expression serious as she studied me standing—okay, more propped up by the bed than actually standing on my own—I could see amusement still dancing in her eyes. She stood and crossed over to me, stopping a foot away, near enough for me to smell her shampoo, the fruity scent I’d come to associate with her.
Fruit and ice.
Sweet and vulnerable and so fucking cold.
But there wasn’t frost on her face now.
“How’s the wound?” she asked.
I shrugged before I could stop myself then had to bite back a curse because fuck that hurt. “Fine,” I said when I could speak evenly.
She snorted. “Not fine. Hence the reason for two weeks of light duty.”
I groaned but didn’t deny that Ava was right. If I could barely stand upright, hardly move my body without fiery pain shooting through my nerves, then it wasn’t like I was up to taking down bad guys.
Fuck, it had been a long time since I’d been shot.
The last time Brit had nearly lost her shit.
Speaking of which, maybe I should fly home to San Francisco and visit my sister. It had been too long since I’d seen her, and if I had to be cooling my heels for a couple of weeks—
Yeah, no, dumbass.
I’d wait until I didn’t have two healing bullet wounds—one on my chest, one on my back—in my body. My sister had freaked when I’d shown up with one extra hole; the last thing I needed to do was mess up her season by showing up with two.
Not to mention, sitting cooped up on a plane for twelve hours didn’t exactly seem like fun at the moment.
“Have you gotten any rest?” I asked.
“Yeah, I crashed after Olive stitched you up. Slept almost ten hours.” A shrug. “Woke up. Showered. Ate. Now work.”
Considering we’d mobilized at the last minute for the retrieval, both of us catching barely an hour on the plane, and the strain of being ambushed, me getting shot, then trying to get to the rendezvous point unseen, I was half-surprised we both hadn’t slept longer.
But the mission wasn’t complete.
So maybe half-surprised was too much.
“What was on the file?”
“Nothing I can make sense of yet. Everyone’s working on it. I’ll make sure you get a copy.” She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen. “I just pinged Olive. She wanted to check you over one last time before she and Laila fly back to England.”
“I’m fine.”
Fine being a relative term.
One at the moment that meant I was conscious and standing.
“You’re currently sequestered with no fewer than three extremely stubborn women, one of whom is in charge of our team’s medical care, another who is our team leader, and me, who may be the most stubborn of them all,” she said. “Do you honestly think you’re going
to win this argument?”
My only answer was to make a face.
“Exactly,” she said. A moment later, her cell buzzed, and she glanced up at me. “Olive will be here in a few.”
“Great,” I grumbled.
“It’s not so bad.”
“You’re not the one with Boner as a call sign.”
She giggled, and I felt a bit of the misery leave me.
Her amusement filled me with joy. Not all of me, since I was feeling very pouty about the forced downtime—even though I understood it was necessary—and the call sign.
“I might be able to convince them to stick with Wolf.”
“How?”
“You’ll refuse to use Mud.”
I nodded gravely, knowing she was letting me off the hook for my very unsmooth compliments while high on morphine. It wasn’t an offer I was going to squander. “Deal.”
One half of her mouth curved up. “You know, you’re lucky to only have two weeks of light duty. Olive could have easily grounded you for a month or more,” she pointed out. “It’s better to just take the time to rest, heal up, and be ready to go so she won’t need to extend it.”
“Don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t be as miserable about sitting on your ass as I am,” I muttered. “We don’t get into this job for R&R.”
KTS agents weren’t known for our relaxed, laid-back attitudes. In fact, if there were a greater subset of Type A personalities anywhere else in the world, then I had yet to find it.
“It’s not so bad.”
I’d opened my mouth to argue—the idea of doing nothing for weeks on end was worse than bad—then stopped. Because Ava hadn’t left the moment I’d awoken. Because she’d come into the infirmary to work, even though she could have chosen any other computer at the base.
Further that, she’d stayed and was talking with me.
Since the week we’d spent together two years before, I could count on one hand the number of times she’d done that, how often she’d just hung out and shot the shit with me.
Hell, I could count it on one finger.
Of course, Ava was probably here because I was wounded and at risk of passing out again and Olive had assigned her to make sure I didn’t crack open my head on the floor. The doctor was nothing if not practical, and she didn’t appreciate treating a patient twice—“once for an injury and twice for stupid.”
