A Question of Honor

by Lindsay McKenna

  “Experience has taught me to be leery of trusting men’s promises, Noah. They’re capable of breaking their word when it suits them.”

  Noah held on to his disintegrating patience. “As long as you’re under my authority, you’ll have to live with my orders. I’ll make sure you’re properly protected.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Kit gritted out.

  Moving his shoulders to release the accumulated tension, Noah said, “Can’t any man or woman, up to a point?”

  “Don’t play word games with me!”

  Noah slowly sized her up, realizing he was striking at the core of her stubbornness. “You’re so damned independent that you don’t know when to lean on someone for support.”

  Kit reared back as if struck. “That’s your opinion, Lieutenant Trayhern. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t make me less capable of surviving. I learned the hard way that a man can’t even protect himself, much less me!”

  She got up and turned angrily, then marched down the hall. Taking deep breaths, she walked out into the backyard to cool down. Not more than ten seconds passed before Kit heard the back door open and close. She turned, still trembling with anger, her arms belligerently crossed over her chest.

  Noah Trayhern’s features were thundercloud dark as he approached her. Kit tensed, uncrossing her arms, allowing her hands to drop to her sides as he halted inches from where she stood. His eyes were the color of a stormy sea as he appraised her in the icy seconds afterward.

  “I swore I wouldn’t let myself be affected by your negative attitudes,” he began, his voice low with fury. “But I am. For some reason, you don’t trust men. And whoever caused that kind of damage to you ought to be hung out to dry.” His voice became more coaxing. “The only thing that will make our relationship bearable is total honesty. Don’t project on me the images of previous men in your life.”

  “I’m sorry, Noah,” she offered, confusion in her gray eyes. “You hit a sensitive chord in me. I shouldn’t have overreacted like that.”

  He hung his head and released a long sigh. “I’ve tried to figure you out, Kit. You’re a woman in a man’s world as an undercover agent. That’s a harsh kind of life for anyone, much less a sensitive person like you. Second, I think a man has damn near destroyed you emotionally in the past.” He narrowed his eyes with concern. “Am I right?”

  Kit nodded painfully. “Right on all counts.” She turned away and went to the chaise lounge, sitting down. Noah followed and crouched beside her, sympathetically placing his hand on her knee. She accepted his gesture for what it was, and openly studied his face. It was generous and trusting, and Kit felt a desperate need to trust him right now. “What are you, an amateur psychologist?” she asked, attempting lightheartedness.

  Noah took her hands and held them in his own. “I think in our business it becomes second nature,” he offered quietly. “Level with me, will you?”

  “Why?” Just the warming touch of his strong, protective hands sent a burst of stability through her.

  “Because I care.” Far more than he should, Noah added inwardly. Far more than she would ever know. “Is that reason enough?”

  Kit looked up guardedly. Her heart ached, and need finally won out over her fear. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  The grip of his fingers tightened momentarily. “Who made you so distrustful of men?”

  Fighting a deluge of emotions, she stammered, “Is—is this necessary, Noah?”

  “Kit, we’re going to be working closely together,” he explained, his eyes never leaving her taut features, “and I need to know your strengths and weaknesses, just as you’ll know mine.”

  She searched his face. Her heart thrashed about like a bird caught in a trap. Pain began to ebb from that tightly walled chamber. Kit withdrew her hands and buried her face in them. She felt Noah’s reassuring hand sliding across her shoulders in a gesture of support.

  A ragged breath escaped her lips, and she lifted her chin, staring blindly past Noah. “I’m sure my personnel file shows that Pete Collins was my partner for four years out of the last five.”

  Noah searched his mind; he’d read her file thoroughly, committing it to memory. “It does.”

  She gulped unsteadily. “The last three generations of my family have been police officers. I have three older brothers and they were already police graduates. I followed that family tradition. Except I had all those pie-in-the-sky dreams about helping people.”

  “You were a supercop with a high degree of patriotism, and you wanted to strike at the roots of one of our worst problems.”

  Kit winced and nodded miserably. “Supercop. You hit the nail on the head…” Gathering her courage to go on, Kit continued in a strained tone. “When I graduated and demanded narc duty, Chuck Cordeman gave me Pete Collins for a partner. He was a supercop, too. Only he had ten years experience and all kinds of commendations. He was a hotshot, just like you are. As an impressionable twenty-three-year-old, I emulated him in almost every way.”

  “Your file shows four years of impressive collars, Kit. And you’ve got a lot of commendations.”

  Sadness overwhelmed her. “My father’s proud of me. That’s all that counts.”

  Noah understood what she meant. All his life he’d striven to live up to the glorious thirty-year military career that had won his father, Chase Trayhern, nearly every conceivable medal. “You said you emulated Pete.”

  “Not quite.” Kit’s voice turned harsh with agony. “Pete had a family—a lovely wife and two kids. He had me as his backup and partner. He had everything, Noah, but he threw it all away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His wife divorced him the second year I was with him because he took too many chances. We were always mixing it up with the Mob collars, and there were a lot of shots fired. Finally Valerie couldn’t stand his John Wayne tactics, and she took the children back to California. She couldn’t live in the constant fear of him dying.” Kit rubbed her aching brow. “I tried to tell Pete he should have cared more for them, for his wife and kids. But he just kept taking chances….”

  Grimly Noah looked at her. “He was taking constant chances with your life, too,” he suggested softly.

  “Yeah…I guess he was….” She closed her eyes. “But I was too naive to know that at the time. I was so caught up in the image he presented that I was like his shadow. And I was too inexperienced to see that he was a heavy drug user himself.”

  Noah frowned, his grip tightening on her shoulder. “Hard drugs?”

  “Yeah.” Kit laughed hollowly. “I was so intent upon cleaning up the streets of Miami that I failed to see Pete and his problem! God, how could I have been so blind?”

  “We’re all blind at some point in our lives. So when did you discover his habit?”

  “It was just a few months before he died. Pete’s bravado and risk taking were sort of a death wish. The thing he hated most in the world had control over his life. When I put two and two together, I tried to talk to him about it.”

  “And?”

  Kit shook her head, giving Noah a grief-stricken look. “When I confronted him with it, he denied it.”

  “Typical of a junkie.”

  Kit valiantly tried to stem the rising tide of anguish that threatened to shut off her breathing. “Typical,” she croaked.

  “You’re doing fine. What happened next?”

  Her shoulders dropped, and her eyes remained fixed on him. “Those months were hell,” she rasped. “Once Pete knew I was aware of his drug problem, he didn’t care what he did. He just kept taking stupid chances.”

  “Were you emotionally involved with him?”

  “If you’re asking if we were lovers, the answer is no. I was emotionally involved from the standpoint that he was my partner. He’d been like a hero to me, and we’d spent too many years together not to have feelings of intense loyalty.”

  Noah studied her tortured features. At a gut level he sensed that Kit had been in love wit
h Pete Collins. Had she been naive about love before meeting the larger-than-life supercop? If so, then Pete Collins could have had an almost mesmerizing effect on Kit and her young, untutored emotions.

  “Was he like a father to you?” Noah asked, trying to put their relationship into some kind of focus.

  “More like a big brother.” She managed a sad smile. “He was wonderful, Noah. So proud, brave and strong. And then he became just like the filth we were busting.”

  Noah’s stomach knotted. “Did he become violent with you?”

  “Not physically. But brutality comes in many forms, Noah. You know that and so do I. Pete beat me down emotionally and mentally until I began losing it.”

  “So narc duty and your home life became one and the same?”

  “I never had a home life. Narc was my life. I—I never could talk to Dad about this. I’m sure he’d have expected me to turn Pete in. I felt guilty about not being able to talk Pete into getting help. I was walking a tightrope with Pete in the middle of the Garcia undercover operation. I posed as a Colombian, and Pete was my older brother who handled things stateside.”

  “I remember reading in the paper how Emilio Dante was collared. You were responsible for that, weren’t you?”

  A shudder worked up her spine, and Kit hid her face in her hands to hide the emotions etched on it. “Dante was Garcia’s main man. I lured Dante to Miami for capture. At the last moment, just before the bust went down, Pete took an unbelievably stupid chance and Dante gunned him down.”

  Noah felt as if a fist had slammed into his heart. “Right in front of you?”

  “Y-yes. Damn Pete Collins!” she sobbed. “He should have cared more about his family, himself or even his partner, me! And he didn’t! All he could do was grandstand, adding another commendation to his record and having the other cops look up to him. I really believe he was more afraid of them finding out he was a junkie than he was of getting killed.”

  Her anguish scored his chest. She was trembling, and he guessed that she hadn’t cried for a year. He wrapped his arm around her. “I’m sorry,” Noah soothed, “I didn’t mean to make you hurt this way. It’s over, Kit. Just let go of the pain. I’ll hold you…”

  Noah’s gentleness shattered her immobility. Fear vomited through Kit, and she tore out of his embrace with a cry. She saw the surprise on his features as he looked at her.

  “Just leave me alone!” she begged hoarsely. “Just go away!” Hanging on to the grief and tears, Kit whirled around, running for the safety of her house. Blindly she ran down the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. With shaking hands, she locked it. Knees wobbly, she made it to the bed and curled in a tight ball, unable to release the past because Noah Trayhern reminded her too much of Pete Collins.

  As she lay there, eyes tightly shut, Kit saw too many similarities between the two men. Only this time, Noah’s gentleness and understanding had made her vulnerable in a way she’d never encountered. Pete had never been tender, much less sensitive to anyone but himself. But Noah had some of Pete’s other attributes—a drive to be the best, to overcome a personal failing, although in Noah’s case it was to compensate for his brother, Morgan. He was a supercop in a Coast Guard uniform.

  Muffling a cry, Kit rolled onto her stomach, clutching a pillow, buried in a mire of past and present anguish. There was no way out, no answer. Somehow she’d have to stop the unraveling emotions that Noah had jerked free within her, and try to work with him. But where was she going to get the strength? And what would Noah do about her past? She’d trusted him enough to tell the truth. What would he do with that volatile information?

  “Are you Chuck Cordeman?”

  Cordeman raised his head from the mound of paperwork that seemed to attack him from every direction. “Yeah, I’m Cordeman. Who are you?” he shot back in an irritated tone. The noise surrounding them couldn’t be blocked out, although the narc supervisor’s office was enclosed by a sturdy glass panel. Phones were ringing constantly, and men and women in plainclothes with police IDs hanging on their shirts milled around in the larger outer office.

  “I’m Lieutenant Noah Trayhern of the Coast Guard.” Noah didn’t offer his hand.

  Leaning back in his lumpy chair, Cordeman studied him a moment. “Have a seat.”

  “We’ve got some business to discuss.”

  “Look, I’m pretty busy, Lieutenant. If you can make it quick I—”

  “Stow it, Cordeman. What I’ve got to tell you isn’t going to wait.” Noah took a deep breath, trying to control his emotions. “I left Kit Anderson’s house an hour ago.”

  Cordeman’s bushy eyebrows drew into a heavy scowl. “So?”

  Noah’s expression hardened as he placed both hands flatly on Cordeman’s desk, glaring down at the pudgy supervisor. “When I met Kit, I knew she was in bad shape. That’s why I fought IOIC to give her a week’s rest before we initiated Operation Storm.” His nostrils flared. “She hasn’t improved. Now you’re going to throw your considerable departmental weight into this lopsided battle to help get her two or three more weeks of rest. She’s not anywhere close to being ready to step into this damn snake pit of an operation!”

  Cordeman glared up at him. “I think you’d better calm down!”

  “You really don’t care if Kit Anderson can survive this bust, do you?” Noah asked angrily.

  Cordeman shot out of his chair and leaned across the dilapidated desk. “Now just one damn minute, Trayhern! Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here with accusations like that?”

  “I’m responsible for Kit Anderson,” Noah countered. “She’s officially part of my team, Cordeman. And I do care what happens to my people. Particularly when so much is at stake.” His eyes narrowed to slits of fury. “You knew Kit was broken emotionally before you sent her to us, didn’t you? You knew it, and sent her, anyway. Why did you do it, Cordeman?”

  Cordeman’s jaw jutted outward, and his face turned red. “Kit is a damn good agent!” he breathed. “The best! The captain wanted her on this operation because she’s the only one who can identify Garcia. She’s the only one to come back alive from his fortress. That’s why she’s been assigned to you, Trayhern. Is that clear enough?”

  Noah dug his fingers into the desk, his knuckles whitening. “A lot of good her knowledge is going to serve if she’s mentally and physically on the edge. You know that and so do I!”

  Cordeman reared back, glowering at Noah. His raspy breathing heated up the silence lengthening between them. “Okay,” he muttered. “So she’s almost washed up. Kit will hold together for you. She’s tough. She’s got what it takes.”

  “She bought it less than a year ago, Cordeman! Kit’s been running on raw nerves and ulcer medicine since then. Who the hell are you trying to fool?”

  The narc supervisor’s shoulders dropped. “Okay, okay,” he groused, “so Kit’s been going downhill for a while.”

  Noah straightened, his eyes blazing. “Kit lost her partner, Pete Collins. And you didn’t even have the humanity to give her time to recover. You just pushed her back into the trenches, hoping she’d forget about it.”

  Cordeman’s gaze moved to the floor. “Look, I feel badly about this…. Kit’s like a daughter to me.”

  “No father in his right mind would have done what you did,” Trayhern snarled. “She looked to you for support, Cordeman, and you ignored all the warning signs. I don’t buy the father figure routine.”

  The older man sat heavily on his chair, not meeting Noah’s eyes. “Kit was hysterical after Pete’s death.”

  “Did you know he was hooked on drugs?”

  Cordeman studied him harshly. “At the time, no. And if I had, I’d have hauled him off duty, taken his badge and sent him into rehabilitation. Kit kept that knowledge to herself and tried to help him, but she failed. What she did was wrong. She should have come to me. But she was too young and too loyal to Pete.”

  “So you found out after he died?”

  “Yeah. I went
over to the hospital and that’s where she spilled the whole ugly story.” He shook his head. “They had a special relationship, Trayhern. It wasn’t love, but it was a commitment to each other to be the best at what they did. They were one hell of a team. Ever since Kit lost him, she’s been sliding.”

  “So after Collins’s death you sent her right back out there?”

  Cordeman glared at him. “What else could I do?”

  “You could have gotten her some therapy, for God’s sake!” Noah spit out. “Emotionally, she was never cut out for narc duty, but she was trying to please her father, Collins and you.” Noah grimaced, fury racing through him. “Kit Anderson shouldn’t have been a cop. She hasn’t got what it takes to deal with the brutality of it all. You’ve used up her strength, her spirit and her will to live. Right now, she’s close to an emotional breakdown.”

  “So what the hell do you want me to do about it?”

  “You side with me against IOIC and get Kit three more weeks of recuperation time before we initiate Storm.”

  “Three weeks?” he cried. “You’re out of your mind!”

  “Three weeks,” Noah ground out, “or she’ll be dead on this bust and we both know that.” He rested his hands against the desk, hovering over the narc supervisor. “And I’m not going to allow that to happen, Cordeman. You hear me? Either you side with me, or I’ll throw so many wrenches into this operation that you’ll scream like a stuck hog. I know your captain is going up for promotion soon. And I suspect he’s counting on Storm to make him look like a regular tin god in front of the good city fathers. I carry weight over at the CG. I’ll screw your department so damn hard that your captain will bury you so deep you’ll never see the light of day.”

  Cordeman’s eyes grew round. “Do you know how hard it is to get something like that approved? The paperwork alone will weigh ten pounds!”

  “I refuse to knowingly put one of my people’s lives on the line. Kit is part of my team, Cordeman. Side with me or else. Her life is more important than any drug bust or captain’s promotion.”