Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel (18 page)

S
treet dragged
his feet all the way to the hospital, through the corridors, and up the elevator. Maybe she’d screwed the pep right out of his step. She’d gone at him like a women possessed, taking control after his confession had rendered her incapable of speech. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, love was last on the list.

Letting him take the lead once or twice in the sack was an entirely different thing than declaring her love. No question, she loved the man. As much as she’d tried to deny it, there was no refuting the evidence.

Damn it.

But he deserved better than her. Yes, she was great in the sack, would never turn into a middle-aged marshmallow, and could keep up with him on any battlefield, but she couldn’t—no—
wouldn’t
give him children. And he would make a great father.

She stared at his profile, willing him to look at her, to say those words that she shouldn’t want to hear again. The words that shouldn’t mean so much to her. He stared at the flashing red numbers at the top of the shiny silver door, a veil of resignation clouding his mood. Was it because—other than hollered orgasms and orders—she hadn’t said much after his confession?

Her gaze hit the floor. She gnawed on her lower lip, missing the tang of her signature lip colors. For maybe the first time ever, Khani didn’t check her make-up in the reflection. She hadn’t applied the stash she kept next to her extra ammo in her bag. Only after she’d been covered in Vail’s blood and unwilling to leave his side for fear he’d utter the name of his attacker, had she been clean faced in public. The last few days in the middle of nowhere without it made the discomfort bearable.

King’s gaze, his wise and understanding eyes, would ease her self-consciousness, but he remained sober and staring ahead.

The elevator dinged. The doors opened.

Zeke stood in the gap.

Stood was an exaggeration. He listed as though he were the tenuous flame of a birthday candle. A hospital gown flapped around his hairy knees. His breaths labored in pants, threatening to buckle his own legs. Blood dripped from the top of his hand onto the white inlayed rubber floor. It streamed from the vein where an IV had been less than a minute ago.

“Going someplace?” Khani asked.

“They discharged me. I just didn’t feel like hanging around while they did paperwork.” Zeke heaved.

“And I peed standing this morning.” She jabbed her finger toward the corridor. “Back to bed, Zeke.”

“No.” He snapped and straightened to his full height, which was well over her head.

A growl rumbled from King’s throat.

“I reserved myself yesterday, Zeke. So help me, if you make one false move in my direction I’ll lay you out with no help from him.” She took one bold step out of the elevator. Her brother stepped backward, or tried. His right leg gave and he pitched toward the ground.

She reached out for his hand, but King hooked his arm under Zeke’s pit. “Blast it, your sister isn’t nearly this eager for me to sweep her off her feet.” He hefted her bother over his shoulder. “This makes twice. One more time and I might get flattered.”

Khani couldn’t hold back her chuckle. Zeke glared at her from King’s broad back. A back she’d gripped so hard last night it had eight perfect crimson nail marks this morning that hid under the navy of the borrowed Air Force T-shirt. Luckily the temperature had taken an upswing during the night. Colonel sent their dirty jackets and clothes to the laundry before dropping them off.

A blonde nurse skidded to a stop around the corner. Her hand covered her heart. “Thank goodness. He’s been a pain in my a…he’s been a challenge all morning.”

“All morning? It’s not even daylight yet,” Khani pointed out.

“We’ll he’s an early riser,” the forty-something woman explained as she rushed ahead of them to the
im
patient’s room. She stood at the doorway and ushered them in with a flourish.

King stopped and let Khani lead the way into the sterilized room. She scooted close to the sink, making room for the caravan to come. Then King and Zeke filled the threshold. Then he turned and pushed the door toward the frame. “We’re going to need a few minutes alone.”

Before the befuddled nurse responded, he thrust the door in her face. King walked to the hospital bed and plunked her brother down on his bare backside. Zeke hissed for an eight count, and then split his angry gaze between her and King, who took up watch at the window.

“Look.” Khani rested her hands on her hips. “I have the resources to locate your teammates and protect them until the threat is eliminated, which I can also handle. You don’t need to warn them in person. In fact, you can pick up the bloody phone and achieve the same outcome.”

“I told you yesterday, you—the organization you work for—cannot be involved with the people I work for.” He sat, but propped his shoulder against the bed’s railing.

“Why not?” Khani asked the same question she’d needed to know yesterday.

“I can’t tell you,” Zeke said without compunction.

She folded her arms and squeezed her fists together. “I can help you.”

“No, you can’t. Not this time. Your help will only hurt.” Zeke’s grey eyes mirrored an all-too-familiar determination. “And I’ve done nothing but call their numbers since I regained consciousness.” His gaze sliced to King’s back silhouetted against the clear sky and scruffy green treetops. “No answer. That doesn’t mean anything. They won’t answer. A strict no-communication policy went into effect as soon as our mission went live.”

“They won’t answer because Stas already has them.”

Khani stared at King’s back as the word seeped into her brain.
They won’t answer because Stas already has them.

“
Y
ou assume
.” Khani stated it as fact. If only that were true.

Street turned to face her. “I know,” he said simply, but it was the most complex thing he’d ever said in his life. Even more involved than his confession of love. This was the proof of his devotion. She would never see it that way, but he knew.

He looked to Zeke. The man held up an impenetrable facade, except for the flare of his nostrils. “Your friends, Greer Britton and Derrick Coen, were reported missing four days ago.”

“You know?” she asked in a trill. When his gaze drifted back to Khani, her dark brows drew tightly over turbulent eyes. “How do you know?”

“I used our resources to research Zeke’s background, who he worked for, when, where,” he explained.

The definitive news wilted Zeke onto the bed.

“When?” Instead of yelling, her word whispered across the distance that seemed to expand with the seconds that ticked by.

“You wouldn’t open up to me. You wouldn’t share. I told you I refused to go into a situation blind for all our sakes.” Street held his ground, afraid any advance or tender gesture would intensify the stand-off.

“So it’s my fault you snuck behind my back, and then lied to me about it while getting me to fuck you again?” she spat.

Zeke groaned.

He ignored her brother. The piece of shit didn’t know how lucky he was to have Khani’s unfettered love and devotion. “No. I knew what I was doing every step of the way. If I had it to do over again, I would. All of it.”

“Yeah.” The muscles in her jaw flexed. “I’ll bet you would.” Her head jerked as though the sight of him repulsed her. “You sure fucked me, didn’t you?”

“I tried to protect you.” He broke and took a step in her direction.

Khani sidestepped, backing her shoulders to the sink. “Leave.”

Street retreated the step and lifted his palms in surrender. “I’ll leave when you’re both home safely. You don’t have—”

She cut him off with a slice of her bladed hand through the air. “You said you’d never hurt me. I knew you were a lot of things, but not a liar.”

The comment hit him square between the eyes. Being called a liar was nothing new. She wasn’t the first to say it. She wouldn't be the last. But he’d hurt her. His troop admitted as much, which said a lot about how much she’d opened up to him over the last few days. It said a lot about what an idiot he was.

Tears glimmered in her eyes. They fueled her rage. She blinked wildly, crossed to the door, and opened it. “Leave now.”

W
as there anything more irritating
than a commercial flight? Plenty came to mind, but none more boisterous and close to her stinging eardrum than Zeke. She’d done a great job of ignoring him over the past two days and close-contact eight hours. It wasn’t hard to ignore someone when they were unconscious. Try ignoring them stuffed into the seat next to you in a tiny double row at sixty-thousand feet. It took so much effort she’d shaved a few centimeters off her molars.

His attempted escape combined with the scathing words he had for the head nurse who found a new vein, restarted his IV, and explained the stringent rules of the facility, had earned him round the clock sedation until the doctor released him. His induced coma had given her plenty of time to see that the Polzins didn’t leave their cell for a good long time, along with their cop buddy who’d taken their bribes.

The cabin attendant propped a hip against the seat, jarring her from the darkness of her mind. “We’re on approach. Can I get you anything else? Another pack of—”

“No, thank you.” Khani shooed the woman away with a wave. Zeke’s mouth gaped and his eyes followed the shiny snack packs in her hands as she moved to the row behind them, where she collected empty cups. At least it shut him up for a second. But just one.

“I can’t bloody believe you let those wankers dope me while my friends are…” His gaze shot around the cabin of the Boeing. “I can’t bloody believe it.”

Khani canted her head toward him, giving him her full attention for the first time in the eleven long hours he’d been awake and rattling on about the same damn thing over and over. The fight finally fled him. He plowed long fingers into his dark mop and twisted them into the nap. True misery haunted his eyes.

Her defenses clattered the earth. “If you’d gone off fully cocked with no ammunition, they’d have killed you along with your friends.”

“Put yourself in my position.” He leaned so close his nose bumped her cheek. The touch annoyed her because it made her think about the last person to caress her face, the only person. “Put your precious Branch operatives in jeopardy, and then think about what you’d do in my position.” He eased back into his seat and mumbled, “I can’t bloody believe it.”

“You can’t believe I would put your life above that of your friends?”

Khani remembered the time he’d found a half-broken harmonica on the side of the road. He’d played that damn thing for days on end, driving her to the front steps of the looney bin. She hadn’t taken it away, tossed it into the road and clapped as traffic smashed it into bits. He’d been a child with no toys to call his own. She’d gritted her teeth and endured.

But he was no longer a child.

“I put your life above my own. Hell yes, I’d put it above your friends.”

“It’s time for you to stop.” Every ounce of bitterness faded from his voice. Mature finality emanated in his tone.

Was he pushing her away? After all they’d been through. After all they’d survived together, how could he close her out of his life? His friends apparently meant more to him than she did.

Zeke sighed a long drawn breath.

She just blinked at him to keep the waterworks in check—something she did quite often over the last few days.
Fucking pansy.

“Khan.” He grabbed both her hands into his palm and shielded them with his right. “You’ve always looked out for me, always put me first and still do. I remember every time you went without dinner so I could eat. You collected bottles constantly, turning them in for a tiny fraction of a pound. And when you finally collected enough to buy clothes from a second-hand store, you bought me a harmonica to replace the broken one I’d dropped down the sewer grate the week before.”

He smiled. “After all these years, it’s my most prized possession.”

“I thought that was your ’Cuda,” she said, reminding him of the 1970 cherry red muscle car he’d bought upon arrival in the States.

Zeke sucked a breath through his teeth. “It’s a close one, but Elizabeth comes in second.”

“Elizabeth?”

He shrugged, and then grimaced. “She’s royalty.”

“Queen Elizabeth.” Khani’s head shook.

The smile curving his lips fell. “I moved to the States for a job, but I also took it for the distance it would put between us.”

She tugged her hands back, needing them to temper the ache of her already shredded heart.

Zeke held firm. “I hated the thought of being away from you, but I thought if we were apart, you’d make a life for yourself that didn’t revolve around caring for me. And then…”

“And then I followed you across the pond,” she finished.

“Yeah,” he said, looking chagrinned. “I never expected you’d leave England. When you did, I stayed away for a few reasons. The biggest of them being my hope that you’d start living.” His hand closed around hers. “And you did.”

Khani turned her head away and found two wet-eyed women wedging their heads so hard into the gab between the seats they’d need the Jaws of Life to extract them. Their clumpy lashes spread wide in surprise. They snapped around and faced the cockpit. Guess they didn't need help after all.

“Khan.” Zeke tugged on her hands, but she looked past the guilty women to a row of middle-aged men trying not to touch elbows in the narrow seats.

“I had a hunch about why you left home. Now I know I’m too smart for your own good.”

“Shut it,” she said.

“You have no one to blame, but yourself. Should have let me shirk on my homework once or twice a week.”

Finally she relented and gave him her tired gaze.

“You love him.” Zeke’s lips pursed.

“Sod it all, yes.”

“He loves you.”

She didn’t dignify that with a response. Unless a huff qualified as a response.

“Khani,” he urged. “Did you learn nothing from our dispute?”

“That’s different.”

“You wasted a year being mad at me for wanting to protect you.”

“I wasted a year being mad at you for your dishonesty. He knew how I felt about honesty from the very first, long before he betrayed me.”

“Which goes to show how much he cares about you.”

“When we get to DC you’re getting another MRI. I think Valentine missed something.”

“He knew if you lost me, you’d be devastated. You told me earlier that if he hadn’t been there, steering your efforts, you wouldn't have found me. Whatever he learned in his research was critical to my rescue, but if you’d known about it sooner you’d have pushed him away. It’s what you do, even to me.”

When she started to look away Z pressed her hands flat between his palms. “He didn’t have to come clean. You’d have never known, but he also knew I’d have done anything to get to my friends in time to warn them. He also knew I would have gotten myself into an elephant’s backside of trouble.”

Zeke grinned—something he wasn’t prone to. “He loves you more than he loves himself, sis. Now you have to figure out how to deal with that truth.”

He released her hands. The airplane zipped over the clouds. She stared at them for a long time, hours, thinking about every conversation she and King had over the course of the trip. Remembering every touch. Every look.

As hard as it was, she turned her scrutiny inside, to the ugly truth she never wanted to sully herself with.

She’d taken care of Zeke for so long he became her shield to the world. She hid behind him and in turn clung to the past.

Khani had done what she always did and pushed King away. She’d hurt the man she loved. She’d shunned a man accustomed to the world’s neglect. His own mother had abandoned him. Yet, he’d put his trust in her.

And she fucked up.

Her ears popped several times as they descended into Reagan National. Khani grabbed her carry-on and waited in the mid-plane shuffle with Zeke at her back. Slowly, they made their way to the luggage carousel for her three bags.

She swallowed the rise of emotion and turned to her bother. How he’d grown from the scrawny kid she incessantly worried didn’t get enough to eat into a beautiful man. She didn’t agree with his career choice, but hey, at least he had a job, a house, a car, and a mission…whatever it may be. She wrestled him into an embrace, squeezing as hard as she dared with his cracked ribs.

“I love you, Zeke.” When she thought her heart would burst she released him and stepped back. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“What?” His chin dropped and he looked at her down his nose.

“Beat it. You don’t have any luggage.”

“You’re not putting me in cuffs?” he asked with a lopsided smirk.

“No. You were right. It’s time I let go of the past, take care of myself, and let you take care of yourself. So,” she clutched his hand, “take care of yourself.”

He smashed her hand in his. “I will, sis. You taught me how.” His fingers slipped though hers. He turned and trotted out the sliding glass doors.

Khani watched him flag a cab and hop in as though he had the world to save. The yellow car eased into traffic and the brother she worked so hard to save disappeared into the trickling traffic.

The pang she expected to stab her in the center of her heart was replaced by hope. The next weeks wouldn’t be easy, but she knew what she needed to do.