Kai saw her, and handed his spot on the hose off to another soldier nearby. He jogged over, coughing under where he had his T-shirt pulled up over his face. He was streaked in soot and blood, his eyes red and watering. She reached up and helped him get into the mask, before grabbing his elbow and pulling him farther away from the raging fire.
“Kai, what are you doing here?”
For a moment he didn’t answer her, gulping air in the mask. She tightened her hold on him. Had he been near the fast-food place when it caught fire? Had she almost lost him again? The thought ripped through her, leaving her knees weak for a dizzying second.
“I was at the BUE branch, signing off on my new accounts, when I heard the explosion.”
“Explosion?” That was worse than a simple fire. There would be more casualties, with more extensive injuries.
He nodded, taking a few more deep breaths. “I came down here and started getting people out before the fire took hold.”
She glared at him. “You should have waited for the first responders. What if there’d been a second explosion?”
“Then there’d be more people dead. I couldn’t stand by and watch those injured people burn.”
She reached up and wrapped her other hand over his shoulder. “You don’t always have to be the hero. That’s what got Elliot killed.”
His gaze softened as he stared down at her. “I’m okay, Sacha.”
She pulled back from him, the cold fear of what could have happened to him, what had happened to her husband, leaving chills beneath her skin.
“Elliot used to tell me the same thing, until he wasn’t okay anymore.” For the first time in months, those awful feelings she’d struggled through after losing Kai and then Elliot were too close to the surface. But she couldn’t deal with that in this second, she had a job to do; people were relying on her. “I have patients I need to see.”
She started to turn away, but Kai grabbed her hand.
“Wait, Sacha. There’s something else.”
She glanced back at him, too on edge to talk when her emotions had just been scraped raw, and there were casualties needing her help.
“Kai, I need to go—”
“No, it’s important. This is it. This is the place where I lost that soldier.”
She shook her head, not comprehending his meaning. “What are you saying?”
He stepped closer to her, a determined, almost fanatical gleam in his gaze. “I told you, remember? That soldier I followed, he was acting suspicious. He stopped outside this burger joint, and then I lost him. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I don’t think this was an accident.”
A defeated kind of emotional weariness slipped through her. Kai was getting worse, and she couldn’t do anything about it right this second, not when so many critically injured people were waiting to be treated.
“Kai, can you hear yourself? You know it sounds paranoid, right? Do you really think the CSS are sophisticated or organized enough to infiltrate the Valiant Knox as one of our own? And why blow up a burger shop?”
His expression took on an edge of frustrated anger. “You don’t even want to consider for one second that I might be right, do you? All you can do is look at me through your doctor’s lenses and tell me I’m going nuts. I don’t know why—”
He broke off and looked up, dawning comprehension in his gaze. “No, I think I do know why. And I’m going to prove it.”
He yanked out his comm and she shook her head. A second wave of medico responders had turned up, and they’d started moving people down to the triage. She needed to get Kai off this level and squared away somewhere safe until this crisis had been dealt with.
She looked back at him, to see he was talking on his comms with someone. The conversation was short, and he had a grim look of satisfaction to him as he put his comm away again.
“Do you know what’s above us?”
“No, but how about you tell me while I take you home so you can get cleaned up?”
“Don’t patronize me.” He pointed a finger outward. “All of the port-side launch decks are above us. The fire has gone into the outer hull, and Alpha just confirmed it’s interfering with the hatchways. As of this moment, more than three-quarters of the Knox’s launch bays are useless.”
A jolt of shock rammed into her. If the ship was attacked or something happened on Ilari, the Knox wouldn’t be able to provide adequate air reinforcements. Had Kai been right after all?
But this wasn’t her problem. She was a doctor, and she was needed at the emergency triage.
“Kai, I can’t think about this right now. Maybe you do have a point, but I think it would be better if you went home, had a shower—”
“I am not leaving in the middle of a crisis.” His voice came out low and furious, reminiscent of the old Commander Yang who’d sent soldiers scurrying with a single look. “You might not believe me, you might think I’m damaged or fragile, but I’m not going to sit on this any longer. I don’t care if it’s risking my return to duty. I have an obligation to protect everyone onboard the Knox, even if they’re not under my command any longer. I’m going to Emmanuel with this, which is what I should have done days ago.” He stared past her, and for a split second, the yellow-orange of the flames reflected in his eyes. “Maybe I could have stopped this, if I’d come forward sooner.”
Before she could reply, he turned and stalked away from her, his posture tight and shoulders back. Instead of making him crumble, this horrible situation seemed to have strengthened his fortitude.
She turned to look at the lowering flames and last few casualties being moved from the thoroughfare. Was this tragedy partly her fault? Yet, she’d been so sure he was just displaying PTSD symptoms. For the first time, the notion that she may have been wrong, so very wrong, dug deep, burning claws into her.
…
A gentle hand gripped her shoulder, her name murmured quietly, waking her from the doze she’d fallen into. She blinked open her eyes to see Kai standing above her. He wore nothing but a pair of sweats. His hair was wet and he smelled clean and soapy, as though he’d just come out of the shower. She pushed herself straighter, glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall that read after one a.m.
“Sorry, Sacha, but you’re currently occupying my bed.”
“Oh, sorry.” She brushed off the blanket that had been covering her legs and sat up, touching her feet to the floor. “What happened when you went to see Emmanuel?”
She’d tried calling him a few times after the initial rush of injured patients had passed, but he hadn’t answered, and hadn’t returned any of her calls.
He sat on the arm of the chair adjacent to the couch and dropped his attention away from her, avoiding her gaze. “You were partly right. At first Emmanuel was skeptical about my memory, too. But we talked things out, and when we brought in Cam, he confirmed that my suspicions put some pieces together that hadn’t made sense to him before. He’d already thought there was something not right about the soldier. We made some discreet enquiries. It seems he might have killed a UEF soldier and taken the man’s place. The only thing worse is that he may have had help from the inside, because someone altered the bio-ID on the dead soldier’s file to match the imposter. There’s a possibility the infiltration already runs deep.”
Her heart thudded hard against her ribs. Oh god, Kai had been right, and she’d been trying to convince him it was all in his head. Her throat tightened and she tried to swallow down the aching tension.
“What’s going to happen now?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “If we can find the bastard, he’ll be apprehended and questioned. Unfortunately, a search of the ship turned up nothing, so he either managed to stow away on a shuttle headed for the ground while we were all distracted, or he’s hiding somewhere, which isn’t impossible on a ship this size. Either way, he’s our number one priority. We need to know if there are any other moles in our ranks, and what else the CSS is planning.”
She nodded, though he
wasn’t looking at her. Not that she blamed him. She’d been so focused on treating him as a patient she’d become a terrible friend.
But hadn’t she already had the same conversation with herself, about not knowing how to be his friend? And it seemed she hadn’t been a very good doctor for him, either. A sense of failure pressed in on her from all sides.
“I’m sorry, Kai.” The words came out as a broken whisper. He still didn’t look at her, though a muscle clenched in his jaw.
“It doesn’t matter now, what’s done is done.”
Empty words, with no real meaning behind them. Was this really what she’d brought them to?
She wanted to reach out to him, make physical contact because she knew in that, at least, they had been in the same place for a time, connected in a way they never had before. But she’d gone and destroyed that as well. The tension in him, his closed-off posture and tight expression, told her he wouldn’t welcome anything from her in that moment. Considering the position she’d put him in, she didn’t deserve any less.
She pushed up from the couch and brushed by him, heading for her room without saying a word. He didn’t try to stop her, didn’t say a single thing to call her back or clear the air between them. If he felt anything like she did, then she supposed he realized there was nothing left to say.
Chapter Fifteen
Sacha took her oversized mug out of the coffeemaker and then blew at the steam swirling off the top, ignoring the clock on the wall that would no doubt tell her she’d worked through dinner again. Her grumbling stomach was already giving her enough grief over it. She’d grab something to eat on the way home in a little while, but she had another handful of reports she wanted to get through.
Besides, the longer she stayed away from her apartment, the less time she’d spend alternately criticizing and congratulating herself. Yes, she’d screwed up in not listening to Kai about recognizing that soldier, but if she’d been wanting to drive a wedge between them to prevent any more intimate moments, she couldn’t have come up with a better way.
As she rounded the end of the passageway leading to her office, she spotted Macaulay coming out of his office across the way, the light on the panel in the bulkhead flashing red into lock mode as he stepped away from the door.
“Dalton, why are you still here?” He shot her a frown as he stopped, though his expression was mostly exasperated. “This is the third night in a row you’ve been here for hours on end.”
A bristling indignation simmered up within her. “I’m busy. You’re busy. We’re all really busy since the explosion on commerce level, so excuse me if I want to catch up on a few things.”
He shifted closer, his expression softening into something too close to pity. “I don’t blame you for throwing yourself into your work for a distraction. But you need to start bringing it back a notch, otherwise you’re going to burn yourself out. Today is almost over, you got through it, and it’ll get easier every year.”
She stared at him, her brain trying to catch up, because apparently she’d missed half the conversation. “Today?”
“You know, your—”
Even as he started saying the words, the answer burst into her mind like a bubble that had been slowly expanding in the background, releasing a whitewash of guilt and remorse through her body.
“My wedding anniversary,” she whispered over a thick tongue. The first since Elliot had died, the inaugural one marking her as a widow.
Oh god. How could she have forgotten? Well, actually, she hadn’t entirely forgotten. Last week, before Kai had turned up, the thought of getting closer to this day had consumed her every waking moment. She hadn’t known how she’d get through the day without breaking down, how she’d endure all the sympathetic well-wishers, or what she was supposed to do with herself
Except, ever since she’d walked into that med-bay and seen Kai lying on the gurney, she hadn’t given her upcoming wedding anniversary a single thought. Now the day had come, and she still hadn’t remembered, not until Macaulay had reminded her. In fact, the day was nearly over, and she hadn’t devoted one moment of remembrance to her dead husband.
The guilt tripled, closing around her chest and squeezing until air was hard to find. “I’m sorry, Macaulay, I’ve been a mess these past few days. You know, I think I will head home.”
She spun away from him before he could reply, because her heart was beating too hard and her eyes were beginning to sting. But she couldn’t break down yet, not until she’d reached her apartment, where she could be alone to berate herself over this betrayal to Elliot. It wasn’t enough that she’d broken her oath as a doctor and slept with Kai, possibly hindering his recovery, and then failed to believe him about the CS Soldier, but to forget the most important day of her life with Elliot?
God, I’m a horrible person.
The escape down to the residential levels of the ship went by in a blur, until she got inside her apartment and sank down on the couch. She gulped in a hard breath, but she’d held off falling apart for so long, it seemed like her body couldn’t let go. The grief was trapped inside her, thrashing around like a wild animal. She wanted to let it out, needed to force it free, but she’d wound herself up so tight, she could only sit there, her body aching with tension and crushing emotions.
“Sacha?”
She squeezed her eyes closed at Kai’s voice behind her. Though he’d come back to sleep on the couch the last three nights, they hadn’t really seen each other, with her working late and him out doing who-knew-what. And they certainly hadn’t talked to each other.
She couldn’t face him, not when the truth of her selfish perfidy had been stripped bare. Why did he have to be here just in time to catch her in one of the darkest moments of her life?
She stood on unsteady legs. A few steps to her room, and she could endure her shame spiral in private.
She’d made it halfway across the room, her gaze focused on the doorway to her bedroom, but Kai caught her wrist.
“Sacha, what’s happened?” He tugged her arm gently, urging her to turn around, but she kept her face averted. “Is this about the other night? I’m sorry, I know you probably think I’m angry with you, but the truth is I’m more furious with myself.”
She stared at their feet on the soft carpet. “It’s okay. I’m not upset about that.”
“Has something else happened?” His fingers touched her chin. “Did you lose a patient or something?”
She shook her head free of his touch and stepped back, wrapping her arms around her middle. “I forgot. This is the one day I should have remembered, and I had totally forgotten until Macaulay mentioned it just now. Do you know how awful that is?”
“You forgot…?” Kai shifted closer to her again, and damn him, but she wanted to sink against his chest, bury her face, and maybe not feel so bad for half a second.
Instead, she turned away from him to stare at the picture of her and Elliot she had displayed on a side table, along with a few of his special possessions, things that reminded her of good times.
“My wedding anniversary.”
“Oh, Sacha.” Kai’s hands closed around her upper arms, but she shrugged out of his grip.
“Don’t. I don’t deserve it. What kind of person forgets their own wedding anniversary less than a year after they’ve buried their husband?” She blew out a shuddering breath, wanting to let go of the profound anguish within her, to simply let the grief drag her under, but terrified that once she did it would take days, weeks, maybe even months to resurface, just like it had after Elliot had been killed.
“Sacha, you are not a terrible person.” He grabbed hold of her again, this time keeping a firm grip on her.
“Let me go, I need to be alone right now.” She squirmed harder, but he spun her to face him, before wrapping his arms around her.
“No. Locking yourself in your room and crucifying yourself over this won’t make it any better, and it certainly won’t change things.” He cupped her face and urged her to l
ook up at him.
Her control slipped a notch, leaving the thinnest thread holding her together. She didn’t have the strength to fight him.
“You’ve put so much effort into me since I got back. Elliot wouldn’t be upset with you over forgetting. He’d want us looking out for each other.” His fingers eased into her hair in a soothing caress, but the action only put her more on edge. “I don’t think it’s surprising, or a sin, that you forgot about today. But don’t disrespect Elliot’s memory by punishing yourself over a small mistake. He wouldn’t want that.”
Kai talking so casually about this, as if it wasn’t such a big deal, was the pressure that ended up snapping everything inside of her. She jerked back out of his hold, a tidal wave of dark emotions burning and blackening everything in its path as it surged through her.
“Don’t tell me what Elliot would have wanted! You might have been his friend, but I was his wife.” She spun and snatched up the picture of her and Elliot from the side table with shaking hands. “And what did I do before he’d even been gone a year? I screwed his best friend and forgot our wedding anniversary all in the same week.”
A short hysterical laugh escaped, even as a few tears streaked down her face. It was almost funny, exactly how far she’d messed up everything in her life.
“Sacha—” Kai held up his hands in a placating gesture.
“No!” She pointed a trembling finger at him. “Don’t stand there and try to tell me it’s all okay. It’s not okay!”
She threw the picture, but Kai stooped down to catch it before it hit the floor and shattered. Damn him. She stepped forward and shoved him in both shoulders as he straightened.
“Why couldn’t you just let it smash? I failed him, and I failed you. I don’t want to have to look at him and be reminded of every messed up thing about my life.”
Kai set the picture down and then stepped toward her. “Sacha, this is just the grief talking—”
“Now who is being patronizing?” More tears flowed down her face, but she didn’t care anymore. “Don’t talk to me about grief. You have no idea how deep that scar runs.”
Escape Velocity Page 15