Hard to Protect (Black Ops Heroes)

by Black, Incy

  That made sense.

  She wriggled free her hand and stared at the scar scored across her palm. “We were both trapped by that stupid, stupid vow.”

  Will’s thumbs were filling the role of windshield wipers on her cheeks. “You were two traumatized kids looking for something, anything to cling on to. That promise you two swore to protect one another no matter what, was your lifeboat in a sea of crazy, sweetheart.

  “Better that we’d let it sink and learned to swim independently.”

  “Harsh. Take the word of a man who was damn near drowning until you came along, Angel. Don’t let anger and bitterness color ugly something that was beautiful—your love and loyalty to Rhys.”

  She let his words percolate then chanced a wobbly smile. “You could try taking your own advice. Diana? Doesn’t she deserve forgiveness, too?”

  Will lowered his forehead to hers. “Maybe.”

  Her next smile was a whole lot steadier. His arms loosened. She eased free. “If I need to take a moment to process this, are you going to go all loopy insistent that I can’t do it on my own. That you have to be there to beat back the hurt?”

  She watched him silently wrestle his dislike of her hurting at all, let alone without him strong by her side. “I’ll try. I should be able to hang tough for ten minutes. But then I’m tracking you down, so process quick, Sunshine.”

  She nodded and quit the kitchen. God alone knew what Helena had made of all the theatrics. She hadn’t dared glance at the poor woman.

  Her back to the Will’s childhood bedroom door, on the floor, her knees pulled to her chest, she needed more than a moment.

  Memories and images flooded her mind. Of a terrified boy standing at the bottom of the stairs in a silent scream. Of that same boy staying silent while he was led away by somber-faced strangers. Of that same, but somehow suddenly different, boy slicing into his small, pale palm, then hers, with resolute conviction to stand firm and protect, when he finally returned from whatever hell they’d taken him to.

  Both of them too young to understand that blame would not have touched her. Then, when old enough to see that, knowing it was already too late for either of them to escape the lie.

  And she’d wished that boy dead. Rhys had done his best living under the lie. She’d done her worst. Rhys hadn’t abandoned her. She’d abandoned him. By not watching him more closely and getting him the help he’d needed.

  How to atone for that?

  “By making damn sure those responsible for exploiting Rhys’s brilliance as a bio-chemist and turning him to the dark side, pay,” she told the empty room papered with superheroes and villains.

  She pushed to her feet. Will had said Richard had been able to recover the names of all those who were culpable for BT11 and the hideousness it had wrought. Will’s team—the Assassins—would be assigned the elimination program. She wanted a timeframe for when that would begin and when it would end, so she could move on and truly mourn her brother for the boy he’d been, and the man, but for those bastards at the MoD, he might have been.

  And Will would be there for support. He might not yet have reached the point where he’d risk a full commitment—obvious, from the way he dodged sharing his feelings, and all open discussion of where their relationship might be heading—but his “maybe” response when she’d suggested it might be time to forgive Diana gave her hope. If he was moving closer to resolving his issues with Diana, the future, their future, held a whole lot of promise.

  …

  Despite agreeing to give Angel space, he would have followed her, not wanting her to cry unless he was holding her tight, but Helena snagged his arm as he hurried past the breakfast counter where she still sat.

  “She asked for a moment, Will. Give her that.”

  He slumped onto a stool and scoured a two-palm face rub. He’d caught an hour’s shut-eye on Jack’s sofa, but his bones were leaden with exhaustion. He smiled wryly as his mother shoved a fresh mug of coffee under his nose.

  “What was your other piece of news?”

  He’d already spotted the bottle of pills on the counter. Left to worry, Helena would get antsy. Then explode. “They’re not street drugs. I know better than to touch that shit. You know Zac’s a firm believer of ancient Chinese remedies; he sourced them, perfectly legitimately, in Chinatown. Besides, I’ve stopped taking them—for Angel—and feel much better as a result. I’m not going to need them in the future, either. That’s my other piece of news. No more field work for me.”

  If he’d hoped to settle his mother’s hair-trigger temper before it ignited, he’d failed.

  “The bastard Commander benched you?”

  He winced when she slammed her palm down on the marble countertop. “No. God. I got a promotion. Butters was supposed to tell me my first day back. Instead, he ordered me to honey-trap Angel.”

  He frowned and cast a look at the slightly ajar door demarking the kitchen from the corridor down which Angel had disappeared. He should go to her.

  His mother caught his wrist. “I suspect crying is new to her. Give her some privacy to explore the sensation. That way she’ll recognize the feeling and be less self-conscious about it next time it happens. Crying is good, Will. You should have done more of it yourself after Diana died… Now, go on, tell me about this promotion.”

  He didn’t like it, but Helena was used to dealing with her girls and knew more about tears than him.

  Lifting his mug, he took a sip of coffee. “You’re looking at the new senior handler of the Black Ops Division. Instead of being an operative, I get to draft operations, domestic and international, and run the agents involved from London. And not just my old team—all the units working out of the Cube. It’s one rung down from the Commander’s post.”

  Helena leaned in a squeezed his hand. “That’s more than you could have hoped for so soon, Will. Angel will be thrilled for you.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. Her tears had dampened his initial excitement about telling her. With her sharp sense of justice, she’d expect pints of more than just her brother’s blood on the carpet. And she wasn’t going to get it. The Commander was already cutting deals to protect the public interest.

  “What, Will? What aren’t you telling me?”

  That was the problem with Helena, too bloody sharp. Though maybe with that quick wittedness, she’d be able to give him a few pointers on how to break the no retribution embargo to Angel. “Rhys Treherne’s death must remain a secret so he continues as a viable threat. To keep those buggers in the MoD and the senior ministers who authorized the use of troops in the medical trials in line and dancing to our tune. We need them to believe Rhys is alive and watching, and that he will reveal all if they make a move against Angel, you, me or anyone else remotely in the know about BT…about what’s been going on.”

  Angel’s voice, like an ice blade honed from the heart of a glacier, sliced across the kitchen. “What happened to killing them, Will? To making them pay for the atrocities that would not have happened, but for their greed and supreme arrogance that everyone’s life is cheap, barring their own?”

  Raw instinct had him finding his feet and bracing. This was not how she was supposed to find out. He’d wanted to manage the flow of information so that the details lapped over her like a spent wave running its last up a beach. He hadn’t wanted her smashed into by a fucking tsunami.

  Her eyes shone, not from tears but from furious gunmetal glints flashing her irises.

  “Angel, the names on the thumb drive identified persons of the highest rank and position across all branches of the armed services. Also, senior ministers across all the key political parties. We can’t assassinate them all. It would cause an all-out national alert, which we would not be able to contain. The most expedient solution is to scare the bastards under control by letting them believe we’ve negotiated a deal with Rhys. That he’s been allowed to disappear without fear of retribution, but that he’ll be watching, and he’s reserved the right to leak their iden
tities to the media should they fail to comply with the terms we, the Service, impose on them.

  “Expedient? What happened to justice? What happened to integrity? What happened to doing the right thing? What happened to me getting to live lie-free? You’re selling out, Will.”

  “Angel—”

  Four feet into the kitchen, she halted and hugged herself. “Was that the price of your promotion? Breaking your promise to me that those men would pay?”

  His teeth hurt from how hard he had them clamped together. “You would never have lived free with the blood of those men on your conscience, Angel?

  “You underestimate me, Will. I was ready to chance loving you, a man with ninety-three kills to his name, without my conscience suffering so much as a bruise,” she said softly, sadly.

  A cold metal fist fixed around his heart at her unspoken, but unmistakable, I’m done. “I never promised you their deaths, Angel. I only said I’d try and give you that.”

  The glints in her eyes had died. The color of her irises had leap-frogged flat Siberian-winter gray, to slate permafrost. The Ice Queen was back, and she already had one foot out the door.

  “I told you I would not live under another lie. Keeping Rhys alive would be to live under a lie.”

  The metal fist around his heart tightened to the point of unbearable pain. He had not a damn thing to offer her, not the words nor any gesture, to make that right—less painful for her. He retreated to where he felt safest. Where he understood the rules—his job. “The decision’s been made, Angel. A program of killings of the magnitude you want would risk bringing the medical trials into the public domain. That can’t be allowed to happen. It would tip this country into turmoil. The fiction that Rhys is alive must stand.”

  She bunched her hair in her fist and lifted it clear of her neck. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose it must.”

  He’d lost her. She was quitting on him. Without giving him a chance.

  The numbness started in his boots, slowly crept up his legs and torso to his chest. Different scenario, but her betrayal felt like Diana’s cheating all over again. He’d let Angel close enough not just to hurt him, but to rip his fucking heart out.

  “I can’t do this again, Angel,” he told her hoarsely, the to and fro of his forefinger cutting the gap between them, letting her know he meant them. Together.

  “Can’t? Try won’t, Will. Won’t commit. Won’t forgive. Won’t read Diana’s journal. Still hanging on to that life vest of yours, that if you don’t promise anything, you bear no responsibility when things end. Sorry, but I have to believe I’m worth more than that. I can’t stay with a man who’s only offering me a tiny, still guarded fraction of himself… Where are the keys to my bike, Will?”

  “In the top drawer of the chest in the hall—ride safe.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Her back to the bank of removal boxes she’d filled with the last of her and Rhys’s possessions so she could put the house they’d shared on the market, Angel glanced around the rug-less, picture-less, drape-less, ornament free shell of her home. How depressing that it should reflect so accurately how she felt. Empty. Desolate. Stuck in limbo.

  A heavy pall she’d lugged since quitting Will three weeks ago—and which would not lift.

  Relocating to Italy, her lackluster, my-heart-does-not-want-this-but-my-head-says-this-must-be attempt to move forward with her life. Because if Will had not come for her by now, he never would. And she’d just have to try and live with the crushing dejection of accepting that.

  What she would not do is go back to Will—though resisting the ceaseless fierce pull of that temptation was killing her.

  It wasn’t about him failing to bring to justice, in the way she’d wanted, those who’d commissioned BT11 and then trying to duck all responsibility by ordering a full erasure program. She’d gotten past that. Once her initial anger and hurt that Will expected her to live under another lie had burned out, and she’d rationalized both his position and his decision.

  No, this was about Will’s inability to conquer his demons about Diana. His preferred fallback position, still, that of shutting down and slamming up a barrier, even against those who loved him.

  She could love a man like that—did, and always would—but she couldn’t live with a man like that.

  A loud knock.

  She frowned. It was after eight. Who the hell would call at this time of night?

  More knocking—no, insistent banging.

  Will?

  Her heart in full flutter, she couldn’t help herself. Leaping to her feet she dashed to the window. Only to have disappointment slam her chest. Zac. On her doorstep, his head tilted back so he could better scour the height of her property for any sign of life. What did he want?

  Tempting though it was to hide—if she couldn’t have Will, she wanted no reminder of him slicing her soul deep—she made her way to the front door and opened it.

  “Hello, Angel. I thought it was about time someone checked to see how you’re holding up. Can I come in?”

  She supposed so. It wasn’t like he’d stay long—once he saw she couldn’t even offer him a place to sit except the floor.

  She nodded, turned on her heel, and shuffled back to the sitting room. Shuffled, because in just her socks and without any carpeting to provide grip, just slick floorboards, she didn’t want to risk a slip.

  Without the energy or will to stand on ceremony, she sank to the floor, the packing cases once again her back support.

  Zac joined her, his shoulder pressing tight against hers.

  Not wanting to cause undo offense, she surreptitiously eased sideways a smidgen.

  Zac tipped a bottle of wine he must have brought with him, and she’d failed to notice, at her. “Got any glasses?’

  “Everything’s packed away.” God, she so desperately wanted to ask after Will but didn’t trust her voice not to crack. Or worse, that she wouldn’t dissolve into a gulping mess of sobs.

  “Not a problem.” Zac smiled, fishing a Swiss army knife from his pocket, and plucking free the corkscrew from the fat fold of miscellaneous blades. “The way you hit my hip flask the day of the funeral, I know you’re not averse to swigging straight from the bottle.”

  She remembered and wished she didn’t. That was the day Will had put his job on the line for her… Also stolen her heart, though she hadn’t realized that at the time.

  “Why the need to see how I’m holding up, Zac,” she asked thickly, taking the bottle from him and throwing back a hefty swig, before passing it back—anything to clear the constriction clogging her throat—even wine, which she disliked.

  “The killings.”

  She turned her head and stared at him blankly.

  “Christ, you don’t know do you? Which planet have you been on the last two weeks?”

  “I haven’t been out much. No television. Disconnected from the internet. What killings?”

  Zac took a hit of wine, his lips, seeming to linger where she’d pressed hers. She dismissed the unease that skittered her spine.

  “General Wilkins: accidently shot himself in the face whilst polishing an antique pistol. Admiral Peters: somewhat embarrassingly, the victim of self-induced autoerotic asphyxiation. Air Marshal Johns: a hit and run. And mother-shocker of them all, The Right Honorable Peter Gwyn-Davis, Secretary of State at the MoD: lost consciousness and drowned in his bathtub.”

  Her vertebrae locked. Four MoD men dead. She didn’t have to ask if they were connected to BT11— She knew the answer.

  Christ, enough blood had been spilled. Will had been right. Given a little space, and time to process the pain of losing Rhys, the violent revenge she’d wanted against those responsible for BT11 had become more rational. Those men would pay for what they’d done, just not with their lives. The Service, men like Will, would see to that.

  “Will.” Not a question—there was no doubt in her mind he was innocent of the killings—more a need to grab hold of something solid and saf
e. And it was supposed to stay as a private thought in her head not come out in a whisper.

  “Phsssst, no,” Zac dismissed. “He’s one of the gray suits now. Wouldn’t dirty his hands, even to see justice served. Though the Assassins are under investigation, and Will’s in the frame as prime suspect in authorizing the kill-orders. He’s up to his neck in shit. Hasn’t been suspended though—yet.”

  Well, Zac needn’t sound so damned satisfied. “Can I help? There must be something I can do? I’ve some experience in forensic profiling. I could—”

  “Ruin everything— He doesn’t want you involved, Angel.”

  God, Will. Accepting her help wouldn’t be an admission of failure. “Is that why I haven’t been hauled in for questioning?”

  “Yup. Will threw a shit fit at the suggestion. He insisted you’d been through enough, threatened to quit if any officer so much as darkened your door. People have a tendency to take his threats seriously. God knows, Diana did.”

  A vague What the hell does Diana have to do with this? flitted through her mind but got swiftly flattened in the tumble of other thoughts flooding her brain. Why was Will still trying to protect her? If he’d gotten past his fury at her for quitting on him, why hadn’t he reached for her? Had he still not figured it out yet? That to open himself up to the risk of being hurt would be to trust her. Trust her not to do that. That’s all she needed, his trust. She loved him—

  Zac’s kiss wasn’t easy. It was rough, angry, mean even. His hands around her head to hold her still, crushingly tight. His shoulders pressing her tight against the packing cases so insistent, several balanced on the uppermost row crashed to the floor, the sound of glass and china smashing, stunning Zac into pulling back.

  “What the hell was that?” she demanded furiously, swiping the back of her wrist across her stinging mouth, the tiny smear of red left behind confirming he’d cut her lip.