Colter shoved himself forward, sliding down the recliner. At the motion, his jaw clamped so tightly that his lips turned inward and moisture filled the corners of his eyes. “What’s going on? You need a doctor to check you out.”
Jumping to her feet, Kensie held up a hand. “Stop! Don’t move. I’m fine. I promise. I was just thinking about something and it surprised me. I feel normal, no headache, nothing. I don’t have a concussion.” She stood on one foot and pivoted in a circle. “See? My balance is fine.”
He froze halfway down the recliner, eyes narrowed. “What were you thinking about?”
What could she tell him that was believable but wouldn’t scare him into suggesting she find someone else to help her? Someone she wouldn’t fall for after just a few days?
“Um...”
“Kensie.” This time her name was filled with warning, like he already didn’t believe her.
“I think I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to make up for letting Alanna get kidnapped.” The words that burst from her mouth surprised her. Not the fact that she thought it; she’d realized it while she’d been wandering around town, searching for information on Henry. But it surprised her that she’d shared it.
Colter looked equally surprised. He stayed suspended halfway down the chair, his mouth open in a silent O.
Not wanting him to feel sorry for her—or think she didn’t have a life—she backtracked. “I know it’s not my fault. It’s just survivor’s guilt rearing up.”
Great. Now she sounded like one of the psychiatrists her parents had insisted she see as a teenager.
“Of course it’s not your fault.”
Colter sounded almost offended by the idea, but he must have believed her, because his biceps bulged out again and then he hauled himself back up the chair. Leaning against the headrest, he closed his eyes, exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders and the way his chest heaved from the effort.
She hoped he’d drop the topic, but when his eyes opened again, they were soft, understanding.
“Why isn’t your family here with you, Kensie? Helping you search for Alanna?”
It wasn’t the question she’d expected him to ask and she felt herself flush for a new reason now. She didn’t want him to think her family was mean or uncaring. “Because of what the FBI told us,” she explained. “We’ve all been through this so many times over the years. There’s been a lot of false leads. Once, two years after she was taken, we even drove down to Indiana to see a girl who’d been rescued. She wasn’t talking and police thought it could be Alanna. It wasn’t, but—”
That experience had scarred her. The girl had been a broken shell. Gaunt and terrified, and the same age as Alanna would have been then. Police had eventually found her family, but Kensie had kept track of her over the years. At thirteen she’d committed suicide.
“Anyway,” Kensie rushed on, realizing she’d stopped talking long enough for concern to put lines across Colter’s forehead. “My parents handled that one better than Flynn and I did.”
“Of course they did. How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Colter swore, and Kensie continued. “My parents did try hard to keep me and Flynn away from the search. But we wanted to know. We missed Alanna, too. We still do. And the longer Alanna was gone, the harder it was to get interest from the press, help from the public for tips. But they were a lot more interested if they could talk to me or Flynn.”
“Oh, Kensie—”
“Flynn was younger than me, so I tried to do most of the press interviews. I thought I was protecting him, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. My parents did their best for us, but they were trying to do their best for Alanna, too. And over the years, Flynn just got more and more out of control. Hanging out with a bad crowd, doing dangerous things just to cheat death or get some kind of rush—he’s explained it to me, but I still don’t totally understand.”
Rebel let out a low whine and scooted closer, resting her head against Kensie’s leg.
Kensie smiled at the dog, who seemed to have a finely tuned sense for when someone was hurting. Running her hand over Rebel’s soft fur released a bit of the tension knotting Kensie’s shoulders.
“When he was sixteen, he drove his car off a bridge. Not intentionally,” she added, thinking of the girl in Indiana. “He was drunk. Thank goodness no one else was hurt. Flynn spent a month in the hospital. And that changed everything.”
“What do you mean?” Colter asked softly.
“We have close family friends who say it woke my parents up to the fact that they had two other kids who needed them.” When Colter frowned, she told him, “I don’t think they ever forgot. But it was hard growing up with Alanna’s disappearance always overshadowing everything. My parents missed birthdays chasing possible sightings. Flynn and I probably spent too much of our childhood talking to police and being interviewed by reporters and talk-show hosts. I wanted to do it, but Flynn...” She shook her head.
“So, if Flynn was sixteen when this happened, how old were you?”
“Twenty.”
“So there was no do-over on your childhood at that point.”
Kensie shrugged, uncomfortable with the implication. “I love my parents. They love me. They tried to do what was best for all three of their kids. I understand that. Heck, I pushed them hard not to stop. And when they did—”
“You took over,” Colter said, his intense gaze never leaving her face.
She shrugged. “Yeah. My parents needed to focus on Flynn. But we couldn’t just give up on Alanna. She’s my baby sister.”
“So, now you chase after these leads all by yourself, with no one to lean on?”
“It’s not like that. My family is only a phone call away. And I can’t expect them to drop everything every time I think there might be a chance.”
“They dropped everything for your sister when you were a kid.”
“That’s not fair,” Kensie said, but it lacked heat because she knew Colter was just trying to take her side. The problem was, there were no sides. There was just sadness. Her parents’ way meant accepting Alanna was long dead, lost to them forever. Her way meant the possibility of an endless cycle of hope and heartbreak.
“You’re right,” Colter said. “I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m not doing it alone,” Kensie said softly, her hand still absently stroking Rebel’s head. “I’ve got you.”
And that had changed everything. She stared at him, the soft understanding in his gaze, the ice hanging sideways off his leg, dripping unnoticed onto the chair.
She’d never met anyone like Colter Hayes. She’d probably never meet anyone like him again.
If this was what being halfway in love with him was like, she was in trouble. Because it would be far too easy to fall the rest of the way.
And she had a feeling if that happened, she’d never recover from the hard landing.
* * *
“I’VE GOT YOU.”
Kensie’s words echoed in his head, the soft, shy certainty in her voice tugging at his heart. She deserved someone to stand next to her, to help shoulder her burden for more than just a few days or a week or however long she was going to be in Desparre.
That was something he could never give her. But he could support her while she was there.
And he could open up to her, the way she’d opened up to him.
The very idea made his lungs constrict too hard with each breath, made his skin burn with clammy heat despite the ice melting all over his leg. But he pushed the words out anyway, praying he wouldn’t have a full-blown panic attack in front of her.
“When I woke up in the hospital, the doctors told me they weren’t sure they could save my leg.”
Kensie’s back straightened at his change in conversation, her hand slowing on Rebel�
�s head.
As if sensing he needed her now, his dog came to the recliner and dangled her head over the chair arm. She nudged at his elbow, encouraging him to pet her, and he laughed at her antics.
But his laughter faded fast. “Pretty quickly, though, it didn’t even matter what happened with my leg, because they told me none of my brothers had made it out of that ambush. Rebel got out, but they weren’t sure she was going to pull through.”
He smothered the sob that lurched forward at the memory. He could almost smell the hospital’s nauseating mix of bleach and sickness. Saying the words was a softer blow now than it had been then, but it still felt like someone had punched him right in the chest.
Kensie lurched forward. She gripped his shoulder, not impeding the quickening motion of his hand petting Rebel. “You don’t need to talk about this, Colter.”
“I do. I want to tell you.” As he spoke, he realized it was true.
He hadn’t talked about that day since it happened, refusing to get into any detail with the shrinks the military kept offering him. Refusing to go into detail with his parents, who wanted to help him, but just couldn’t move past their own mix of fear and joy that he was alive to understand his depression.
“You know that picture in my room you liked?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. He could actually hear her swallow, waiting for him to continue.
“It’s the last one I have of them. We weren’t technically a team. I was Military Police, K-9 Unit. Rebel’s role was pretty new to the military then. She’d been serving for three years as a Combat Tracker Dog. It meant the two of us were partners. Sometimes we’d go with a unit, other times we’d get dropped into a site by ourselves.”
“Dropped?” Kensie asked, her hand absently rubbing his shoulder.
He wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “Yeah. Helicopter would take us in and we’d rope out together. Rebel would be attached to me and we’d be set down somewhere, usually out in front of a unit to check out a location. Rebel’s job was to start at the site of an explosion or an ambush and then follow the trail back to the person who set it. She was good at it, too.”
At the praise, Rebel’s tail darted back and forth a few times. But it settled fast, either because she knew what he was talking about or she recognized the serious tone of his voice.
“Anyway, for almost a year, Rebel and I had been attached to a Marine Special Operations Team. The guys you saw in the picture in my room were that unit. We all bonded fast. That day—the day the picture was taken—we’d just come back from a mission. We thought we were finished for the day. We should have been finished for the day.”
He blew out a breath, remembering the moment the call had come that they were going back out. There’d been nothing out of the ordinary about it. They’d all had just enough time to get cleaned up, get comfortable. But that was the way of missions sometimes. You might not see any real action for weeks and then, all of a sudden, you’d barely get any rest.
That day they’d heard about a bomb going off, listened to the initial reports. One of his brothers had said he hoped they’d be the ones to check it out. They all knew Rebel’s success rate. They believed she could find the bomber who’d taken the lives of what he’d later learned were twenty-six soldiers.
That moment in the command tent was the last time they’d all been together before heading out. He could picture the whole group, in a combination of fatigues and fresh T-shirts, looking exhausted, but with a seriousness that said they were ready to go.
He blinked the image of his brothers away and Kensie refocused in front of him. She waited patiently, quietly, her hand still on his shoulder.
“It was an IED—improvised explosive device. A strong one. Blew up a couple of transports. A lot of our people were killed. The area was dangerous and reports said there were no expected survivors, so the Special Operations Team I was assigned to was sent out. Their job was to clear it for a Medevac unit to come in—with the hope that reports were wrong and there’d be people left to save. Rebel and I were supposed to get a scent on the guy who’d set the bomb.”
When they’d arrived, the scene had been terrible. The trucks had been caught in a remote pass, an area known to be dangerous because of the terrain. The trucks could go between the rocky hills or all the way around. Around meant losing a lot of time. Between meant making a tempting target for the snipers who were known to hide up in the hills if they got word of a transport coming through. But this had been the first time someone had tried an IED there.
“I admit, I was nervous about the call once we got details. I had a feeling we’d be tracking this bomber up into territory well controlled by insurgents. But Rebel and I were going to wait for the rest of our team to finish their work and come with us if we needed to. But we never got the chance.”
The wreckage had still been smoldering when they’d trekked in, alert for snipers looking to finish off anyone trapped in what remained of the transport vehicles. But there’d been no one left to hurt, no one left to save.
The smell of smoke and fuel had been overwhelming, the craters much bigger than anyone had expected. He’d known from a single look that it was too late for anyone who’d been in those trucks.
His vision blurred over at the memory. He’d known most of those people, and just like that, they were gone. It hadn’t been the first time. But in that moment he’d tried not to linger on the pain. He’d tried to hold on to the anger. That’s what would push him forward into the rocky hills with Rebel, looking for the bomber.
“Rebel got a scent,” he told Kensie, realizing that it was tears blurring his vision. He felt her soft fingertips swiping them away for him as he pressed on. “It’s probably why we made it. We were out in front of the rest of the team. They’d already cleared the immediate area, but the hills above? All we could do was watch those. So, Rebel and I were the first targets.”
“Targets?” Kensie’s voice wobbled and her hand clamped harder on his shoulder.
“It was an ambush. Once the bomber took the trucks, the others waited up in the hills until we’d searched the place, called it in as clear. Then they fired. An L-shaped ambush. Seems like all the fire is coming from one spot, so you move, and then you realize it’s there, too. Probably the plan had been to get soldiers and then the first responders. Which isn’t exactly what we were, but a Special Operations Team is a pretty tempting target.”
Colter couldn’t believe it had been a year now. The official after-action reports estimated that it had taken less than three minutes for everyone else on his team to be killed. And he’d missed all of it, hadn’t been able to take a stand alongside them, because he’d already been out of the fight. It was one of the biggest regrets of his life.
The cabin was so silent he could hear Rebel’s soft breathing, Kensie’s more uneven breaths.
“How did you survive?” Kensie finally asked. Her voice was shaky and something wet dropped onto his arm that he realized was her tears.
“Rebel. That first shot was fired and she leaped on me. Kind of like she did with you the day we met you.” He’d actually felt the next bullet slice right over his head, but by then he’d already been falling.
Rebel whined at the sound of her name, pressing her head against him, maybe recognizing he was moving into dangerous territory.
“It’s okay, girl,” he told her. Because it was. He’d already gotten through most of the story and he hadn’t broken down.
Colter stared up at Kensie. Her lips trembled despite how hard she’d pressed them together. She was blinking rapidly, trying to contain the moisture covering her beautiful toffee-colored eyes.
She cared about him. The thought filled him with joy and pride and fear. He didn’t want to hurt her.
Dropping his gaze from hers, he continued. “We fell into one of the bomb craters. Down through rubble. A piece of
metal went all the way through my right leg.”
Kensie gasped as he finished. “Rebel landed mostly on top of me, so the metal that went through me also sliced her back leg open pretty badly. I passed out. I woke up later in a helicopter airlifting me and Rebel out of there. Apparently the insurgents had come down from the other side and finished off the rest of my team.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kensie whispered, her hand like a vise on his shoulder.
“I guess they thought we were already dead. I was out cold, but Rebel wasn’t. She must have kept totally still while they were searching. The team who came to help us said they wouldn’t have even known we were down there except Rebel alerted them. We were flying out of the site and I was trying to stay conscious long enough to ask about my team, but no one wanted to answer me.”
When they’d avoided the question, he’d known it was bad. But as hard as he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to hold onto consciousness long enough to force the issue. It had been days later, in the hospital, when a representative from the military he’d never met before had finally broken the news.
“I had two surgeries, the first one to get the piece of metal out of me and then later to screw the leg back together to try and save it. Rebel had three, poor girl, though her leg has healed better than mine. Then there was PT for both of us, for a good six months. We both made it back home, but our career together was over.”
His physical therapy had been driven by an equal mix of unrealistic determination to get himself back into fighting shape and the desire to just be mobile enough to go and see his brothers’ families in person. Apologize.
He’d never done it. By the time he’d healed enough to be released, he’d broken down every time he’d picked up the phone to book the travel. Since then, one of his brothers’ wives had given birth to their first child. Another’s oldest had graduated from high school. So much they should have been around to see.
Instead, it had just been Colter. And no one had been waiting for him because he’d never made that commitment to anyone or anything outside the service.
K-9 Defense (HQR Intrigue) Page 12