“At this point, he’s just sleeping off the exhaustion and the fever—he should be up and around in the next twenty-four hours. But keep an eye on him. He’ll tire easily, and relapse is a serious possibility.” Pierce finished off his juice and set the bottle in the sink. “Ever administered penicillin before?”
She shook her head.
“Shot goes in the ass. You may be unfamiliar with the procedure”—he flashed a grin, the line near the top of his cheek deepening—“but you’re well acquainted with the results. You’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
Well acquainted with the . . .?
“Wait, did you just call me a pain in the ass?” she asked, squishing a laugh between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
“If the shoe fits, love.” He braced his hands on the counter and rolled his shoulders, though if he were slipping off tension or bracing for a fight, she couldn’t tell.
“Have you given any thought to what comes next?” he asked, his voice dropping and his gaze going toward the bedroom door.
Cooper shook her head, though that wasn’t entirely true. As Will’s fever had ebbed and his seizures disappeared, all of her thoughts had turned from if he would live, to what happened next if he did.
“What are you going to tell him?”
A deceptively complicated question. Will was no mark. No naive civilian she could manipulate with easy lies or half-formed truths. He’d have questions. He’d demand answers.
And she had to assume that above all else he’d want to go home.
She couldn’t let him. Not yet.
“The truth, I guess.” As much of it as she could stomach, anyway. A redacted and sanitized version that wouldn’t end with Will walking out . . . or with his hands around her neck.
“The truth?” Pierce asked skeptically. “And what, you’re just going to hope he feels like helping you?”
“I can’t lie to him, Pierce.” She sighed, resigned to the now-familiar fight between them. “He deserves to know what he’s getting into. What’s at stake.” He deserved to know everything. Deserved to know not only what his role in all of this was, but hers as well. She’d tell him, if it came down to it, though she didn’t want to. Didn’t want to hear the words that rang through her head fall from his mouth.
Traitor. Coward. Murderer.
But if that was what it took, if that was what it cost to set things right, then she’d pay.
Cole deserved that much, at least.
“There are other ways, Cooper.”
She shook her head. “I need him to access that safe deposit box—”
“You needed his fingerprints to access that box—a distinction you conveniently ignore.”
“You can’t be serious.” Working to keep her voice down, Cooper shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and tamped down her irritation. “I told you that wasn’t an option. I’m not like you, I can’t just—”
“Just what? You think it was easy for me?” Pierce slapped the edge of the counter with an open palm. “That I just woke up one day, cold and ruthless? I didn’t. And I paid for it. People died because of it.” His tone lost its ragged edge, softening into something like melancholy. “This life, it pushes you, Cooper. It’s a never-ending sequence of choices, and none of them are good. The sooner you accept that, the better shot you have of making it to the other side.”
But at what cost? she wondered. If she lost that part of herself, buried it deep and walked away, could she ever get it back?
“You got what you wanted. Will’s alive, and we’re even.” Disappointment and a vague sense of disgust rode him. “I hope it works out for you.”
“Exactly. My choice. So what’s your problem?” she asked, frustration thrumming through her veins and pounding at her temples.
“I don’t have a problem,” he grunted. “I just don’t like wasting my time.”
“You consider saving a man’s life a waste of your time?”
He rounded on her. “What I consider a waste of my time is the not-insubstantial effort I’ve invested in keeping you alive.”
“And here I thought you’d be grateful—”
He snorted. “For what, exactly?”
“To be out of my debt, for one. Lord knows you’ve bitched about it enough.”
“Yes, well.” He tugged down the crisp cotton sleeves that he’d rolled up when he’d walked in the door to check on Will. “You’ll forgive me my disappointment—I never expected you to call in your chips over something so common as affection or banal as loyalty. My mistake, obviously.”
“Common as aff—” She snapped off her angry retort. “He was dying, Pierce. I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Of course you could have. And you damn well should have. I could have easily faked a set of fingerprints, Cooper. You know that.” He stormed out of the kitchen, frustration stiffening his shoulders as if he’d forgotten to remove the hanger before sliding on his shirt. “Lie to me all you want, but for fuck’s sake, don’t lie to yourself. You didn’t save that man’s life because you had to. Calling me in wasn’t a tactical decision or a calculated risk, and you know it. This was sentiment and friendship, pure and simple. The seduction of memories from a life that is gone.” He shook his head. “It’s a potent cocktail and your go-to drug of choice.”
She snapped her mouth shut. She wanted to call him out. Accuse him of being a cold, uncompromising bastard.
But he wasn’t wrong. And they both knew it.
Sweat itched along her palms and a shiver rose across her skin, all her mistakes and sins whispering reminders against still-sensitive flesh.
“Whatever else you’ve done, whatever you’re trying to atone for, you’re a good person, Cooper.” Pierce stared at her, his expression guarded but his voice sad. “This life, it kills the good ones. Snuffs them out and carries on as if they never existed in the first place. I want to see you out and free before then.”
“Why?” she asked, giving voice to the question that had haunted their strange friendship.
He didn’t answer. Just studied her as if he wanted to know what button he had to push or cut he had to make before the wound finally went deep enough to scar.
He reached for her hand, ran his fingers along the raised line of skin on her palm. That cut, and the one that matched it on her other hand, had gone deep. Had scarred.
And had changed everything.
“What’s it going to take before you realize the only person you can truly save is yourself?”
“I don’t believe that.” She swallowed hard and pushed back against the fatal current of fear and doubt and just managed to keep her head above the tide that threatened to drown her. “I can’t believe it. I have to make this right, Pierce.”
“And that’s the problem. You’re trying to fix something that cannot be mended. You’ve shouldered the blame for something that was never your fault to begin with. And you’re trying to save a man who is lost, Cooper. For fuck’s sake, let him go.”
She turned away from him, walked toward the drop-leaf table and the curtain-covered window. “I didn’t set things in motion,” she agreed. “But I pulled the trigger. I killed those men.”
“You followed orders,” he corrected. “That’s all. And they tried to kill you for it. Are still trying to kill you for it.” He pulled her around to face him. “How do you know the man in that room won’t do the same?”
“Will wasn’t part of that—”
“Of course he was part of that.” He gripped her by the shoulders, shook her once, twice, as if trying to strike what he was saying down to the very marrow in her bones. “If he wasn’t part of it, then he wouldn’t be here. There wouldn’t be a hidden box in a private bank. You wouldn’t have pulled him off that mountain and there wouldn’t be a price on his head. Everyone has their own agenda, even him.” He let her go, knocking her back a half-step with the force of his irritation. “Bennett is part of this, whether you like it or not.”
“Then we’re right back
where we started,” she said, thumbing her nail across the scar along her palm. “By your own admission, I need him.”
“That doesn’t mean you can trust him.” Pierce grabbed a tin of a cigarettes from the table and slid one out of the case. “Quite the opposite, actually. You don’t know how he plays into this. You don’t know what he wants. And you definitely don’t know what he’s protecting. And each and every one of those things could get you killed.”
“And each and every one of those things could get him killed, too,” she levied at him. “Someone wants Will dead, and they’re willing to pay for the privilege. Which makes him—”
“All the more dangerous,” Pierce answered, flicking open his lighter and igniting the end of his hand-rolled tobacco. He breathed in, the ember flickering dark, then bright again as he exhaled. “Man’s spent the last year of his life at the mercy of others. Beaten. Tortured. Starved. What do you think he’d do to go home?” he asked, raising a brow at her as he took another drag. “Who do you think he’d sell out to get there? His mother? His sister? His best friend?” he asked, his mouth turning harsh and ugly. “How about some woman he barely knows? How about the woman who killed his friends?”
Cooper sucked air, Pierce’s one-two punch a physical blow that reverberated through her body and down to her toes. “You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you,” Pierce reminded her. “How do you think your life stacks up against theirs? Against his own?” Pierce asked, his mouth a hard, tight line as he leaned over to flick some ash into the sink. “If the situation were reversed, if Will had pulled the trigger that day, if you’d watched Cole’s life drain away, a hole where his head used to be, would you give one goddamned thought to anything other than punishing the person who’d stolen him from you?”
No, Cooper thought viciously. No, she wouldn’t. She’d want justice. And if not that, then vengeance. Cole was her partner, her brother, her friend. She’d been his best friend and his wingman, and later, after she’d goaded him into hitting on the pretty brunette sitting lonely at the bar, she’d stood at his wedding.
No one touched him and got away with it.
No one hurt him and lived.
And no one destroyed him without Cooper laying their life to ruin.
“Do you really think it will be any different for Will?” Pierce asked.
Cooper swallowed against the doubt that surged like bile up her throat. “What choice do I have? I have to tell him something.”
“Or you can tell him nothing,” Pierce offered, unzipping the small leather bag that sat on the table. He pressed three capped syringes into her open palm.
Cooper stared at them, her mouth dry, questions like flocking birds in her head.
“Scopolamine. Laboratory refined for injections.”
“No!” Horrified, Cooper shoved the syringes toward Pierce.
“Yes,” he hissed, catching her wrist and pulling her close.
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s safe,” he argued, closing her fingers around the needles. “You don’t know what you’re walking into.”
She shook her head and slapped the drugs on the table. “And you don’t know what you’re asking.” Didn’t know the horrors he was unleashing. To Pierce, this was little more than an unpleasant practicality. A situation in which it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
But to Cooper?
To Cooper it was betrayal. Unconscionable and unforgivable.
“One injection will buy you eight to twelve hours, Cooper. He’ll be open and impressionable. If you have questions, then ask him. He won’t lie to you—it would never even occur to him to try,” Pierce urged her. “Walk him into the bank. Access the box. Get your answers. And do it all with the absolute certainty of the control scopolamine will give.” He pushed back his shock of brown hair and sighed. “It’s been used for far less—and far worse.”
To Pierce it was a Colombian legend. Derived from the borracherro tree, scopolamine was used by locals to carry out the perfect crime. A lost woman on the street. An open map. Someone kind enough to stop and help. All it took was a breath of air and a face full of powder. Twelve hours later and the victim’s memory was as empty as their bank account.
But security footage would reveal the game.
The victim, walking in, alert and responsive. Emptying their accounts. Handing over the cash. And doing it all with a ready smile.
Completely open to suggestion and entirely at the mercy of their captor.
The crime as horrifying as it was non-violent.
And Pierce didn’t know the half of it.
Didn’t know the ways the CIA had used it.
Or maybe he did. As a truth serum that had been abandoned in the seventies, at least. But he didn’t know about what came later. Didn’t know how they’d coupled it with cutting edge software and state of the art medicine for something much, much worse.
Assassinations. Programming. Enslavement.
But Cooper knew. She’d seen it, even if she hadn’t realized it at the time.
And she’d have no part of it. Not now. Not ever. Not for any reason or anything.
“No,” she repeated, forcing all of her firm resolve into a single word. “It’s a line I won’t cross, Pierce.”
He cursed. “Not even for Cole?” he asked.
She shut her eyes, pushed down the nagging sense of failure, and ignored the promise she’d made. “Not even for him.”
“What then?” he asked, his voice harsh, his face slashed with frustrated lines. “Tell Bennett the truth and trust him to do the right thing?”
“I trusted you to do the right thing,” she said, meeting his gaze. She’d expected to find amusement, surprise, or even that smug look of satisfaction he wore so well, but instead found only horrified shock.
He recovered fast and moved faster.
“Trust?” he asked the second he had his arm around her neck, his huge hands braced against her face and jaw. “Trust just got you killed.” He jerked his hands but turned her loose instead of snapping her neck.
She stumbled away from him, only to find him at her back, one hand on her shoulder, his gun at the base of her skull.
“This is what trust feels like, Cooper.” He dug the cold metal of the barrel into her head. “This is what it sounds like.” He cocked the gun, the click deafening . . . and still not half as loud as the whispered warning against her ear.
He spun her, shoved her back against the wall, then holstered his gun.
Tired of his games, she struck out, landing a blow to his jaw, to his cheek, to that goddamned mouth. She smothered a scream and bit off a curse when he caught her hands, pried open her fingers, and held her palms up, his thumbs digging into the scars he found there.
“This is what trust gets you, Cooper.” He dropped her hands and stepped away. “If you’re lucky.”
Tears burned at the back of her eyes. He wasn’t right, but he wasn’t wrong, either. And he’d known just where to hit her. Just how to make it hurt.
But it didn’t matter. Because if she did as he suggested, if she crossed that line, then she’d become the very thing she hated.
And there’d be no coming back. No going home. Not for her. Not ever.
“It’s not an option, Pierce. Not for me.”
He nodded, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “Then God help you, Cooper.” He strode for the door, pulled it open, and walked away.
Because I won’t.
He didn’t say it. But then, he didn’t have to. She’d heard him anyway.
His debt was paid, and he was done.
She wondered if she’d ever see him again.
Probably not.
She closed the door and braced her palm against the wood.
It should be a relief, watching him go.
But it wasn’t. Not really.
Just a hollow sense of understanding that sometimes, death wasn’t the worst thing a person faced. And not all who lived through trauma survived
.
She turned away from Pierce. She couldn’t help him. Couldn’t save him.
But there was someone else she could.
Chapter Eight
Pain, both familiar and foreign, registered first.
Familiar, in that Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken to anything else. The ache of bruises had become a ready, if not friendly, touch. The throb of infected skin as consistent as his own heartbeat. The pull of overtaxed or underworked muscles—extremes, always extremes—was little more than a tease and a torment. A lover’s touch that promised a lot, delivered less, and always left him aching.
But this time, there was something new, too. The foreign warmth of unencumbered sunlight burned across his eyelids, urging him to wake, to rise, to face the new day.
It seemed an impossible and terrifying thing.
He didn’t know where he was, but he was damn sure where he wasn’t. Forgotten in the jungle. Trapped in a pit. At the mercy of another. He’d been so certain that place would become his grave. Had tried to make his peace with that. And toward the end, when he’d had enough, he’d let himself hope it would be.
He’d cursed himself a quitter and a coward but had let himself pray for the end anyway.
Knowing he was free, that he’d won, that he’d lived, and those bastards had died, should have been easy. Welcome.
Instead, it was the most frightening realization he’d had in over a year.
Now that he wasn’t dying, he’d have to face the monumental task of living.
And he had no idea where to start.
“Are you trying to do that thing where you’re not asleep, but you pretend to be anyway?” Cooper asked, her voice soft but amused. “You know, the whole regulate your breathing, tamp down your heart rate, and utterly fool the other person in the room?”
Will turned his head toward her voice, felt a smile tug at the edge of his mouth. “Maybe,” he croaked, his mouth dry and his lips chapped.
Fearless (Somerton Security Book 3) Page 7