Crossing The Line (KTS Book 2)

by Elise Faber

  I wasn’t so sure of that. Olive’s vitals were shit, and the metal or whatever had sliced through her had practically razed her insides. It would be a fucking miracle if I hadn’t missed tying off something, if she weren’t bleeding internally even at this moment.

  “There’s nothing more we can do,” she said. “And right now, I need to look at your back.”

  I turned to her, head pounding, vision swimming with exhaustion. “What’s wrong with my back?”

  “Burns, Linc,” she said gently. “Your back is riddled with them.”

  “I’m fine.” I took a step toward the door, rubbing my temple, the pounding transforming into a cacophony of noises and swirling vision.

  I just needed to lie down for a bit, and I would be all right.

  “No,” Hannah said. “You’re not. You look like you’re going to pass out.” She snagged my shoulder. “Infirmary. Now. And if I need to make that an order from your commanding officer, I can do it.”

  “All right,” I muttered. “I’ll—”

  I’d lifted my foot, readying to take a step toward the room down the hall . . .

  But I didn’t feel it touch the tile.

  Because darkness swept up and sucked me under.

  Chapter Three

  KTS Satellite Base

  Western Georgia

  09:47hrs

  Olive

  The light was the first thing I processed, shining through my closed eyelids and making my brain thrum with pain.

  But that pain quickly became negligible when compared to my stomach.

  That felt like someone had taken a circular saw to it then jostled the blade through my insides, just for good measure. In fact, it hurt so much, overwhelmed my senses so rapidly that I found my breaths coming in short, staccato bursts.

  Which did not feel great with a wound in my lower abdomen.

  So, for long moments, I just lay there, trying to slow my breathing, to moderate my pain enough that I could open my eyes and get some freaking morphine.

  “Easy now.”

  A gentle hand on mine, slightly calloused fingers brushing my arm, shifting it and moving a cord along the inside before pressing a push button into my palm. “Morphine,” Linc said. “It’s ready for you.”

  I pressed the button. Once.

  Even though I wanted to press it a dozen times, to waylay that motherfucker until the morphine filled my veins, until I drifted off into blissful abandon, I didn’t. For one, morphine pumps didn’t work that way—e.g. I couldn’t overdose on this one—and two, part of me couldn’t reveal my insecurities to this man.

  I needed to be strong, to be tough.

  To not be hurt.

  Clearly not logical, I knew, because I unmistakably was hurt. So yes, it was illogical. But also, I couldn’t be vulnerable with this man.

  I just couldn’t.

  Luckily, the first pump of morphine took the edge off, allowed me to wait a few seconds before taking another. And by the time I pressed it a third time, I was floating blissfully on a cloud.

  And floating enough to open my eyes.

  God, he was pretty.

  God . . . even doped up on morphine I wanted him.

  God . . . that was pathetic.

  “How’s your back?” I asked, shifting my gaze from the chiseled planes of his jaw, the sharp lines of his nose, the stormy gray depths of his eyes.

  Because he was looking at me gently.

  And we couldn’t have that.

  Nope. No fucking way.

  “Lily got the burns patched up.” A shrug. “I’ll be sleeping on my stomach for a while. I probably shouldn’t say that, should I?” He lifted the sheet and my hospital gown, palpated gently around the bandage, peeling the corner up slightly to peek beneath at the stitches. All things I would do, which was why it took me a minute to realize he was basically staring at me naked.

  No, of course, he wouldn’t actually be thinking that.

  If I’d learned anything about this man, it was that he was completely professional.

  But . . . I was hurt and practically naked, and this man was looking at my body, a body I’d basically invited him to enjoy, a body he’d turned down with a sharp rebuke. So no, I wasn’t feeling all that comfortable with him staring at me, no matter how professional.

  “How’s it feel?” he asked, smoothing my gown and the covers back down.

  “I’ll live,” I said, resisting the urge to yank the blanket up to my chin. “You?”

  His lips turned up. “I’ll live.” He made some notes in the computer, and I waited for him to leave as he slid in the keyboard tray, as he moved around the room, putting things back into place.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, he putzed about for a few minutes and then sat in the chair next to my bed.

  Quietly.

  Waiting . . . for something.

  Fatigue was already creeping into the edges of my mind, threatening to take me back under. “What happened after I passed out?”

  He shrugged. “We took you into surgery.” A slight curve to his mouth, making a dimple appear in one cheek. “I followed your advice about the lines and TKA, though we had to double the dose.”

  “Of course, you did.” I sniffed. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that a man always has to make things bigger?”

  Silence.

  Then he roared with laughter, absolutely roared with it.

  Meanwhile, I’d been serious. Which meant I did a fair amount of scowling at this man I was pretending not to want.

  “I’ve always loved your sense of humor.”

  That was so not true. “Are you going to go away anytime this century?”

  Warm, rough fingers covered mine, making me jump, causing pain to radiate down my side.

  “Shit, sorry,” he murmured, but he didn’t let my hand go.

  Just wove his fingers through mine and held tight.

  “I’m tired,” I whispered.

  “Then sleep.”

  A shake of my head. “Not until you go.”

  His chuckle was rough, rumbling out of his chest, rubbing along my skin, combining with the fuzzy feeling in my head to make me shiver.

  Then wince.

  “You should take more morphine.”

  I shook my head again.

  And . . . standoff.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, my eyes struggling to stay open.

  Calloused fingers running along mine. “Because I have a captive audience.”

  I frowned.

  His fingers continued moving, lulling me into sleep, but I fought it. “What do you mean?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I asked—” A yawn punctuated my words.

  “We almost lost you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  Blinking at the change in topic, I focused on his face, on the concern in those dark gray irises, on the shadows beneath his eyes.

  “You have a cut on your jaw.”

  A flash of that dimple. “Yes, Pops. I do.”

  More blinking. “What did you call me?”

  He tilted his head to the side but didn’t acknowledge my question, just said, “We had to give you a transfusion, and I lost count of the sutures.”

  “Probably because you were being stubborn about your back and shouldn’t have been performing surgery.” I lifted a brow, knowing I was being a bitch, but unable to stop myself. “Should I worry about surgical instruments being left behind?”

  His laughter this time was quiet, a soft sound that rubbed against my skin like velvet. “No,” he said. “Because Lily was there to keep me in line.”

  I snorted.

  And still those fingers stroked—up and down, up and down, up and—

  I yawned again.

  “We almost lost you,” he whispered.

  “You already said that.”

  “It’s something that’s warranted to say twice.”

  “I don’t know why you’d even care,” I muttered.

  “I care,
” he said, his voice going silky smooth. “I care because you’re a good agent, a good friend, a good person.” My lungs froze as he paused, my heart skittering in my chest. “I care because of what I was going to tell you earlier.”

  “Before the giant explosion?” I said dryly, needing to keep this light, to not process the words he’d just given me.

  A chuckle. “Yes, before that.”

  “Pre-explosion. Got it.” And saying that a second time made me realize I probably should have asked about it much sooner. There had been an explosion, likely an attack on the base, unless it had been some sort of freak accident, and I was thinking about Linc’s dreamy eyes. I sighed, pushed that recrimination away. Oh well. I supposed I was allowed to be a little slow. I was recovering from major surgery, after all. “What’s going on with that?” I asked him. “Did they find the source? Was anyone else hurt?”

  His fingers stayed tangled with mine, but his other hand ran up and down my arm, sending a prickle of sensation through my nerves. It was somehow both perfect and also completely unpleasant.

  “No one was hurt,” he said, somehow seeming to sense that because he lifted his hands from my skin and sat back somewhat gingerly in his chair. “No source yet, but Laila and Ryker think it was a bomb meant for them.”

  My eyes widened, and I tried to sit up. “What? Are they okay?”

  He was gentle as he coaxed me to lie back down. “They’re fine. We were the only ones in the garage, so aside from the cars being totaled and some scorch marks in the concrete, the base is fine.”

  Well, that explained what had cut me.

  It must have been a piece of metal from one of the vehicles. That was the only thing that could explain the clean lines of my injury. It certainly hadn’t been an impact wound from the concrete.

  “Is everyone else okay?”

  “You asked that already,” he said gently, smoothing back my hair. “Everyone is fine, but the entire base is on total lockdown. The teams are going through and searching every inch of the compound to make sure there are no other dangers, and anyone who isn’t on that is rotating through patrols.”

  I nodded, but that information didn’t answer the most important question.

  “How could someone get in with a bomb?” I glanced up at him. “We’re supposed to be completely secure. Someone would have to have credentials to—” I broke off, yawned again.

  “Rest now,” he ordered. “We’ll figure out the answers to those very important questions later.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t work on you,” I muttered.

  A brush of his fingers on my cheek. “Not being sarcastic,” he said.

  Exhaustion was making my limbs heavy, my lids kept being dragged down, forcing me to almost have to physically yank them open. “But what if—”

  “Olive,” he murmured. “Rest. We’ve got it for now.”

  His fingers stroked across my forehead, smoothed back my hair, and reflexively, my eyes shut, sleep inched closer. I fought the fatigue, struggled to stay above the fog, above slipping away.

  But then he smoothed my hair again, murmured softly once more, “We’ve got it, sweetheart, I promise.”

  And I fell headlong into sleep.

  Humming woke me up, and I blinked against the bright lights.

  All I knew for certain was that it wasn’t Linc.

  Even as I’d lost and gained consciousness over the last who-knew-how-many days, I’d always known when he was checking in on me. Even hurting, even under the influence of morphine, I’d experienced the same instant body awareness I always did—my nerves all firing, goose bumps on my skin, heat coiling in my abdomen . . . and farther south.

  Aside from all that sensation missing, the voice doing the humming was feminine.

  See? I could use my kick-ass deductive reasoning skills. Go me.

  Squinting and still blinking, it took a moment until I could see who was in my room. Ava. My kick-ass, formerly closed-down, and oftentimes frightening friend was staring out the window and humming.

  Incongruous action with the woman I’d known before she’d fallen for my teammate, Dan, and opened her heart to love.

  But certainly not incongruous with the woman I knew now.

  And I was happy for her—even though I was forcing myself to not be a giant, jealous baby.

  I wanted that.

  I was still happy for her.

  As she kept humming, I squinted again, though this time not because I needed my eyes to adjust but rather because I was trying to figure out the song. It sounded familiar, like something I’d heard on the radio a million times before—

  “Sugar!” I screeched, making Ava freeze.

  Not jump, because she was too good of an agent to react in such a way, going still rather than flailing when surprised, as we’d all been trained to do. She spun carefully, and I grimaced, somehow having forgotten the woman was on crutches.

  Christ.

  I’d almost made the woman with a twice-broken ankle fall off her crutches.

  Go me, again.

  She hobbled my way—still infinitely more graceful than me, even on those metal sticks—and sank into the chair at the bedside, studying my expression closely. “You had me worried there for a second, Ollie.”

  I couldn’t have that, so my answer was light. “A girl tries to take one drive.”

  Ava chuckled. “You should have known better than to leave without the team.”

  “Meh.” Gingerly, I waved a hand. “You don’t want the third wheel around.”

  “You’d never be the third wheel,” Ava said. “You know, we all feel so lucky to have you on the team.”

  “That’s because we’re the best team.”

  “Damn right, we are.” She lightly fist-bumped me when I managed to lift my hand a little higher.

  Progress.

  “Plus,” I said, making sure to keep my tone teasing so she knew I was joking, “I’m not even the third wheel. Technically, I’m the fifth.”

  I was joking.

  Sort of.

  No—I mean yes, I was joking. My team was the best, and that was because of the people on it. Laila and Ryker had both been leaders on separate teams before they’d gotten married, and when they had navigated their way to a permanent relationship, Ryker had given up his position as a commanding officer, coming over to Laila’s team when an opening had come up.

  True love, those two had.

  But it made sense.

  Being an agent with KTS was a full-time job, and having two agents in one relationship, both with separate teams, plus the added responsibility of leadership? Well, that would have made it nearly impossible for them to see each other.

  KTS itself was an offshoot of several branches of several countries’ military organizations. It was jointly funded and technically operated outside of all those countries’ purview, though we had the necessary funding thanks to some very deep pockets.

  Pockets that ensured KTS’s mission was fulfilled.

  Our job?

  To save the world.

  Our job in slightly less dramatic terms?

  To track down the worst of the worst bad guys and to bring them in. We worked in human trafficking, in drug rings, in mafia cases. The tougher the villain, the more diligently KTS’s teams worked to take them down.

  And we were successful, for the most part.

  But there always seemed to be another bad guy to take the place of those we shut down.

  It was like fucking whack-a-mole, but for the worst of the worst.

  Disheartening at times. Rewarding at others.

  And still, something I would never, ever trade.

  Each team at KTS focused on a different case, and though sometimes our jobs overlapped and we worked together, for the most part, we—meaning the field teams—were made up of small cells designed to infiltrate, reconnoiter, and take down.

  Laila’s—and by extension, my—team was currently focused on breaking up a trafficking ring based in southern Italy.


  We had cracked some of the code, saved some of the people being sold.

  But many more were still out there, and many more were still vulnerable to being exploited.

  Plus, in our investigation of the ring, we’d discovered that KTS had been betrayed by a former agent named Daniel. Long thought dead, he’d been pulling some puppet strings, putting both KTS and many innocent people at risk. It was devastating knowing that one of our agents would do that, would do something so against the organization’s tenets, but I had seen enough bad things to understand that . . . it wasn’t unusual.

  Shitty people did shitty things.

  So now, our principal focus would be hunting Daniel down and making him pay for what he’d done.

  And that last thought was why I couldn’t ever be a doctor in the real world.

  No, I didn’t like to hurt people—even bad ones—but I sure as hell didn’t mind tracking them down so they could meet their comeuppance, all the more so when it wasn’t dished out by my hands.

  On rare occasions, I’d heal them enough so they could meet their comeuppance a second time.

  See?

  Immoral and against a doctor’s ethics to do no harm.

  But I supposed that was why I was with KTS.

  I didn’t fit the normal doctor mold.

  “You wouldn’t be the third or fifth wheel,” Ava said, drawing me out of my head, “or anything in between. You’re Ollie, and you’re the shit.”

  “Only because I bring the pizza,” I said lightly.

  A smile. “That, too.”

  Then she surprised me by grabbing my hand. Ava wasn’t a touchy-feely person, not in any way, shape, or form, but this was another way that being with Dan had changed her. She didn’t actively recoil from contact, sometimes—like in this case—initiated it herself. She’d certainly loosened up in other ways, too, and I didn’t feel like she was actively trying to keep her distance any longer or that Laila and I had to drag her into anything that resembled a semblance of socialization.

  I was thrilled that my friend—who had been through so freaking much—had been able to find someone who loved her for everything she was inside.

  Because she was fucking great.

  “What’ll it be this time?” I asked. “Should we torture the boys and make them eat soggy Hawaiian?”