All because he had once trusted the wrong man. No wonder he was so screwed up.
"You were hit by shrapnel after a RPG destroyed your Humvee," she reminded him, quoting the information she'd read in his Silver Star citation. "Thrown thirty feet in the air, had a concussion, four broken ribs, two vertebra and herniated a disk in your cervical spine. Moving could have left you paralyzed for life, but you managed to make it back to Dhe Rawood in time to warn the rest of your unit and save the other civilians."
She remembered reading the dry recitation of facts in his record. How he'd been pinned under the remnants of the armored vehicle, floating in and out of consciousness, no chance to reach any weapons and unable to move.
How he had played dead, then waited until the rebels had moved off, before painstakingly digging, scraping away at the hard packed lifeless soil to dig his way out. He'd dragged himself to cover near where the rebels had taken the civilians, then as soon as night fell, he had ambushed the men left to guard the prisoners, killing five men with a knife and his bare hands, shooting the final two, then stealing their Jeep.
Too late to save the male civilian workers but he had rescued three women and arrived back at Deh Rawood in time to warn the rest of his unit about the rebel attack force.
"You were a hero, Chase."
He shook his head as if her words were meaningless. "Tell that to my men, to those dead civilians I was supposed to protect."
The fire crackled in the silence that fell between them. She ached with the urge to reach out and touch him, to let him know she understood his pain, but the way his shoulders were hunched and his eyes tightened, she knew it would do no good.
"That has nothing to do with now, with us," he finally said, turning to face her, placing his hands on her shoulders, his eyes boring down into hers.
"Can't we," he searched for words, "just take a time out, you and me? An hour, just one hour, for us—leave the rest of the world behind?"
She looked up into his face, so earnest in the flickering light of the fire, and she desperately wanted to believe him, to trust him, to give him what he asked for.
"Come on, KC. You can spare an hour, can't you? Or is it the thought of spending it with me that's so awful? Are you that good of an actress? Because I thought, I think, we have something here, something powerful, bigger than you or me—"
She placed a finger to his lips to interrupt him. His hands on her shoulders were gripping her hard as he waited for her answer.
She believed Chase was a good man. She wanted to trust him, but as she looked into his face, she still saw deception. He was telling her only part of the truth. How could she trust him when he wouldn't trust her?
KC pulled away from the distraction of his touch, steeled herself to make her move. There was too much at risk: her team, Neil Gianotti, her own life.
CHAPTER 29
Chase felt KC withdraw from him. It was as if they were on opposite sides of the globe when only a few feet separated them. He shivered, turned away and poked at the fire a few times. Before turning to face her, he replaced the HK and its holster back on his waistband.
When he looked back at her, she was leaning against the bunk, her head down so that he couldn't read her expression.
"Damn it, Westin. I need to get out of here." She aimed a hard stare at him.
"KC, you're not going anywhere." He stepped closer to her, within striking distance in case she tried anything stupid.
"I was afraid you'd say something like that." She pivoted into a fighting stance and swept a knife toward him, barely giving him the chance to avoid the sharp edge.
Damn, where'd she get that?
The words rushed through his mind even as he feinted with a heel strike to her knife arm. She blocked his first move easily. He countered by pivoting inside her guard and using both hands to twist her wrist backward. She gasped in pain, the sound stabbing through the otherwise silent cabin.
"Drop it, KC," he urged her, hating that it had gone this far. "Don't make me hurt you."
Her body relaxed and her hand opened, the blade falling to the floor. Before Chase could take another breath, he felt a weight lifted from the small of his back. The cold steel muzzle of his HK touched the sensitive skin behind his ear.
"On your knees, Westin," KC commanded. She stepped back, out of range, as Chase slowly dropped to his knees.
"You won't kill me," he said, raising his arms to rest on top of his head in the universal position of surrender, praying like hell that he hadn't misjudged her.
He deserved it if she did. How had she gotten under his guard so easily? Damnit, he'd broken every rule, and now there'd be hell to pay.
"Kill you, no," she said, reaching for her jacket, her eyes never leaving his. "But shoot you? Hell, yeah."
She was serious. Of course, she thought it was the only way to protect her team, just like she'd been ready to bash his head in last night to protect Jay.
"Don't do this, KC," he said as she pulled a pair of plastic flexcuffs from her jacket. Real cuffs, not fashion statements like the ones dangling from her belt. "There's more at stake here than you know. That meet has to go through. Trust me, please. That's all I'm asking, just trust me."
She hesitated for a split second, then gave a small shake of her head. "I can't. I'm sorry, Chase, but I just can't."
Finally, she called him Chase. Too bad it was too late. She deftly applied the cuffs with his wrists pinned behind his back. Very professional and almost impossible to escape from.
She grabbed her knife from the floor and returned it to its hidden sheath at the back of her vest. Then she shrugged into her jacket.
"Look at me." He tried one last time. "Listen to your heart, your instincts. KC, I'm not the man you think I am."
She ignored him as she gathered the two Glocks and opened the door. He was ready to tell her everything, to risk everything and trust her. But it was too late, she was out the door before he had a chance.
Chase hurled himself forward, shouting curses he knew would never make it past the heavy logs of the cabin walls.
Damnit, she'd just condemned Lucky to death, not to mention whatever innocent population Deacon and The Crusade were buying those weapons to slaughter.
He forced himself to calm down. She'd be back, she only went to the car to get the cell phone, he told himself. After all, she'd left him his own knife, the fireplace poker as well as a wealth of other tools to escape from the flexcuffs with. She was too professional to leave him alone for long, she'd call for backup and return to guard him.
Then he'd have his chance to talk her out of this, to explain everything to her.
He heard the growl of the Mustang's engine and swore once more.
Damn KC and her soft-heart, did she think by leaving him, giving him a chance to escape before the cops arrived, that she was doing him a favor?
It was his own fault, he'd told her to listen to her heart, and she'd compromised by stranding him without means to make it to the meet on time or interfere with her operation, while also giving him a chance for a new life.
She'd done exactly the wrong thing for all the right reasons and innocent people were going to pay the price.
Chase squirmed his way over to his jacket, awkwardly sliding his knife from its sheath. He wedged the blade between his feet and arched as far backwards as he could. His spine screamed in pain, he considered it just punishment for his lapse of reason as he began to saw through the cuffs.
If only he'd trusted her sooner, had the courage to listen to his own heart, then none of this would be happening.
CHAPTER 30
KC sat in the Mustang, her vision clouded by tears as she fumbled with her cell phone. Damn it, she was on the job here, this was not the time to get emotional.
It hurt so bad, though, she couldn't stop crying. She'd never felt this way before. Not even after Manny died. No man had ever made her feel the way Chase Westin had.
Was this what it was like for her grandfather, Konstantine, when he was forced to choose between his captured lover and the welfare of the rest of his resistance group?
In the end, her grandfather had chosen to sacrifice himself, gambled on a brother's honor. What would he tell her to do now? Risk betrayal as he had? Or walk away and do her job, protect her team and an innocent civilian?
KC rested her head against the steering wheel. God, she was so very tired. All she wanted was for this day to be over.
Chase's face invaded her mind, the pain in it as he had recounted the loss of his men, the way he looked this morning when he argued with her about Jay's safety.
He was lying about something, that was a certainty. But he couldn't lie about the kind of man he was—loyal, brave, willing to sacrifice anything for his people. KC swiped a hand over her eyes and threw the phone to the empty seat beside her. If she didn't show up, Glenn and Carson had their orders. With or without her, the operation would go forward.
She turned off the Mustang's engine. It might get her killed, but she was going to trust Chase Westin long enough to give him a chance to explain.
When she opened the cabin door, he was almost free of the cuffs. He looked up at her, his expression speeding from anger and frustration to shock, then relief, and finally joy. His knife dropped to the floor with a thunk.
KC drew the HK and held it on him. "You've got five minutes to tell me the truth," she said. It was an effort to keep her voice from shaking. "If you aren't working for Gianotti, who are you working for?"
He rolled back into a kneeling position, his eyes never leaving her face. "When I finished my rehab down at Lejeune, I was in the best shape of my life," he started. "Running half marathons, re-certified on the range, could go through the obstacle course in better time than before we were deployed. None of that mattered to the doctors, though. They won't let you do the things Recon has to do after a back injury—HALO jumps or roping out of a helo. I was through.
"I was drowning my sorrows at a bar in Jacksonville when I spotted Bruno. Overheard enough to realize he'd given up his father's numbers racket to move into arms deals and that he was big time. I contacted a friend at NCIS, and we set up a sting operation."
"So your arrest, almost killing that MP, those were all faked?" If what he said was the truth, it explained a lot. Not everything, though. She watched him closely.
"Not faked—I did put a choke hold on that guy, mainly to keep him safely out of the line of fire if things went wrong. I did sell out the rest of the gang, and the court martial was for real. As well as the time in Leavenworth." He frowned as if the extent of all that he'd lost had finally become apparent. "Maybe someday I can get the record straightened."
He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Jay knows the truth, I guess that's all that counts. Anyway, Bruno recruited me to help with some deals he was putting together with Deacon and The Crusade."
"And you were reborn as Chase Westin, arms broker." She looked down at him, could find no trace of deception. "Why not just tell me the truth after you knew who I really was? Why all this?" She gestured to the cabin.
"I'm working with a partner, Ed Cavanaugh, he's ATF. Last night Deacon's men took him. If he's still alive and that meet doesn't go down, they'll kill him for certain. I need those weapons to get to The Crusade. I'm supposed to deliver them in person, it'll be our only chance to find out what they're planning and stop them."
"Bottom line, you didn't trust me," she said, anger creeping into her voice. "All those little speeches about how important it was for me to trust you, despite the fact that as far as I knew, you were a convicted felon who could get my team killed. When all along the real problem was that you couldn't trust me."
He rocked back, stood up. She raised the HK out of reflex, then let it fall to her side. Never point a gun at anything you wouldn't want to shoot, her first weapons training lesson rang through her mind.
"I'm sorry, KC," he said after a moment of silence. "I couldn't. There was too much at stake. If anything goes wrong at that meet today, they'll kill Lucky."
"And you," she reminded him. "They'll shoot you first. What makes you so certain your friend is still alive?"
He shook his head, his hair falling in his face. She had to stop herself from reaching out to push it away from his eyes.
"Nothing. But I have to give him every chance I can. There's nothing else I can do for him."
KC sighed and holstered the HK. She drew her knife.
"Turn around, let me get you out of those." She sliced the cuffs from his wrists. He massaged the red lines where they had bit into his skin.
"Sorry about that," she told him. "You didn't leave me much choice. So, what do we do now?"
"How about my previous offer?" he said, his fingers hooking in the waistband of her jeans, pulling her close. "An hour for us? Forget about the rest of the world? We have time before the meeting. Then we can figure out how to fix everything else."
She framed his face in her hands, pulling him down to meet her. "One hour, Chase," she whispered, her lips skimming over his as she formed the words. "Consider it a Christmas present."
As she kissed him, his hands slid down her back and across her jeans. The sound of handcuffs clicking jolted through the room.
"Fear not," he said with a grin. "For the next hour, I'm your prisoner, Special Agent."
KC returned his smile. Then his hands began to move and further thought became impossible as the heat spread through her body.
Chase squirmed within the confines of his voluntary restraints. This was kind of fun. He could understand the allure.