Authors: Kaylea Cross
“I just— Christ, I can't even think about... ”
About Rhys dying.
“He's always been there,” he rasped, pacing again, rubbing the back of his neck. “Always. I... I can't... ” He stopped and whirled to face the opposite wall, covered his eyes with his hand. His shoulders shook. “God, if he dies because I trusted you... ”
Uncaring of anything except easing him, she leapt up. “Ben,” she whispered.
He shook his head and walked away, the choked sound he bit off making her chest feel like it would split open.
She laid a hand against his trembling back. He flinched at her touch, rejecting her presence and fighting to hold on to his control. This grief was too deep for words or anger. Maybe her love could still reach him. She laid herself against his spine and tentatively slid her arms around his waist. Ben took a shuddering breath, tipped his head back as he blew it out and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. She held on, offering the only comfort he allowed her to give.
I'm sorry
, she cried silently.
I'm so sorry I caused this.
But then he pulled her hands from his stomach and stepped away. Physically and emotionally cutting himself off from her.
She stared at his broad back for a moment, reeling from the implication of his gesture.
She'd just lost him.
It was more than she could bear. She withstood it for another few moments, but he didn't acknowledge her presence. The door opened a second later and a nurse poked her head in.
“Sir,” she addressed Ben. “The doctor wants to see you.”
Sam inhaled sharply. Was Rhys dead?
Ben rushed past her without so much as a backward glance. In the silence that followed, the nurse looked at her quizzically. “You family?”
“N-no.” She was nothing to Ben anymore.
She wanted to scream in agony. Swallowing her tears, she choked, “I'll be outside if he... ” She almost said “needs me", but caught herself just in time and left. The door shut behind her with a thud. Alone in the hallway, the sound was as hollow as the empty hole in the middle of her chest.
A few hours later as dawn lit the horizon out the hospital room window, Ben was keeping vigil next to his brother's bed when Neveah popped her head in, her damp hair telling him she was fresh from a shower. He leaned back in his chair and forced a weary smile even though his face felt like it might crack from the strain. “Hey.”
“Hey. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” He scrubbed a hand over his shaggy face and blew out a weary breath.
Beside him, Rhys’ chest rose and fell in an eerie rhythm set by the machines he was hooked up to, the right side of his head left wide open under the bandages to accommodate the swelling in his brain. A ventilator inflated and deflated his lungs in that artificial rhythm. His eyes were so badly bruised and swollen his bearded face was distorted. They had him propped onto his left side because his right shoulder, back and part of his neck had second and a few third degree burns on them. Every inch of that skin was singed except where the tattoo below his right shoulder blade lay, the mirror image of the one Ben had inked into the left side of his own back. Eerie, how that spot was the only place left untouched by the fire. Ben had teared up when he'd seen it, that lone patch of skin like an island in a sea of raw and blistered flesh. How Rhys was still alive was anyone's guess.
And yet, Ben kept expecting him to wake up and look at him. Say something stern and irritating, like, “What the hell are you staring at?", or, “Quit gawking at me, punk.” Anything. Any sign that he was going to make it.
No, that wasn't quite true. The one thing he didn't want was for Rhys to come out of this a vegetable. If he'd suffered that kind of brain damage, then it was best if he never woke up. Without a doubt, Rhys would rather die than waste away like that, drooling and shitting all over himself. The thought of his brother ending up like that made Ben want to cry.
Nev edged her way in, checked the profusion of monitors beeping and whirring around his twin's still form. “He's holding his own.”
For the moment, yes. “If he's still stable in the morning, they're going to transport him to Germany, then maybe stateside.” A pang of loneliness hit him.
Ben fought the urge to fidget under Nev's assessing gaze. Had she seen Sam? He hadn't since that awful confrontation in the waiting room, and didn't want to. Not until he cooled off and got the facts verified from someone he trusted. His heart and his brain were still at war with each other over her. The gnawing pain in his belly shot up like he'd been nailed with a welder's torch, making him want to double over. That's what a full blown ulcer did for you.
“Walter Reed,” Nev said as she picked up the thread of conversation. “They do great work with TBI patients.” She laid a hand on Rhys’ gown-covered shoulder, almost a caress, then turned her attention back to him. “Do you have any more questions about what to expect with all this?”
“No.” Rhys was a Traumatic Brain Injury patient. The swelling would take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to disappear. Once that happened, they'd bring him out of the coma and see how much damage had been done to his brain. He could have permanent motor or speech loss, memory loss, cognitive loss. Even if most of those functions were largely intact, he would still have a shitload of physical therapy to go through. The neurosurgeon had said most of the damage was in the right parietal lobe, and that meant he'd almost certainly have lack of coordination on the right side of his body and left-sided weakness. The possibilities didn't make Ben's ulcer or the sick feeling in his stomach any better. “I hear you're on your way home.”
Nev turned her eyes on him. Lake blue, a few shades lighter than Rhys'. “I'd rather stay. I told them that, but they want me home to debrief me. Security reasons and all that.”
Made sense. He rolled his head around to try and ease the tension in his neck and shoulders. It didn't help. “Sam going with you?”
Nev gave him a surprised look. “She left hours ago. Didn't she say goodbye?”
A hollow sensation filled his burning gut. “No. No, she didn't.”
“They came to take her in for some questioning.”
More like an interrogation. He closed his eyes. God, Sam... He still had his doubts about what had happened, but in his heart of hearts he didn't think Sam was capable of selling them out. Not even to save her cousin.
There was nothing he could do for her now, and wasn't even sure he wanted to right then. He just needed time to think. But damn, what if it turned out she was clean? The way he'd reacted, and the things he'd said... He scrubbed a hand tiredly over his eyes. He'd been so damn hard on her. Mean, even. He sighed. Wouldn't be the first time he'd done something he'd regretted. One would think he wouldn't even notice this sinking feeling anymore.
“In the morning they're flying her back to Langley for a full debriefing. That's what she told me, anyhow, that it's standard procedure in a case like this.” She cocked her head. “Was she telling me the truth?”
The truth? How the hell should he know? “Yeah.”
“She's not in some kind of trouble or anything?”
Not if she was innocent. He prayed to God she was innocent. “She's fine.”
Relief washed over Nev's features. “She probably didn't want to distract you. She was really upset about Rhys, and made me promise to let her know what happens to him. I'm sure she'll be in touch once she gets back to the States, but I think she'd prefer to hear about your brother from you.”
No she wouldn't. A layer of guilt settled over the emptiness inside. “Yeah.” God, he'd treated her like shit.
“Sam's the best person in the world.” Her gaze traveled to his brother, and Ben recognized the heartache in her eyes. “Well, maybe it's a tie.”
He kept his derisive comment about comparing Sam and his brother to himself. Nobody could touch Rhys when it came to character. He was integrity personified, Ben thought fiercely. How the hell was he supposed to go on without him?
“Hey.” Nev laid a hand on his forearm. “The doctors won't transport him if they don't think he's ready. Keep talking to him. Some patients can hear their loved ones speaking to them even in a coma.”
He nodded, so desperately exhausted he wanted to lie down on the floor and shut his eyes and sleep, but he wouldn't abandon his brother. Not even in that way.
“Get some sleep if you can. You're not going to do him any good by driving yourself into the ground. He's going to need you at full strength when they bring him out of this.” Glancing at Rhys, she shook her head with a smile. “God, he's strong. He shouldn't have survived the flight here, but look at him.”
He'd been doing little else for the last six hours.
“Well, I'd better go so you can sleep.”
Ben knew he needed some, but he was afraid Rhys might slip away if he closed his eyes. He was terrified that it might break their subconscious connection enough for his twin to stop fighting and let go. “I can't thank you enough for what you did— ”
“Don't even say it, Ben. Without both of you, I would be dead by now, so if anyone's grateful, it's me.”
When she came up to him and opened her arms for a hug, he almost drew back, but made himself endure the quick embrace even though he was afraid the gesture would undo him and turn him into a human faucet. He was that close to losing it. Nev pressed against him and enveloped him in her arms for a moment, and all he could think about was how he wished it was Sam holding him, and that he'd been such an asshole. He'd probably never feel her arms around him again. Nev kept it mercifully brief and withdrew.
Her gaze strayed back to Rhys. “I wish I could stay with him.”
“Don't worry, he won't be alone. I'm not budging from here.”
After she left, Ben stared at his silent twin with gritty, aching eyes, and took stock of everything. Rhys was fighting for his life. Sam was gone. His parents were on the other side of the world. He'd never felt so alone in his life.
“You gotta stay with me, man,” he whispered, and because no one was around to see it, he reached for the lax hand nearest his and wrapped his fingers around it in a desperate grip. “You keep fighting, you hear me? Don't you let go.”
If he lost Rhys, he lost half of himself. The best half.
He held Rhys’ hand for a long time while he watched the machines inflate that strong chest. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. The rhythmic motion lulled him into a trance. When he snapped out of it, it took him a second to realize his cell phone was buzzing against his hip. Without relinquishing his brother's hand, he answered.
“Sinclair.”
“Ben, it's Luke.”
He sat up a little straighter. “What's up?”
“Heard your brother's doing well.”
That depended on your definition of well. “He's a fighter.”
“Yes, he is. One hell of a fighter.”
He cleared his throat. “Did you get a lock on Tehrazzi?”
A deep sigh came over the line. “No. He's got to be out there, but no. None of the villagers are talking. We think he may have been smuggled over the border into Pakistan in a tanker convoy. Possibly in an empty drum.”
So his brother had suffered all of this for nothing? Ben's throat ached with the pressure of unshed tears. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Don't worry, we're still gonna nail him. Listen... I thought about waiting to tell you this, but figured you'd want to know ASAP.”
“What?”
“About Sam... ”
All his muscles tensed. “What about her?”
“Miller and I talked with her, and her side of the story checks out. Then we brought in Karim and leaned on him. Turns out Tehrazzi used the kid's family as leverage for intel on our team's location. When Sam came after me, Karim snuck back into the CP to drop the note for me, then took the laptop and relayed the coordinates to his village where Tehrazzi was waiting.”
Aw, fuck. Ben closed his eyes as a wave of pain engulfed him. He remembered the candy bar wrappers strewn on the ground, and the terrible hurt in Sam's eyes when he'd confronted her. “So she
was
innocent.”
She'd been telling him the truth, and he hadn't even listened. He'd opened up on her with both barrels and blasted them at her like a verbal shotgun. Well fucking done. He was torn between bitter laughter and tears.
“Yeah, I know you had your doubts, but she's clean. The locals took Tehrazzi in under
Lokhay Warkawal
to treat his wound and give him protection. Heard of it?”
“Yeah. It means they're honor bound to defend him to the death.”
“Right. He received the information about the team's location there.”
Which was why the Taliban had been coming up the mountain after Rhys and the others when they arrived in the helo. Christ. The whole thing had been an accident, and he'd blamed Sam for Rhys getting hit. Among other things, like her making a deal with Tehrazzi to kill them off. Jesus. Did he never learn? Why hadn't he trusted his gut in the first place? He swallowed hard. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem. They transferring Rhys tomorrow?”
“If he's still stable.”
“He will be. And if there's anything you need, just let me know. You call me, day or night, no matter what it is. Okay?”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He almost asked Luke how his head was, but thought better of it and left it alone.
“I'll get in touch with you once you're home and things have settled down, give you the report about what's going on here in case you're still interested in a job.”
“Sure.” Ben didn't care about terrorists at the moment. The job and all the money in the world meant shit to him right now. All he wanted was for his brother to open his eyes and look at him with some sort of recognition. If that happened, then he could think about the rest of his life and figure out how to fix what he'd done to Sam. For now, the only thing he cared about was his brother waking up.
“One last thing.”
Ben grunted.
“A word of advice from an old turd who's stepped in it more than a few times in his sorry excuse for a life... ”
“What's that,” he responded, setting the phone in the crook of his shoulder and pinching the bridge of his nose.