Shades of Gray (13 page)

CHAPTER 22

ODDLY
enough, P.J. dreaded facing Cole more than she dreaded facing Steele. Steele would
be pissed, yeah. He’d already gone on record saying what he thought of her quitting
the team. And yes, she’d been a total coward for only going to Steele and not facing
her entire team—and Cole.

She’d been barely aware when Cole stopped the vehicle several hours after they’d fled
the scene of her crime. She’d slipped in and out of consciousness when Cole had carried
her inside a musty-smelling house and settled her on a couch.

When he’d arranged cushions around her for comfort, he’d bumped her leg, causing a
low moan to escape her mouth.

He’d pressed his lips to her brow and murmured soft words of apology and a firm command
for her to rest. She’d retreated beyond the veil of the medication, embracing the
opportunity to delay the talk she knew was inevitable.

Anyone with eyes and a brain could see that things were . . . tense . . . between
her and Cole. They had only to look at the way he’d been around her and they’d instantly
know that their relationship wasn’t as simple as teammate to teammate.

Former teammates.

It was a point she had to keep reminding herself of. She was no longer a part of KGI.
No longer part of something that made her feel like she belonged.

She stared up at the ceiling, achy and wrung out from the medication. Her leg was
throbbing and her skin felt clammy. When she turned her head to the side, she saw
that the other members of her team had arrived.

Dolphin was propped in one of the small armchairs, his head tilted sideways, eyes
closed. Across from him, Renshaw occupied the other chair and had his head straight
back so he was staring upward. He was asleep too.

Guilt nagged at her. How many days or weeks had they gone without sleep because they
were tracking her down? Or had they even been looking for her? If they were after
Brumley, it stood to reason they’d have the same intel she’d gathered. Maybe she was
alive thanks to nothing more than shit-ass luck.

She pushed herself upward and rotated so her legs fell over the side of the couch.
Pain shot through her thigh. Spots dotted her vision and she nearly passed out. For
several long seconds she sat there, sucking in huge mouthfuls of air. Her pulse hammered
and the clammy feeling grew stronger.

She wiped at her brow, holding her palm over her forehead. It was then she realized
she still had an IV attached to her arm and the bag was hanging above the couch on
a hat rack.

She started to pry the tape away from her arm so she could remove the IV when her
nape prickled.

“What the fuck, P.J.?”

She looked up to see Cole suddenly looming over her, a dark scowl on his face. Where
had he come from? Her mouth went dry and her hand fell away from the tape. Cole immediately
dropped down to one knee and refastened the tape over the port site.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

P.J. sighed wearily. The last thing she wanted was a confrontation.

“P.J., look at me.”

She forced her gaze upward in response to his fierce command.

“Where the hell have you been all this time?”

She could tell he was visibly trying to keep his temper in check. If she weren’t hurt,
he’d probably be letting her have it with both barrels, and that pissed her off because
she just wanted things to be normal and they never would be again.

“Hunting Brumley and his minions,” she said bluntly.

“Yeah, I saw your handiwork on the two guys who were with Brumley that night.”

She refused to let shame crawl into her soul. Nor would she try to determine if there
was condemnation in his tone.

“Look, Cole, I quit the team. You shouldn’t be here. None of you. I walked away.”

She saw Renshaw stir and she quickly glanced in Dolphin’s direction to see that he
was already awake. He was sitting quietly, his mouth drawn into a pinch, his focus
on the conversation between her and Cole.

“I have a mission to complete,” she said. “And I can’t accomplish it by sitting on
my ass while I’m being babied by my former teammates.”

Cole’s lips curled and fire blazed in his eyes. “Former, my ass. Over my dead body
will you go off on your own. You’re lucky you weren’t killed or that they didn’t get
their hands on you again.”

Forgetting the others, she pushed herself forward on the edge of the couch and farther
into Cole’s space, bristling with as much anger as she saw in his own expression.

“This isn’t a righteous mission, Cole. It’s personal.”

“Do you think it isn’t goddamn personal for me too?” he all but roared at her.

“I can’t involve you—any of you—in my mission,” she yelled back. “It’s not who KGI
is. Never has been. I won’t drag this organization through the mud. This is bloody.
It’s revenge, Cole.”

“I damn well know it,” he snarled. “And I want in. We all want in. If you think we’re
just going to leave you hanging in the wind, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

She covered her face with her hands and propped her elbows on her knees. She was exhausted
and heartsick. This wasn’t what she wanted to happen.

Firm hands gripped her wrists and carefully pried her hands from her face. This time
when she glanced back up at Cole, she could see Donovan and Steele in the background.
Baker was standing behind Renshaw’s chair. All eyes were on her. Their expressions
were grim and . . . determined.

“We—
I
—don’t give a fuck if the mission is righteous or whether the motivation behind us
taking Brumley out is revenge or to prevent more women and children from being brutalized.
We stand with you, P.J. We’re family. You aren’t doing this alone so get over it.”

“I’m going after Brumley,” she said. “He’s doing a deal in Jakarta in three weeks
and I’m going to be there. I’m taking him out.”

“Not without us,” Cole bit out. “It’s time for you to suck it up and learn to lean
on someone.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Steele interjected.

Surprised, she lifted her gaze to her team leader and then glanced at Donovan. It
was one thing for her team to pledge such a thing, but Donovan represented the organization.
Surely he couldn’t be in agreement with the others.

Donovan crossed his arms over his chest and stared challengingly back at her.

“If you think I’m going to toe the company line and lecture everyone on vigilante
justice, you’ve got the wrong guy. That’s Sam’s job. I’m of the mind that taking Brumley
out—
however
we take him out—will mean one less asshole in the world.”

“Hooyah,” Dolphin said emphatically. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, and P.J.?”

She looked up at Steele when he said her name.

“You can take your resignation and stick it up your ass.”

Baker and Renshaw chuckled. Dolphin grinned and snickered and Donovan nodded his agreement.

“Looks like you’re stuck with us,” Cole said with clear satisfaction.

She blew out her breath, shaking her head the entire time. It had to be the medication
that had her tripping like this.

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“How about yes sir, when I tell you that you’re going to take it easy and recover
as much as possible over the next three weeks,” Cole said.

Her brow wrinkled in disgust even as her chest tightened with unexpected emotion.
God, it felt good to be back with her team. All the ribbing. The smart-ass remarks.
Cutting jokes and insults left and right.

“For God’s sake, don’t cry,” Cole said in disgust.

The others laughed and P.J. smiled through the pain, her eyes stinging with those
unshed tears.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“Now you’re just pissing me off,” Steele said. “You don’t thank us for doing our job.
We live as a team and we die as a team, and you thinking you walked away is bullshit.
You don’t take a piss without my say-so, you got that, Rutherford?”

She smiled, and it felt like the first time she’d truly smiled in a lifetime. God
it felt good to be surrounded by the people she considered family. She’d never been
as alone as she had in the last months when she didn’t have her team around her.

Her team.

“Yes sir,” she said briskly.

CHAPTER 23

IT
was two in the morning and P.J. was wide awake, her leg throbbing. She’d refused another
dose of painkiller because she’d wanted to evaluate exactly what she was dealing with.

Though just a flesh wound, her leg still protested if she put any weight on it. She
had a limited amount of time in which to heal because she wasn’t staying behind while
her team went to Jakarta. The truth was, she didn’t want them involved even if they
were determined to be. She didn’t want her sins to be their own.

She pushed herself awkwardly from the bed and eased her feet to the floor. She had
no hope of sleeping. She’d been out most of the day, aided by the pain medication
Donovan had administered. She imagined the rest of the crew was sleeping soundly.

Donovan had arranged for the jet to take off early the next morning. After a quick
glance at the clock, she knew it was pointless to even try to go back to sleep. She
only had three hours before they moved out again.

The little cottage that Donovan and Cole had finagled was barely big enough to fit
two people, much less her entire team plus Donovan. They’d insisted she take the bedroom,
and Cole had carried her from the front sitting room where she’d spent some of the
afternoon on the couch and put her on the double bed.

If she’d had more courage, she would have invited Cole to share the comfort of the
bed with her. He looked haggard and worn down. But she couldn’t make the words come
out.

Tentatively she took a step, bracing herself for the pain that shot up her leg and
into her belly. She waited several long seconds as she sucked in breath after breath
in an attempt to steady herself.

She needed the bathroom in the worst way, and she wasn’t about to call for one of
the guys to help her with that particular necessity.

The few feet to the bathroom took an eternity. At the door, she paused and glanced
into the living room to see the guys draped all over the furniture. They looked horribly
uncomfortable. Steele and Cole were lying on the floor with their backpacks shoved
under their necks to cushion their heads.

Feeling about a hundred years old, she shuffled into the bathroom to do her business.

It took longer than she’d have liked. She examined the bulky bandages on her right
thigh. She’d been lucky. The bullet could have shattered her femur or worse, hit her
femoral artery and she could have bled out in minutes. As it was, it passed through
a chunk of flesh less than half an inch from her bone.

Push past the pain.

It was a mantra that had been effective for the last six months. At times it was the
only thing that kept her going.

Clad in her underwear and a clean T-shirt, she pulled the shirt farther down her legs
before she opened the bathroom door. As she stepped into the hall, she came face-to-face
with Cole.

He was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, one leg pulled up so that
his foot rested flat against the wall.

“You should have called for me,” he said tersely. “You don’t need to be up walking
around. You’ll tear the stitches.”

“I’m fine,” she said, even as she gingerly took another step.

“The hell you are. Every step you take, you go even paler, and your forehead is so
clammy I can see it from here.”

Without saying anything further, he pushed off the wall and wrapped a supporting arm
around her.

“Wrap your arm around me and hold on. Put most of your weight on me.”

Relieved he hadn’t picked her up and carried her, she did as he instructed and limped
forward into the bedroom. At least he seemed open to her trying to get around on her
own. Or mostly on her own anyway.

When they got to the bed, he helped her sit on the edge and then he plumped all the
pillows so she could scoot back and sit up in bed in comfort.

After she got situated, he sat on the edge of the bed facing her. He pulled one knee
up and rested his forearm across his leg as he studied her.

“How are you feeling?”

The way he said it told her he wasn’t asking about her leg. She expelled a long sigh.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I haven’t allowed myself to feel anything for
the last six months. But when I knelt there in the dirt with Nelson’s blood on my
hands, I thought to myself
you should be jubilant
. You should feel
vindicated
. Justice has been served and he’ll never hurt another woman or child again.”

Cole slid his hand gently over hers, lacing their fingers together. Just that simple
gesture chased some of the lingering sickness from the pit of her stomach.

“Instead I just felt . . . sick. It all came rushing back at me, and I’ve tried so
hard not to remember. I swear it was like he’d raped me all over again. Isn’t that
stupid?”

She tried to laugh but it came out more as a sob.

“God, I had him at
my
mercy and all I could think was that it was like being raped all over again because
that’s all I could remember. Him on top of me. Him overpowering me and all the hatred
and revulsion I experienced.”

Cole squeezed her hand, but his hand shook against hers, giving her a hint of the
emotion running through him.

“It’s not stupid, baby. Nothing you feel is stupid. It’s how you feel, so that makes
it legitimate. Do you understand what I’m saying? I won’t let you beat yourself up
for being human. What happened to you wasn’t just a simple injury in the course of
a mission. It was something no person should ever have to endure. You can’t just shrug
that off and pretend it didn’t happen. Sometime, someway, you have to deal with it,
and I don’t think you have yet. I know you haven’t,” he added softly.

“I hate it,” she whispered. “Oh God, Cole, I hated feeling that helpless. Not even
when all the shit went down with my S.W.A.T. team did I feel helpless. I felt angry.
I was pissed. I was disappointed. But what I did was my choice. I didn’t have my choices
taken away from me.”

Cole leaned forward, pressed his lips to her forehead and left them there. She leaned
into him, closing her eyes as they sat in silence for a long moment. Just him being
there was enough. He didn’t have to offer her platitudes.

When he pulled away, there was a hardness in his eyes that told her the gloves were
about to come off. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief, because it was getting too
heavy. She much preferred his anger to the overwhelming worry in his gaze.

“Why did you run, P.J.? Do you have any idea what that did to me? To us? The team?
When Steele told me what you’d done, I felt like someone had sucker punched me. The
other guys were just as bewildered. We aren’t your goddamn S.W.A.T. team. We aren’t
dumping you when things get sticky.”

The very real anger and frustration in his voice made her feel shame. There was nowhere
for her to go to hide from the look in his eyes or the way he stared so intently at
her.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. And at the time it had been true. “I wasn’t
thinking straight. I was sick to my soul and all I could think about was revenge.
I was
consumed
with hatred and shame. God, do you have any idea how it feels to be totally helpless
while someone holds you down and degrades you? I felt like those bastards had taken
my very
soul
.”

Cole’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, I do know. Maybe not on the same level, but goddamn it,
I know what it feels like to be helpless. I had to sit there and listen to the whole
goddamn thing, P.J. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. To have to sit there while
someone I care about was savaged? It makes me sick to even
think
about.”

She paused and looked up, her jaw going slack as she processed his words. Some of
her shock must have shown on her face.

“Yeah, that’s right, P.J. I care. I care a whole hell of a lot.”

She didn’t know what to say or how to react, because they both knew he wasn’t talking
about caring on a more casual level. Like the way Dolphin or Baker or Renshaw cared
about her. This was something much deeper, and it scared the hell out of her.

Unable to do anything else, she gripped the hand holding hers and squeezed, hoping
the gesture conveyed what she wasn’t able to put to words.

He leaned forward, tense and hesitant. His free hand went to her face, brushing aside
her hair, and then he simply kissed her.

It wasn’t the burning, scorching-the-sheets kind of kiss that they’d shared that night
so many months earlier. There was no impatience and no demand. It wasn’t even sexual.
The touch was so exquisitely gentle that it made her want to cry.

He had a way of getting to her. Past her barriers. And there he was, at the very heart
of her before she even realized he’d slipped past.

When he drew away, he rotated so that he could climb onto the bed beside her. Then
he simply pulled her against his chest, holding her with both arms.

“Rest and let me hold you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Just you and me, P.J. Don’t
think about the past or the future. Just focus on right now, you getting better, and
let yourself lean on me.”

She rested her head on his chest and stretched her injured leg down the length of
his. He was warm and solid and it felt so very good to give in and allow him to shoulder
her fears just for a little while.

It took some time to muster the courage to ask the question burning her tongue. She
opened her mouth several times and ended up closing it when her nerve fled.

“You care about me . . . even after what happened?”

At first she wasn’t sure he heard her muffled whisper. Then she realized he was merely
collecting himself before answering. His voice was chock-full of emotion. He sounded
angry, but not at her. The words came as though he struggled to get them out there
without losing his composure.

“I don’t give a damn about what happened other than the fact that those sons of bitches
hurt you. They put their hands on you. What happened changes nothing about my feelings
for you. If anything the fact that you’re coming out of this so strong makes me respect
your strength even more, and I already had a healthy dose of admiration for your ability
to kick some serious ass.”

She pushed upward, placing her hand in the hollow of his chest as she looked him in
the eye. “I have scars, Cole. They aren’t pretty. You saw where he cut me. There are
scars in each of those places. And they’re not going away.”

He touched her chin with the tip of his finger and then kissed her almost as if he
couldn’t resist. Then he let his hand slide down until his palm rested over her heart.

“I’m more concerned about the scars here,” he said, pressing inward on her chest.
Then he lifted his hand to her temple and tapped gently. “And in here.”

He kissed her again, this time on the forehead.

“The physical scars don’t change who you are, P.J. The emotional ones do. Those are
the ones I want to help you with. I don’t give a damn that your body has a few more
scars. Hell, I’m riddled with them and you didn’t seem to mind.”

Her cheeks tightened and heat rose up her neck.

He picked up her hand, the one resting on his chest, and he laced their fingers together,
holding their hands between them.

“I’ll wait as long as it takes, P.J. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Whatever
it takes for you to heal physically and emotionally. Just know that I’m not going
anywhere, and it’s time for you to stop running.”

She snuggled back into his embrace, nuzzling her cheek against his chest as she processed
the words that still floated around her mind. Such beautiful words, and she knew he
meant them. Cole wasn’t the type to bullshit. He was lighthearted and fun when the
occasion called for it, but at the end of the day, he was a straight shooter. He was
blunt and spoke his mind.

And now that he had spoken precisely what was on his mind, she was blown away by the
implications.

Here was a man who admitted he had feelings for her. Not only that, but he was also
willing to wait for as long as it took her to get her head on straight and heal from
the trauma she’d endured.

Hell, even more than that, he was risking his life, his reputation and his career
in order to help her seek justice.

He was helping her find a way to murder another individual.

She winced at the thought of taking him down with her. She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t
bear it if the team was dragged through the mud with her.

She closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that she was safe. Cole was here, surrounding
her. Offering her unconditional support.

He’d been up front with her. Had told her what was in his heart. Now she had to figure
out what was in her own heart and sort out her muddled feelings for a man who infuriated
and enticed her in equal measure.

The future was a very scary prospect when she didn’t even know if she had a present.
What scared her the most, though, was the very real possibility of screwing up a relationship
with someone she genuinely cared about before it even got off the ground.

Cole deserved someone who could give him one hundred percent. Someone who could give
herself without any reservations. He was a good man. Loyal. Fiercely protective. A
man any woman would be lucky to have.

She could see herself as that woman, and maybe that was what scared her most of all.

And it wasn’t as simple as deciding they fit and then living happily ever after. They
had their team to consider. They had dozens of young girls depending on them. They
couldn’t afford to fuck it all up because their emotions got in the way.

As much as she wanted to be selfish and let tomorrow take care of itself, she knew
she had to remain objective and make the mission her priority. For her own sanity
as much as for the protection of those precious little girls.