Chapter One
Hogan had never been a man to trust in fate, but instinct—that he trusted like gospel. And right now, every instinct in his body told him Kai was close. Somewhere near the beach in Hilo. Somewhere hurting. Somewhere he needed to be found before the world finished grinding him down.
He owed that to Black Tide, a group of men Bateman had connected him to.
Their leader, Surge, had delivered the vehicle himself two nights ago.
The guy stood there with his arms folded, big frame taut like a bowstring.
Reluctant and almost hostile. Like he wanted to climb into the passenger seat and come with Hogan.
But in the end, Surge had stepped back, eyes hard.
“This is your run, Hogan. Your fight. But you had better bring him home, or the next time we meet, I might not be so friendly.”
Hogan hadn’t promised, but he’d nodded once, and that had been enough.
Now the rain streaked down the windshield, a sheen of water that blurred the neon sprawl of Hilo.
Hogan’s jaw flexed as he scanned the streets.
Storefronts still glowed faintly from late-night diners, neon signs flickered in the downpour, and music thumped from a bar two blocks over.
All of it looked normal, but he knew better.
Trouble didn’t wear a sign. Trouble waited in the shadows.
He could almost feel Kai out there, thin as a thread but pulling him unerringly forward. Hogan’s knuckles tightened on the wheel, the scar across his temple and his collarbone burning like an old warning.
And then the phone beside him, and the entertainment screen it was connected to in the van, lit up.
He punched the answer button on the steering wheel before the second ring. “Kai?” His own voice carried concern, sharper than he intended.
“Hey,” Kai answered, soft and slurred, never a good combination. “You sound worried. You worried about me, Hogan?”
“Where are you?” No greeting, no wasted words.
“Inside something that used to deliver packages and now only delivers regret,” Kai muttered. Hogan heard the breath catch behind it, pain spiking through the humor. He was looking for some type of delivery van then.
“You’re slurring your words,” Hogan said, his tone steady when he was striving for calm. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Personal best for me,” Kai rasped. He was trying for a joke. Hogan clenched his jaw. “It’s okay, though.”
“Kai.” That tone—sharp, commanding, the one that kept men alive by refusing to let them give in. “Listen to me. I need three things—what you smell, what you hear, what you see.”
Hogan waited for a heartbeat, then Kai, ever the observant Special Agent, started answering. “Salt. Coffee that’s been a little burnt but roasted nearby. Hot engine. Rust.” Another pause. “Scooters. One with a missing baffle. Ocean. Wind through—pandanus?—something with dry leaves.”
“Good,” Hogan said. Relief punched through him. “Eyes.”
“Slatted shadow on the floor. Light through boards. No streetlight inside, just spill. Blue flyer stuck to the windshield of the van about a half-marathon that already happened. Dashboard has a saint charm that keeps hitting the plastic and I hate it.”
“I’ll buy you one you don’t hate,” Hogan promised. His grip on the wheel whitened. “Stay with me.”
Kai laughed, broken and hurting. “You always say that like it’s easy.
Here’s the thing, Ace.” Hogan’s heart stuttered as Kai exhaled, ragged.
“Before—before you lost pieces of yourself. We had ... a run. Short, but we burned hot, brighter than we were careful for. You don’t remember and that’s on me.
I didn’t come to you to help you find it, or let you keep it. ”
Hogan’s grip tightened until his hand shook. “Tell me anyway.”
“You called me trouble and I called you a liar. You taught me a breathing count that silenced the voices in my head for a spell. I taught you how to disappear in a city that didn’t want to let you.
We didn’t fix each other. We just—fit together.
For a minute. I think about it when I’m trying not to do stupid shit. I’m failing at that part tonight.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fail at shit,” Hogan said. “You’re going to do exactly what I tell you and then you’re going to keep breathing until I find you. That’s the job.”
There was a silence that pressed against Hogan’s ribs. Then Kai’s voice, softer, giving up ground Hogan refused to let him give. “Maybe we’ll meet in my next life. We can meet where the ground is even and nothing’s hunting us.”
“No next life,” Hogan snapped. “This one. I’m not finished with you in this one, Kai, so you shut that shit down.”
“My Ace,” Kai whispered, and Hogan’s heart ached. “Always so bossy.”
He swallowed hard, forced control. “Open the side door of the van. Keep the phone on. Throw something out, leave me something bright to find you. If you can’t, breathe and talk to me, and I’ll find you anyway. I’m on island, Kai. I’m close to you. I can fucking feel it.”
Hogan listened as Kai fumbled then opened the door. “Good,” Hogan said quickly, seizing the thread. Softer now. “Now keep talking.”
“I should’ve encrypted this,” Kai whispered. “I didn’t. I wanted your voice.”
“You have it,” Hogan said, fierce. “You’ll have the rest of me when I get there.”
Hogan could hear Kai’s breathing, and it did not sound good. And his voice kept slipping. “Hey ... if I go quiet—”
“You won’t,” Hogan cut him off. “Hold the fuck on.”
Kai’s reply was faint. “Copy that.”
The line went thin with silence, then the sound of his breathing. Hogan clung to it, forcing the van faster through Hilo’s wet streets. His voice chased Kai as he felt him slipping away. “Stay with me, Kai. I’m coming. This life. Don’t you fucking leave me.”
The Sprinter rolled down a narrower road, the kind where streetlamps flickered like they were too tired to fight the dark. Hogan killed the lights, letting the van glide. Instinct screamed. The hair on his arms rose.
There. An old, beat-up van listing half onto the curb, sliding door on the side of the van hanging open. Figures in the rain, trying to drag something heavy from the van.
Not something.
Someone.
Hogan was out the door before his brain could catch up. Sig raised, suppressor whispering as two quick squeezes punched holes in the night. The first man spun, chest blooming red. The second stumbled back, choking on his last breath. Both crumpled into the gutter.
“Should’ve stayed home tonight,” Hogan muttered, sarcasm sharp and bitter as he stalked forward, gun still raised, ready to drop any and all threats coming their way. “Could’ve played cards, watched TV. But no—you had to fuck with a man I’m not letting go.”
He reached the van.
Kai.
Knowing time was not on their side, he sent up a silent prayer and pulled Kai into his arms. Blood slicked his shirt almost immediately, Kai’s body slack and cold against Hogan’s chest. And he felt too light. Too damn light.
“No, you don’t,” Hogan growled, voice breaking as he hauled him close. “Not here. Not like this.”
Hogan carried Kai back toward the Sprinter, heart hammering, rage and fear twisting like knives in his ribs. Rain sheeted over them both, washing blood into the gutter. The van loomed like salvation, as he managed to open the sliding door.
He shoved Kai inside, slammed the door, and covered him with his body as if sheer will could hold him together. The stench of cordite and blood filled the air, thick and undeniable.
“Stay with me, Kai,” Hogan whispered, his name rough in his throat. “Stay with me.”
He had to get them somewhere safe. He stood up, stepped into the cab, started the van and drove.
****
The dark held fragments of memory like broken glass.
Kai floated in and out of it, flashes stabbing through—Hogan’s voice muttering against his ear, cursing and pleading, demanding he breathe, he live.
The sound of machines he half recognized, monitors that beeped at him as if to measure his stubbornness.
Hands steady on his skin, holding him down when pain and fever had made him thrash.
Hogan spooning soup into his mouth, grumbling about how a man could fight cartels but couldn’t handle a bowl of broth without help.
Each memory burned quickly and then went under, leaving him drifting until the next one surfaced.
Hogan’s breath rough as he said, “Not here, not like this.” Hogan swearing at someone over a line, snapping at whoever was on the other end of the line.
Hogan whispering promises he wasn’t supposed to make. “Stay with me. Stay.”
Hogan never once called him Rip. Not once. That name, that history, was buried beneath the amnesia that Hogan suffered after Chechnya. To Hogan, he was just Kai—broken, bleeding, stubborn—but Kai knew how close he’d come to giving it away.
Then—light. Real light. Morning crept across him soft and golden, a warmth he hadn’t expected to wake to.
Kai blinked hard, the lids heavy, and found himself lying on a mattress that smelled faintly of bleach and Hogan’s soap.
A blanket was tucked tight around him. His body pulled when he shifted, stitches or staples tugging fire at his side. He hissed, sucking in air.
Beside him, someone stirred. He turned his head to look.
Hogan.
The man came awake instantly, even in sleep sharp-edged.
His blue eyes locked on Kai across the narrow space of pillows.
Messy hair, scruff roughening his jaw, and a crease pressed into his cheek from where he’d lain.
He looked exhausted. Yet, he still looked like home. Kai guessed he probably always would.
Kai’s throat scratched. “How long?”
Hogan rubbed at his eyes once, then fixed him with that steady gaze. “Week. We have checked into an RV park. I’ve been playing nurse. Before you ask—yes, you’re alive. Yes, you stink. And yes, I’ve seen you naked. Try not to get too excited.”
Kai coughed a laugh that tugged at his side. “Christ, Ace. You always know how to make a man feel special.”
“You’re special, all right,” Hogan muttered. He reached for the bottle of water by the bed and pressed it into Kai’s hand. “Special kind of pain in my ass.”
Kai sipped, the cool liquid burning down his dry throat. He set it back, then let his gaze linger on Hogan. Every line of him. The weight of him here, beside him. Sarcasm aside, Hogan had sat vigil. Hogan had kept him tethered to life.
“Did you really—” Kai’s voice dropped. “Soup?”
Hogan’s mouth curved just enough. “Fed you like the helpless baby you were. You’re welcome.”
Kai smirked, then winced again at the pull in his side. He lay back, closing his eyes briefly. “Guess that means I owe you.”
“Damn right it does,” Hogan said. He adjusted the pillow behind him, stretching out but keeping his gaze fixed on Kai. “And don’t think I won’t collect.”
They lay like that for a long beat, just watching. Breathing. The world outside the van quiet, muted by morning, but there were sounds of people moving about the park.
Kai swallowed, throat thick. He’d faced death enough times to know what it looked like. This time, Hogan had pulled him back from it with sheer force of will. He felt the truth of it pressing down on him, heavy and strange.
“So,” Hogan said finally, voice low. “I have a shitload of questions.”
“No doubt you do,” Kai responded.
Hogan nodded. “Even have them written down in a list so I don’t forget any of them. I figure the best way to tackle them is in chronological order.”
Kai’s heartbeat raced. Had Hogan remembered him? Had he finally remembered everything they were, and could be in the future together? If he knew, then—
“So, let’s start at the beginning. You are going to tell me why you helped the colonel when Eli was taken.”
The words landed like a blade on stone. Nope, he hadn’t remembered shit. And without even knowing it, he had asked Kai the easiest question of them all to answer.
Kai licked his lips, the weight of memory pressing in. “That’s ... certainly a place to start, I guess.”
“Good,” Hogan said, settling in closer, his tone equal parts challenge and promise. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Kai met his stare across the pillows, his chest tight and aching. “You think I can get a shower and use the bathroom first?”
An adorable sweep of red rose in Hogan’s cheeks, and he fumbled but steadied himself.
“Shit, yes. Of course you’ll want to do that.
” Hogan started to get out of the bed in a rush, but the sudden movement caused the mattress to shift, and Kai inhaled sharply.
“Shit, sorry, Kai. Let me help you get in the bathroom. I’ll tidy up while you’re in there and get us something to eat. ”
“Coffee, too,” Kai demanded.
Hogan smiled. “Bossy,” he murmured. “But sure, coffee, too. Then you can answer my questions.”