Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Zenko slammed open the door to Noble’s office hard enough that it bounced against the stop. He’d made it halfway across the compound before the anger had really taken hold, and by the time he’d turned around and headed back, he was fucking furious.
Four hours. Noble had kept Shaun sitting in that room for four fucking hours without feeding him or getting someone to look at his back.
He understood why Noble needed to question him, especially with the lives of everyone on the team potentially depending on whether Shaun was telling the truth, but there was interrogation, and then there was being a fucking asshole.
Noble looked up from the phone as he stalked into the room and dropped the receiver back into the cradle. “Briefing in an hour.”
Like that was why he was fucking there.
“What the fuck, Noble? You didn’t feed him or get him medical attention? When did you become such an asshole?”
“Do you even see how you’re acting?” Noble sat back in his chair and stared at him.
He saw it, all right. He also saw the phone Noble had dropped back into the cradle when he’d stormed through the door, which meant someone had probably gotten an earful of him losing his shit.
He didn’t fucking care. Noble had seen the state they’d found Shaun in.
He’d watched the body-cam footage. He knew what had been done to the man, yet he’d still left him sitting in that chair for four fucking hours.
“Fuck you, Noble.” He slammed his fists onto the table on the opposite side of where Noble sat. “That was an asshole move that we use for terrorists, not fucking recovered abductees.”
“And I should believe every word out of his mouth because you say so?” Noble sat back and folded his hands over his chest like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“I know your gut feelings are good, Zen, but tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing when everyone’s lives on the team depended on it? ”
Fuck. He hated that Noble had a point. If their positions had been reversed and some unknown man had walked onto his base carrying intel about a terrorist attack, he’d have pulled apart every fucking word until he was satisfied the threat was real.
He would have questioned him from every direction, looking for the smallest change in his story.
But he’d also seen Shaun’s back. He’d felt the man shaking beneath his hands while he cleaned those wounds in the cave, and the memory alone was enough to keep the anger burning.
“You were being an asshole.”
“I was doing my fucking job.” Noble stood up from the chair and leaned across the desk to face him.
“You might be a great operator, hell, you are probably one of the best I’ve ever worked with, but that man has fucked with your head somehow, and you aren’t thinking straight. I needed to be fucking sure.”
His jaw locked. Shaun hadn’t fucked with his head.
He’d found the man chained to a fucking wall with his back torn apart and gotten him out.
That was it. Anyone on the team would have done the same fucking thing, and Noble knew it.
Except somewhere in the back of Zenko’s mind, an annoying little voice reminded him that none of the others would have spent four hours sitting on the floor outside Noble’s office waiting for Shaun to come out.
“Noble?”
“What?” Noble barked at Max without looking away from Zenko.
“JSOC are back on the line.”
Noble growled in frustration, but he still didn’t break eye contact.
Zenko knew that look. They’d gone through BUD/S together well over a decade ago, and he’d seen it more times than he could fucking count since.
Noble expected him to get in line, accept that his team leader had done what needed to be done, and move the fuck on.
“I’ll call them back.”
Zenko kept his expression blank even though he wanted to punch Noble in the fucking face.
The worst part was knowing the asshole was kinda right.
This wasn’t how he usually reacted to shit like this.
He knew it, and judging by the way Noble kept staring at him, his friend knew it too.
Something about Shaun Jacobsen had gotten under his skin faster than anyone he had ever met, and he had no fucking idea what to do with that yet.
He finally gave Noble a sharp nod and spun on his heel.
“I want to hear you say it, Zenko.”
Zenko paused mid-step and spun around, the scowl breaking through before he could stop it.
“I get why you didn’t make sure he was fed, Noble.
You needed to know if his story changed when he was tired and hungry, and I’d have done the same fucking thing.
” He clenched his jaw, remembering how close Shaun had come to falling over when he walked out of the office.
“You just didn’t have to make him suffer in pain for nothing. ”
Noble stared at him for several seconds before some of the challenge finally left his expression. “Fine. Go take care of him. We debrief in an hour.”
Zenko turned for the door before Noble could say anything else.
He didn’t need the asshole pointing out again that he was acting differently over Shaun.
He already fucking knew it. He’d never sat outside Noble’s office for four hours waiting for a man before.
He’d sure as fuck never gone toe-to-toe with his team leader because someone hadn’t been fed or given medical attention quickly enough.
Whatever the hell this thing was, he could figure it out later.
Right now, Shaun was hurt, exhausted, and waiting for him to come back with the medical supplies he’d promised.
He stood outside his bedroom door and took several deep breaths.
Even after crossing the compound to get the medical supplies and coming back, he was still pissed at Noble.
He understood why the interrogation had been necessary, but fuck, the asshole had seen the footage from the team’s body cameras.
He’d seen the state they had found Shaun in and the damage to his back when Zenko had cleaned the wounds before extraction.
Four hours sitting in that fucking chair without anyone doing a damn thing about the pain was the part he couldn’t let go.
He refused to examine too closely why it pissed him off this much, though. Nope, not happening. Shaun was hurt, and he wanted to help him. That was all there was to it.
Yup, you keep telling yourself that, you idiot.
He pushed the door open and stopped dead.
Fuck… he was so fucked.
Shaun was stretched out face down across the bed with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, one pillow scrunched beneath his chest to keep the damaged skin of his back away from the mattress.
Zenko’s gaze dropped before he could stop it, following the line of Shaun’s body straight down to where the towel hugged his ass.
Just the perfect position for…
Shut up.
He dragged his eyes away from Shaun’s ass before his stupid brain cells could head any farther south.
This was so not the fucking time. The man had been kidnapped, tortured, and rescued less than a day ago, while he was standing there thinking about how fucking good he looked wearing nothing but a towel.
He quietly approached the bed and peered down at Shaun, the gentle snores convincing him the other man was asleep.
At least that explained why Shaun hadn’t caught him standing in the doorway staring at his ass like a horny fucking teenager.
It was probably better if Shaun slept through the cleaning of his back, because that was going to hurt like a bitch.
Zenko grabbed a bowl of warm water and knelt on the bed beside him, careful not to jostle the mattress enough to wake him.
He surprised himself with how gently he wanted to clean the wounds so Shaun could keep sleeping, and his fingers hovered over the warm skin beside one of the deeper cuts for a couple of seconds before he finally touched him.
The reaction was instantaneous. Shaun jolted awake and grabbed his wrist before Zenko had time to fucking blink.
Holy fuck, he’s fast.
Zenko frowned at the hand locked around his wrist before glancing at Shaun’s face.
That hadn’t been the startled reaction of a civilian waking unexpectedly.
Shaun had gone from dead asleep to restraining his wrist before he’d even had time to react, and Zenko knew exactly how much training it took for something like that to become instinct.
Shit, if he moves like that when he was asleep, is he trained somehow?
“Shh, it’s just me. Zenko.”
The grip around his wrist loosened almost immediately at the sound of his voice, and Shaun’s fingers slid away to curl into the comforter as his body relaxed against the mattress again.
He stared at him. Shaun had reacted to the touch before he was properly awake, yet the second he recognized Zenko’s voice, every bit of that instinctive fight had disappeared.
What the hell?
He washed the damaged skin carefully, keeping one eye on Shaun for any sign that he was waking again.
Damn it, two of the wounds were deep enough that they probably needed stitches, but there was no fucking way he was waking Shaun fully to put them in unless he had no other choice.
He rooted through the medical supplies until his fingers closed around a packet of butterfly closures and breathed out in relief.
Those would hold the wounds together until Doc could get a proper look at him tomorrow.
He covered Shaun’s back in salve again. He still wasn’t sure what the hell was in the stuff, but it smelled like shit and was as slippery as Astroglide, so he hoped to fuck Shaun didn’t roll over in the night and slide right off the damn bed.
Whatever was in it worked, though. Zenko had used it on enough of his own wounds over the years to know they healed clean without infection.
Once it was done, he squatted next to the bed for a couple of minutes just watching the rise and fall of Shaun’s shoulders as he slept.