Chapter 11
ALEX
The safe house smells like mildew and forgotten violence.
Three miles of running through forest turned to scrambling over rocks, then wading through a creek cold enough to numb everything below the knee.
Delaney never complained. Never slowed. Blood soaked through the makeshift bandage I'd wrapped around her shoulder, turning the fabric dark, but she matched my pace step for step until we reached this place—an abandoned hunting cabin whose location Tommy made me memorize.
Emergency fallback location, one of six scattered across this mountain range.
Now she sits on a rusted metal chair while I dig through the med kit we stashed here. The cabin's got no power, no running water, just four walls and a roof that mostly keeps out rain. Enough.
"Shirt off," I say, keeping my voice flat.
She hesitates. Just a second. Then her good hand moves to the buttons. The fabric's torn, blood-stiffened, nearly ruined. Each button takes effort. When she reaches the fourth, her fingers fumble.
"Let me." I step closer before I can reconsider.
My hands brush hers as I take over. The contact sends electricity up my arm that has nothing to do with adrenaline crash. Her breath catches—barely audible, but I hear it. The space between us narrows until I can smell pine and copper and something underneath that's purely her.
The shirt comes off. Beneath it, her tank top is soaked through on the left side, clinging to skin and showing exactly how much blood she's lost. Not life-threatening. But enough to make my pulse spike.
I killed the operator who shot her. Put three rounds through cover that shouldn't have been penetrable at that angle. Didn't hesitate. Didn't feel anything except the cold clarity that comes with eliminating a threat to someone I can't lose.
"Tank top too," I say.
"Very professional." The attempt at humor falls flat. Her voice carries too much pain.
"Practical. I can't treat what I can't see."
She pulls the tank top over her head with a gasp that turns into a bitten-off curse.
The wound is worse than I thought—a deep furrow across the top of her shoulder where the bullet carved through muscle.
Edges ragged. Still seeping. Needs stitches I'm not qualified to do but will anyway because we don't have better options.
"How bad?" she asks.
"Bad enough." I open the med kit, pull out antiseptic, gauze, the suture kit I've used on myself more times than I want to count. "This is going to hurt."
"Everything hurts already. What's a little more?"
The joke doesn't land. We're both too raw, too wired from combat and the kiss we haven't mentioned. The kiss that's present in every breath between us.
I pour antiseptic over the wound without warning. Better that way. No anticipation, no flinching.
She goes rigid. Doesn't scream. Just breathes through clenched teeth while the liquid foams pink in the gash. Her good hand grips the chair arm hard enough that her knuckles turn white.
"Breathe," I tell her. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Four counts in, hold for four, out for four."
She follows the instruction. Controlled even now, even bleeding. Even sitting half-naked in an abandoned cabin while I tend damage I should have prevented.
I should have spotted that ambush sooner. Should have realized they were tracking us. Should have protected her better.
The thoughts spiral but my hands stay steady. Years of field medicine, of treating wounds in worse conditions than this. The suture needle slides through skin. She doesn't flinch. Doesn't make a sound except for that measured breathing.
"You did good out there," I say quietly. Anything to distract from the pain. "The shots you took. Controlled trigger discipline."
"I killed more people today."
"You survived. That's what matters."
"Does it get easier?" She watches me work, eyes too dark. "The killing?"
The question deserves honesty. "No. It gets familiar. That's not the same thing."
Three stitches. Four. The needle pierces skin with resistance that never stops feeling wrong. Taking damage is one thing. Inflicting it, even to heal, carries different weight.
"How many?" she asks. "How many people have you killed?"
The needle pauses. Just for a second. "You really want that answer?"
"Yes."
"Enough." I don't elaborate. Don't need to. "Eight years of active duty. Then the Committee extractions. Now this." The suture slides through. "Some I remember. Most I don't. The ones that stick are never the ones you'd expect."
She's quiet. Processing. The profiler in her probably analyzing my tone, my body language, looking for signs of what those numbers cost.
"Does it haunt you?" she asks.
"Some more than others." Another stitch. Five. "The ones who deserved it haunt me less than they should. The ones who were just following orders—those stick around."
"Which ones do you see when you close your eyes?"
Nobody's asked me that before. Not the psych evaluators after Afghanistan. Not the debriefers when I went rogue. Not Kane, even though he probably knows the answer.
"Kabul," I hear myself say. "A kid—couldn't have been more than sixteen—manning a checkpoint. Orders said anyone at that checkpoint was hostile. Rules of engagement cleared me to shoot. So I did."
Six stitches. Seven. The rhythm keeps me grounded when the memory tries to pull me under.
"Found out later the Committee had paid his family to put him there. Knew we'd eliminate anyone in position. Used him as bait to justify an airstrike." The suture pulls tight. "He never fired a shot. Never even raised his weapon. And I put two rounds in his chest because orders said so."
"Alex—"
"Don't." The word comes out harsher than intended. "Don't tell me it wasn't my fault. I pulled the trigger. That's on me. Always will be."
She reaches up with her good hand. Touches my wrist. Not pulling me away from the wound, just making contact. Grounding us both.
"I wasn't going to," she says quietly. "I was going to say I understand why you carry it."
The knot in my chest changes. Not loosening—just changing shape into something I don't have words for.
I finish the last stitch. Twelve total. Clean work considering the circumstances. The bleeding's stopped. Edges aligned. It'll scar, but she'll keep full mobility.
"Done," I say.
But I don't move away. Can't make myself step back when she's this close, this vulnerable, this real.
My hands rest on her shoulders—one on unmarred skin, the other carefully avoiding the fresh stitches. Her skin is warm under my palms. Warmer than it should be in this cold cabin. Heat radiating from exertion and adrenaline crash and the weight of what's building between us.
"Alex." My name sounds different in her voice. Softer. More dangerous.
"I shouldn't have done that," I say quietly. The words taste like ash. "Kissed you."
"Why?" She meets my eyes without flinching. "Because I'm FBI? Because we're in danger? Or because you felt it too?"
The truth sits in my throat like broken glass. "All of the above."
"Which one scares you most?"
Profiler question. Aimed right at the defenses I've spent eight years building. She's not playing fair.
"That you'll realize what you signed up for," I say. "What being with someone like me means. And you'll run."
"I'm not some civilian you need to protect from yourself, Alex. I made my call back in that forest. I'm not changing my mind now."
"You don't know what you're choosing."
"Then tell me."
The demand hangs between us. Direct. Uncompromising. The same tone she probably used in interrogation rooms when suspects tried to hide behind silence.
I should walk away. Should bandage her wound and check our perimeter and plan our next move. Should do anything except what I'm about to do.
Instead, I pull the other chair closer. Sit down so we're eye level. No tactical advantage. No height differential. Just two people in an abandoned cabin being more honest than either of us probably wants.
"I have nightmares," I start. Might as well lay it all out.
"Not every night, but often enough. Some nights I wake up thinking I'm still in that compound, surrounded by bodies I put down.
Or I'm at the checkpoint, watching that kid fall.
Or I'm in interrogation rooms listening to Committee operators describe how they'll kill people I care about. "
She listens without interrupting. Maybe she understands that some things need to be said straight through before the courage fails.
"When it's bad, I don't sleep for days. Just patrol the perimeter or train until exhaustion shuts down my brain.
Kane calls it operational tempo management.
I call it survival." I flex my fingers. "The kills haunt me, but not the way you'd think.
Not guilt over pulling the trigger. Guilt over how easy it got.
How routine. How I can put rounds in center mass and feel nothing except mission completion. "
"That's not the same as being broken," she says.
"Isn't it? I'm thirty-two years old and I've spent the last decade learning how to kill people efficiently.
That's my primary skill set. Not building things or creating value or contributing to society.
Just eliminating threats." The words come faster now, pressure building.
"I don't know how to have normal relationships.
Don't know how to sit at a dinner table without planning exit routes.
Don't know how to look at strangers without cataloging potential weapons.
That's what you're signing up for if you stay.
Someone who's broken in ways you can't fix. "
"I'm not trying to fix you."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"Understand you." She shifts forward. The movement pulls at her stitches but she doesn't flinch. "You're using trauma as armor, Alex. Pushing me away before I can see you're scared of letting me in."
The profile hits dead center. She's FBI. She's trained for this.