In the Line of Duty: First Responders, Book 2 (9 page)

“Oh, I did. And you know as well as I do, Kendra. When people like me fail, other people die.”

Chapter Six

He was beginning to open up. Kendra wasn’t sure if she was glad or if she needed to escape. She wasn’t good at this sharing thing. But he’d been here for her tonight. He was holding her in his arms, and she owed it to him to listen. She wanted to help even though the very idea scared her to death.

“Someone died?” she prompted, swallowing hard. All she could see in her mind was that beautiful young girl. A person’s face changed when their heart stopped beating. For a few precious moments it had been peaceful and beautiful, but then it was different. Like a shell where once there had been a soul.

Soullessness scared her to death.

“I still have nightmares about it. She…” His voice broke a little and he stopped, inhaled.

“It was a woman.” Her voice sounded hoarse.

“From a nearby village.”

He stopped. Kendra didn’t urge or nudge. She just waited. If it wasn’t time, he’d stop and they’d talk about something else. And if he needed to get it off his chest, she’d listen. Jake was turning out to be so much more tender and caring than she’d expected. It wasn’t fair that he’d been so tied up in knots for what, a year? Two years?

“We were in a pretty delicate spot. Lots of insurgents around. Lots of Taliban and a lot of frightened villagers. I met this woman—Khaterah.”

His voice hitched saying her name. It was a beautiful name, exotic and lovely. Had Jake fallen for her? Had she been someone special?

“Khaterah. That’s beautiful.”

“It means desire.”

“Oh,” she answered.
Oh
, she thought. There was definitely something here. There was something in the way he said her name. A quiet reverence. A wistfulness. Kendra was relatively sure no one had ever spoken
her
name in quite that way, not ever. For a fleeting moment, she was the tiniest bit jealous that this woman, whoever she was, had captured Jake’s heart so completely.

Jake’s chin rested against Kendra’s temple as he spoke quietly. “She wore a burka. The first time I met her, I could hardly see her eyes. She wouldn’t look at my face—it was wrong to make eye contact. Wrong to touch. The burka was shapeless and covered her from head to toe, but she moved with a grace that was beautiful. She passed me a message that day. It was incredibly brave and stupid of her to do that.”

Kendra’s heart started beating faster, afraid of what was coming next. “Any woman who would do such a thing—”

“She was risking her life. When I met her later, I told her never to do it again.” He swallowed and she felt his Adam’s apple rise and fall. “She met my eyes. More than that. She showed her face to me that day. I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman, brave and determined. And yet her life was about hiding, about being faceless and powerless. She fought back in the only way she knew how.”

There was anger in his voice now, and frustration. Kendra leaned back a little so she could look into his face. It was so tense, so…haunted. She lifted her fingers and touched his cheek. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I meant it when I said it was okay.”

His dark eyes probed hers. “I know you did. Maybe that’s why I finally wanted to tell someone.” He tilted his head a bit. “You would have walked away without knowing, wouldn’t you?”

“Everyone has a right to their secrets. To their private pain. But if you want to tell me the rest, I’m here.”

“Why?”

It was a simple but incredibly loaded question. Why was she getting herself involved with Jake, taking on his problems? Leaving the pseudo-sex on the beach out of the equation, there was something more going on. She could acknowledge that in her head even if she couldn’t say it out loud. Something drew them together. Perhaps it always had, right from the time he’d held out his hands, dressed in nothing more than boxers, and commanded, “Cuff me, Constable. You know you want to.”

It had been a challenge. And, she understood now, a way of punishing himself. A person couldn’t live like that forever.

“Because it’s time you told someone. It’s time you stopped punishing yourself. Somehow, despite our horrible beginning, we understand each other. It doesn’t have to go any deeper than that.” She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “What happened to Khaterah?”

He hesitated, deliberating, but finally continued. “She fed me information for days. It got more and more risky, and we…I…got personally involved. I never touched her. Never kissed her. I wouldn’t have risked her that way. Besides, she was married. But it didn’t matter. I fell in love with her anyway.” He laughed bitterly. “It was all impossible and crazy. There was no way on earth we would ever be together and we both knew it. But it didn’t stop how I felt about her. How I wanted to protect her, to take her away from there and the danger.”

Kendra cursed lightly under her breath. No wonder Jake had been a mess.

“And then they knew. Somehow they knew that she’d been meeting me.”

“What happened?” Kendra was afraid to ask, but desperate to know the truth.

“They treated her as they would any traitor.” His voice was flat. “Only maybe worse. They raped her before they killed her.”

Shock rippled through Kendra. “Raped…” She took a breath, tried to steady her voice. “How can you be sure?”

He lowered his chin, met her gaze with his own. Despite the thick emotion in his voice, his eyes were dry. “Because I heard it. I heard the shouts. I heard her scream and I could do nothing to stop it without giving away our position. By the time we got there it was too late. She was already dead.”

“My God, Jake.”

“God had very little to do with what happened that night,” he said bitterly. “I heard her being tortured and thought I would go crazy. I still hear them in my sleep. I should have protected her. I should have insisted on staying away from the very first. I was over there to help people like Khaterah, not kill them. And I’ll have to live with that until I die.”

His eyes were bleak, and Kendra stroked his hair back from his forehead, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to make it any easier. There was so much more to Jake than she’d ever expected. Behind the charmer, behind the glib barman, was a man who had served his country bravely. A man who had depths she hadn’t even imagined. Who had come home and gone on a two-month tear through town before being deployed again. “You went back,” she whispered. “How could you stand it?”

He blinked. “Not very well. It was my last deployment. I just wasn’t in the right headspace. There were…problems. Nothing official, but I was unpredictable after that.”

“What about help after you got home? There are programs—”

“For people who are a hell of a lot more messed up than me,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I went off the rails for a bit but I got myself straightened around. It ain’t perfect but it could be a lot worse. I came home in one piece without leaving bits of me over there, which is more than a lot of guys can say.”

Except his heart. Except his pride and perhaps even a piece of his humanity. Not that she would be the one to point that out. She was pretty sure he already knew exactly what he’d lost and didn’t need reminding.

All of it made her night seem like nothing compared to what he’d been through.

Except it wasn’t, not really. Because in the end someone innocent had still died. In the end, lives had been destroyed—not just the girl’s but those of her family, who would never be the same again.

But at least Kendra wouldn’t carry the weight of responsibility of it with her forever. Not like Jake did.

“Jake, I’m sorry,” she murmured in the deepening darkness.

“Why are you sorry?” Now that he’d finished his tale, his voice had softened to a deep rumble. “It wasn’t your fault. Nothing you could do.”

“I’m sorry I judged you. Sorry that you had to go through it at all.”

“You didn’t know. How could you?”

“And so you came home and bought the bar. Jake’s.”

“I wanted to be near my family. And I wanted to be done taking orders. When it came to running my own business, this made the most sense to me.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Running Jake’s has saved me the past few months. I needed something to ground me, and as much as I need to be near my family sometimes it’s hard. They ask too many questions. Worry too much.”

“Because they love you,” she replied softly. “You’re very lucky that way.”

“Unlike you? What about your parents?”

Something dark turned in the pit of her stomach. “I stopped trying to keep track of my mom a few years ago.”

“And your father?”

She focused on one of the buttons on his shirt. It was a slightly different color from the rest, like he’d lost one and replaced it with one that didn’t quite match. She let out a breath and let the words out. “My dad was killed in the line of duty when I was six.”

His arms tightened around her. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. My mom was never the same after that. She tried for a while, but the alcohol ran the house. We moved a lot.”

And that was how Kendra had gotten so good at being personable but not personal. She knew it. It usually wasn’t a problem. Except now she was getting personal with Jake and she wasn’t quite sure how to do it, how it worked.

“Anyway, like you, I needed something to ground me. The RCMP was it. And the valley has become my home now.”

“And yet you’re still flying solo.”

“You noticed.” Nothing got by Jake, did it?

“No family, no roommate, no boyfriend…”

“Old habits. No ties, no hard goodbyes, you know?”

“I’ll bet you’re sorry you went on a date with me then?”

She smiled. “No, not sorry about that. I needed it.” She wasn’t sorry either. She’d needed the day out. She’d needed to laugh. And she could even admit to herself that she’d needed the physical contact. It was ridiculous to be so inexperienced at her age.

But the closeness she’d experienced with Jake did frighten her. What did it say about her that the first place she’d turned tonight was Jake’s? Had she really been bent on making herself forget, or had something more driven her here?

On the outside they were complete opposites. He was relaxed and easygoing while she was starched and uptight. He ran a bar and she upheld the law. But inside, in all the other secret corners, she was starting to see they were made up of very similar stuff.

And comparing her evening to his past was apples and oranges. But when she put it into context, it took on a whole other life. She’d hated being the one to deliver the news because once upon a time she’d opened the door to that same news and afterwards nothing had been the same again.

A moment like that—when a family is ripped apart, when the woman you love is killed—it was the kind of moment that made the world drop out from under your feet.

Being held in Jake’s arms felt the tiniest bit like putting them on solid ground again.

“Telling that father tonight that his daughter was dead…that was the worst thing I’ve had to do in my life,” she admitted. “I know what it’s like to be on the other side of that door or phone call. I know how it tears things apart so that nothing is ever the same again. Thank you, Jake, for keeping me from self-destructing. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. You needed someone. Maybe if I’d talked to you sooner, I wouldn’t have made some of my mistakes either.”

“You’re here now and you’re okay. That’s what matters.”

“Right.”

She sat back in his arms and wrapped her fingers around the collar of his shirt. “Khaterah made her own choices, Jake. She knew the danger and the consequences, just like my father did when he became a police officer. Like I did. Like you did when you joined the Army. If you could have protected her, you would have. I know sometimes it’s harder to accept that you couldn’t. But it is what it is. Maybe it’s time we both started living again. Really living, not just going through the motions.”

She looked at him for a long moment, his face a little below hers as she sat on his lap, his full lips slightly open. She wet hers with her tongue, felt his warmth beneath her hands, felt the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Jake was life. And she needed it—and him—so very badly.

She leaned forward and tasted his lips. There was a faint bite of whiskey and then something she already recognized as his own unique flavor. He opened his mouth beneath hers and she took her time, slowly exploring, sliding closer against his chest and curling her hand around the nape of his neck.

“Mmm,” he murmured against her mouth. “Kendra, are you sure you want to be starting this?”

Her blood sang through her veins, the same thrumming excitement she’d felt lying beneath him on the beach. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so alive. She wasn’t kidding herself into thinking this was more than it needed to be—one night. A connection, a shelter from all the crap that had been thrown at them because they’d chosen to do the jobs they did. She understood now what people meant when they said once in, never out. But for the next few hours they could forget.

“I’m sure.” She nodded, dotting kisses over his jaw and on the side of his neck. “Are you?” She shifted slightly, felt his hardness beneath the outside of her thigh and grinned. “You feel sure.”