43. May 20th

MAY 20TH

Waters

Waters puthis water bottle down and leaned on his forearms folded in front of him on the table. "What if he does? I've never known you to be concerned with whether or not someone hates you. I'll set aside that part of your psyche for right now because I know you're scared."

He raised a hand to her mouth as it opened up to deny it.

"Don't even try," he warned.

Kubrick closed her mouth and looked down at the tabletop.

Oh, hell no, woman. Don't you dare pull inside yourself.

He reached across the table and, with one finger, tipped her chin back up so that she'd look him in the eye. "Now, putting aside the ‘why' question, where the hell do you get that he hates you?"

"You know, I had to triple the rate I originally offered to get him to agree to actually consult. Now he's really going to charge me out the ass for getting you all involved in my mess. Especially since he isn't calling the police."

"You are correct. From the get-go, he hated taking this job, but he did it because he knew you were in danger. In order to make it look on the up-and-up, he made it as painful as possible for the studio pricks. If it hadn't been for Ka-Bar calling in Steel's marker, he wouldn't have even met with you. But he did, so that got you in the door. We're not exactly in the straight and narrow kind of business. When he thought this was somehow connected to your brother, there was no chance in hell he wasn't going to take the job, but he had to make it look good. In all honesty, he doesn't like anyone. Even us."

Don't even think that last part is a lie.

Waters cleared his throat. "We just had two separate things going on at once and got blindsided into believing they were connected. That should never have happened. Unfortunately, there were some extenuating circumstances."

He watched as Kubrick chose to ignore that uncomfortable conversation.

"Well, his dickishness didn't stop when he signed on the dotted line," she argued. "Whatever test you seem to think I passed, I obviously didn't. So, what other evidence do I have? One, the nickname. Two, the barking at me. Three, he talked about me like I wasn't even in the room today. Four, he makes unreasonable demands that compromise everything about me, my job, and my situation by telling you to lock me down. And last but not least, he makes me feel like I'm just another Hollywood princess in an ivory tower who needs rescuing by one of his stud castle guards."

Knowing an actual grin would get him a kick to the solar plexus, and from experience with her during training, those hurt like a sonofabitch, Waters was grinning from ear to ear. On the inside.

Stud castle guard, am I? Good to know.

"Okay, stop. You are so far from living in an ivory tower and requiring protection, it's ridiculous."

"Really? Could have fooled me."

"Since you're dying to overanalyze this clusterfuck, let's clear up some things."

Her face looked down at the tabletop again.

"Hey! Look at me," he whispered. This time, he gently grabbed her chin and turned her face up to his. Instead of letting go completely, he cradled the unbruised side of her face with his hand. "That was not a cut at you. I'm trying to explain some things to you so that your head's in the right space."

His thumb stroked the curve of her cheek. "One, all our clients get nicknames so that sensitive information doesn't get into anyone's hands who might manage to listen in. We use codewords for all kinds of things, and your practices with your filming philosophies played nicely into that. Why he chose that moniker is on him, so I can't give you the whys and wherefores.

"Two, he barks at absolutely everyone, me included. He's a big junkyard dog that's used to puffing up and making a lot of noise to get people to jump to his bidding. Tongue lashing is part of the gig, and it hurts worse than any flaying of skin. The average person hates yelling. They will do almost anything to avoid conflict, so they try to pussyfoot around things. Yelling implies conflict, so God yells to cut through the bullshit and get done what needs to be done.

"Three, he knows you're in the room. Everyone on the team does. It's hard not to know you're there. Trust me on that one. Whole fuckin' useless group of them are half in love with you." He tucked the last part under his breath, but she must have heard him because she scrunched her eyebrows together in confusion.

So clueless for someone so smart.

"He's treating you like an inanimate target so that he doesn't lose it over what this pathetic shitfucker did to you. God talks around you to create a disconnect, which allows him to think clearly about an assignment.

"Four, he makes ‘unreasonable demands'—and let me just add that I'm hurt that having to stay with me seems ‘unreasonable' to you—that compromise your everyday life because this situation is that fucking serious, baby. You ignore just one of his orders, and it could be the difference between you being able to go back to living your life the way it was before and being locked up. The police won't look much further than the obvious, and then your ass really will be in jail, at least until someone with a brain cell sees it was clearly self-defense.

"And, last but not least, God is in charge of every life that touches him. If we get all Knights of the Round Table on you, it's because your safety is important to us.

"Babe, you put yourself in my hands for help and protection, and I would still take a bullet for you. I would die to protect you. By extension, that means my tribe would do the same, including God, whether you want them to or not. And that comes complete with a castle guard.

"However, make no mistake, Kubrick, you are not a ‘Hollywood Princess.' God's way of disconnecting, maybe, but you're one of the strongest, most capable, kick-ass women we know."

"Yeah, real kick-ass. Broke down like a teenage girl over what happened at my place. Sorry about that."

He covered her clenched hands sitting on the tabletop. "In case I need to remind you, baby, there was a fucking dead body in your living room. Someone attacked you intending to end your life, for fuck's sake. And you defended yourself with equal force. Of course you fell apart a little. Taking a life, intentionally or unintentionally, has a cost that comes with it. And later on? There was absolutely, positively no reason to go back into that house, but you did. You did not need to deal with that shit a second time. The fact that you had to deal with it for the first time has made me want to breathe fire."

"Pisses me off that now I have a blood stain on my antique wood flooring. That's never going to come out, and I'm going to have to remember that fucktard every time I go in my living room." She snorted. "That is if I don't go to prison."

Waters grinned and leaned back in his seat.

There she is. She's back.

"You're not going to prison. The team is taking care of your house, Midas is going to make it so there's no record of him going anywhere near the direction of your house. Demon went diving for the gun. He'll probably have it by the time I get you home."

Her face blanched. "God told TB to make Big Bird disappear."

"Don't worry about the details. I promise. No one will know. We have a lot of skills that you're better off not knowing about."

"You're covering up a murder."

"No, it's not a murder. You defended yourself. But we're not exactly a regular channel kind of group. We're not ‘good guys,' Kubrick. We're hired to do sketchy things all of the time. Even knowing that, your brother sent you to us because we get shit done."

"I'm scared, Waters. Beyond scared."

He brushed her hair back behind her ear. "I know. But we've got you now."

"But—"

"Stop. Now, I'm going to take you back to my house in the hills, and we'll hang out there for a few days while everything sorts itself out. Did you have any meetings or projects in the next few days?"

"No. I was scheduled to go out of town. I usually take some time right after a film closes up shop."

"Perfect. That's still going to happen, just not how you planned." He stood up and reached out for her hand. "C'mon, babe. Let's go. We've got a drive in front of us."

Waters'house was just under two hours from the heart of L.A. in the rolling hills of Escondido. The ride was silent, with Kubrick staring out the passenger side window the entire way. When they arrived at the A-frame luxury cabin, she simply stared out the front window at it. Waters watched her process what she was seeing.

"Wait for me to open your door." He hopped out of his truck and then walked around to her side of the vehicle. "C'mon. Let's get you inside."

He put her just in front of him as they walked to the door. When they got onto the porch, he made sure to cover the entire back of her with his body as he disarmed the security system.

When he ushered her through the door, he watched her take in her surroundings, trying to see the house from her perspective. Vaulted ceiling. Pine floors that gleamed. Log walls that matched the outside, although there was insulation between the inside wall and the outside wall. A kitchen with stainless steel appliances and a kitchen island breaking it apart from the living room. A stone fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed that there was a second-floor deck, both windows and deck giving a spectacular view of the orchards on the side of the mountain that spread down into the valley. A staircase that went upstairs to the open bridge hallway connecting the two sides of the gallery formed the bottom of the U-shape to bedrooms on the left and right side of the structure. On the left was a closed-off room. On the right was a loft guest room the kids had shared with each other or friends when the family vacationed there. Or the occasional other guests that Tribe housed there.

Her eyes and nose scrunched up again.

So fucking cute.

"Not what I pictured for you."

He pocketed his keys and reset the security system. "What did you picture?"

"Honestly? A bunker."

"I read so military that you imagine me living underground like a doomsday prepper?"

She shrugged and hugged herself. "I guess I never thought about where you lived. Everything with us was always so right-here-right-now that it wasn't something that existed in my head."

He left that commentary alone. He was on dangerous ground here and didn't want it all to go sideways by saying the wrong thing. "You tired?"

"No. Amped, actually."

"The crash will come."

"I don't have anything with me. How long will I be here?"

"Cherry went out to grab you some things from the stores. The guys will bring them up later."

She whirled around. "God said they'd be babysitting?"

"They'll be so invisible, you'll forget they're even out there. As for a timeline, probably a week. Maybe two." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Why don't you have a seat?"

She moved to the leather couch, and he watched her consider sitting down. Reading her right now was painfully easy. He could almost see the wheels turning, envisioning the leather couch in the War Room. He swallowed hard and tried to bury his own memories of that couch.

She jerked suddenly ninety degrees and instead sat on the edge of the matching leather chair, her hands underneath her thighs. "Thank you," she said so softly he almost missed it.

"Thank you for what, babe?"

"Finding Zahra and the baby. Finding Jacques' family. Taking care of them and making sure they're safe."

"No need to thank me." He sat on the edge of the coffee table in front of her, elbows on his knees, leaning toward her. "I'm just sorry we're still hunting for your brother. His gifts, which are so valuable to the military, are the very reason we're struggling to find him. But we will find him. It's just going to take time and patience."

Weakly, Kubrick smiled at him. "And we know how good I am at being patient."

"Don't sell yourself short. You're patient when it comes to a lot of things."

"Not so much when it comes to self-control."

"Self-control is overrated."

She slouched. "Ka-Bar could have used some, and he wouldn't have been in this situation. And neither would I, or you and your team."

"While it is true that, in hindsight, it would have been much better for him to have just brought her to the embassy for sanctuary, we have no idea why he didn't. He might have had a damn good reason. Then again, sometimes love blinds people to the obvious, and they make decisions that later are defined as ‘What the fuck was I thinking?' moments. No one is immune to those, even the most brilliant of us."

They both knew that Waters wasn't just referring to Ka-Bar at that moment.

He continued, "In his defense, I think sanctuary was the initial plan. But something must have told him that it wasn't a viable option. When I spoke to her, Zahra said that he couldn't get her out of her father's compound without creating an international incident. Then he got a visit from one of her father's security team who threatened him to find out where Zahra was. That was when she took matters into her own hands and disappeared without telling anyone, trying to protect Ka-Bar. Both sides thought the other was responsible for her vanishing act when neither knew she was on her own."

Kubrick shook her head, murmuring, "Fuckin' Kent."

"Hardly surprising how it all went down. If it had just been about Zahra, seventh child of seven, and the third daughter, her family probably would have been pissed but just written her off. Some of the most traditional families in any culture don't have much use for daughters. Especially ones that have fallen in love with ‘the infidel.' But three of the brothers have died in military action, and the baby is a boy, so…" His voice trailed off.

She nodded in agreement. "A possible heir to the family name."

"She's Ka-Bar's wife—"

"So she's tribe. I know."

"Exactly."

Fuck. Here goes nothing.

"Kubrick?" He expelled a pent-up breath of nerves. "I need to apologize to you."

Kubrick's posture became ramrod straight; what little color she'd had was now leaking from her face, jaw clenching, and eyes going blank.

"You were right. The way I left. I should have waited. I wasn't thinking clearly. God ordered us out immediately, and I was angry. Unfortunately, you were the one who suffered for it, and it shouldn't have been that way."

"It's okay, Waters."

"No, it's not, Kubrick, and you shouldn't be accepting of it. I could have at least waited for you to wake up, to be clearheaded. To explain what was going on. Instead, I fell into old habits even when I knew it wasn't how you deserved to find out what was happening. It was easier for me to leave like I did, but I should have worried about was what was easier or better for you. I have no excuse. I've been making decisions based on a fucked-up paradigm for so long that when I needed to make a really important decision and do it right, I totally screwed it up."

He both felt and saw her armor go up before she turned her eyes onto him. "It's okay, Waters. It's not like we didn't know that we would be separating eventually. It just happened before we thought it would. And you needed to go. If you hadn't, things might have gone much worse for Zahra and her son. I'm not angry."

He reached over and brushed the unruly strand of blonde hair that had fallen forward and settled it back behind her ear. "Maybe not. But I hurt you, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I should have listened to the team. I should have ignored God." He reached for her hands, prying them out from under her legs, and held them, brushing his thumbs over her knuckles. "I should have stayed."

"But to what end?"

"Baby, you were left alone and vulnerable. You had Demon to be a buffer for you for the last three weeks on set, sure. But now, here at home, you were left off even more vulnerable, and the situation could have ended up so much worse. I'm absolutely sick thinking what could have been if you weren't so amazingly you."

"Don't, Waters. I'm fine. Besides, the end result would have been the same for us. And unfortunately, now I'm just going to have to go through all that pain again." She pulled her hands back from his to cover her face. Her shoulders started to tremble. "I'm so fucking weak. I've never needed anyone, and for the past few months, I've been dependent on you or Demon to get me through."

Waters felt his molars grinding a bit at the thought of Demon helping her with anything, but he'd done that himself. His watch pinged. He stood. "Speak of the devil."

I'm going to fucking kill him. His timing is shit.

He crossed to the door and flipped up a hidden panel. On the security camera screen, Demon and Steel appeared in the Yukon, turning at the mile marker to the cabin.

Waters sent back a quick text and then deactivated the system so he could open the door when they arrived and let them in. He looked over at Kubrick, who hadn't moved an inch since she sat down.

"Look, why don't you go upstairs and lie down. Try to take a nap. The adrenaline crash is coming. Take a shower, and then you're going to need to eat. And I'll need whatever clothes you have on right now."

"Why?"

"Bloodstains. Part of the cleanup process."

She looked down at her lap and nodded. "Right." Stiffly, she got up from the chair and went up the staircase. Once she was out of sight, he let out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

How the hell do I fix this?

Steel had parkedthe Yukon in the camouflage carport about a half mile down the road, and they walked in. Demon didn't bother to come up onto the porch, but he pierced Waters with a hard stare as he stood at the bottom of the cabin's steps.

The chance to get your shit together and fix it has been dropped into your lap. Don't be a douchebag.

Message received.

Waters gave him a single nod, and Demon grunted as he went around the side of the cabin to find a position to watch from.

Steel stepped up to one stair from the top of the porch and handed him a duffle bag. "You might want to open that first before giving it to her. Cherry threw some party favors in there. Might not be good if she saw that first."

"Shit," Waters muttered. "Can't you people stay out of this?"

"Nope," his friend said with a slight grin. Then Steel jumped to the ground and went in the opposite direction of Demon to find another overwatch position.

Waters took the duffle bag inside, locked the door, and rearmed the system. He placed the duffle bag on the counter. Opening it, he removed the extra package from the top of the bag with the sticky note on it that said, "Remind her!" and then a smiley face that was winking at him. "Good grief. Sex doesn't solve all problems," he murmured.

He stopped in mid-zipping of the bag. What the fuck? Since when did he spout shit like that, even just to himself? Perhaps his Navy buddies had been right with his name. Way too sensitive for a guy.

Putting the bag at the foot of the stairs, then throwing the box in the downstairs bathroom in the back of a drawer, he headed to the kitchen.

Five steps out the door, he turned around and came back to open the box and tore three condoms off the strip, placing them in his cargo pocket.

Power of positive thinking? Obsessive Planning Tendencies for contingencies, right?

He shook his head. Time to go see what food was around so he could make Kai dinner.

Kai. Not Kubrick.

She's not a client, and she hasn't been for a long time.

He had takenthe duffle bag upstairs and found her asleep in the open-air guest room. He would have preferred her to have picked the primary bedroom since it could be closed off, but somehow, he knew that she had found that too uncomfortable, given how things had ended between them. After placing the bag on the dresser where she'd be sure to see it, he took the quilt from the rocking chair in the corner and unfurled it, laying it over her sleeping figure. Gently, so as not to wake her, he brushed his lips to her temple, then left as silently as he had arrived.

He stood for a long while at the living room windows, looking out over the valley at the orange groves. While this upcoming conversation with Kai about their relationship was littered with minefields, he would navigate it as best he could. In all honesty, he had no idea how she was going to respond, but he did know that if she shut him down, he wasn't going to give up. She was worth the fight. How it would all work out between her job, his job, and God was the bigger issue. The team treated the whole situation like he was making way more of the situation than it was, but Waters wasn't so sure that was true.

The sun had set by the time he heard Kai moving around and then the running water of the shower. Waters had just finished taking the baked chicken and oven-roasted potatoes out of the oven when he heard the creaky stair he'd learned to avoid as a teen when he or Sarah were sneaking out. He turned around to see her two steps from the bottom, with damp hair and clean clothes. Cherry had packed the duffle filled with Kai's go-to wardrobe—leggings and baggy shirts—including the oversized, long-sleeved Dodgers T-shirt she was currently wearing. He couldn't help but grin. "Well, that should make you feel a little more comfortable."

Kai gave a small smile. "Something smells good."

"I'm no master chef, but it's comfort food. Come, sit down."

He watched her sit down at the table, clearly noticing he had put the two settings next to each other on a corner instead of across from one another. He put the baking dish on the table and went to the refrigerator for water while she helped herself. "It's filtered water," he said as he set down the pitcher.

"I'm not that much of a snob that I won't drink tap water," she joked.

"Ewww. But I am. Yuck." That got a laugh out of her. "Sleep okay?"

She nodded. "Yes, I feel a little better. I don't even remember lying down, actually. You were right about the crash."

He nodded. "Some of the best sleep I ever had was in the Navy after missions went to hell."

They ate in silence for a while. He could tell she was trying to figure out how to have the conversation she wanted to have with him, so he let her grind her gears to figure it out. He knew from their time together that she needed the processing time.

Weird how much alike we are that way.

Uncomfortably, she cleared her throat and put her fork down. It reminded him of the day in the diner when she first let on that she thought she wasn't on his level.

Think it's more the other way around. I don't deserve her. Then again, I don't have her again. Yet. Hopefully.

"So, who showed up?"

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and took a sip of his water. "Demon and Steel." He caught the slight grimace. "Something wrong?"

"I'm just surprised Demon agreed to be here. He's not the happiest with you."

"He's not doing it for me. He's doing it for you."

"I didn't sleep with him!"

He reached for her hand and held it beneath his on the tabletop. "Relax, I know you didn't. I didn't mean it that way. I'm not sure how much of his trust I've lost or if I can ever gain it back. He's angry at me for leaving. Can't say I blame him. I'm angry at myself, too. However, that's neither here nor there now."

"So, what happens now?"

"We lock down here until God gives me the all-clear for you to return to your life."

Her eyes bore into his, searching for something. For the first time with her, he wasn't sure what. Normally, she was an open book, but this was uncharted territory for him, and he had no clue where she was headed.

"So, I go my way, live my life; you go yours, live your life." Firmly, she pulled her hand from under his and stood up. "Noted. I'll do my best to stay out of your way until he gives the all-clear."

Fuck. So much for trying to be subtle. When did that ever work with her, dumbass?

She began to move with purpose toward the stairs. He slid out from the table, following her and catching her at the foot of the stairs. He grabbed her elbow, spun her around to face him, and leaned her up against the wall.

"Don't, Kai. Don't run away or shut down on me." His grip on her arms gentled but still denied her the ability to continue to run away. "I fucked up, okay? Multiple times. I get it. I'm always so sure of everything, but you come along, and that all gets shot to shit. Now I'm floundering, saying the wrong things, or not saying things I should, doing the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I'm all sorts of fucked up when the last thing I want to do is drive you further away."

Her chest was heaving, and her eyes were glassy. No tears, but it probably wouldn't take much for some to fall. He stepped as close to her as he could, pressing his forehead to hers. "Please don't run again."

"I didn't run the first time."

"No, you didn't. But you started to just now, and that is not going to happen. I'll keep chasing you until I catch you because I know you don't really want to go."

"What choice do I have? Your team knows how I feel about you, including your boss. I know the rule. The rule hasn't changed. And I can't come back into your life for another brief period of time only to have you leave me again."

"Fuck the rule," he growled.

I can't avoid this. I have to tell her. Maybe then she'll understand.

He stood up straight, dropped his hands from her, and took a step back. "Look, I have to tell you something. It's not going to be pretty. In fact, it's going to be fucking ugly. But I don't know how else to make you understand why I left without a fight."

He could almost feel the blood draining from his body. The one thing he guarded more than his name. The one thing he'd sworn he'd never talk about, and he was going to tell her.

He sat down hard on the stairs.