7. Zach

SEVEN

Zach

Kai's gaze flickered to mine, his expression blank now, after I'd watched him cycle through shock and disbelief, then settle on dismissive, as if it didn't matter at all even with Clarke's blood on his hands.

He tilted his chin. "I did what I had to do."

He was trying for confrontation, but I knew him well enough to hear that his voice strained with emotion. This wasn't the Kai I was used to sitting in front of me, and instinct told me not to call him on his attitude or lose my shit and end up arguing. There was no real bluster and confidence. This was him broken.

We sat for a beat and I had to think about how I worded this for fear of him losing his shit and walking out.

"Killing the target wasn't our mission. "

He winced as he dropped his focus on me to stare at his lap instead. "Duh."

That was a non-answer, and I wasn't letting him get away with that. Knowing why it had happened would tell me whether I'd have to lie to have his back, or just embellish the truth. "So, why did you kill him?"

There had to be a reason, somewhere beyond temper, and I wanted to hear it from him. The way he'd ended the man was animalistic, raw, and so fucking painful for him.

He gave a heavy sigh, then removed his weapon from his holster and balanced it on his knee. A psychologist would have a field day with the way Kai often sat with the HK in his hand, smoothing the metal, like some kind of comfort blanket.

"You should go," he murmured, tapping the gun, and curling his finger around the trigger, then loosening his hold.

"You gonna shoot the only witness?" I deadpanned.

He threw me a glance that made my chest tighten. "If you don't leave me alone, yes." For a moment, I saw familiar confidence, but it quickly became despair, and it chilled me. We entered an epic stare-off, but he looked away first. "You'll never understand why I wanted him dead."

I waited for more, but he was silent, and I knocked his foot with mine. "Try me."

"I have regrets," he began, then snorted. "I regret I didn't kill him neater, so no one would know, but I regret he didn't get to feel an ounce of the pain that I… that kids here had felt."

I heard the slip, but this was his story, and I wanted to let it unfold. Only he was quiet again, so I poked at him. "So you don't regret killing him when our mission was retrieval and interrogation?"

"Hell, no. And when I saw him… Nah, there was no way it would be neat." He tipped his chin—the stubborn ass. "And I won't let anyone lock me away for what I did so you need to leave so I can grab my shit and go." He stared at me, his gaze focused and determined.

I'd seen this expression before in people facing the end of things when death was certain. Was he planning something stupid before anyone locked him away for murder? My breath caught, and I tensed, ready to leap for his gun if he even so much as twitched.

"You need to tell me what the hell happened."

He huffed a laugh, but it lacked humor. This wasn't a joke—he really was going to do something stupid. He was fast, but not fast enough to prevent me from wrestling the gun from him before he put a bullet in his brain.

"I don't need to tell you anything."

"So, you're running?"

"Wouldn't you?" He raised an eyebrow. All the shakiness in him vanished.

"I won't let you leave. "

He raised an eyebrow. "You're gonna stop me?"

"Nope, you're my partner. Where you go, I go."

Kai's eyes darkened with worry, his brow furrowing. " Now you want to be partners?" He huffed again, but this time there was a hint of laughter there, as if it amazed him I'd called him that.

"It was an op gone bad. I called it in." I was desperate to get through to him. "I've got your back, despite you not telling me shit."

"You're an idiot."

"Says you."

He sighed again, fatigued as he pressed his other hand to his temple. "I'm not taking you down with me."

"You're a stubborn prick." We stared at each other, neither willing to back down, only it was me who broke the silence. "Jesus, Kai, why? Tell me what I need to say to ops. Did you think he had me pinned? Why would you?—"

"He's like my father," Kai murmured. For all the quietness of them, the words held hatred in every syllable, raw, sudden, and deadly. None of them made sense as he pressed a hand to his chest.

"What?"

"My sperm donor was an abusive, drug-dealing, people-trafficking, off-grid, murdering psycho who hated me. When I saw the room with the ropes and the blood, and then Clarke, I saw the man who hurt me, and I panicked, okay! "

"Shit," I said, because what in God's name could I say to that?

He stared up at me, his jaw tight, his brows drawn together in a deep furrow of frustration. Fire burned in his eyes, a fierce intensity hinting at the storm of emotions brewing just beneath the surface.

"You saw the photos. Clarke was yet another man who decided fourteen-year-old kids were fair game." He winced as he spoke as if he'd revealed too much.

Horror gripped me. Kai shook his head.

"I don't want to talk about it. Just leave." He held out a hand as if he expected me to shake it. "Nice knowing you, Frogman," he deadpanned, but I could see the pain in his eyes, and my heart hurt.

Please tell me your father didn't hurt you, please tell me he didn't abuse you.

Who am I kidding? I already knew the story as soon as he'd told me Clarke was like his dad.

"You were a kid when the same things happened to you as the kids in those photos? How old were you?" I said, because I couldn't think of what else to say. I felt sick.

He dropped his hand, then shrugged. "Doesn't matter if I was a kid, a teenager, or aged out. I grew up in a place like this. They were anti-freaking-everything apart from being pro whatever happened to the kids there. You need to know I played the game until I got a gun and could run." He cracked his neck and grimaced. " I ended up at a shelter, got help, enlisted, blah blah. Over it now."

He wasn't over anything . Was this why he was so reckless? Was he constantly racing from what had happened in the past? Is this why he never showed respect or followed orders? Why wasn't this on his eval?

"And your father had the same network, hurt… the kids?" Hurt you?

He closed his eyes. "Yeah. Until I killed him."

An ugly knot of anger coiled in my belly, my chest tight. I wanted to kill. The urge to track down every son of a bitch who'd placed a hand on Kai was so strong it was acid burning me inside, and I needed a plan of action, a way to make things right.

"How many of your dead father's friends are left?" I blurted.

He blinked at me. "Why?"

"So I know who to kill."

There was another pause, and I watched his expression smooth out, from confusion to a mask of indifference, then humor. "Aw, you coming to my rescue?"

"How many, Kai?" I wasn't letting this go.

"Jesus. None, okay? They're gone." He stopped, but I knew there was more to this story. "They died in a fire." I read between the lines that maybe he'd had something to do with the fire. It didn't faze me as I imagined him dealing out retribution for children who had been hurt. "Whatever," he continued. "I saw Clarke's bio, and the victim statements and photos, and then the room, and it was as if I was back there again…" He rubbed at his chest.

"So had you planned to kill him before we went in?" Did I blame him even if he did?

There was that frown again. "No. That would come down on you, and… no. I meant to bring him in. I never meant to kill him, but then…"

"You saw red, recalled everything he reminded you of, and killed him," I said, and pulled out my phone as he nodded, connecting to the secure line.

"Ops," Simon answered, and I pictured him sitting with Cain, surrounded by screens, on the top floor of the Chicago office. I liked Simon and Cain both, but Simon was a former cop and there were never any gray areas in his reports from scenes. He was our handler, and given we had body cams, he would have seen it all, and no doubt reported everything right up to Jake at the top of the tree.

"The target resisted with force," I reported.

Simon sighed. "It's not that easy."

I held my temper—this wasn't Simon's fault, but there was no way Kai was paying for taking out the worst kind of human. "Connect the dots between Agent Henderson, his childhood, and the damn target. Then pass this information straight up to Jake." I paused for a moment, with my gaze fixed on Kai, then repeated the line. "The target resisted with force. We retaliated."

"Hold."

I heard tapping, then there was silence, and opposite me, Kai seemed to curl in on himself, as if maybe the adrenaline had left him and now he was shaky, not from the kill, but from the target he'd had to face.

The comm crackled with static. "Subject resisted, with force, unfortunate conclusion," Simon summarized. "Jake says you're expected back in Chicago in ten days. Both of you. Take the time. Comm out."

Kai's shoulders sagged with relief, a hint of gratitude in his eyes that quickly vanished.

"Let's focus on getting out of here in one piece." I used the bed to stand, then extended a hand to help him, but let him go when he was upright.

"Where?" Kai asked when we neared the SUV and I stopped so abruptly that he nearly walked into me. "Zach?" He sounded fucked, so vulnerable, wounded.

What if Sanctuary took our defense and ignored it and instead contacted authorities that could arrest Kai?

We had a safe house in place, but we needed something else, and there was only one place I could think of going.

"I hate this place," Kai groused for the tenth time. As much as he bitched, we needed this quiet place in Johnson Valley, a couple of hundred miles outside San Diego. I'd bought the house ten years ago, when I fancied myself settling down one day, and the small town had a decent pizza place.

It was also closer to Jax, but that was a story for another day, and one I owed Kai at some point.

Seemed like we both had our secrets.

I let him bitch and grumble and get irritable about being stuck in the house as much as he wanted as he worked through what had happened with Clarke.

We laid low and only told Sanctuary where we were after a few days, although Simon laughed at that and said they'd known all along, and it was all good. Whatever. So they had tabs on us. Hell, at least that gave me some confirmation that the authorities wouldn't be taking Kai in.

Still, I remained armed, and the perimeter security I had set up around the small house was enough to give us the illusion of being safe.

"We've eaten pizza, binged movies. It's a vacation," I replied, checking the security I'd hacked into. He mumbled and cursed under his breath, rolled to his belly on the bed he'd taken to sitting on—the bed in my bedroom where I had a desk with my computer—and clicked around on the e-reader I'd dumped in his lap this morning after he'd told me how bored he was one too many times.

"Okay, I give up. Who are you watching?" He sat cross-legged, the e-reader open next to him. I don't know what books he'd ordered with the fake account, likely something to do with helicopters if I guessed. Or maybe he liked a bodice ripper. Who knew? Still, asking who I was waiting for was a new question, and I'd been waiting for it for a while.

"My brother," I said, and turned back to the window, checking my watch, and knowing his routine on a Friday evening.

"I didn't know you had a brother."

"Twin brother, separated at birth, foster system, blah blah," I deadpanned. "Well, not quite at birth—Jaxon and I were toddlers. Anyway, long story short, our mom sold one of us, and the other one ended up in the system and got adopted."

He spurted coffee on the bedcovers. "The fuck. Your mom sold your brother?" I stared at him and saw the moment he realized what I'd meant. "She sold you?"

"I don't remember the family I got sold to much. I was seven when I ended up in the system, didn't recall a twin at all, aged out, joined the Navy at eighteen, and found out I had a twin adopted by this cool family. I meant to contact him. But you know… when I found out he'd been adopted, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There I was, stuck in care, on my own, while without me kn owing my twin got to live the American dream." I cleared my throat. "I felt sorry for myself knowing that my twin had known something better, not that I had a bad life. I just didn't have a family."

He frowned at me. "So you resented this Jaxon for being handed a golden ticket."

"Jax, and yeah. Stupid shit that wasn't his fault at all. Then there was the SEALs thing, then black ops, and now the things we do." I waved to include me and him and the house and all the messed-up crap we'd been involved in, apart and as a team. I shrugged. "It wasn't all bad."

"If that's what you say…"

"It is." I didn't have any particularly bad memories of the system, just loneliness, and I hadn't found out about my twin for a long time.

"Did it make sense?" he asked after a pause.

"What?"

"Like, did you have a twin thing and felt as if half of you were missing?"

"No." I laughed, then sobered. "Yes? Maybe? I don't know." Sometimes I thought I felt things that were weird, but I never questioned it. I was forever connected to Jax by genetics, but until I was done with my covert life, I wouldn't be getting into his space.

He paused for a moment and then gestured at me. "Keep talking, this is better than a book." He tapped the e-reader and smirked so hard it made me roll my eyes .

"I aimed for the SEALs, got my place, found out I had a twin, kept tabs on him, end of story." I glanced at the footage, stiffening when a familiar red-haired man took a seat. Before I could say anything, Kai was standing next to me, peering down.

"Wow, you two could be twins." He threw me one of his smirks, and I elbowed him. "Now what? Where is he?"

"San Diego."

"Do we go visit?"

"Shit, no."

"Then, uhm, what exactly are we doing?"

" We are doing nothing. I am watching him, making sure he's okay."

I glanced at Kai and he was blinking at me as if he couldn't understand why my stupid ass was doing this. How could I explain that I needed to see my twin every so often? Since the whole covert thing happened, and I was often away, I'd hacked the security at the bank opposite his favorite coffee place to get a look at him, because I couldn't visit.

Silence, and then it was his turn to elbow me. "Shit, Zach, that's fucked-up."

"No one knows about him. He's safe. He has this contracting business, building, y'know, he's built it up from nothing, and he has friends. Also, two brothers, a sister, an amazing mom and dad. I won't wreck that. So I watch him, make sure he's okay, and we're done. He's been looking for me, and sometimes I'll seed information to this made-up sibling network, so he visits places and I get to see him in real life, from a distance, though."

Kai was ominously silent, or maybe calmly quiet—I didn't know—as we watched Jax finish a coffee and check his phone.

Then he sighed. "All this emotional sharing is messing with my head."

I considered leaning into him, but that would just be me making myself feel better, and I was sure it would make it all too real for him to even think I was in the room and reacting.

"It's just us being honest so we have no more surprises."

"Shit." He scrubbed his eyes. "Talking of no more surprises."

"What else is there?"

"So the men I said died in a fire?" he began.

I had to rip my concentration from Jax on the monitor to my partner. "Yeah?"

"Well, I set the fire. Got out when they were dead. Is that honest enough for you?"

"Okay."

"Okay?"

I nodded. "Okay."

"Jesus, Zach, you can't just say okay like that."

"I can and I did. "

"I murdered them all in cold blood."

"And?"

"So what does that make me now?"

"Brave," I replied as I turned back to watch Jax, thankful he was getting to enjoy a coffee.

"Vengeful," Kai corrected me.

I glanced at him. "Brave," I repeated, and met his stare. "They deserved to die for what they did."

"Me as judge, jury, and executioner?" he asked, and reached out as if he was going to touch me, all confused.

I stiffened, not sure why he was reaching for me, until I saw the pain in his expression. Did he really see himself as a bad guy?

"Witness," I corrected him. "Victim."

Movement in my peripheral vision pulled me from Kai's blue gaze, and I watched Jax get up and amble away from his table. He only stayed for twenty minutes every time, and after he'd walked out of our sight, I felt Kai touching my arm, then he squeezed my shoulder, and went into his own room, picking up the e-reader as he passed my bed.

We were both messed-up, both broken, the kind who put themselves between a bullet and a civilian. They didn't know it, but people needed us to stay fucked-up.

No point in having a level-headed, emotionally neutral hero coming to the rescue.

The world needed blunt instruments, not idiots who caught feelings.