the best, but the … uh, truth is, your memory will either come back, or it won’t, and we’ll deal with it either way. You take your time.”
Con narrowed his gaze and tilted his head a little to one side. “Did you practice that?”
An instant grin flashed across the younger man’s face. “A little,” he admitted. “It’s been six years, bro. I wanted to get the first words right.”
“You did.” In spades. This was hard on everybody, a six-year gulf full of grief and pain on all sides.
A moment of silence drew out between them, so many questions, so many unknowns.
“You look tired,” he said, and the younger man nodded.
“I’ve been waiting for you, J.T.,” Kid said, his voice low, his words heavy with the emotion Con could see in his face. “I’ve been waiting for you for a damn long time.”
Without a thought, Con reached up and pulled his brother in close, his arms tightening around Kid’s shoulders. God. He knew what it was like to wait for the dead, some part of your mind not accepting that the person you loved was gone from you forever.
Peter Chronopolous. Kid Chaos. J. T. Chronopolous. It was a lot to work through. Take your time, Kid had said, and Con knew the value of those words.
“Thanks.” He tightened his hold on the younger man for a long moment before letting him go—except for taking hold of Kid’s hand. He was exhausted, drifting back into sleep, but he wasn’t ready for his little brother to leave him. Not yet … not yet …
The next time he woke, morning sunshine was streaming through the windows, and another angel was waiting for him. A beautiful woman with long dark hair, freckles across her nose, and a warm smile leaned over the bed.
God, he was glad to see her, to know she was still with him, that she hadn’t been a dream.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
“Hey, cowboy.” She took his hand in hers, and he remembered something.
His brow furrowed. “There was a guy here earlier.” His brother.
“There’s been a lot of guys here,” she said. “It’s standing room only out in the hall, but you’re talking about Kid. He’s been here since you got here. He actually came in with you, and he hasn’t left. He’s just down in the cafeteria right now, getting some breakfast. How are you feeling?”
More awake now than when he’d been talking to Kid.
“Better.” Way better. Bruised, roughed up in places, like a train had hit him, but better. He reached up and felt stitches in his head and another bolt of fear shot through him.
“No, no, baby,” the woman murmured. “It’s okay. You were hurt in the fight, and the doctors here stitched you back together. Nothing else happened. Nothing. I haven’t left your side.”
He believed her. Yeah, now that he thought about it, he didn’t have that queasy, what-the-fuck-happened-to-me feeling he’d always had in Bangkok whenever he’d woken up. And he wasn’t strapped into this bed, not like he’d been strapped into Souk’s gurneys.
“Monk is dead, right?” he asked, remembering where he’d been and what he’d been doing when the lights had gone out. “Somebody got him?”
“Everybody got him,” she said, offering him a cup of water. He lifted his head up and took a small swallow. “Everybody at Steele Street, the whole team. Hell, if I’d had a gun, I would have gotten him.”
Good. He fell back on the pillow.
He’d needed to know that. Whatever Dr. Patterson had done to that soldier, nobody should ever do it to anyone else ever again.
“Did he hurt you?” He needed to know what she’d gone through, all of it. Monk was dead, but that whole night had been rough on her.
“No,” she said. “Nothing like what happened to you. I got a few bruises, a headache. That’s all. The docs checked me out that night, when I came with you, and I’m fine.”
A weight lifted off of him at her words. She hadn’t been hurt, and suddenly, life was full of grace.
“And Randolph Lancaster?”
“You mean that little old dead guy Monk was dragging around?”
Geezus. That’s what his life’s work had come down to in the end: a little old dead guy getting dragged around?
“Yeah, that guy.” The one who’d committed countless acts of treason against his country and ruined countless lives.
She shook her head, her smile fading. “A bad end, a real bad end. The chop shop boys mined the elevator shaft with claymores, and Monk tried to escape that way.