what comes up,” Kid said. “It’s early yet. Hang around long enough, and I guarantee I’ll do something to piss you off, and then it’ll all come back to you, what a pain in the ass I am. By the time you remember me, I’ll probably be wishing you didn’t remember quite so much.”
“Yeah,” J.T. said, and looked away, out the huge expanse of windows fronting the loft. Over the last week, he’d spent hours going over every aspect of his life for the last six years with Dylan and Hawkins. In return, along with Zach, they’d told him his life story eight ways from Sunday, all the known facts, all the dates, everything except the missions. Those would remain classified until he could tell them what, when, and where they’d all done their jobs for the eight years before he and Creed Rivera had been ambushed in Colombia—if he ever could.
With Dr. Brandt’s help, he was looking for memories of his life, doing regressions, using relaxation techniques, and taking a meticulously charted series of cutting-edge medicines, psychopharmaceuticals created by Dr. Brandt to counteract and mitigate Dr. Souk’s drugs. They’d helped Red Dog get back nearly a hundred percent of her memory, and Brandt was optimistic that they could help J.T. regain his whole life, too.
But while he was looking for memories, he knew other members of the SDF team had a few they wished they didn’t, especially Kid and Creed. They’d witnessed the brutality of his “death” firsthand, Creed in the rebel’s camp and Kid when he’d gone down to Colombia to recover his brother’s bones.
“I heard about you in Bangkok,” he said, “through the grapevine, about this guy named Kid Chaos and the run he made through South America a few years back.”
The young guy acknowledged the accolade with a slight nod of his head, accepting the praise with as much subtlety as J.T. had used to deliver it. Kid Chaos was a legend among the world’s most elite soldiers. His mission to avenge his brother’s death, and the consequent destruction of a whole cadre of narco-guerrillas from Colombia, was a story told on bases and in bars around the world.
Now J.T. knew he’d been part of that story, and that felt so damn odd.
“I’m sorry about what you went through on my account,” he said, wishing like hell that he had more to offer. From everything he’d been told, starting with the firebombing of the cantina where Kid had been waiting to take his brother’s body home, to the deadly deeds in South America, it had been a miracle the guy hadn’t been killed himself.
“You can make it up to me,” Kid said, and when J.T. looked, he was grinning again, a real shit-eating curve of nothing-but-trouble. It was amazing. Kid Chaos Chronopolous had dimples, just like J.T., and a helluva lot of sheer guts, just like J.T.
“If we both live long enough,” he agreed, hoping like hell that they did.
“Whatever it takes.” Kid’s gaze was steady, his voice calm. “One way or another, we’ll get it done.”
Looking at him, J.T. could believe it. Kid wasn’t like Jack Traeger, who had whisked Scout off to Paris and hadn’t shown any signs of coming back anytime too soon. Kid was older, without a wild streak anywhere in him. He wasn’t a loose cannon. The guy was solid, absolutely calm, absolutely assured, and J.T. was damned proud of him, whether he remembered having a reason to be or not.
The guy inspired confidence.
J.T. shifted his attention to the painting over the fireplace. “So your wife paints naked men.”
What else was there to say when you were looking at a guy spread out over eight feet of canvas, wearing nothing but a pair of wings and looking like he had been personally infused by the hand of God with almighty grace?
“A lot of naked men,” Kid elaborated without a trace of self-consciousness that J.T. could detect. “She even painted you.”
Oh, hell, no.
J.T. turned to face him.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said, then remembered Jane had told him the same thing.
Kid shook his head, his grin returning even wider than before. “Twice life size, a dark angel with a sword. She calls it The Guardian, and you’re in wings, just like the rest of us.”
“Naked?” Jane hadn’t mentioned naked, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so.
“Nah,” Kid said. “You and Creed both got to keep your pants on.”
He looked around the loft again, at all the gear and the great view.