“I’m not doubting you,” he soothed, but his lips kept twitching.
The body they’d constructed was sprawled out on his bed, his 3-D-printed skeleton—complete with a replica of his rebuilt hands—surrounding enough internal organ–ish material to keep the TechCorps busy for a while. All of it was encased in a clear gel that matched the general shape and mass of his body.
Dani was right. It looked like the world’s most disgusting gummy bear.
Impressive logistically, if not visually. But the fact that every scrap of it carried his DNA elevated the whole thing from macabre art project to work of evil genius.
“Did I ever tell you what I thought when I saw Maya’s file for the first time?” he asked.
“Was it something along the lines of oh fuck, I just coercively kidnapped the wrong set of ladies?”
“That would have been a lot smarter,” he conceded. “No, I thought whoever faked her death instead of walking away with two million credits was a ridiculous idealist and highly ingenious. And I found both of those things uncomfortably appealing.”
“That’s sweet.” Nina wrapped her arms around his waist. “But you can stop trying to butter me up.”
“Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the flattery.” Being able to touch her was a heady thing. He stroked his fingers over her cheek and brushed her hair back from her temple. “I always knew you were brilliant, but I have to be honest. This whole new level of advanced technological deception is extremely sexy.”
She laughed, then sobered as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “Will you miss him?”
“Who, Captain Knox?” He’d expected to. Had been dreading this moment, in fact. Then Nina had pulled him into a closet and set the entire world on its side. “I thought I might. I may not have loved who I’d become, but that was all I had. A rank and my crew.”
“But?”
“But I still have a crew. And they haven’t followed me just because of the rank in a long time.” He threaded his fingers gently through her hair and tilted her head back. “And you gave me something better than a rank. You gave me back my purpose. I have a future now.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she made a soft noise in the back of her throat. “Does that mean you’ve made your peace with this?”
Peace sounded too passive. The feeling churning inside him was closer to sharp anticipation, a roiling desire to be done with the past. “I’m mostly feeling impatient.” He brushed his lips over hers, soft and sweet. Quick, because if he really started kissing her, he wouldn’t want to stop. “I’m ready to start my new life now.”
“Hey, we’re almost—oh.” Gray caught the doorjamb, halting his forward momentum with a jerk. “Right, this is a thing that’s happening now.”
“What’s up?” Nina asked.
Immediately, Gray straightened, unconsciously assuming the posture of a soldier giving report. “Everything’s ready. We’ve placed the decoys, along with the explosives and the accelerants.”
“And Conall double-checked the calculations?”
“Twice. It’s all exactly where it needs to be for maximum damage and conflagration.”
“Good.” Knox drew back and slipped his dog tags from beneath his shirt. The final piece of the deception. “Make sure Conall and Rafe left their tags on the bodies, and that everything we need is packed into the trucks. We’ll be down in a second.”
Nina checked the time as Gray pounded down the stairs. “We’d better hurry. Only half an hour left before Clem makes the call.”
Knox stared at the little bits of metal in his hand. Almost three decades of his life were tied up in those tags. Three decades of his life—and one death that would haunt him, no matter how many decades he had left.
After a moment, he snapped the chain and freed Mace’s tag. It sat in his palm for a moment, warming against his skin, the only thing that hurt to let go. Conall and Rafe and Gray would be a part of whatever new life he built, but Mace …
Nina closed his fingers around the tag. “You can keep it. It’s not something they would expect to find. They won’t miss it … but you would.”
“I would.” He held it for another moment, making a silent promise—to himself and to Mace. He’d find a way to open that clinic, to do all the things Mace would have done if Knox had just gotten them out a few months sooner.
Mace would live on, even if only through the men who had been his brothers.