Deep Trouble: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (10 page)

“You want me to help?” Kylie’s jaw fell open.

“I want to keep you safe,” Devon corrected. “But the best way to do that is to work as a team, so yeah.” He grabbed her fingers, and Kylie felt the squeeze all the way from her breastbone to her boots.

“I want you to help.”

Chapter Eight

Devon’s eyes burned like they’d been dipped in battery acid and set out in the sun to dry, but he blinked twice, ignoring the sensation. Levering his foot a little harder over the gas pedal, he stared through the windshield, watching the irony of a gorgeous sunrise over the horizon.

Fagan was going down. The uglier, the better.

Devon was going to make sure of it.

“Looks like we should make it to Iowa City in about fifteen minutes,” Kylie said, her slender brows tucking into a V as she looked at the GPS. “By then maybe we’ll have heard something from Kellan.”

“He was pretty set on getting out here today. I’m sure he’s working something out with that detective contact of his to get you into protective custody ASAP.”

Translation: Kellan had probably been in the woman’s face 24/7 ever since Devon had dropped the news that they’d been shot at leaving Montana yesterday afternoon. It had taken all of Devon’s negotiation skills to convince the guy not to just jump on a plane all yippy-ki-yay and start blasting his way through the Midwest. While the idea of ending Fagan had a metric ton of merit, stepping strategically was important now more than ever.

Devon had sworn to keep Kylie safe, and come hellfire or brimstone, he was going to be a man of his word.

The shrill ring of his cell phone cut through the quiet in the Challenger, and speak of the sinner. “Walker. Tell me you have a plan.”

“I do,” Kellan said, pausing only long enough for Devon to put him on speaker so Kylie could be part of the convo before continuing. “How far are you from Chicago?”

“Um.” Kylie’s fingers flew over the backlit screen of the GPS. “About two hundred miles, give or take.”

Kellan let out a relieved exhale. “The NCPD arranged for me to fly under an alias, so Moreno and I are getting on a plane in three hours. She knows a DEA agent at the field office in Chicago, and she says the guy and his unit are good police. They can bring Kylie into protective custody and keep her safe while they hunt Fagan down.”

Whoa. Talk about bringing in the big guns. Literally
and
figuratively. “Copy that.” Devon paused, considering taking Kellan off speaker for the next part, but screw it. Kylie was tough enough to handle the truth, and anyway, she deserved full disclosure. “How do you want to work this? Because I’ll be honest. Your detective might trust this DEA guy, but the only person I trust in this scenario is you.”

“You think I’ll still be in danger once we get to a DEA field office in a major city?” Kylie asked, and Kellan made a sound to match her disbelief.

“I don’t know, Dev. I get that Fagan had a lot of locals in his pocket, but Chicago’s a far cry from Podunk. You really think the guy’s got hooks like that?”

Devon’s gaze landed on Kylie, and something fierce and dark turned over in his belly. “I really think we can’t take the chance.”

A few heartbeats passed before Kellan said, “Okay. Get to Chicago and lay low. I’ll reach out once Moreno and I land and we’ll strike a rendezvous point with the DEA. They’re not going to like the plan, but I’m not in it for a popularity contest. Just stay under the radar ’til I get there.”

“Copy that.”

Kellan’s response came after a pause that said he’d been measuring his words. “Hey, Ky, can you pick up for a second?”

Kylie’s blue eyes narrowed, but she reached for the cell phone Devon had propped up over the dash. Cradling it to her ear, she mostly listened, adding a couple of quiet “mmm hmm”s to the mix before disconnecting the call.

“Everything okay?” Devon asked, although man, considering the threat level involved in their circumstances, the question was pretty brainless.

“Yeah.” Kylie wrapped her arms around her midsection, looking at the pink and orange-tinged landscape outside the passenger window. “He’s just worried. Wanted to make sure I’m hanging in there.”

Devon’s gut squeezed as if someone had jammed it into a vise. Of course Kellan would go out of his way to make sure Kylie was straight. She was in danger. Her life was on the line.

And the only person keeping watch over her was Devon, who had nearly gotten a bullet buried in his buddy’s skull.

If you move, I will kill your friend. You’ll watch him die screaming, and then I’ll kill you just as slowly
.

“Right. Of course,” Devon managed, his shoulders going stiff against the black leather of the driver’s seat. Dammit, he needed to put a stranglehold on that memory, once and for all. “Well, Chicago is only five hours from here. If you want to close your eyes, I’m good to drive.”

“Devon, what happened on your last tour in Afghanistan?”

The answer burned in his chest, begging for release just as it had when she’d asked the same question yesterday. For four years, he’d kept the whole thing buried, covering his unworthiness and guilt by holding everyone at a distance. Devon had grown tough not because he liked it—hell, half the time he looked in the mirror, he didn’t even recognize his reflection. He’d grown hard-edged and cold out of necessity. To get through the freelance jobs. To be there when the guys at MacKenzie Security needed him. To cope.

But he couldn’t tell Kylie any of these things. He needed her to trust him for a little while longer, just until he made sure she was safe.

And if Devon told her the truth, her trust in him would shatter. No matter how badly he wanted to tell her every last bit of the horrible truth he’d kept buried.

Hell, he really wanted to tell her. But her trust would keep her safe, and right now, he needed that more.

“Afghanistan was a long time ago. It’s in the past,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the road, his mind set on keeping her protected.

But when she finally turned toward the window and closed her eyes in defeated silence, Devon couldn’t shake the feeling that if he’d told Kylie everything, she’d have understood.

* * * *

They made record time to Chicago, thanks in no small part to Devon’s determination to get there and get hidden. Kylie had slept for pretty much the duration of the ride to the motel on the outskirts of the city, and he’d spent the time trying—and failing—to knock back his thoughts of the past.

He knew he needed to focus on the present now more than ever. But with how Kylie was looking at him, so wide open and strong and so damn beautiful as she chained the motel room door and immediately closed the curtains like he’d taught her, Devon could no longer deny the truth hammered home by the five-hour drive.

What had happened in Afghanistan
had
happened. He could never atone for it, but if he didn’t give himself some breathing room, making good on Kylie’s trust in the here and now would never truly happen.

And he needed it. He needed
her
.

He needed to tell her.

“Devon?” Kylie’s voice threaded past the slam of his heartbeat against his ears. “What’s the matter?”

“I…there was an ambush. In Afghanistan.”

Devon blinked, the words sounding strange out loud after having been buried for so long. But now that he’d flipped the lid on the memory, the whole thing rushed upward, pushing and burning and desperate to be told.

Kylie crossed the carpet, standing in front of him in an instant even though she said nothing, just looked at him with trust in her eyes, listening.

And hell if that didn’t make the words flow out faster.

“We were doing a routine sweep in a village we’d been to dozens of times. The place was remote, but so was pretty much everything else we saw in the desert. There were no signs of a threat—we practically knew the village by heart. Everything was good to go. Business as usual.”

Air like an oven, almost too hot to breathe…sunlight slashing past the glassless windows in the mud-brick walls, throwing patterns on the dirt floors…

Everything had seemed so fucking normal. Right up until it wasn’t.

Devon cleared his throat. “A lot of times, insurgents hide in plain sight, blending in with the friendlies so they can get close to US soldiers. They don’t discriminate. Women, the elderly, kids. The insurgents would strong-arm anyone if it meant getting close enough to hurt us, which is why we swept the places pretty regularly. Part of our job was to keep the friendlies safe.”

Inhale. Exhale. Get the story out
. “Kellan and I paired off to check one of the dwellings in the village. The locals used the place as a school of sorts.”

“Were…were there kids inside?” Kylie whispered, but he read the fear in her eyes and shook his head. At least he could reassure her of one good thing.

“No,” he said, and Kylie’s relief-tinged breath out was warm as it coasted over his cheek. “The school was nearly empty. That wasn’t totally unusual because it was a little late in the day. One of the local men who taught the kids was there, though. He greeted us, invited us in, then left. I checked the back room, and everything looked solid.”

Guilt and regret flooded Devon’s veins, making his hands shake at his sides. But rather than shy away from the story that she had to know had no happy ending, Kylie laced her fingers through his, holding strong.

“Everything wasn’t okay, though, was it?”

“No. There was a hostile who’d been hiding in the back. I swear I never saw any sign of him. He grabbed me from behind and put a gun to my head. Then he said something I’ll never forget.”

The cold pressure of steel against his sweat-slicked temple…the steady, evil voice sliding from Devon’s ear to the center of his chest, so clear and so deadly, he could still hear every syllable, every inflection…

If you move, I will kill your friend. You’ll watch him die screaming, and then I’ll kill you just as slowly
.
Your men will come running, and they too will die. All of you will die today.

Kylie sucked in a breath, and only then did Devon realize he’d relayed the man’s threat out loud.

“So what did you do?” she asked, her tone wobbly despite what looked like a Grade-A effort to stay steady.

“I didn’t do anything,” Devon said past the pounding of his heart against his rib cage. “Kellan shot the guy dead without so much as blinking. He saved both our lives—
all
our lives—and all I did was stand there.”

Kylie’s lips parted. “Devon, you were being held at gunpoint. Of course you just stood there. If you’d fought back, that psycho would’ve killed you.” Abruptly, understanding lit like a switch in her eyes. “You blame yourself for that ambush, don’t you? You think it was your fault you and Kellan were in harm’s way.”

He took a step back on the carpet, his frustration going from a simmer to a boil. “Of course it was my fault. I did the sweep! There had to have been a sign, something I missed somewhere.” Devon had been over that day so many times, the details were permanently etched in his memory.

“There wasn’t,” Kylie said, pinning him with a stare that cut off the protest she must’ve seen brewing in his expression. “You’re meticulous to a fault. If that insurgent had left even the slightest hint he was there waiting, you’d have seen it.”

Funny, Kellan had said the same thing, over and over. Still… “I risked every one of my teammate’s lives that day, including your brother’s. I don’t deserve his trust, or yours.”

“And yet you have it from both of us.”

Her words startled Devon so thoroughly that all he could do was gape like a Neanderthal while she continued. “I know I’ll never forget how terrified I was when Fagan put that gun to my head, and I can only imagine how much worse it was for you, with that threat extending to other people you cared about. But the man to blame died in that village.
He’s
the bad guy. Not you.”

Kylie let go of his hands, her palms coasting up to frame his face, and Christ, when she looked at him like that, he wanted so badly to believe her. “I should’ve seen him. I—”

“There was nothing to see.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked, the words little more than a hoarse whisper in the quiet motel room.

“Because you keep me steady when all I want to do is fall apart. You’re calm and smart and sure, and I know in my heart you’d do anything to keep me safe.” Her arms slipped around him, and Christ, no one had ever felt so good there, so right. “I don’t just trust you, Devon. I need you. No matter what happened in the past, or what happens after today, I only need you.”

Chapter Nine

Kylie lifted her mouth to Devon’s without hesitation. She might not know how to convince him he was worthy, or if she could come up with any words that could accurately describe how she felt in this moment. But the guilt pouring out of him nearly gutted her, and she had to do something—anything—to show him what she knew by heart.

Devon would keep her safe. He would keep her steady.

Kylie trusted him with her life.

His arms wrapped around her in a flash. Returning the chaste press of her lips with a desperate bid for more, he quickly took the kiss from a whisper to a scream. Devon parted her mouth, searching and taking with his tongue, his lips pushed so hard over hers that she ached. But the more urgent he got, the more Kylie gave back, her tongue sliding over his, diving deep before retreating to let him have control.

She reached into the tight sliver of space between them, her fingers curling over the black cotton hem of Devon’s T-shirt. Heat moved in a straight shot between her thighs, but he caught her hands, stopping her movements.

“Kylie. I’m not—”

“You are.” She cut him off before he could say the words
good enough
. His eyes blazed like fire-lit whiskey, full of his own burning need, and in that split second, Kylie’s realization settled in, hard and fast.

All the words in the universe wouldn’t work. She needed to
show
Devon she trusted him.