Find A Way Or Make One (12 page)

“No! I will NOT calm down, not at least until you
tell me what is going on. And even then, if you tell me anything that ticks me off, your face and my fist are going to become besties. Just tell me, why is he here?”

Cale makes his way until he is standing right in front of me. He is sending he hand through his head repeatedly. But that nervous twitch isn’t what gives him away. No, it is the fact that he can’t look me in the eye. I know what ever his is about to say is going to piss me off.

“Kye, we had no choice. You need to give yourself a chance to heal. You can’t do that constantly over extending your arm and back muscles. So we figured that you could go ahead and start with the profiling training by splitting the recruits up in teams.
Each of us could work with a group until they shift to the next training session. Since you are not only our
behavior analyst, but since you also help me with the hand to hand combat and weapons training, we needed someone to help. I know T and his swim buddy will be here soon, but we can’t wait until they get here. So when
Fucktard offered his assistance, we knew we had to take him up on it.”

The reasoning makes sense, but I, still being upset, am
enraged me so much that it is hard to think straight. After taking a long moment to think it over, I have to agree that it makes sense, but the hell if I am going to like it. “And you guys couldn’t talk to me about it? Give me a heads up? I can’t tell
what pisses me off the most; you all thinking you had to hide it from me or
that I have to be anywhere near this asshole. That I have to breathe the same air as him.”

I suddenly feel the heat from eyes that I really wish I didn’t recognize,
but I did. I started walking to the door. After making it about five feet I decided to be cooperative. Without breaking stride I threw my acceptance over my shoulder. “Fine, if it makes everything run
more smoothly, fine. But that
Asshat better stay the hell away from me, understood?”

I had almost made it to the door when I heard Cale call my name as he was running after me. I stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Kye! I am sorry we asked you to do this. We will figure something else out. I realize that this is just too much to ask.”

Shaking my head, I
breathed out a long drawn out sigh. “No, it will be ok. I should have thought about what I was doing before I helped Yasser
.”

“Kye, after what you told us, we all know there is no way in hell that you would have
not
helped him. None of us would have asked you to either.”

I nodded my head in acceptance. “No I wouldn’t,” I agreed. “But I should have prepared for the possible fallout better. I guess we ‘gotta do, what we gotta do’”

Cale reached out and squeezed my arm, “Will you be ok little girl?”

I patted Cale’s hand.
“All I can do is put one foot in front of the other; day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.”
Then I just walked out the door.

13

“It was just something that I had to get through, to get me to you.”

Lila McCann,
Get Me to You

Wyatt

Once again I get to be Cale’s punching bag as he
shows the recruits how to take somebody down. Yeah, my ass is getting handed to me, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. Not if I want the opportunity to talk to Kye.

But it doesn’t look like I am going to get a chance to talk to her anytime soon. No,
Cale had come up with the abso-fucking-lutely
brilliant plan that we break the recruits into teams and work on different aspects of being a drug enforcement agent. Since the Seal team that I had been
in
and Cale, Sunny, Crow, and Chip were currently in, was assigned to Latin America, and a great deal of what they dealt with was related to the making and distributing of illegal drugs, we all have some sort of drug enforcement experience. I knew that Kye needed time to heal so
I knew that she wouldn’t be involved with any physical training, but I was completely unprepared for Kye to head up teaching the recruits how
to profile criminals. When I voiced my surprise Cale wasted no time in telling me that she had been trained by the FBI’s BAU in the art of profiling.
When I asked him when he just stared at me a long minute, then slowly walked away.

Fuck! It appears that I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets seven
years ago.
While I had thought that she was attending the community college near Quantico, evidently she was getting trained in behavioral analysis by the FBI. I mean she never out and out said that she was attending community college, but she never said she wasn’t either. She just let me assume.

That just pisses me off. But as soon as I start feeling my anger reach about as high as I think it can go, I remind myself that I lied also, and mine wasn’t a lie by omission, but
a full out and out lie. My lies were told to keep me from getting caught, even if I didn’t cheat. I never wanted Kye to learn about my assignment with Catherine.

It’s funny how easy it is to start calling her Kye. I mean, while I still see the same kindness and goodness that I loved in Kylee, she is different too. Everything about her seems to be sharper, more dire
ct and to the point. Kye
just seems to fit.

It has now been three days since she has been back, and because it is a Friday, I know if I don’t make a move to speak to her today, she will have the entire weekend to build stronger walls against her feelings for me, that I know she still has. I have caught her looking through the window in the conference room at me too many times to think that she is indifferent to me.

As I am racking my brain, trying to figure out how I can devise a meeting between us, one of the recruits gives me the perfect opportunity.

Danny, a young guy about nineteen or twenty years old asks Cale, “This is all well and good, but what do you when the other guys are bigger than you or outnumber your?”
Cale tried to talk him through it, but I could see that he didn’t really understand
. Seeing my chance to talk with Kye, I
innocently
suggested, “Hey, why don’t we get Kye out here and she can show how smaller people defend themselves and then you guys can gang up on me to show how to defend against more than one assailant.” I finished with a shrug, like it didn’t matter to me if she came out or not.
Cale looked at me for a moment then rolled his eyes. Yeah, I wasn’t fooling him, but really; did I care?

Cale looked at me and rolled his eyes and lifted his lips into a belligerent smirk. “Hey, D
ipshit, you really think you are fooling me?”

“Does it really matter if I
am fooling you or not? Danny
boy doesn’t understand your verbal explanation of how to combat assailants bigger than him or how to win a fight when he is outnumbered. All of the trainers here have about the same
height and weight, accept Kye. S
o why not get her?”

The look Cale gave me was a cross between incredulity and outright anger. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because she pulled a damn knife out of her shoulder and Sunny had to fucking burn her skin closed again so she didn’t bleed to death?”
Shit, I had forgotten about that, and while reopening her wound was something I had to think about, I knew Cale was being almost unreasonably protective of Kye.
Cale was fighting this as hard as he could, but I had been given a chance. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him stand in my way. As I was preparing for our confrontation, when something else he said caught my attention.

“What do you mean,
again
? I have to assume that you mean that Sunny
has cauterized a wound of Kye’s before. When did this happen, and why not get her to a fucking doctor
, Shit Stain?”

Just as Cale was about to open his mouth, and
give me hell, the voice that has haunted both my nights and my days comes from behind me. “Have you ever I thought it might have been because
they didn’t have the time or the resources to get me to an actual doctor?”

What in the hell did she mean by that? “Why wouldn’t they have had time to get you to one? Where were you?”

Cale opens his mouth to tell me when Kye makes a swiping motion with her hands. “I am sorry, Mr. Masters, but that is classified. So unless you have had your intelligence clearance reinstated
and
elevated, you will just have to live with the uncertainty of not knowing.”

Stunned, I can only stand there watching her as she makes her way to the ring and pulls her purple v-neck tee off, so that she is now standing in her sports bra and begins talking to the recruits. Good old Danny boy has asked for help
, and Kye seems willing to help.
Finally, something seems to be going my way.

Cale is pouting, and even Kye is getting tired of it. She looks at Cale and shakes her head. “
Shit Cale, let’s just get this over with ok?” I can’t help it, but the smirk on my face had to be as big as
the Atlantic and the Pacific combined. I go to get in the ring with Kye; leaving Cale no choice but to follow.

Kye motions for the recruits to gather round the ring. Kye hasn’t even started talking yet when I hear a long drown out whistle.

“Damn lass, that is one kickass tattoo. But I don’t understand; words assigned to Hannibal are usually in Latin. Why did you put them in Irish Gaelic?”

A slow sad smile crosses Kye’s face. “Yeah, Hannibal’s words may usually be in Latin; but these words honor a dear friend who was extremely proud of his Irish heritage.”
She looks down at her feet for a moment; but
not before I see the sadness and tears that fill her eyes.

It is obvious to everyone in the room that this topic was tearing Kye u
p. Danny can see she is upset and quickly lets the subject drop. I so don’t want to let this drop. The emotion in Kye’s eye when she spoke of her
dear friend
has my heart dropping like a fifty pound weight. I have to brace myself so that the devastation of knowing that she has loved someone else. The only reason I am still breathing is that I know she loved me too, and I cling to the hope that she will be mine again. Taking a slow steadying breath, I ask Kye and Danny, “What does it say?”

Danny looks to Kye, and sees that she is busy trying to get her emotions under control and can’t answer; so he replies, “
Bíodh a fháil ar bhealach nó duine a dhéanamh
? It means ‘either find a way or make one.’ It’s a quote from Hannibal.”

Shaking her head, Kye walks to the ring. “Ok, as you all can see, I am not a tall person. Since I typically went up against men who were bigger than me
, I have had to find ways to overcompensate for the difference in size.” She continues on, giving the recruits some really good advice on how to take on assailants that are bigger. After demonstrating a couple of moves, Cale and Kye move to attack me. As Kye moves to twist my arm behind
my back, I quickly flip her over my shoulder before she can compromise the strong base that I have made of my legs.

As she hits the mat, I see her come down on her shoulders, only to jump up with a yel
p. Shit, I forgot about
her shoulder! I immediately rush over to help her up, “Shit Kye, I am sorry. I completely forgot about the wound on your shoulder. Let me see if the hit ruptured where the wound had been cauterized.” I put my hand on her arm and she jerked it away from me like I was holding a blow torch to her skin. “Damn Kye, I am just trying to help.”

Kye looked at me, rolled her eyes and barked out a sharp laugh. “Look, Wyatt
baby,
I don’t want or need any of the
help that you can give me. The last time you help
ed me led to six months of lies and betrayal that
ended humiliation. So no, I don’t want your fucking help!” As she spoke, her voice got louder and louder until she was practically shouting in my face.

How in the hell was I supposed to get her to listen to me when she was madder than I had ever seen her? Granted, I deserved it, but was it really wrong of me to hope to catch a break? “Kye please, just listen to me. It wasn’t what it seemed, I
wa…”

Kye cut me off before I could even
finish my first sentence. “No shit, it wasn’t what it seemed. It
seemed
to me that we were in love with each other.
But no; you were really just using me for a piece of ass, until you went back to your upper echelon family who topped the who’s who of Texas society. That brings up a question that I have never really been able to answer. Were you using the Navy and the Seals to get your rocks off, just like you were using me? Stupid question, of course you were. I guess the real question is when you left the service.
Before or after your
platoon was told they might have to go pull a tour in Afghanistan?” By the time she finished the last insulting question, her face was twisted in a snarl and her eyes were shooting fire.

That was ok with me, because she had succeeded in pissing me off. The fact that I had to quit the teams before
my platoon was
deployed to Afghanistan still filled me with guilt. While
I was stateside, going through three surgeries and months of
therapy so I could walk again, one of the guys from my platoon was killed by an IED. The very thing that I had been trained to detect and diffuse. I knew that I had to leave before I said something that would sabotage any chance I had with Kye. I turned and headed for the door. I
was, in fact pulling the door open when I heard Sunny step up to me. While I didn’t turn around, I did stop to see what, if anything, he was going to say.