Page 46 of Defenseless
“Really? Wow, that’s great…Yes, please send the info to Ryan and Chad…Thank you, really. You’ve done a great job. You need to get some sleep, though,” she said. She listened for another few seconds then appeared to extract a promise to head to bed before hanging up.
Right as she did, Chad’s phone dinged. Pulling it out, he saw a name, date of birth, and location of birth, along with a link to a document.
“Who’s Jason Kline?” he asked, holding the phone up. Not that she could see the screen from where she sat, but it felt like the right thing to do.
“Our mystery patient,” she answered with a grin.
“The one Ethan shot?” Colton asked, reaching for Chad’s phone.
“The very same,” Sabina replied.
“How did Collin find him?” Kara asked, waving off the phone Colton had offered her. It didn’t surprise Chad she didn’t feel the need to know more than his name; he was more or less just one of Jacobs’s lackeys.
“Believe it or not, about twelve years ago, he sold a couple of video games to one of the gamer shops. As part of the process, you have to submit your fingerprints,” Sabina said.
Chad blinked. “To sell a used video game?”
She nodded. “In some states, they are considered in the scope of certain secondhand goods laws that require that kind of identification.”
“Then why didn’t it show up in the national databases?” Kara asked.
“My guess is that it went to the local police, but then the police didn’t add it to the national database,” Colton suggested.
“He has quite a background, too,” Chad said, having opened the document Collin had sent and scanned the contents. “Tried to enroll in the army but didn’t pass the entrance exams. Then he joined a local police force in Pennsylvania where he served for eight years on the beat. After that, he moved to Markland Security. Not the best of private security firms,” he said as an aside to Kara. Sabina and Colton would recognize the name. It was a decent-sized shop that farmed out personal security to clients who skirted the gray side of the law. “And from there he went to Sweet River, where he’s listed as still being employed.”
“Sweet River?” Kara asked.
“Think Blackwater, but even shadier,” Sabina answered. “I’ve met a few of those guys—and they areallguys. They aren’t people you want to spend any time with. Always wanted to jump in a shower after talking to them.” She made a face that had Chad smiling despite the topic.
“I hate those guys,” Colton muttered. “I’ll be glad of the excuse to dig into them. Whether we find a tie to Jacobs or not, I’m guessing we won’t need to dig very deep to find a pile of shit. Excuse my French.”
Sabina and Kara snorted, sounding remarkably the same, even after so many years. “You do realize that I work in some of the worst hot spots in the world. Ones often surrounded by the military,” Kara said.
“And I work with you lot,” Sabina added, gesturing to them. “You hardly have to apologize for your language.”
Colton let out a huff that was almost a laugh. “I know. You, I’m used to,” he said, pointing to Sabina. “You, though. You’re still new.” He pointed at Kara then paused. “Only not totally new. It’s really uncanny how identical you are once you get past the hair color.”
Chad agreed but didn’t. Now that he’d spent more time with them, he noted several subtle differences between the sisters, no doubt due to the different lives they’d led. Sabina had a small scar on her right hand and one above her left eye, just below the hairline. Kara’s skin tone was a shade darker, likely from her time in places like Africa and Asia. She was also a touch leaner than Sabina. Both women were petite, but Kara had the look of someone who was used to rationing food, something he’d wager she did every time she was in the field.
“Maybe I’ll let it grow back in my natural color now,” Kara said, the words coming out more serious than the topic warranted. Then again, the decision had weight. Letting her hair grow back in strawberry blond was a symbol of shedding her old life—her old life of hiding.
“You’re beautiful whichever you decide,” Sabina said, ruffling her sister’s hair. “But you don’t have to decide tonight. In fact, it might be best if we all take the advice that I gave my team and get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
Kara sighed as Sabina and Chad rose. They were still staying in the apartment on the top floor of the cabin, while Kara had taken Ava’s spot in the second bedroom downstairs. Kara hadn’t wanted to put the woman out, but Ava had insisted, saying she wanted to spend some casual time with Collin and Leo. Although after Collin’s call, Chad suspected that what she really wanted was to stick close to the lab. He considered pulling up the security cams to see if any of Sabina’s team had followed her orders and gone to bed. But he didn’t feel like having to be the bad guy and deprive them of their fun if he found them still working.
Sabina hugged her sister, then Chad dropped a kiss on her cheek before they headed upstairs. For added security, the stairwell behind the kitchen had doors on both the ground level and the second story. As they trudged up the stairs, Colton locked the lower door and Chad did the same once they reached the upper apartment.
His gaze lingered on Sabina as he stood on the landing. She mumbled a “good night” through a yawn then headed to the room she’d slept in the night before. Once she was inside, he walked to his own, closing the door behind him. Stripping out of his clothes, he headed straight into the shower and flipped the faucet on. The cold water hit with a shock, but he welcomed it. Then slowly the temperature shifted from something close to arctic to one that steamed the glass doors.
Standing under the spray, the image of Sabina walking to her room played through his mind. The day had distracted him from everything that had happened the night before. As the heat flowed over him, though, he poked and prodded his psyche. Twenty-four hours ago, he’d been bruised and buried by his emotional scars. Did he still feel that way?
As the soap bubbles streamed off his body and circled the drain, he accepted that, yes, in some ways he did. But others? The healing had started. He understood why she’d said the things she said. More importantly, he believed her when she said they weren’t meant in the way he’d taken them. She didn’t gloss over the hurt she’d caused, and several times he’d caught her watching him, always with a pensive look. But throughout the day, she seemed committed toshowinghim that she hadn’t meant them that way. As if she knew talking about it more wouldn’t erase the pain. And in every action that she took, she gave him her trust. Explicitly and without condition.
Switching off the water, he grabbed a towel and ran it over his hair before wiping his body down. After brushing his teeth, he pulled on a pair of boxers then lay down on the bed on top of the covers. Sabina had told him she loved him, and he believed her. But there was still a small part of him that wondered how she could. Not because he didn’t think he was worthy of her. But because he wondered how she could love him when he’d kept her at such a distance these past few years. Was it possible to love someone you didn’t really know? Part of him thought it was—there was no way couples knew everything about each other before falling in love. Another part had to wonder, though. The space between him and Sabina wasn’t about how one person loaded the dishwasher or what they thought about fiction versus nonfiction. The space between them was there because they hadn’t trusted each other. Well, to be more precise, she hadn’t trusted him with her secrets, and so he hadn’t trusted her with his heart. He didn’t think he was wrong in holding back, but with two years gone now, was there a way to even bridge that gap?
There was. There had to be. Now that he knew how she felt, he wasn’t willing to let her go. He wasn’t willing to let go of what he knew they could have. But how did they jump from being friends to lovers? He smiled, thinking of the romance novels he’d read while in the army. Pickings were slim while deployed, and he’d read anything he could get his hands on. His buddies had ribbed him endlessly. Until they’d started noticing how attracting female attention when he wanted it wasn’t ever an issue. He’d never been a man-whore, but when he met a woman he liked, he didn’t tend to have a problem earning her appreciation in return.
And he could thank romance novels for that. The stories were fantasy to be sure. But taking his cues from a genre that readers—mostly women—devoured to the tune of over a billion dollars a year seemed like a smart thing to do. Eventually, his buddies caught on and thought so, too. To his chagrin, getting his hands on a good romance became harder and harder.
