Page 20 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

Kai was ominously silent, or maybe calmly quiet—I didn’t know—as we watched Jax finish a coffee and check his phone.

Then he sighed. “All this emotional sharing is messing with my head.”

I considered leaning into him, but that would just be me making myself feel better, and I was sure it would make it all too real for him to even think I was in the room and reacting.

“It’s just us being honest so we have no more surprises.”

“Shit.” He scrubbed his eyes. “Talking of no more surprises.”

“What else is there?”

“So the men I said died in a fire?” he began.

I had to rip my concentration from Jax on the monitor to my partner. “Yeah?”

“Well, I set the fire. Got out when they were dead. Is that honest enough for you?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Jesus, Zach, you can’t just say okay like that.”

“I can and I did.”

“I murdered them all in cold blood.”

“And?”

“So what does that make me now?”

“Brave,” I replied as I turned back to watch Jax, thankful he was getting to enjoy a coffee.

“Vengeful,” Kai corrected me.

I glanced at him. “Brave,” I repeated, and met his stare. “They deserved to die for what they did.”

“Me as judge, jury, and executioner?” he asked, and reached out as if he was going to touch me, all confused.

I stiffened, not sure why he was reaching for me, until I saw the pain in his expression. Did he really see himself as a bad guy?

“Witness,” I corrected him. “Victim.”

Movement in my peripheral vision pulled me from Kai’s blue gaze, and I watched Jax get up and amble away from his table. He only stayed for twenty minutes every time, and after he’d walked out of our sight, I felt Kai touching my arm, then he squeezed my shoulder, and went into his own room, picking up the e-reader as he passed my bed.

We were both messed-up, both broken, the kind who put themselves between a bullet and a civilian. They didn’t know it, but people needed us to stay fucked-up.

No point in having a level-headed, emotionally neutral hero coming to the rescue.

The world needed blunt instruments, not idiots who caught feelings.

EIGHT

Kai

We slipped into the whole honesty thing well, or at least, Zach knew enough about me to excuse my sometimes idiotic tendencies. We’d been together a year, had a few successful missions and Shadow Team had brought two new members on board, both Canadian Special Forces—CSOC—and based out of a brand-new place in Maine, and when we finally had a team leader, it might seem official.

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