Page 7 of Knight's Journey

“Zane! Zane! Can you hear me?”

He tried to focus on the face swimming above him and the voice calling his real name, but his vision wouldn’t clear. Before his pain brought on blissful unconsciousness, he had one thought swimming through his foggy mind.

Who the hell brings a knife to a gunfight?

Chapter Three

Jay Colter hated hospitals. The smell of antiseptic, urine and sickness stirred memories he’d rather leave buried. The days after his sister escaped the man who kidnapped, raped and tortured her were spent in a hospital. Then there was the time his friends, Sydney Reede and Cole Atwood, were sent to the hospital after an automobile accident which had been no accident. And, not too long ago, there was the time when his wife Payton and their foster daughter Davi were in the hospital. The irony was they wound up hospitalized after escaping the men sent to harm them by the very people who took down his teammate.

As with each of those times, a hospital waiting room had been commandeered, thanks to the connections his boss Tristin Knight had at the medical center and…well, everywhere in Grayson Cove. The room overflowed with the Knight Security and Investigations family. Tristin closed the business so everyone could be at the hospital to wait together for news on Zane Wilder’s condition.

Gathered in the small room, Jay was struck with how much their numbers had grown from the handful of people who worked to get the company off the ground. Tristin had hired him and Brick Coffey to help him staff the two key components of the company. The private security and investigations portion of the business, supervised by Brick, was the bread and butter and the public image KSI presented to the community. Then there was the covert side, supervised by Jay, and employing two elite teams to handle off-the-books operations for government and law enforcement agencies which were prohibited from taking the missions themselves. That side of the business had changed the most, employing two five-men teams known as Alpha and Delta. He led the Alpha Team — which included Cole “Panther” Atwood, Zane Wilder, Griffin “Wings” Tyler and Brennan “BB” Beckett.

Add to those numbers the support staff and families of employees, and they filled the waiting room to capacity. They supported each other as they waited somewhat impatiently for news on Zane’s condition. When Jay and the rest of the Alpha Team had gotten their teammate to the emergency room, a trauma team was waiting, thanks for a heads up they’d gotten from Tristin’s wife, Kat. The prognosis had been bleak even before they found out he needed surgery.

Jay stood in the corner of the waiting room, stoically staring off into space. He replayed tonight’s operation on a loop in his mind, pinpointing all the ways it had gone wrong and landed Zane on an operating table fighting for his life. Jay insisted on planting an ear wig on Zane, so they could listen and record the meet to add to their evidence against the De la Peñas. They went into action the minute Zane had given the distress call, “smoke show.”

The problem was the Alpha Team had been too far away to respond in time. Because of the lookouts planted around the warehouse, they set up a couple of blocks over where they would go undetected. Jay had thought they would put Zane in danger if they were too close, and instead, he was in danger of losing his life because they had been too far away. If he’d had more back-up going into the op, they could have neutralized the lookouts the minute Zane was inside, so when he gave the signal, they could have gone in sooner, guns blazing, and stopped his teammate from being stabbed in the abdomen.

To make matters worse, the op had been a bust. They had let the customers leave since they weren’t the real targets. Elian’s bodyguard had ushered him and his father out an exit on the other side of the warehouse, while Thumper and Singer took care of Zane. Then the two enforcers disappeared. Somehow they escaped in the chaos of their breech even though the Alpha Team had been hot on their heels.

“You need to stop that right now.”

He shook himself out of his troublesome thoughts and lifted his eyes to his wife. Just studying her face — big brown eyes, clear luminous skin, full kissable lips — lifted some of the pressure off his chest. He reached to caress Payton’s cheek with the back of his finger. He should send her and Davi home, but they refused to budge until Zane was out of surgery. And truthfully, he was thankful to have her there where he could touch her and reassure himself that while the rest of his world was in turmoil, she was there to ground him.

“I’m just standing here, sweetheart. Waiting like everyone else.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and drew herself close to him. “You’re blaming yourself for what happened.”

Jay squeezed her tightly with one arm. The woman knew him too damn well. Davi called it her social worker Zen, the way she could read people and know what they needed.

“We shouldn’t have sent him in. The feds haven’t been able to pull off any undercover operations, so we were dumbasses to think we could. We were sending Zane into a suicide mission.”

“His cover was solid enough to keep him in for a year. Kat listened to the feed and said they were only guessing he was the leak. They had no proof, so they were hoping he’d break his cover under pressure. He didn’t.”

Jay rested his chin against the top of her head, her hair tangling in his beard. He should have guessed Payton would talk with Kat who worked as a technical analyst for KSI. She provided computer support to the Alpha Team whenever they were on an op, so she was the one recording the meet when it went down. He wished Kat’s account of the op would lessen his guilt over how it went down.

“He gave us the distress signal. He tried to stall, but there was too much lag time in our response. We should have found a way to be closer, to cut down on our response time.”

“You’re not the one who stabbed him, Jayson. He volunteered for the assignment. He knew what he was walking into, and he’s good at his job. None of this happened because of a wrong move made by you or by Zane. It’s a risk of the job. If you hadn’t had his back, he would have been dead on arrival. You guys gave him a fighting chance by stabilizing him and getting him here so quickly. So stop beating yourself up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He planted a kiss on the top of her head, smiling at how she chastised him. Payton and his mother were the only ones to use his full name, and Payton used it these days when she was making a point.

His gaze returned to Davi, sitting beside Sydney and holding the redhead’s hand. Sydney was a wreck over what happened. Zane was the closest thing to a brother she had in her life. She even put her wedding on hold until he could be free to walk her down the aisle when she married Cole.

And Davi was consoling Sydney with a strength belying her fifteen years. The first few months she’d been with Jay and Payton had been rough at times. She was a teenager who discovered the identity of her birth mother, Marisol, only to lose her after she was shot by Davi’s birth father, Oscar De la Peña, the youngest son of Armando. Oscar tracked Davi down and kidnapped her, but Jay and his team rescued her, killing Oscar in the process. The relatives she had left were a Dominican crime family who disowned her because they disapproved of Oscar and Marisol’s relationship. She was uprooted from the only life she’d ever known and came to live with Payton and Jay.

Davi was a special young lady, but there was still a transitional period for all of them. She was starting to find her place among their family. Jay’s parents doted on her as if she’d been their granddaughter since birth. He and Payton were hoping to talk to her very soon about formally adopting her. He had hoped Zane’s undercover operation would give them what they needed to shut down the De la Peñas, so he didn’t have to worry about them possibly coming after Davi or seeking revenge against him and his team.

Payton followed his line of sight and smiled at their daughter. “I called your parents. They’re coming to take Davi home with them. She’s exhausted, but I didn’t feel right having her home alone with all this going on.”

“You should go with her. I can call you with any updates.”

Her head whipped back around, her eyes fierce. “I’m not leaving you. I can help. Kat got in touch with Zane’s mother and sisters. They’ll be here any minute. I want to be here for them.”

Jay relented. “You’re right. We could use your help. Thank you. For being here.”

Her gaze softened, love shining in her eyes. “Always.”

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