Mine to Keep

And I touched him. I took the tag from the hole above his heart.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image wouldn’t fade. Nausea built, and she tried to fight it. Again and again and again.

She couldn’t.

Skye ran for the bathroom. Trace called her name, but she slammed the door shut behind her.

***

Trace stood in front of the bathroom door. “Skye?” He jiggled the knob. She’d locked it. “Baby, let me help you.”

“Go away.” Her voice was soft.

“I want to help you.” Trace felt as if he were tearing apart.

“Don’t, Trace. Don’t.”

He backed away. Forced his gaze off the door.

The damn dog tag waited. Trace grabbed it, smoothing his fingers over the letters of his name. This tag should’ve been in an icy grave.

Maybe I should’ve been in that grave with it.

The tag wasn’t buried, and neither was his past.

He heard the rush of running water. His shoulders tensed. Skye would be coming back.

I have to tell her.

His fingers were trembling. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He was always rock-steady. Never hesitating.

He’d been dead-on in battle. In the boardroom.

His business was secrets. Protecting them. Exploiting them.

He’d kept his own secrets so well over the years. But Trace knew with utter certainty that if he didn’t tell Skye everything, he would lose her.

The dog tag was a message.

The bathroom door opened. Light spilled behind Skye. “I wash and I wash my hands,” she said, sounding a little lost. Not at all like Skye. “But I just can’t seem to get all the blood off.”

He dropped the tag. Went straight to her. He caught her soft hands in his. “There’s no blood on you, baby.”

Her head tilted back. Her hair had come loose from the knot at the base of her neck. “If it’s on yours, then it’s on mine. What touches you…” Her smile broke his heart. “It touches me, too.”

I realized today…I would do anything for you.

The smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I thought you’d killed Parker, and do you know what my first instinct was? To protect you.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“What does that say about me? If I’d steal evidence from a dead man’s body, then what else would I do for you?”

Everything.

The answer was there, stark and chilling between them.

“I can’t live like this.” Grim finality had entered her voice. “You were right. I-I should’ve seen someone after the attack. My mind’s jumbled. The nightmares won’t stop, and I’m not even sure who I am anymore.”

“I know who you are.” The only woman he’d ever loved.

She pulled away from him. “I can’t do this.”

No, no, she had to do this. But she was walking away from him.

“I’m very good at killing, Skye.” Those weren’t the words he’d meant to say. They sure as hell weren’t words that were going to reassure her. “The military taught me how to be good. How to get close to the enemy. How to take out my prey swiftly and silently. My main job was infiltration. Infiltration and hostage rescue.”

Rescue of military personnel who’d been taken by the enemy. Rescue of dignitaries. Of rich corporate CEOs who’d been taken because they’d been at the wrong place. Because they’d trusted the wrong men.

Some of those rescued men had been grateful. They’d remembered him when he left the military. They’d jumped at the chance to use Weston Securities for their corporations.

He’d kept their secrets.

But he was spilling his own.

“I saved lives, but I took lives, too. The lives of the enemy, the captors who’d taken the hostages.” Tell her. “And the lives of-of those on my team who turned against us.”

Very slowly, she faced him again.

He hated the strain on her face. His past had done this to her. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.” He looked at his hands. “I still have the blood here, and you know the only time I ever feel clean? It’s when I’m touching you. You make me feel like I can be someone else.” And not just the lie that he presented to the world.

“You’re telling me this now?”

“You need to know.”

She shook her head, hard, and the last of her hair broke free from the knot, tumbling around her shoulders. “First I get that crazy phone call. I-I thought it had to be Reese, wanting me to help you, and then—”

He zeroed right in on that. “What phone call?”

“I race to that alley. I find him—”

“What phone call?” Trace snarled.

She stumbled back a step.

“Skye.” He tried to soften the harshness of his tone. He failed. “Please. What phone call?”

“Your number. It was your ring. Your number on the caller ID. But the voice didn’t sound like you.”

Fear was a living monster inside of Trace.

“He told me to go to that alley. That you needed me. That I had to help.”

“And you went?” Claws ripped at his insides.

“I tried to call you back first. But I couldn’t get you, and I was so afraid something had happened. I knew Parker was out—”

I knew I’d do anything for you.

“So I ran to the alley.” A sad shrug of her shoulders. “And I stole evidence.”

“Give me your phone.”

She blinked at him.

Trace didn’t wait for her to comply. He rushed to her discarded bag. He searched fast and yanked out the phone.

He scanned through her received calls list. Saw his name. His number. “I didn’t call you then.”

“Reese—”

“Reese was visiting his girlfriend earlier today. They have a standing lunch date each week.”

She blinked. “I didn’t—”

“He hacked into my account.” Smart SOB. “And he called you.” She could have walked straight into a slaughter. Her own. Trace wouldn’t have been able to do damn thing to save her.

“Who?” Skye was beside him now. “Who did this?”

Tell her everything.

There would be no going back now. “After a while, after we’d served our tours, the team knew we were good at what we did. Very damn good. We started our own rescue service. That’s what Weston Securities was, in the beginning.” And it still was, when the situation demanded it. “I tried to get Reese to join me back then, because he’d served with us, but he wanted to come home. He’d said that he’d had his fill of blood and death.”

Smart bastard. Reese hadn’t joined them, but later Trace had told his friend all about the nightmare that had destroyed the team.

Trace continued, because there was no stopping now. “So when the team started, there were five of us. Noah, Drake, Ben, Tucker, and me.”

Her shoulder brushed against his. “Tucker?”

“Tucker Hawk.” Tucker had always seemed to be the most easy-going of the group. The one who’d laughed the easiest. Loved the easiest. “Tucker had a girl. Anna Jean. She’d just finished a tour with the Air Force, and she wanted to join our team. She could fly like a dream, so I knew she’d be useful.” Back then, he’d always thought in terms of usefulness. “But Anna had other plans. On our last run together, she decided she could get more money by playing both sides. She set us up, telling the enemy our extraction plans. Telling them our weaknesses. Telling them everything.”

“But you made it out. You survived.”

“Ben was hit hard. Drake…Drake was captured. Tortured. I carried Ben out and left him at the chopper with Noah. Then Tucker and I fought like hell to get Drake out.” The gunfire had blasted. A continuous thunder that shook his world.

“We killed every man between us and Drake.” He couldn’t look at her as he revealed this. “Blood soaked me, and I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get home again.” His eyes closed. “I wanted you.”

She twined her fingers with him.

“We got to Drake. Pulled him out. We were almost home free, then Anna Jean appeared. She’d slipped up behind Drake, and she was about to shoot him.” There’d been a knife in Drake’s hands. His only weapon.

“Drake spun to attack. He stabbed her, and she fell back.” But they just hadn’t counted on one thing… “You can know some people are evil. You can know that they’ve betrayed you, but if you love them, if you really fucking love them beyond reason, then, sometimes, I don’t think you care about what they’ve done. You only see them. Nothing else.”

That was the way it had been for Tucker.

“He screamed,” Trace recalled. “When Drake’s knife went into her chest, Tucker cried out her name. He blasted two bullets into Drake, and Tucker ran for Anna Jean.” That anguished scream had frozen them all.

Tucker had known than Anna Jean betrayed them.

He hadn’t cared.

She’d been what mattered most to him, and when he lost her… “He broke right before my eyes,” Trace said. Tucker had fought, shot, attacked—and gotten to Anna Jean on that snow covered field.

They’d been in Russia. So far from home. Cold. Frozen. The white snow had been stained red.

Skye watched him with her big, solemn stare. He didn’t want to see himself reflected in that stare. Because the part that was coming…

Man up and tell her everything. “Drake needed medical attention. We had to get out of there, but Tucker wasn’t just going to let him walk away, not after what he’d done to Anna Jean.”

“But he was protecting himself—”

“It didn’t matter. Anna Jean died in Tucker’s arms, and the man he’d been before vanished. He attacked Drake. Tucker shattered Drake’s wrist and took Drake’s knife. Then Tucker went in for the kill.”

Trace had shouted then. Yelled for Tucker to stop. “I could’ve taken a shot at them, but they were so close. Tucker and Drake were fighting, rolling around in the snow. So I ran forward. I grabbed Tucker, and I pulled him off Drake.”

Her gaze seemed to see straight into Trace’s soul. You won’t like the darkness there, baby. “Tucker had his knife. I had my gun. I told him to stand down. To get his control back.”

Even as he’d said the words, Trace had known that wouldn’t happen. If I’d lost Skye, I would’ve reacted the same way. “She was everything to him, and Anna Jean was dead at his feet.” The blood had spread beneath her in that snow, looking like bloody angel wings.

She hadn’t been an angel.

Tucker hadn’t cared.

“He said Drake had to die. Tucker lunged at me. He wouldn’t stop.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The memories were so sharp.

Tucker, stand the hell down! We’re your friends!

But Tucker had stared him straight in the eyes. You’re dead men. Every single one of you. You did this—you could’ve brought her in alive. You. Did. This!

“The last time he came at me, I fired.” Close-range, one shot right to the chest. “He grabbed my dog tags, and when he fell back, they were still in his hands.”

“Trace…”

“We didn’t even get to bring his body home. Anna Jean’s reinforcements arrived. Blasting from the east. I could’ve carried Tucker—he was still alive then—or I could’ve gotten Drake out of there. I made the choice.”

Her fingers curled around his. “Would Tucker have been able to survive his wounds?”

That was the same damn thing he’d asked himself that day. And every day that followed. “I thought I’d hit his heart.” He should have hit it. That close… “But there wasn’t exactly time to stand there and do an exam. I grabbed Drake. Threw him over my shoulder, and I dodged fire as I ran. Noah brought the chopper in because without an aerial extraction, we were dead.” He stared down at their hands. His looked big, rough.

Hers were so delicate.

“Heavy snow started falling. In that part of Russia, the snow can drop from the sky for days. It can bury everything and everyone in its path. I thought…I thought the snow became their graves.” After Ben and Drake had been secured and patched up, he’d gone back to try and retrieve the bodies, but it had been hopeless. He’d searched, nearly getting hypothermia, but there had been nothing to find.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

Trace knew his laughter held a bitter edge. “Why didn’t I tell you that I shot my best friend and left him to die in the middle of a snowstorm? Maybe because I didn’t want you thinking I was a cold-blooded killer.”

She flinched. Her hands pulled from his.

Oh, right. “But then, you do think that now, don’t you? So confessing to my kill in the past hardly matters at this point.”

Trace turned away from her and paced toward the window. The glittering lights of the city stared back at him. At least it wasn’t snowing. He hated the snow. Every time he saw it, he thought of blood.

“Tucker is the one who attacked,” Skye said, voice soft. She hadn’t followed him to the window. “You were protecting yourself. Your other teammates.”

The lights were so bright. “I understood, that’s the worst part. I knew exactly how he felt. He loved her so much that nothing else mattered, and without her, there was no control for him. He was desperate, hurting, and I left him there.”

Only the ghosts from his past had come back to wreck his life. “Tucker liked the up-close attacks. They were his specialty.” His…and Trace’s. “He could get close to anyone without his prey ever knowing. Slip right up and slip his knife into his enemy’s heart.”