All Or Nothing (The Alpha Brotherhood #2)(36)
Author: Catherine Mann

Her cell phone buzzed beside her, and she saw an incoming text from Conrad.

All clear. Just a break-in at the clinic for drugs. I’ll be home soon.

A moment of sheer fright was over in an instant. Was this how Conrad lived on the job? Not fun by any stretch of the meaning. But then, not any more stressful than the time she’d been working in the E.R. when a patient pulled a knife and demanded she empty the medicine cabinet. He’d been too coked up to hold the knife steady, and the security guard had disarmed him.

There weren’t any guarantees in life, regardless of where she lived.

She picked up the clearance code and punched in the numbers to open the door back into the house. She texted Conrad an update.

Made it out of the panic room. No problems with the code.

She hesitated at the urge to type “love you” and instead opted for…

Be safe.

Seconds later the phone buzzed in her hand with an incoming text.

This will take a while. Don’t wait up.

Not so much as a hint of affection coated that stark message, but then what did she expect? He was in the middle of a crisis. She shook off the creeping sense of premonition.

For a second, she considered returning to the panic room and just watching him on the screen, but that seemed like an invasion of his privacy. If she wanted this relationship to work between them, she needed to learn to trust him while he was gone. And he needed to learn to trust that she could handle the lifestyle.

So what did a woman do while her man was out saving the world? Maybe she didn’t need all the answers yet. She just needed to know that she was committed to figuring them out.

She knew one fact for certain. Living without Conrad was out of the question.

* * *

The moon rose over the clinic, lights blazing in a day that had run far too long. Bile burned his throat as he watched the last of the Agberos loaded into a police car. Ade, a teen from the soccer game, stared over the door at him with defiant eyes that Conrad recognized well. He’d seen the same look staring back at him in the mirror as teenager.

Jayne and the house were safe, but four teens he’d played with just this afternoon had tried to steal drugs from the clinic. While one of them tried to escape, he’d strayed too close to the house. Boothe had said the attempts were commonplace. Agberos weren’t rehabilitated in a day—and many of the Area Boys could never be trusted.

Now wasn’t that a kick in the ass?

Intellectually he understood what Boothe had told him a million times. In a country riddled with poverty and lawlessness, saving even a handful of these boys was a major victory.

Still, defeat piled on his shoulders like sandbags.

The ringleader of this raid really got to him. Conrad had played soccer with Ade and his younger brother Kofi earlier. He thought he’d connected with them both. And yeah, he’d identified with Ade, seen the seething frustration inside the teen, and wanted to help him build a stable life for himself. Would the little Kofi follow in his big brother’s footsteps?

There wasn’t a damn thing more Conrad could do about it tonight. He jerked open the door to the Land Cruiser, hoping Jayne had turned in for the night, because he wasn’t in the mood for any soul searching.

The drive home passed in a blur with none of his regular pleasure in the starkly majestic landscape that had drawn him to this country in the first place.

Ahead, his house glowed with lights.

The house where Jayne waited for him, obviously wide-awake if the bright windows were anything to judge by.

Conrad steered the Land Cruiser along the dirt road leading up the plateau, his teeth on edge and his temper rotten as hell. He floored the Land Cruiser, the shock absorbers working overtime. He couldn’t put enough space between him and the mess at the clinic, now that the cops had everything locked down tight again.

He parked the Land Cruiser in front of the house, but left the car in idle. He couldn’t just sit here thoughtlessly losing himself in his wife’s softness in order to avoid the obvious. He needed to take action, to do something to resolve the questions surrounding Zhutov. And he needed to tuck Jayne somewhere safe—most likely somewhere far the hell away from anything in his world since his judgment was crap these days.

Bringing her here had been a selfish choice. He’d wanted to be alone with her. Like some kid showing off an A-plus art project, he’d wanted her to see his clinic, to prove to her there was something good inside him. There were plenty of other places she could stay that were safer. He would talk to Salvatore once Jayne was settled for the night.

He turned off the car, leaped out and slammed the door. Already, he could see her inside on the sofa, lamps shining. He should have tinted these windows rather than depending on the security system.

Just as he hit the bottom step, Jayne opened the front door. Her smile cut right through him with a fresh swipe of guilt.

“Welcome back.” She leaned in the open door, a mug of tea cradled in her hands. “What a crazy evening. But at least you know your security system works as advertised.”

“You figured out how to work the surveillance television?” If so, that should cut down on the questions for tonight, a good thing given his raw-as-hell gut.

“I did, although I’m still a bit fuzzy on the details.” She followed him inside, the weight of her gaze heavy on his shoulders.

“Some of the local Agberos tried to steal some drugs from the clinic. When the alarms went off at the clinic, one of the kids—Ade—ran away and tripped the security system here.”

“Thank goodness they didn’t get away with it. And I’m glad everything was resolved without anyone getting hurt.”

“A guard was injured during the break-in.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, pacing restlessly past a ladder against the wall covered with locally woven blankets. He needed to get to his computer, to plug into the network and start running leads.

“Oh, no, Conrad. I’m so sorry.” Her hand fell to rest on his shoulder. “Will he be all right? Do they need my help at the clinic? I’m sorry now that I didn’t go with you.”

Her touch made him restless, vulnerable.

He walked to the window, looking out over the river. “You were here, safe. That’s the best thing you could do for me.”

“What’s wrong?” She stopped beside him. “Why are you avoiding me?”

Because if he lost himself in her arms right now, he would shatter, damn it. His hands clenched. “This isn’t the right time to talk.”

She sighed, a tic tugging at the corner of her eye. “It’s never the right time for my questions. That’s a big part of what broke us up before.” She squeezed his forearm. “I need for you to communicate with me.”