From Sanctum with Love (Masters and Mercenaries #10)(61)

Kai turned the engine off. “Your entourage is here? Upstairs? With Big Tag?”

“Not sure if they’re with him, but I asked Squirrel and the guys to start taking some notes, maybe some pictures so I can get in the character’s head. Don’t worry. Everyone loves to answer questions about themselves.”

“How many actual spies have you known?” Kai opened the door and hopped out, praying he could get up there fast enough to save some lives.

Jared was right behind him as he strode to the elevator. “I played a corporate spy on a Lifetime movie once. Have you seen it? Cyber Eyes Are Watching Her. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

It sounded spectacularly crappy. “I don’t watch a lot of TV. Or movies.” Luckily there was an elevator open. He hopped on. “You can’t treat Ian like some movie consultant. He’s the real thing.”

Someone shouted out Jared’s name. He turned before he got on the elevator, his face going movie star bright as he waved. “Yes, it’s really me.”

Kai reached out and hauled his brother inside. “No time for autographs.” He pushed the button for McKay-Taggart. They now occupied the top two floors. “I’m serious about Ian. You have to be careful. Even now he’s involved in classified stuff. The company he runs still works for the government from time to time and they take those secrets seriously.”

Like the fact that Theo Taggart was alive somewhere. If Jared threatened that mission in any way, Tag would happily bury his body.

Jared grinned. “Real spy stuff. That’s cool. And I’m sure my guys are sitting in the lobby somewhere looking at their phones. It’s kind of what they do.”

“How are you still with Squirrel? I can’t see that kid does anything real for you.”

“You always hated him. And I gave him a job because he stuck by me when no one else did.” Jared looked straight ahead, his eyes on the elevator doors. “He’s not stupid. He can run errands.”

“I thought that’s what Lena did.” Kai knew it didn’t matter, but he wanted Jared to admit that Squirrel was mooching off him. He wanted to at least get that out into the open. So often Jared looked at the bright, shiny side of everything, refusing to see anything could possibly be wrong.

“He’s my friend. Just drop it, Kai,” Jared said in a stubborn tone. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t understand friendship?” They were good at falling back into old patterns. Kai would come out accusing his brother of acting like an idiot and then Jared would say Kai never understood. Nothing had changed in fifteen years.

“Not really. How many friends do you still have from childhood?”

It was a decent point, but he had one of his own. “I didn’t have a lot of them. I was too busy taking care of you.”

“Fine. Blame me. How about from the Army? Have many friends from those times?”

He didn’t. He had some guys from his unit he called from time to time to check in on them. “They live in different parts of the country and most of them are at different stages in life. And I’ve made a lot of friends here.”

“Well, when they’ve been around for ten years or so, get back to me.”

There was something deeper going on in his brother’s head, but at that moment, Kai didn’t care. His inner therapist voice was only a whisper really, telling him his normally sunny brother was hiding something. Jared didn’t push this way. But right then, Kai didn’t give a shit. “Just because I don’t pay a group of people to stay around me all the time because I can’t stand to be alone with myself doesn’t mean I have a problem making friends.”

Jared turned and his eyes were lit with an anger Kai had rarely seen in his younger brother. “I wasn’t talking about making them. You’re good at that. Everyone wants to be your friend. I was talking about keeping them. Is anyone good enough for you? Is there anyone in your life who measures up to the Great Kaiser Ferguson’s standards? Or do they all end up being stupid and human and flawed like me?”

“Flawed? You call sleeping with my fiancée a flaw?”

Jared shook his head. “You hated me long before that.”

Hate was a strong word and not one he used often. “I don’t hate you.”

“Bullshit.”

He took a deep breath and realized maybe he had issues with Jared, but Kori was right. He needed to face them. He had to stop getting surly every time the chance to deal with Jared came up. “I don’t hate you. I might not have fully forgiven you for what happened with Hannah, but I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t even know what happened with Hannah. You have no f*cking idea what happened to me while you were gone. You left me behind.”

“I went into the Army so I could help support you, you *.” How did his brother do this to him? With anyone else he would brush off the accusations and try to find the heart of the matter. He was trained to do this. He’d been called every name in the book by his patients, who often mistook anger at the world for anger at him. He could handle it. In some ways, it was part of the healing process. But the minute his brother walked in, Kai was right back, standing in that living room where his brother had betrayed him utterly.

God, maybe he did hate Jared a little.