Deadly Game (GhostWalkers, #5)(32)

“Are you certain she’s unconscious? We can’t chance her warning anyone. If they don’t follow Nico, we can’t get her to Lily’s. And you and I both know Whitney has something else up his sleeve that insures she’ll go home. I want Lily to check her over thoroughly before she ever gets near Briony.”

“She’s out. We cut that one a little too close. They were an hour behind us. Nico could be in trouble.” The buzzing in his head was fading, indicating that the team was moving away from them.

“We wanted them to think they were gaining on us. They had to follow him. Nico knows what he’s doing. Logan will be here any minute, Ken. I need to ask you . . .”

“Don’t. I tried to tell you and now it’s too late.”

“We have to talk about it. I had to face it when Briony came to me asking for shelter. There was every possibility our father lived inside of me.”

“There was never that possibility. We made a pact, Jack, that we’d never get close enough to a woman to fall in love, but I always knew you would be fine if it happened.”

“How? I didn’t know. I feel nothing at all when I take the shot, Ken, you know that. I didn’t feel remorse when I killed our father.”

“When you finished what I started,” Ken reminded. “Mom was already dead when I walked in on him. I should have run, but all I could think about was killing him.” He could still remember in vivid detail tearing the baseball bat from his father’s grip and swinging it hard. There was absolute pleasure when the bat connected with a satisfying crack and his father screamed. For the first time in his life, Ken had felt powerful and in control. He wasn’t even a teenager, and yet he’d planned his father’s death a million times, and when he’d found his father with his mother’s blood all over him, something cold and ugly, vicious and merciless, had sprung to life and taken hold.

“You think I didn’t have those same feelings, Ken? He made our lives a living hell. He beat the crap out of us, out of Mom; he ridiculed and embarrassed us. He wanted us dead, and he punished her every day of her life for loving us. Of course you wanted him dead. That has nothing to do with her.” Jack stepped closer, gesturing toward Mari.

“It has everything to do with her and you know it.” Ken was too ashamed to admit his feelings to his brother, the one person he loved and respected the most in the world. It was bad enough that he knew his own fatal flaw, that he had to stare into the mirror every day and see his father looking back at him, but he sure as hell didn’t want Jack to see what he did. “I would feel like that, not wanting to share her with anyone. I’m not taking the chance that we might have children and I’d lose my mind completely. When I heard about Brett . . .” He could hardly say the name and a wealth of disgust and anger was in his voice. “I should have been thinking what she went through, but all I could think about was that he’d touched her, been inside her, that I wanted him dead.”

“I had the impression she despised him. If he forced her, he deserves to die. Hell, I’d want to kill him.”

“The point is, I wasn’t thinking about her—I was thinking about my own feelings, and they weren’t exactly noble. And I wanted to be inside of her, driving any memory of him out of her.” There was shame in his voice.

“Ken,” Jack said, keeping his voice low, “we’re both different. We have to be careful, but it doesn’t make us like him. So we’re a little more dominant . . .”

Ken snorted. “A little?”

“And a little more jealous than the average man . . .”

“A little?” Ken repeated. “Hell, Jack, Briony’s too sweet and lets you get away with going all badass on her; she thinks you’re cute or something. Who knows what goes through her head. And you don’t lose your mind when she’s around other men.”

“It disturbs me,” Jack admitted. “I handle it.”

“And what if you couldn’t? What would that eventually do to your relationship with Briony? How do you think it would make her feel every time some man smiled and you were instantly angry?”

“I’d have the good sense to keep it to myself. I trust her. You don’t even know this woman, Ken. She doesn’t love you; you don’t love her. Why do you expect to be able to handle something like jealousy when you haven’t even built a relationship with her yet? If you trusted her, and loved her, it would be different.”

Ken shook his head. “Logan’s here. Let’s keep them away from her. We had to ditch her clothes, and the thought of any of the others seeing her naked is enough to set me off. I had a difficult enough time with the doc.”

For the first time, Jack’s expression was leery, as if it might be sinking in that Ken was telling the absolute truth—that his possessive, dominant nature might be too strong to control, as he feared.

“We’ll handle it,” Jack said. “We’ll do it the way we always do.” He indicated the gurney. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ken lifted his end, but hesitated. “If you had walked out into the backyard first and saw mom dead, and him standing there smiling, covered in her blood, would you have gone after him, or done the sane thing and left?”

Jack sighed. “It was a long time ago, Ken. I saw him beating you; he broke both your arms, and I went after him. I don’t know what I would have done had I found him with Mom. Probably exactly what you did. I’m the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind, remember? You’re out front keeping everyone from bothering me, keeping them safe. You aren’t our father, Ken, and you’ll never convince me you’re like he was.”