Shades of Gray (KGI #6)(45)

Her team.

“Yes sir,” she said briskly.

CHAPTER 23

IT was two in the morning and P.J. was wide awake, her leg throbbing. She’d refused another dose of painkiller because she’d wanted to evaluate exactly what she was dealing with.

Though just a flesh wound, her leg still protested if she put any weight on it. She had a limited amount of time in which to heal because she wasn’t staying behind while her team went to Jakarta. The truth was, she didn’t want them involved even if they were determined to be. She didn’t want her sins to be their own.

She pushed herself awkwardly from the bed and eased her feet to the floor. She had no hope of sleeping. She’d been out most of the day, aided by the pain medication Donovan had administered. She imagined the rest of the crew was sleeping soundly.

Donovan had arranged for the jet to take off early the next morning. After a quick glance at the clock, she knew it was pointless to even try to go back to sleep. She only had three hours before they moved out again.

The little cottage that Donovan and Cole had finagled was barely big enough to fit two people, much less her entire team plus Donovan. They’d insisted she take the bedroom, and Cole had carried her from the front sitting room where she’d spent some of the afternoon on the couch and put her on the double bed.

If she’d had more courage, she would have invited Cole to share the comfort of the bed with her. He looked haggard and worn down. But she couldn’t make the words come out.

Tentatively she took a step, bracing herself for the pain that shot up her leg and into her belly. She waited several long seconds as she sucked in breath after breath in an attempt to steady herself.

She needed the bathroom in the worst way, and she wasn’t about to call for one of the guys to help her with that particular necessity.

The few feet to the bathroom took an eternity. At the door, she paused and glanced into the living room to see the guys draped all over the furniture. They looked horribly uncomfortable. Steele and Cole were lying on the floor with their backpacks shoved under their necks to cushion their heads.

Feeling about a hundred years old, she shuffled into the bathroom to do her business.

It took longer than she’d have liked. She examined the bulky bandages on her right thigh. She’d been lucky. The bullet could have shattered her femur or worse, hit her femoral artery and she could have bled out in minutes. As it was, it passed through a chunk of flesh less than half an inch from her bone.

Push past the pain.

It was a mantra that had been effective for the last six months. At times it was the only thing that kept her going.

Clad in her underwear and a clean T-shirt, she pulled the shirt farther down her legs before she opened the bathroom door. As she stepped into the hall, she came face-to-face with Cole.

He was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, one leg pulled up so that his foot rested flat against the wall.

“You should have called for me,” he said tersely. “You don’t need to be up walking around. You’ll tear the stitches.”

“I’m fine,” she said, even as she gingerly took another step.

“The hell you are. Every step you take, you go even paler, and your forehead is so clammy I can see it from here.”

Without saying anything further, he pushed off the wall and wrapped a supporting arm around her.

“Wrap your arm around me and hold on. Put most of your weight on me.”

Relieved he hadn’t picked her up and carried her, she did as he instructed and limped forward into the bedroom. At least he seemed open to her trying to get around on her own. Or mostly on her own anyway.

When they got to the bed, he helped her sit on the edge and then he plumped all the pillows so she could scoot back and sit up in bed in comfort.

After she got situated, he sat on the edge of the bed facing her. He pulled one knee up and rested his forearm across his leg as he studied her.

“How are you feeling?”

The way he said it told her he wasn’t asking about her leg. She expelled a long sigh.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I haven’t allowed myself to feel anything for the last six months. But when I knelt there in the dirt with Nelson’s blood on my hands, I thought to myself you should be jubilant. You should feel vindicated. Justice has been served and he’ll never hurt another woman or child again.”

Cole slid his hand gently over hers, lacing their fingers together. Just that simple gesture chased some of the lingering sickness from the pit of her stomach.

“Instead I just felt . . . sick. It all came rushing back at me, and I’ve tried so hard not to remember. I swear it was like he’d raped me all over again. Isn’t that stupid?”

She tried to laugh but it came out more as a sob.

“God, I had him at my mercy and all I could think was that it was like being raped all over again because that’s all I could remember. Him on top of me. Him overpowering me and all the hatred and revulsion I experienced.”

Cole squeezed her hand, but his hand shook against hers, giving her a hint of the emotion running through him.

“It’s not stupid, baby. Nothing you feel is stupid. It’s how you feel, so that makes it legitimate. Do you understand what I’m saying? I won’t let you beat yourself up for being human. What happened to you wasn’t just a simple injury in the course of a mission. It was something no person should ever have to endure. You can’t just shrug that off and pretend it didn’t happen. Sometime, someway, you have to deal with it, and I don’t think you have yet. I know you haven’t,” he added softly.