Shades of Gray (KGI #6)(83)

The medication was already making her swimmy. Her limbs grew heavy and her eyes were increasingly harder to keep open.

“Damn it, Steele,” she slurred out.

“Curse at me later,” he bit out and then promptly caught her as she fell over.

Cole picked his head up, his lips drawn into a grim line of satisfaction. “Thanks, Steele. I was worried she was going to fall over any second. She needs the rest. She got the hell beat out of her back there.”

“You didn’t fare so well yourself,” Steele said dryly.

Steele laid her down, brushed the hair from her face and then carefully arranged a blanket over her. Then he returned to Cole.

“How bad is it?” he asked tersely.

“Hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’ll live,” Cole said. “Nothing I haven’t lived with before.”

Steele sat down in one of the armchairs across from the couch where P.J. and Cole were both sprawled.

“You both could have gotten yourselves killed.”

Cole nodded. “Yeah, we could have. But P.J. didn’t let that happen. She’s a mean son of a bitch when she gets pissed.”

A half smile cracked Steele’s lips. “Yeah, I hear you.”

Cole sobered and then stared over at his team leader. “How’s this going to play out for me and P.J. being on the same team?”

Steele was silent for a moment.

“I won’t sacrifice my relationship with her for a job,” Cole said.

Steele snorted. “It’s a good damn thing, because I have no intention of letting either one of you go. It’s annoying the shit out of me that I’m going to be out of action for the next while because two of my team members are going to be laid up and then you’re probably going to want time off for a goddamn honeymoon.”

Cole grinned. A honeymoon sounded pretty damn good. He glanced to where P.J. was passed out on the couch. They both had some healing to do, but the future was looking pretty damn bright.

Then he looked back to Steele and sobered. “How is this going to go down with Sam? I know we f**ked up. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Shut the f**k up,” Steele said rudely. “I’ll take care of Sam.”

Cole grinned and relaxed. Steele was a complete hardass but Cole wouldn’t work for anyone else in the world. The day Steele no longer led a KGI team was the day Cole hung up his gun and became an average Joe with a nine-to-five job.

“Get some rest,” Steele said. “We don’t land for several more hours and you’re going straight to the base hospital.”

Cole groaned. “I swear, they need to just reserve a room with my name on it as many damn times as I’ve been in there.”

“Between you and P.J., they’re going to need to name an entire wing for you,” Steele said dryly.

CHAPTER 39

P.J. was technically released from the hospital before Cole, but she’d insisted on staying by his bedside until the army doctor thought he was well enough to be discharged.

Steele arrived on the day Cole was being released. In terse tones, he told them that Sam wanted the team at the KGI compound. He wouldn’t say anything more when pressed, and that worried P.J.

It was the day of reckoning. A day she’d known would come. She just wished Cole and the rest of her team wasn’t involved.

The ride from Fort Campbell to the KGI compound was tense and silent. Cole’s hand crept over P.J.’s and he squeezed as if to say it would be all right. But neither spoke, and she knew that the impending confrontation weighed heavily on Cole’s mind every bit as much as it did on hers.

Even Dolphin, who typically had something to say for every occasion, was as silent as the rest of the team.

Steele drove while P.J. and Cole sat in the middle seat with Renshaw and Baker in the back. Dolphin rode shotgun, and it was the longest P.J. could ever remember no words being exchanged between the teammates.

Were they angry with her? Resentful? Pissed because she’d dragged them into her own personal vendetta?

She was torturing herself with all the possibilities.

By the time they pulled into the compound, P.J. was a wreck.

They parked outside the war room and got out, Dolphin and Steele helping P.J. and Cole. But she was determined to walk into this meeting with no vulnerability. She didn’t want it said she played on anyone’s sympathies, so she shook off Dolphin’s supportive arm and strode toward the entrance, ignoring the protests of her leg.

Her face was a mess, bruised and still swollen from her fight with Brumley. The X-rays had shown no fracture of her jaw, though Cathy had sworn it was broken when P.J. had been brought in.

Chewing would be tough for a while, but she could deal.

She punched in the security code to gain access into the war room and she walked—or rather strode stiffly in her attempt not to limp—into the room where the Kelly brothers were gathered.

She frowned as she glanced around. It was just the Kellys; well, not even all of them. Nathan and Joe weren’t present.

Hell, not even Ethan was there, which meant that this was going to be a come-to-Jesus moment between the three men who officially ran KGI and the team that was in the proverbial dog house.

“P.J.,” Donovan said in greeting. “I’d say you’re looking good, but even I can’t pull off that kind of lie with a straight face.”