Page 5

Chapter Three

B ruce blinked, his focus settling on her. “Hey.”

She walked over to him and almost held her hand out but caught herself before she did. Just a reflex, the intent to help him up versus the reality of her forearms. “I see you found yourself a case.”

“Open and shut. Only took me five minutes.” His tone was easy, but the look on his face when he moved reminded her of how recently he’d been shot and left for dead.

The past few months, he’d been recovering, bouncing back but not as fast as he wanted. He probably wasn’t completely back to fighting fit. Even if he’d just tried to prove differently to the world—or to himself.

The front door of the medical center flung open, and a nurse in black scrubs, her dark hair in pigtails, rushed out.

“Should I call the cops?” She glanced between Kenna and Bruce as if unsure who the perpetrator here was.

“No.”

At the same time Bruce said that, Kenna said, “Maybe.”

He shot her a look.

She shot him one right back.

They both lived on thin ice with local police departments, him more than her.

Neither needed to get on cops’ radars or catch the notice of federal police if they could help it.

She’d connected with too many cops over the weekend, but that was what her life happened to be sometimes, more so now that she was married to a fed.

Bruce was a former CIA agent, burned by his government and left in exile in the UK for years before Kenna negotiated his return to the US. Now she was sort of responsible for him and whatever he did, though she didn’t want to be.

The guy had discovered his former partner at the Agency was the one who had burned him, and Bruce had spent weeks digging into the man’s life.

He’d formulated a plan to get revenge, which Kenna preferred to think of as justice, but as soon as he’d moved to pull the trigger on the plan… the guy up and disappeared.

Completely.

The nurse looked between them, then rushed over to the woman in overalls lying on the concrete, unmoving. “Did you kill her?”

“How would I have done that?” Not because she couldn’t. More because Kenna had no idea how that would be possible right now. “I only shoved her with my shoulder.”

Bruce assessed Kenna. “She went down pretty hard. You good, boss?”

The nurse didn’t look over from her evaluation of the patient, but she definitely stiffened upon hearing that. Yeah, so they were connected. That was more of Kenna’s problem than anyone else’s.

Kenna touched the heel of her hand to her forehead, her thoughts swimming, sending her equilibrium off-balance.

Someone asked, “Do you need to be seen?”

She lowered her hand and looked at Doctor Nicola Santorini.

Dark gray slacks and low-heeled black shoes, a white buttoned shirt, and a doctor’s lab coat over it.

A tiny gold chain rested around her neck.

She had dark brown hair, almost black, pulled back into a ponytail with loose strands around her head.

Doctor Santorini was probably in her mid-forties but had no husband or children in her life. Just her medical practice.

“I had an appointment, but…” She waved at the woman on the ground.

“We’ll get to you.” The doctor went to her patient and crouched, speaking with the nurse.

She flinched at something the woman said, then pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her lab coat and called 911.

She asked for an ambulance. When she lowered her phone, Doctor Santorini said, “Care to explain why this woman’s sternum is caved in? ”

Kenna’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t have any explanation. Wasn’t that why she was here? For the results of her tests.

For answers.

Kenna said, “She ran at me, and I blocked it. She fell back.”

“That doesn’t explain this.” Doctor Santorini sat back on her heels. “This woman needs to get to a hospital fast. She needs surgery.” She brushed back strands of hair from her face. “How did you do this?”

Bruce tugged on her arm. “You don’t have to answer that. You don’t have to say anything.”

He drew her away from the accusations, toward the front door of the medical center. She turned to him. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” She lowered her voice. “You’re the one who threw her out the window.”

“She gave me no choice.”

Kenna lifted one brow. “I’m not the police. You don’t have to defend yourself with me. You already know that.”

She expected the plain truth, no spin. Bruce had been a spy for decades, so telling the plain and simple truth was something they’d been working on.

Especially after he handed her over to their enemy a few months ago.

Sure, if she’d have been apprised as to what he was doing, she would probably have agreed with his plan. But he hadn’t run it by her.

Her ragtag band of employees were the friends she seemed to have gathered over the last few months and, in some cases, years. People who’d stuck around long enough to call themselves coworkers but acted more like family. They were who they were. She didn’t want to change that.

What she wanted was to be a positive influence in their lives.

After all, she’d surrendered her life to the Lord, and now that she was living out the day-to-day of being a Christian, she supposed that meant being evidence for them of what God could do in a person.

It was up to them, not Kenna, whether her story convinced them it was worth taking the same step in their own lives.

She looked around. “What happened, Bruce?”

Instead of answering, he held the door for her, and they stepped inside.

The first thing he did was look at two kids sitting in the waiting area, both of them pale and clearly terrified.

A little girl, maybe six or seven, held her arm tight to her front.

Her brother, around twelve years old, sat close to her side.

Both were slender, their clothes from a thrift store or older and worn because that was all they had.

“Bruce.” Kenna needed an explanation.

“They came in about fifteen minutes ago. The girl is obviously hurt.” He kept his voice low, but the kids knew they were talking about them. Both looked like they were gonna bolt. “When she came in, they both reacted. Freaked out like they’re scared out of their little kid minds.”

“How did you get from there to tossing that woman through the window?”

He had to have come here to watch out for Kenna, knowing she had an appointment.

Every few days, she spotted either him or Ramon somewhere in her periphery, though she hadn’t seen Ramon in a couple of weeks.

Both of them seemed to be working protection detail—keeping her safe.

But also maintaining their distance so she and Jax could be newlyweds enjoying their happily ever after.

She hadn’t asked her team to watch out for her. They’d simply taken it upon themselves to do that for her.

Bruce said, “She stomped over and demanded they get up. She would’ve taken them with her, so I intervened, and things escalated fast. She put her hands on the girl, and the kid screamed in pain.

I got her off the kid and over to the door.

Told her to go. She tried to punch me. I stopped her.

We tussled. Probably too close to the window because we went through it. ”

Speaking of…

Kenna looked out right as a black-and-white police squad car pulled into the parking lot for the strip mall. Two officers climbed out.

Kenna figured she’d probably end up being taken in for questioning. First, though, she wanted to find out the rest of what was going on. She wandered over to the kids, who were huddled beside each other on waiting area chairs.

She crouched in front of them, keeping her distance, just in case they didn’t want their space invaded. “Hi, I’m Kenna.”

They both stared at her. The boy, the older brother. The protector. He stared right back, as if challenging her before he even knew what she wanted. This kid lived his life on the offensive.

The little girl hadn’t quite learned that lesson, which was probably why she wound up being the punching bag.

The one who had been injured. She was the weak link.

She looked at her brother, then at Kenna, and said nothing.

Her gaze strayed to Bruce, over Kenna’s shoulder, with a little bit of awe in her expression.

“That’s my friend. His name is Bruce.” She kept her tone and her expression soft, as if she was sharing a secret. “He used to be a spy . Now he keeps people safe. Me, or anyone who needs it.”

The boy’s gaze whipped over to Bruce, a little disbelief in his expression.

“That’s what I do as well. I help people when they need it.”

“We don’t need help,” the boy said, no faltering in his tone.

“Everyone needs help sometimes. Even Bruce.”

Behind her, he said, “It’s true, kid. We all need help sometimes.”

“Like when we get hurt.” She motioned to the girl, careful to keep it easy and not accusatory. “Or when we’re here to see the doctor, like me.” She looked at the little girl. “Did you get hurt?”

The little girl nodded.

Kenna smiled. “You came to the right place.” She included her brother in that because he’d done the right thing by getting help for his sister. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

The little girl’s eyes filled with tears. “I burned the mac and cheese.”

Her brother stiffened.

“That sounds like an easy thing to do. You made a mistake. I was making cookies the other day, and I forgot all about them,” Kenna said. “They looked like lumps of charcoal, all black and burned. The house smelled like a campfire all day.”

The girl bit her lip.

The door opened, and Kenna glanced over to see the cops come in.

When she looked back at the kids, they were at that ready-to-bolt point again.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” she repeated.

“And you came to the right place.” She tipped her head to the side.

“You don’t need to be afraid of the police. ”