Hard As You Can

Chapter 6

Shane planted himself in the shadows across the parking lot from Crystal’s apartment. Would she leave? Would someone arrive? He couldn’t pull himself away for the night without seeing if there would be any discernible repercussions of his visit.

A half hour passed, and everything remained quiet. From the outside at least. Then, one by one, the lights inside the apartment went out and the windows went dark. It was after 1:30 a.m., after all. The lateness and the darkness and the quiet were all perfect for the last thing Shane needed to do before he left.

He crossed the lot and the scrubby grass in front of Crystal’s building, then circled the building to the rear. Bingo. The electrical, phone, and cable wiring congregated down the back of the brickwork at one corner. Shane retrieved the receiver-transmitters and Swiss Army knife tool set from the side pocket on his thigh and made quick work of wiring up the units so Marz could collect the feed from the devices he’d planted.

At the middle window above him, a dull glow just hinted at light behind the curtains, and Shane could almost picture the small lamp on Jenna’s nightstand. Had Crystal gone back in to check on her? Or did Jenna need help again?

The latter question flooded a restlessness through him he really had no business feeling. Didn’t mean he could make it go away, though.

Best solution was to bug out.

Shane ghosted through the night-darkened backyards to the side street on which he’d left his truck. For shits and giggles, he drove a circuit through the apartment complex and around the immediate neighborhood surrounding Crystal’s place. Not that he ever expected to need the intel he gathered, but in his world there truly was no such thing as too much information.

He spent the ride home analyzing all his interactions with Crystal Roberts. The lie about the surname had him wondering about the first name, too. She did work in a strip club, after all. Didn’t most of the dancers take stage names? Though she wasn’t a dancer, at least not that he’d seen so far.

An image of Crystal onstage, dressed more scantily than ever before, crawled unbidden into Shane’s brain. Moving that lithe body to the music. Gyrating around a pole. Removing clothing piece by tantalizing piece. While every man in the audience eye-fucked her—

“Sonofabitch,” Shane bit out in the quiet of the cab. He shook his head and forced the image out. Focus, McCallan. He had no right to have an opinion about what she did or didn’t do anyway. So what did it matter to him?

Buuullshit, a little voice said inside his head.

“Fantastic,” he muttered. Because his subconscious was clearly aware of something he was working his ass off to ignore—that a nascent sense of investment, of responsibility was taking root where Crystal and her sister were concerned. Mission or no.

Twenty-five minutes later, Shane reached the driveway along the side of Hard Ink. Pressing the button on the black rectangular clicker he’d received just this afternoon caused the chain-link gate blocking the drive to swing inward, clearing his entrance to the parking lot beyond. His tires crunched over the gravel, and the truck’s movement set off the new motion-sensor lights. Had they really just installed all of that this morning? Seemed like days ago. Or maybe that was just his exhaustion speaking.

Because Shane couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up in the morning feeling fully rested.

As he crossed the lot to the back door, he blew a kiss and flicked the bird to the closest security camera. He could imagine Marz’s laughter—as well as the few choice words he was probably saying in reply.

Shane keyed himself in, passed the locked door to the long-closed tattoo shop, and jogged up the cement steps to the second-floor landing. He went straight to the gym, wondering who might be up that he could debrief at this hour.

Marz and Nick sat around Marz’s desk in the far corner. Both men’s gazes cut toward him as he stepped into the room.

“Hey,” Shane said, crossing the wide space.

“Wassup, my brother? Besides your middle finger? Where’s the love?” Marz said, reclining in his chair. He was the picture of ease, with his hands laced behind his head and his feet propped on the desk, the prosthesis his cargo shorts exposed crossed over his ankle.

“Blew ya a kiss, too,” Shane said, grinning.

“You know I can’t handle these mixed signals.” Marz winked.

“How’d it go?” Nick said, rising from where he’d been propped against the desk’s edge. “Make any headway with the waitress?”

She’s not just a waitress. Shane forced himself to dial back the irritation Nick’s label had unleashed. Crystal was a waitress. It was just that, in the few hours he’d spent with her, he’d also learned she was so much more. A survivor. A sister. A caregiver. A fighter. And Shane suspected he’d only scratched the surface.

But if he spilled any of this personal reaction toward her instead of speaking about her like the operational asset she was, Nick’s radar would sound off all over the place. “A little. Not as much as I hoped, but I laid some good groundwork. And, I managed to get us some ears inside her place, too. Whatever good that may do.”

Nick’s gaze narrowed. “How’d you end up at her place?”

Shane recounted the entirety of his night, from bugging Confessions and his confrontation there with Crystal, to following her to her apartment, helping her sister, and finally questioning her after bugging her apartment. He conveniently left out the dance. And the feel of her body in his arms. And how hard she’d made him no matter how much he’d tried to rein himself in.

Marz immediately got to work on the computer, connecting to the transmitters and testing the feeds.

Shane held up a hand and started counting off on his fingers. “Here’s what I nailed down for sure. Church is involved in human trafficking. Some part of it takes place in or via Confessions. And there is a delivery taking place Wednesday night. I think I need to sit on my hands for twelve to eighteen hours and see if Crystal reaches out. In the meantime, we get some ears on those transmissions and see if she has any conversations that might be useful. If not, I’ll need to go back in and push a little harder.”

Nick nodded. “Was she as skittish as at the club?”

“Every bit. Even in her apartment. She was pretty clearly afraid I’d be found there. No doubt by whatever scumbag took a hand to her and marked her face.” Not wanting the others to see how much Crystal’s abuse affected him, Shane scrubbed his hands over his face and tugged his fingers through his hair, still stiff with the gel.

Marz froze, his gaze cutting up to Shane, while Nick’s expression slid into a scowl. “Shit. Someone beat her?” Nick asked.

Shane dropped his hands and felt a big bucket of pissed off park itself on his chest. “Yeah. Because of what we did.”

“She said that?” Nick asked, his tone subdued, like he didn’t want to rile Shane any more than he already was. Which meant Shane was doing a stellar job hiding how angry he was over this. Fantastic.

“She didn’t have to,” Shane said, needing to put an end to this topic. “Anyway, the degree of her fear and the fact that someone had no qualms marking her in a visible way both seem to point to some kind of association with a higher-up in the Church organization. And, if I’m right that this same someone outfitted her otherwise no-frills apartment with several thousand dollars in high-end media components, he’s either a boyfriend or a sugar daddy or something. Least that’s what my gut is telling me.” Though, when they’d danced, Crystal sure hadn’t responded to him like her heart had been claimed by another man. Because, damn, she’d been every bit as affected by their dance as he had. He’d put money on it.

“Sounds right,” Nick said. “Seems like the sister could be an in with Crystal, too. If the girl needs medical care she’s not getting, you could no doubt white knight it and earn some favor.”

Shane frowned. “If Jenna’s not getting treatment or medicine, she’s in some serious trouble. She had a full-blown grand mal seizure. Doubtful Crystal’s pulling in health benefits as a waitress, so unless someone’s picking up the tab, I have no idea how she’d cobble together money for the meds. They’ve gotta be damn expensive.”

The clacking under Marz’s fingers stopped. “Hold up a minute. If someone is covering the sister’s doctors’ bills and meds, that’d certainly give that person a strong hold on Crystal, and it would incentivize her loyalties toward them and away from us. If any of that’s true, you sure we aren’t barking up the wrong tree? ’Cause we don’t have time to spare.”

Marz had a point, so Shane bit back the knee-jerk irritation that threatened at the suggestion that Crystal wasn’t reliable. Because his gut told him she was even if she needed a little time. Years of finding, managing, and working with informants gave him a sixth sense about these things that he’d learned to trust. “What you’re saying all follows, except we don’t know if any of it’s true. Until we do, Crystal’s our best option. And it’s worth saying that she was more than a little interested in my medical training. Like maybe she saw an alternative in me. But I could only push so far without scaring her off. I’ll figure out what’s going on. Don’t doubt it.”

“I don’t,” Nick said. “But we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. Tomorrow night, B-Team should visit Confessions and see what else they can learn and who else they might be able to tap for intel.” B-Team was one of the three-man teams they’d created to run the operation that led to Charlie’s rescue. They’d had two possible locations to investigate—Shane, Nick, and Easy on A-Team focused on Confessions, where Charlie had in fact been held, and B-Team’s Beckett, Marz, and Miguel infiltrated one of Church’s front businesses, a storage facility across town.

Out of nowhere, Charlie’s recollections about his time in the storage facility slammed into Shane’s brain. He braced his hands on the desk as the pieces turned in his brain . . . and finally clicked together. “Well, goddamn,” Shane said.

“What?” Marz and Nick said at the same time.

“Church’s storage facility. When we interrogated that thug on the boat the other day,” Shane said, referring to the man whose attempts to kidnap Becca had landed him on the wrong end of Nick’s favorite knife, “the guy said Charlie had been at the storage facility, and Charlie said he’d heard women locked up inside there with him. Jesus. Could a storage facility be any better of a place through which to traffic women? I bet there are box trucks in and out of there all the time, maybe even container storage. What if there are records at that facility that would give us more intel relevant to Wednesday’s meeting? What the cargo is, who the cargo’s intended for, maybe even where it’s being delivered.”

“Well done,” Marz said, his fingers flying over the keyboard again. “Maybe I can get us into their server. If not, we’ll need boots on the ground. Shane could be right, though. There’s a reason they were so trigger-happy there.” And Marz would know, seeing as how three of the Churchmen’s bullets had turned the guy’s pants into Swiss cheese.

“All right. This is good. We’ll brief everyone in the morning and put together a plan. In the meantime, you two should get some shut-eye,” Nick said. “We all look like the walking dead.”

Marz chuffed out a weak laugh as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Roger that,” he said, pushing out of his chair. “I’ll start fresh on all this on the flip side.”

“You guys make any progress here?” Shane asked. Marz’s computer research was at the center of a number of mysteries they were trying to solve.

Marz blew out a long breath and tugged his longish hair behind his head. “I spent all night burying our IP address so deep you’d have to go to China to find it. Now I’ve got some spiders crawling the web for all possible meanings of ‘WCE,’” he said, referring to the depositor’s initials Charlie had found in his father’s twelve-million-dollar bank account.

Shane pressed his lips into a tight line. Twelve million dollars. Apparently the going rate for selling out the men and the values you were supposed to defend. Fucking Merritt. Shane counted his failure to see his commander’s true character as the second biggest mistake of his life.

After Molly.

Sighing, Marz continued. “Also been trying to unravel the mystery of Becca’s bracelet without much luck yet.” When they’d rescued Charlie the night before, the guy had only needed one good look at a bracelet their father had sent back from Afghanistan to see that the design actually embodied binary codes that translated to six-digit numbers. What those numbers meant, though, nobody knew. Marz pointed to a cardboard box sitting on the far end of his desk. “And I sorted through all the papers Becca had from her father, but nothing seemed to connect to the numbers.” The frustration in Derek’s voice was unusual, but understandable. They were looking for a needle in a Himalaya-sized haystack.

“You’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it,” Shane said. If anybody could, it was Derek DiMarzio.

“Appreciate the vote of confidence, but I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Charlie might be able to help, though. After all, I’d missed the bracelet, and he’d only needed one look to realize its significance.” Shane suspected Marz might be right since Charlie seemed to have been cut from the same scary-brilliant cloth. Marz shrugged. “Anyway, the transmitters are all up and running, so anyone wanting to listen in or review the recordings can.”

“Thanks, man,” Shane said, clasping hands and bumping shoulders with the guy.

“No problemo.” Marz repeated the action with Nick, then headed toward the door, his nearly even gait almost hiding the fact that, a year ago, Shane had held the man’s femoral artery between his fingers when a grenade had blown off everything below his right knee.

When Shane looked at the guy, he saw many things—a survivor, a friend, a brilliant mind. But he also saw one of the few unequivocal things he’d done right in his life. It wouldn’t make up for failing Molly or his team. Nothing could make up for that. But it sure explained why Shane always felt that just a little of the weight on his shoulders lifted when Marz was around.

Because it was surprising just how much a lifetime of guilt weighed when saddled around a man’s shoulders.

What a fucking track record Shane had. No run-of-the-mill screwups for him. No. His mistakes were of the epically catastrophic kind. Every damn time.

Which was why, with every passing minute, Shane’s instincts lit up all over the place when it came to Crystal. Saving her just might represent a chance to earn a little redemption. He felt the truth of that into his very marrow. Any other outcome was unthinkable. Intolerable. Liable to take him to his knees once and for all.

Shane forced himself from his thoughts and turned to Nick. “How come you’re over here with us ugly mugs instead of holing up with a certain blond-haired cutie?”

A hint of humor flashed across Nick’s face. “We were holed up until Charlie started feeling bad. He said he was okay, but Becca wanted to sit up with him for a while.”

“Gotta respect that.”

“Yeah. I can only imagine how I’d feel if it were Katherine lying in that room right now, having gone through what Charlie did.”

Nick didn’t mean anything by mentioning his younger sister. Shane knew he didn’t. But it still totally sucker punched him. Because having failed to be there for Molly when it mattered most, he’d never get the chance again.

“Aw, goddamn, man, I didn’t mean—”

“Ain’t a thing,” Shane said, shaking his head. “Just know if I can help with Charlie, you can count on me.” Suddenly, Shane realized the gruffness in his words made them sound a bit like an accusation given their recent history.

Sure enough, Nick’s expression told him he’d heard the same thing. Damn, would they never recover that old, comfortable easiness that once came so naturally? “Thanks. I hope you know the reverse is true, too. Always has been.”

“I know you have my back.” Which wasn’t exactly the same thing as being able to count on someone, was it? When the shit was flying, sure. Shane had no doubt that Nick Rixey would have his six. But day to day, when the crisis was past, and it was just the regular slog of life, when they no longer had this catastrofuck of a situation to drown out the physical and mental pain this past year had inflicted? Yeah, he wasn’t so sure about that.

Time would tell, he supposed.

A weighty pause filled the space between them. Nick crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to the floor. “But . . . ?”

Shane shook his head. “I don’t need to say it, Nick. You know as well as I do what went down between us.”

Rixey gave a tight nod. “I do. Question is, you gonna let me build a bridge or not?”

If only it were that simple. Shane didn’t want to hold this grudge. Feeling hurt and betrayed took energy and headspace he didn’t have to spare. But some emotions couldn’t be willed away. No matter how hard you tried. He had a lifetime of experience to prove it.

“Come on,” Nick said, walking away.

“What?”

“Just come on.”

Sighing, Shane forced himself to move, no idea what Nick wanted and very little patience left to find out. Halfway across the room, he yawned so big his eyes watered, and his jaw cracked—

Something knocked him in the gut. “What the hell?” he said, his arms rising up to block the attack and finding . . . a pair of black boxing gloves resting in his grip. He glared at Nick. “Aw, hell no.” He tossed them to the floor, his patience just about worn clean through.

“Pick them up,” Nick said, tugging on a thick black glove.

“No.” Shane stepped toward the door.

Nick moved in front of him, blocking his way. “Pick. Them. Up.”

“I’m not fighting you.” Shane nailed the slightly taller man with a glare. Throwing fists wasn’t going to fix what was broken between them, and Shane wasn’t a vindictive asshole. At least, not usually.

Jabbing both gloved hands against Shane’s shoulders, Nick’s light green eyes narrowed. “Put the goddamn gloves on, McCallan.”

The shove made Shane’s GSW sting like a mofo and tripped a wire in his brain, unleashing all kinds of things he’d been trying to hold tight. Anger. Regret. Hurt. Guilt. He shoved right back. “Screw you, Rix.”

“That’s the spirit. Now do as you’re told and glove up.” He knocked his gloves together and arched a brow.

Do as I’m told? “Fuck that noise. We aren’t working for Uncle Sam. And you sure as hell aren’t my superior anymore. What’s your fucking problem, anyway?”

Pressing his lips together, Nick shook his head. “I’m not the one with the problem.”

Shane scoffed. “Oh? Is that right? Then why’d you shut me the hell out the past year?”

“And now we’re getting somewhere.” Nick walked past him, and Shane flinched back, his adrenal gland doing its job and flooding plenty of fight instinct through his body. He was wound as tight as barbed wire. Nick scooped the gloves from the ground, turned, and chucked them at him again. Hard.

This time, Shane caught them before they made impact.

“Look, I know a firearm is your first weapon of choice. But as I don’t need any more holes in my head, and I’d like to stay on this side of the great white beyond, you’re going to have to make do with the gloves. You need this, Shane. We need this. So could you just put the fucking gloves on already and stop being a pain in the ass?”

“Right. I’m the pain in the ass,” he muttered, his hands making quick work of lacing up without really telling them to do it. Nick was right, though. Shane did need this. For a whole lotta reasons. But the other man was a few rounds shy of a full clip if he thought throwing a coupla punches would clear the debris field between them.

The minute the second glove was secured, Nick was right in his face. “No holds barred.” He slammed his gloves on top of Shane’s, and Shane hammered right back.

And then it was on.

Shane threw the first punches, catching Nick in the jaw and the ribs, and blocked the uppercut aimed at his gut. Facing off again, Shane jabbed with his right, forcing Nick to cover himself in a way that exposed his left side—and the lingering injuries from his gunshot wounds that still gave him back problems. Shane jammed his knee into Nick’s side. The deep groan that erupted from his opponent’s throat tempted Shane’s guilt, but then he wasn’t the one who insisted on this, was he? And now that Nick had invited Shane’s lizard brain out to play, it liked their little game here too much to back down.

Nick recovered quickly and came at him with a back kick that had broken ribs written all over it. Shane managed to rear back at the last possible second, but the action threw him off-balance, allowing Nick to take his feet out from under him. Shane slammed to the ground, his breath whooshing out and pain radiating up and down his spine. But even before gravity had all its fun, Shane was forcing his ass to move. He rolled and sprang to his feet, ignoring the dizziness that threatened.

And it was a good goddamned thing he’d found his feet again.

Because Nick was now full-on pissed off. He came at Shane like a freight train, swinging, kneeing, kicking. Nick’s fury fueled his own, and Shane gave every bit as good as he got. Body impacts, grunts, and the scuffs of shoes on concrete echoed around the cavernous space. Man, but Shane was going to be feeling this little dance for days.

They circled, attacked, and retreated over and over, neither man holding the advantage for long. Nick clipped him in the mouth, and Shane felt the skin split and the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. So evenly matched, their fight turned into a war of attrition that threatened to go on and on. Exhaustion making his arms heavy and his responses slower, Shane used the memory of the train of unanswered calls and emails, each one leaving him feeling more alone and isolated, and found the will to keep going, keep fighting, keep exorcising the demons in his head that never let up for five fucking seconds.

It was just . . . all . . . too . . . goddamned . . . much. Wham. His fist connected with Nick’s cheekbone like a sledgehammer. Nick’s head whipped to the side, and his whole body spun as if in slow motion.

Nick caught himself just before he face-planted, though he stumbled until he crashed into the bench press.

For a long moment, Nick braced his gloves against the leather-covered bench and seemed to gather himself. He rose and faced Shane, and it was clear from the stiffness and slowness of his movement that he was hurting.

Shane didn’t take a lick of pleasure from that fact.

Just the opposite.

The sight of his best friend bloodied and injured at his own hands drained the fight from him. Becca was going to have both their asses in a sling when she saw that the nearly healed cut on Nick’s cheekbone was open again. The initial wound wasn’t Shane’s doing—that had been between Nick and Beckett.

“Goddamnit,” Shane rasped, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his forearm. His mouth took over where his fists left off. “I needed you, Nick. I fucking needed you, and you weren’t there.”

Nick’s head dropped heavily on his shoulders. For a long moment, labored breaths aside, he was still. Then his gaze cut up, and Nick nodded. “I know. I . . . know.”

Shane waited, expecting more. Expecting . . . something. Anything. That Nick had needed him, too. That Nick was sorry. That he understood just how deep his silence had cut. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“What else is there to say?” Nick pulled off his gloves.

And there it was. Same story, different day. Guy still didn’t get it, did he? Shane tugged off his gloves, returned them to a shelf against the wall, and shook his head. “Not a damn thing, I guess.”

Shane reached for the door handle.

“Jesus. What do you want me to say?” The agonized whisper had Shane turning back to his friend. “Do you want me to say I was so fucked in the head I became depressed? Do you want me to say I should’ve figured out what Merritt was doing? Because I know that shit is true. And that, since I didn’t see the forest for the trees, I was so guilt-ridden I couldn’t face you guys? That I thought you’d all blame me for ruining your lives and killing our friends?” Nick’s eyes were bleak with anguish.

Shane’s gut went tight as a hollowness settled into his chest. “Nick—”

“Or maybe you want me to say it was easier to ignore you than face the possibility that I’d lost you, too? Because you had to hate me as much as I hated myself, right? Or, how ’bout that the pain of the surgeries and the PT was so intense I got hooked on painkillers for about three months until Jeremy realized what’d happened, flushed them down the toilet, and called my doctor behind my back?” Nick scrubbed his hands over his face, smearing the blood on his cheek, and clawed his fingers through his dark, sweaty hair.

Christ. How the hell had the guy carried all this around for the past year without caving under the weight of it? Just went to show that you never really knew the size of the load another person carried. Except—Shane should’ve known. He was supposed to be Nick’s best friend in the world. His brother.

Damnit. Shane should’ve forced the question.

As Nick stood there pouring his soul in a bloody mess onto the floor between them, it occurred to Shane for maybe the first time ever that he’d failed Nick as much as he’d always thought Nick failed him. If he’d only pushed through his own hurt and anger, maybe he would’ve realized that under normal circumstances, the Nick Rixey he knew would never shut him out. But things hadn’t been normal, had they? Not by a long shot.

Sonofabitch.

Shane released a long breath, then crossed the space that separated them and lowered himself heavily onto the bench. “Sitcha ass down before you fall down.”

Nick sat and dropped his gloves.

Bracing his elbows on his knees, Shane watched a bead of sweat drop to the concrete. “I wish I’d known.” From his peripheral vision, he saw Nick nod.

“I know. I wish I’d been strong enough to tell you.”

Shane’s thoughts were in a whirl. Which made sense since the earth was shifting a bit underneath his feet, at least where his beliefs about Nick were concerned.

Knock, knock, sounded against the door that led to the hall. A moment later, it eased open, and Becca stuck her head through the breach. Did she hear . . .

Yup.

Her expression was a study in worry and concern. How much she’d overheard, he didn’t know. But it was something, for sure.

“Um. Everything okay?” she asked, clearly knowing the answer to the question. She stepped the rest of the way in and let the door fall closed behind her.

Nick’s glance slid from her to Shane. The man’s eyes repeated the question. Are we okay?

Shane didn’t want an audience to say the things he needed to say, and the words weren’t there just yet anyway. So he said, simply, “Yeah, man. We are.” It wasn’t enough, but it was a start.

Nick rose. Shane wondered if Becca would catch that he’d braced himself on the weight bar to make it to his feet. Her expression darkened the closer Nick got. So, yeah, she’d noticed.

“Sorry, Becca,” Shane said, rising to his feet. “Won’t happen again.”

Nick shook his head and caught her hands in his. “Be mad at me, not him. I started it. A guy thing.”

She rolled her eyes but cupped his face in her hand as she looked him over. “Well, let’s be done with the guy things, okay? We have enough enemies out there without fighting each other.”

“Roger that,” Shane said, regret making him weary.

“Okay, sunshine,” Nick said, his voice sounding as exhausted as Shane felt. Nick followed her out the door but threw a look over his shoulder before he stepped into the hall. “You coming?”

“Uh.” Shane tugged his fingers through his hair. “In a few. I think I’ll just”—he shrugged—“listen in on the feeds from Crystal’s and Confessions for a little while. Or something.”

Nick gave a tight nod, and the door closed behind them, leaving Shane alone in the cavernous quiet of the unfinished warehouse. He licked at the crust of blood on his lip as aches screamed from every joint in his body.

But, goddamn, the silence around him only amplified the roar in his head. Because the space between his ears was loud with the sound of all the words he couldn’t take back, of all the things he should’ve said but hadn’t, of all the things he wished he could say, but couldn’t.

Like apologizing to Nick.

Like . . .

Like telling Molly, yes, she could play with him and his friends.

Like telling her he was sorry he’d sent her away.

Like having the chance to say good-bye.

Jamming his hands in his pockets, his fingers found the chain of Molly’s butterfly necklace. God, what he wouldn’t give for five more minutes with his kid sister. Just five. Did she know how sorry he was? How much he loved her? That he’d devoted his life to making things right for others as a penance for getting so much wrong with her?

He stood there. Absolutely lost and completely alone. It was the stinging in his eyes that finally caught his attention, made him realize he’d been staring off into space. He wiped the burn away. Just a little sweat in his eyes. Damnit.

He hadn’t kept Molly safe, but maybe he could do that for Crystal and Jenna. And maybe Crystal could lead him to information that would help him clear his name, his teammates’ names, and the names of his six brothers who’d died. Because they were his family, too. That was a shit-ton of maybes, but Shane didn’t have a choice. A lifetime of guilt and a soul-deep sense of duty meant, at the very least, he had to try.