Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hayden pocketed her cell, buoyed by the news that Drake was on his way back. The team needed every one of its members if they were to put down this latest threat. She spared a moment for Mai, hoping the Japanese agent was okay. If anyone could come out of that ordeal alive and enriched, it was, without doubt, Mai Kitano.

The room around her buzzed with activity. They had been authorized to request the local PD’s help. Within half an hour, they had a forensic expert and a fingerprint team scrutinizing the suite where Lauren Fox had spent the night on January 10.

With the techs swarming and searching every nook and cranny, it left Hayden and Kinimaka with little to do except watch. The hotel management had so far been of little use. It seemed the place was often used by passing celebrities, and the management respected their right to privacy. With supervisors stalling and decision makers unable to be reached, Hayden had taken the decision to examine the room instead. They might find a whole bunch of fingerprints, but the prints they found would surely be more revealing than a guest name of Joey Tribbiani.

Even now, the manager was still grumbling about a warrant. Hayden had left Mano to deal with him, citing national security issues, which was awfully close to the truth.

Now Kinimaka watched the bustle passing them by. “These guys rock, don’t they? Reminds me of my days in the Honolulu PD.”

“Those days,” Hayden said, referring to her own in the PD as well, “at the time they seemed so hard. So manic and rough around the edges. Now—” She clicked her tongue. “Feels like they were a cakewalk.”

“Good days. Good friends.” Kinimaka stole a glance at her. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Oh, I’ve changed, Mano. I used to do everything for my dad.” She held a forefinger and thumb an inch apart. “Every. Little. Thing. Now, I do them for myself.”

She took hold of his hand and led him into the bathroom. She closed the door and locked it. She stared hard into his eyes.

“You got something to say to me?”

Karin Blake stared at her brother as if he’d suddenly sprouted wings.

“You’re what?”

“You heard me, sis. The call of the wild and all that.”

Karin frowned in worry. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Says you.” Ben threw back the standard brotherly reply. “Mum and dad are chuffed.”

“Of course they are. You’re talking about moving back home. Leaving a potentially dangerous job. You can’t run away from real life, Ben.”

“There’s no talking. I’m doing it. The band wants me. Mum and dad want me. Here—” He stared around the safe-house’s untidy kitchen. “Nobody needs me.”

Karin held back a face slap, but only just. “You broke up with your girlfriend. Big deal. That can happen back in England too, you know.”

Ben fiddled with a switch. “Kennedy died protecting me when she should’ve been helping herself. So did Colin Patterson. Do you even know who that is?”

“Of course. It’s the soldier you tried to help back at the third tomb.”

“There’s too much blood on my hands,” he said, checking his phone when it vibrated. “Taxi’s here. I’m off to the airport.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“Are you even allowed to do that?”

Ben turned away. Karin watched his back, stiff and resolute, an answer in itself. She watched him walk past Torsten Dahl and Komodo without so much as a glance. She watched him walk out the front door.

She heard the car pull away. Sadness filled her. Ben was a pain, but he was her brother and still one of the few people alive with whom she had shared the terrors of her past. It was a rare day when Rebecca Westing’s name or face didn’t nudge its way into Karin’s thoughts.

It did now. As Ben left for the airport, Karin found herself remembering that distant day when she had lost her faith in people, and life.

Kinimaka’s eyes grew huge. He stared at Hayden as if she were the Devil. After a second, she raised herself up on tiptoes and brushed her soft lips across his cheek.

“Next time,” she said, with a cheeky smile. “Be ready.”

Next time?

Mano watched as she turned and walked out the door, unable to take his eyes off her body. How did the saying go? Hate to see you go…love to watch you leave. That about covered his thoughts for the next sixty seconds. He had no doubts that he wanted to take her out. That wasn’t the issue. But Mano had been raised by his mother to respect authority, to adhere to the rules and the chain of command.

Was it ethical to ask his boss out? Hayden had been his boss for so long the dynamic was set in stone between them. How would that dynamic then transfer itself to a relationship?

It couldn’t hurt to find out, the hot-blooded side of him whispered.

Oh, but it could, the more conservative side shot back. It could ruin everything. He loved his job. He loved his boss — as a boss. He loved the new team, even Alicia. The hours he’d spent with her and Belmonte in that bar in Vienna opened up a whole new side of her. Alicia was a woman with no agenda, but with a past that was, literally, explosive. Mano had only heard a brief part of it, but his heart had instantly melted.

After a while, he realized he was alone in the bathroom, staring through the open door. The techs were staring at him. With a grunt, he strode back into the main room. Hayden stood by the big window, framed in sunlight, her long, blond hair on fire.

She turned at once, happy. “Drake and Myles will be landing tonight. 8 p.m.”

A tech guy stood up so fast he knocked a kitschy brass table over. The noise didn’t even reach him or make him stop turning a tablet computer around and around in his hands.

Hayden put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

The man stared at her and then thrust the tablet into her face. “Shaun Kingston,” he said. “Owner of Kingston Firearms. One of the biggest legit arms dealers in the country. If he’s in bed with the Koreans…”

Hayden stared at the picture. “Then we’re up shitstorm creek.”