Maya Banks - Shades of Gray

She wiped at her brow, holding her palm over her forehead. It was then she realized she still had an IV attached to her arm and the bag was hanging above the couch on a hat rack.

She started to pry the tape away from her arm so she could remove the IV when her nape prickled.

“What the fuck, P.J.?”

She looked up to see Cole suddenly looming over her, a dark scowl on his face. Where had he come from? Her mouth went dry and her hand fell away from the tape. Cole immediately dropped down to one knee and refastened the tape over the port site.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

P.J. sighed wearily. The last thing she wanted was a confrontation.

“P.J., look at me.”

She forced her gaze upward in response to his fierce command.

“Where the hell have you been all this time?”

She could tell he was visibly trying to keep his temper in check. If she weren’t hurt, he’d probably be letting her have it with both barrels, and that pissed her off because she just wanted things to be normal and they never would be again.

“Hunting Brumley and his minions,” she said bluntly.

“Yeah, I saw your handiwork on the two guys who were with Brumley that night.”

She refused to let shame crawl into her soul. Nor would she try to determine if there was condemnation in his tone.

“Look, Cole, I quit the team. You shouldn’t be here. None of you. I walked away.”

She saw Renshaw stir and she quickly glanced in Dolphin’s direction to see that he was already awake. He was sitting quietly, his mouth drawn into a pinch, his focus on the conversation between her and Cole.

“I have a mission to complete,” she said. “And I can’t accomplish it by sitting on my ass while I’m being babied by my former teammates.”

Cole’s lips curled and fire blazed in his eyes. “Former, my ass. Over my dead body will you go off on your own. You’re lucky you weren’t killed or that they didn’t get their hands on you again.”

Forgetting the others, she pushed herself forward on the edge of the couch and farther into Cole’s space, bristling with as much anger as she saw in his own expression.

“This isn’t a righteous mission, Cole. It’s personal.”

“Do you think it isn’t goddamn personal for me too?” he all but roared at her.

“I can’t involve you—any of you—in my mission,” she yelled back. “It’s not who KGI is. Never has been. I won’t drag this organization through the mud. This is bloody. It’s revenge, Cole.”

“I damn well know it,” he snarled. “And I want in. We all want in. If you think we’re just going to leave you hanging in the wind, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

She covered her face with her hands and propped her elbows on her knees. She was exhausted and heartsick. This wasn’t what she wanted to happen.

Firm hands gripped her wrists and carefully pried her hands from her face. This time when she glanced back up at Cole, she could see Donovan and Steele in the background. Baker was standing behind Renshaw’s chair. All eyes were on her. Their expressions were grim and . . . determined.

“We—I—don’t give a fuck if the mission is righteous or whether the motivation behind us taking Brumley out is revenge or to prevent more women and children from being brutalized. We stand with you, P.J. We’re family. You aren’t doing this alone so get over it.”

“I’m going after Brumley,” she said. “He’s doing a deal in Jakarta in three weeks and I’m going to be there. I’m taking him out.”

“Not without us,” Cole bit out. “It’s time for you to suck it up and learn to lean on someone.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Steele interjected.

Surprised, she lifted her gaze to her team leader and then glanced at Donovan. It was one thing for her team to pledge such a thing, but Donovan represented the organization. Surely he couldn’t be in agreement with the others.

Donovan crossed his arms over his chest and stared challengingly back at her.

“If you think I’m going to toe the company line and lecture everyone on vigilante justice, you’ve got the wrong guy. That’s Sam’s job. I’m of the mind that taking Brumley out—however we take him out—will mean one less asshole in the world.”

“Hooyah,” Dolphin said emphatically. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, and P.J.?”

She looked up at Steele when he said her name.

“You can take your resignation and stick it up your ass.”

Baker and Renshaw chuckled. Dolphin grinned and snickered and Donovan nodded his agreement.

“Looks like you’re stuck with us,” Cole said with clear satisfaction.

She blew out her breath, shaking her head the entire time. It had to be the medication that had her tripping like this.

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“How about yes sir, when I tell you that you’re going to take it easy and recover as much as possible over the next three weeks,” Cole said.

Her brow wrinkled in disgust even as her chest tightened with unexpected emotion. God, it felt good to be back with her team. All the ribbing. The smart-ass remarks. Cutting jokes and insults left and right.

“For God’s sake, don’t cry,” Cole said in disgust.

The others laughed and P.J. smiled through the pain, her eyes stinging with those unshed tears.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“Now you’re just pissing me off,” Steele said. “You don’t thank us for doing our job. We live as a team and we die as a team, and you thinking you walked away is bullshit. You don’t take a piss without my say-so, you got that, Rutherford?”

She smiled, and it felt like the first time she’d truly smiled in a lifetime. God it felt good to be surrounded by the people she considered family. She’d never been as alone as she had in the last months when she didn’t have her team around her.

Her team.

“Yes sir,” she said briskly.

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.