Cole

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HE WAS NERVOUS ABOUT the upcoming confrontation he was going to have with Courtney, and he knew this was his last shot. It was all or nothing, and he had to give it all to her, cards on the table.

Nervous is an understatement.

He was shit-scared in a way he hadn't been when he was eating sand in the fucking desert, dodging sniper bullets. It was a bone-deep fear that could mean the end of every dream he had ever had.

When his phone rang, he pulled it out of his pocket and thought for a split second about ignoring his big brother’s call, but his gut told him not to.

"Yeah?"

"Cole? Big dude with a jacked-up face was waiting for Court by her truck and did a snatch and grab and shoved her into a van. Looks like he had a partner, but I couldn't make out any details. I'm en-route now, but you need to get out here, bro. This looks like some serious shit just leaked back home. Again."

"Fuck!" Cole yelled as he turned and ran toward Courtney's truck, listening to the directions that Clint yelled back at him. Then he yelled it again when he heard his brother firing on the vehicle. "Fuck! Clint, Courtney is in there. Quit shooting at her, man!"

It was too late, though, because as soon as he caught sight of the clutch she had dropped in her struggle and stepped over it to climb into the cab of her truck, the sound of return fire pinging off of his brother’s vehicle was clear, followed by the crunching and crashing sounds of his brother losing control of his vehicle.

That was when Cole threw the truck into gear and hauled ass.

He came upon the wreckage of the SUV in moments and waged an internal battle as he thought of Courtney getting further and further from his reach, but the SUV was smoking in a way that he knew it wouldn't be long before it went up in flames. And by the looks of it, his brother hadn't escaped the overturned vehicle. He knew that there was no way he could let his brother die, especially after he risked his life to go after Courtney in the first place. It was hard to swallow, and he was sick to the pit of his stomach as he tagged his phone after throwing the truck into park and dialed Devon's number while he ran.

Quickly, he ran through everything he knew, and when Devon started to lose his mind, rightly so since his little sister had been abducted, Cole hung up and dialed emergency, giving the operator their location and disconnecting the call against her protestations, his sole focus now on getting his brother out of this ticking time bomb before it went sky high.

Clint hung unconscious in the driver's seat, dangling from his seat belt and oblivious to the ominous creaking and thick smoke that cloaked them both. Cole tried to wake his brother several times, to no avail. And finally, with the heat growing more and more intense, Cole had no choice but to pull his pocket knife from his pocket to cut the belt to free his brother and pray that he wasn't causing more damage while saving his life. As soon as the belt was free, Clint collapsed like a rag doll, no control over his body, so he crumpled awkwardly into the window and over the steering wheel. Cole quickly wrapped both of his hands under Clint’s arm pits and pulled with everything he had.

Time froze in that moment.

This was his big brother. The one he had admired his whole life, the one he had emulated his whole life. Clint graduated and went into the service, and it was understood that Cole would, too. Clint left the military and went with a PMC, and no one batted an eye when Cole did the same.

Cole had lived through moments on the battlefield, where time had slowed and everything was crystal clear to him, and in this moment, as he struggled to pull his brother from the wreckage caused by him, trying to rescue the woman Cole loved, he knew then that he didn't deserve either of them. His brother, the hero, and his love, the woman he should have put above all else. He knew as he roughly breathed in the smoke and finally pulled Clint's limp body free from the vehicle that he could spend the rest of his life trying to make the past up to the most important people to him, and it would never be enough. He only prayed that he had the chance.

So enraptured in what he was doing, Cole hadn't even noticed the paramedics swarming him until they were yelling at him, so he released his brother to their hold and fell back on his rear, looking at the tragedy that he had inadvertently set into motion years before. He was still gasping for breath as the paramedics stabilized Clint on a small body board, and he realized that there was still someone yelling at him to move away.

Slowly, he got up, waved the other man away, and started to walk back to Courtney's truck. He raced as close to the ambulance as he could, flashers warning traffic to move out of the way, all the way to the ambulance.

By the time he parked the truck and ran in the hospital emergency room, they had already wheeled Clint away and Devon was pacing with his phone to his ear.

"Chief, I don't give a fuck what protocol is, and you can throw my ass in Leavenworth, Abu Ghraib, or the motherfucking North Pole as long as you get me some backup to find my fucking sister. Yeah. Ok, out."

Devon turned on his heel and stomped back toward Cole, running his hands through his hair in desperation. Before Cole could even think of something to say, Devon beat him to it. "Two things, La Barron. First, when we get my sister back, if you don't walk away from this life once and for all, then you walk away from her. She does not fucking deserve the shit that keeps landing on her door because of your extracurricular activities. And second, if she doesn't come out of this alive, Chief isn't going to have to worry about Uncle Sam throwing me any fucking where because I will kill you and put myself there, savvy?"

Cole didn't even ask why he thought it was about him. They both knew that with the life they led, relationships were a liability, and too many people had known about his feelings for Courtney for way too long. All he could do was look at the man he regarded as a brother and nod. If she didn't make it out of this, life wouldn't be worth living, regardless.

No words were said after that because Cole’s phone started ringing, and he picked it up to see an unfamiliar number before hurrying to answer it. What he heard made his blood run cold.