Chapter 13

“Okay,” Hale said as he showed her how to get a grip on his wrist and shoulder in preparation for a jujitsu-style body throw. “Remember to get your hip into my groin before you twist or you won’t have the leverage to throw someone bigger than you without having to rely on your werewolf strength.”

Khaki moved slowly through the motions of the martial arts move the team’s resident black belt had been teaching them for the last hour. Xander and Trevor were in the office doing paperwork, but the rest of the squad was standing outside watching, already having taken their turn.

She eyed Hale skeptically. He easily had a good eight inches of height and about a hundred pounds of muscle on her. Nobody her size should be taking on a dude as big as he was without having access to werewolf muscles. “So, why can’t I rely on my werewolf strength again?”

“Because you might have to take down a suspect where other people can see it,” he told her. “It might not be fair, but if a man my size puts a big guy on the ground, it isn’t likely to raise any eyebrows. But if a woman your size does it, seemingly by pure muscle—”

“It’s going to attract unwanted attention,” she finished.

“Exactly.” He grinned. “So, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Khaki wrapped her hand around Hale’s thick wrist the best she could and started the twisting takedown move he’d shown her. But when she came to the part where she was supposed to yank him over her hip and take him to the ground, he stood there like a freaking tree trunk and gave her a shove that sent her sprawling instead of him. That earned her a few laughs from the guys. Not that they laughed very hard since all of them were dirty from getting their asses whooped too.

“You have to use your butt to shove me off balance before you try to throw me, or it’s never going to work,” Hale said. “Try it again.”

She climbed to her feet with a grumble and got back into position, but when she tried it again, she only ended up on her ass.

Hale offered a hand to help her up. “Let’s team you up with somebody else and see if it works better.” He glanced at the guys. “Becker, get over here.”

Becker was at her side in a flash, making her—and everyone else—laugh.

“Be gentle,” he said as she got a grip on his wrist and shoulder. “It’s my first time.”

“Somehow I have a hard time believing that.”

Laughing, she shoved him off balance with her hip and executed the flip move. Becker was only a couple pounds lighter than Hale, but he didn’t resist quite as much when she started to move. Maybe he was just better at being a practice dummy, or maybe he wasn’t as experienced as Hale, but regardless, Becker went over her hip and landed in the dirt with a thud.

She’d done it! She’d put down a guy who outweighed her by a hundred pounds without using her werewolf strength. She hadn’t done it as smoothly as Hale did, and she fell over Becker in the process, but hey, he was on the ground.

The guys applauded as she climbed to her feet and helped Becker up. She was about to ask him if he wanted to try again when she realized he was looking at her strangely. Then he leaned forward and sniffed her. What the hell?

“Why does your uniform smell like Xander?” he asked.

She froze as Max, Alex, and Hale moved closer, apparently wanting to confirm it.

Crap. She was screwed. She and Xander were so busy showering separately to make sure their scents didn’t linger on one another, they never even thought about it rubbing off on each other’s clothes.

“Becker’s right,” Max said. “It smells like you and Xander have been rolling around on the floor together.”

Actually they had, but neither of them had been wearing clothes at the time.

“It does?” Hale frowned as he leaned in to sniff her uniform top. “I can’t smell anything.”

“That’s because your nose sucks, dude,” Becker said, then looked at Khaki. “What, did you and Xander do your laundry together or something?”

Double crap. That was exactly what they’d done. She’d spent the night at his place and tossed her clothes in the washer with his without thinking about it.

The guys were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to answer. The problem was, she didn’t have a clue what to say.

She opened her mouth, not even sure what was going to come out, when Cooper spoke.

“You want to tell them, Khaki, or should I?”

Khaki’s heart stopped. Cooper knew. She didn’t know how, but he’d figured it out. And now, he was going to tell everyone.

“Um…”

She knew she should answer, but she wasn’t quite sure what to say. How did you just come out and admit you were sleeping with your squad leader?

She was still trying to decide if it would be best to just rip the bandage off all at once or drop the bombshell in small, bite-size pieces when Cooper decided she was taking too long.

“Khaki was practicing takedown moves with Xander this morning before you guys got here,” he said.

If she’d been at a loss about what to say before, she was absolutely speechless now. She hadn’t done anything that even looked like martial arts training with Xander this morning. Wrestling, maybe.

He met her gaze, his dark eyes unreadable. “You might as well admit it. You were trying to get in some advance practice so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself, right?”

Khaki had no idea why Cooper was covering for her and Xander, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Um, yeah.” She gave them a sheepish look. “I didn’t even know how to take a fall, so I asked Xander for some tips. I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot out here, at least any more of an idiot than I already do.”

She held her breath, sure no one was going to believe anything she’d said. But they all nodded, as if what she’d said made complete sense to them. Moments later, they were back in training mode, flipping and being flipped.

Khaki couldn’t help looking at Cooper out of the corner of her eye every few seconds.

What the hell had just happened?

* * *

It took her over an hour to find an excuse to get Xander by himself in a part of the compound where it was private enough to talk openly. But a run over to the small armory behind the maintenance and training building to pick up some new M4 magazines for the operations vehicle gave her a chance to tell him what had happened that morning.

“Are you sure he knows?” Xander asked.

His voice might have sounded calm as he dug through the cardboard box on the shelf and came out with four thirty-round magazines, but Khaki could hear his heart beating a mile a minute.

“No, but he was obviously lying about seeing the two of us practicing martial arts moves this morning,” she said.

Xander grabbed another handful of magazines. “If he knows what we’re doing, why the hell would he bother to come up with a lie to cover it up?”

Boots sounded on the concrete walkway outside, accompanied by a scent she knew all too well.

Cooper walked into the armory and closed the door. “I lied to cover your asses since you two are doing such a crappy job of it yourselves.”

Khaki’s first instinct was to deny everything, but it was too late for that. She glanced at Xander. His body was tense as if he expected a fight. He exchanged looks with her before turning back to Cooper.

“How long have you known?”

“That you two were attracted to each other?” Cooper asked drily. “Or that you were sleeping together?”

Xander’s eyes narrowed. “You knew something was going on between us before this morning?”

Cooper folded his arms across his chest. “Ever since your heart started beating like a crack addict running a marathon the second you set eyes on her that first day.”

Khaki did a double take. She looked at Xander. “That happened?”

Xander didn’t answer her. “There’s got to be more to it than that,” he said to Cooper.

Cooper leaned back against the counter separating the main room from the area with the gun safes and high-value cages. “First, there was your bizarre reaction to having Khaki on the squad. That wasn’t like you at all. Then there was the way you snapped at her every time she made a little mistake. And let’s not forget the way you shook your head any time you got too close to her, like you were trying to shake off her scent.”

“I didn’t do that,” Xander snapped.

Cooper lifted a brow. “Sure you didn’t. I could go on for an hour describing all the little stuff you two did to give yourselves away, but it didn’t really all come together for me until I saw the way you two interacted down in those tunnels the other day.”

“What do you mean?” Khaki asked.

Everything had changed that day, but she couldn’t see how he could have possibly picked up on that.

“The level of instinctive trust you two had in each other was obvious,” Cooper said. “I would have to be blind not to see it. And I’d have to be stupid to think that level of faith had magically materialized thanks to a few days of good training. You two were linked the second you met.”

“But that just meant we had a connection,” Xander pointed out. “How did you get from there to us sleeping together?”

Cooper smiled. “I picked up on the scents you two were putting off that night when we all went barhopping. I knew if you hadn’t slept together yet, you were seriously thinking about it. But it wasn’t until the guys and I stopped by Khaki’s place the other day. When I mentioned I smelled your scent in her apartment, she came up with a lame lie about you stopping by to drop off training material. Then she told us she was going to take a bath when I could clearly hear the shower running. It wasn’t hard to figure out that she was trying to hide your scent. That’s when I knew for sure.”

The muscle in Xander’s jaw flexed. “Who else have you told?”

“No one.” Cooper shrugged. “I figured if you two were willing to put your positions in the Pack at risk, it must be pretty serious between you.”

“It is,” she and Xander said at the same time.

“Then I’m not going to be the one to spill your secret,” Cooper said. “But you have to know this is going to come out at some point. The other guys in the squad aren’t stupid. If I figured it out, they will too. But it’s not us you have to be worried about; it’s Gage. And the thing that will piss him off more than you two having a relationship is the fact that you tried to hide it from him.”

“It isn’t like we have much of a choice,” Khaki pointed out, although she knew he was right. It had been worse than naive to think she and Xander could hide this forever. “We know we need to tell him. Just not yet.” The thought of walking into Sergeant Dixon’s office and admitting she and Xander were sleeping together terrified her. “Maybe in a couple weeks, after he sees how well Xander and I are able to make this work.”

Cooper shook his head. “A couple weeks? You know how crazy that is, right? I figured it out in a few days.”

When he said it like that, Khaki realized just how impossible this was going to be. She loved what she’d found here in Dallas—both Xander and the Pack. The thought that she could lose both made her heart beat so fast her chest hurt.

She was so wrapped up in her sudden panic attack she didn’t realize Xander had taken her hand until he spoke. “Hey. It’s going to be okay.”

Khaki tried to nod but couldn’t manage it.

“Xander’s right, so no freaking out,” Cooper told her. “I said this was crazy, but I didn’t say it was impossible. We do crazy every day. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out a way to keep this secret until you want to tell Gage. I’ll do everything I can to help you guys and run interference when I can.”

She blinked. “You will? Why would you stick your neck out like this for us, especially knowing how it’s likely to turn out? Sergeant Dixon will be as pissed off at you as he is with us.”

“You’re a member of the Pack. It’s what any of us would do,” he said, then grinned. “You may not realize it, but I’m a diehard romantic at heart, and you two make a hell of a cute couple.”

Xander snorted. “Bullshit. You just like breaking rules whenever you get a chance and making life hard on Gage.”

Cooper shrugged. “Maybe. I have to admit the thought of seeing him lose his mind when he finds out we were able to keep this from him does provide a certain level of motivation.”

Khaki didn’t care why Cooper was offering his help. She was glad to have an ally they could trust.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” Cooper’s mouth edged up. “Don’t worry. This is all going to work out.”

Khaki knew it was insane, but she actually believed him.

They were heading for the door when Xander’s cell phone rang. It was Becker saying the FBI had some tips they wanted the squad to check out.

“I am curious about something though,” he said to Cooper after he hung up.

“What’s that?”

“What does Khaki smell like to you?”

Khaki frowned. What kind of question was that?

But Cooper didn’t seem as confused as she did. He shrugged. “She smells like a werewolf…a very feminine werewolf. Good, actually.”

“Does she smell the same all the time?” Xander asked.

It was Cooper’s turn to frown. “What do you mean?”

“How about the other day, when we did yoga,” Xander asked. “What did she smell like then?”

Where exactly was Xander going with this?

Cooper’s mouth quirked. “Oh, you mean when she gets aroused?”

Khaki blushed. “Oh God, you guys knew?”

“It’s no big deal,” Cooper said. “We can smell when all women get aroused. It’s a smell that’s hard to miss.” He looked at Xander. “But in Khaki’s case, it doesn’t have that much of an effect on us lately.”

Now Xander was the one who was confused. “What do you mean, it doesn’t have that much of an effect on you lately?”

“She smelled really amazing when she first got here.” Cooper gave her a sheepish look. “It got all the guys going. But after a couple days, the effect seemed to fade away. We thought it was because we were getting used to her, but now I think it’s because she was already falling for you, Xander. I think your pheromones shifted so that the rest of us stopped getting smacked so hard with them.”

“So the other day, during yoga…her scent didn’t…drive you crazy?” Xander asked.

Khaki covered her face with her hands. Could this get any more embarrassing?

Cooper laughed again and shook his head. “Afraid not. Most of us were too busy trying to twist ourselves into pretzels.”

That was a relief. Maybe now she wouldn’t have to take twenty showers a day.

* * *

“So what kind of tip are we supposed to be checking out?” Alex asked from the backseat as Xander parked the SUV at the curb.

Xander cut the engine and opened the door. “An anonymous tip reported seeing several men carrying big black bags and what they thought might be weapons into a house rented by two women.”

Khaki surveyed the neighborhood as she hopped down from the front seat. Judging from the dilapidated houses and cracked sidewalks, this part of Oak Tree had seen better days.

Alex snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Big black bags and things that might be weapons?”

Xander came around the front to join her and Alex. “If it helps, the tipster said the women living there looked like they were really scared.”

Khaki laughed at the look on Alex’s face. She couldn’t blame him. There had been three more meetings with the feds this week, and it was getting beyond old. Everyone had been sure the gang was going to hit the third, and supposedly last, bank over the weekend. The fact that they hadn’t made most people think they’d already left town.

But the feds were keeping the task force together on the off chance that someone could come up with a lead that either pointed toward the next target, or at least gave them some idea who the hell these guys were. Khaki couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t like they had a choice. It was either stay in Dallas and hope to get lucky, or wait for the crew to strike another bank in some other city, then play catch-up. Just because everyone was working hard, didn’t mean they were getting any closer to apprehending these guys. Outside of a list of potential banks that might be ripe for the picking and a collection of anonymous tips, they really didn’t have anything. But Sergeant Dixon wanted them to keep helping, so Khaki and the rest of the squad took turns running down the tips that came in.

They’d spent the last few hours driving all over the city, digging into dozens of useless tips that had come in to the hotline.

She fell into step beside Xander as he led the way up the cracked concrete walkway to the house. While it was in desperate need of repainting, there was nothing obviously suspicious.

“You two check out the back,” Xander said. “I’ll keep an eye on the front.”

She checked the back of the house with Alex, but didn’t see anything that made her werewolf senses tingle. When they came back to the front, Khaki walked onto the porch with Xander while Alex waited on the concrete walkway.

A harried woman with bleached blond hair answered their knock, opening the screen door just enough to slip her head out and give them a wary look.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Xander did the talking while Khaki kept her senses alert. Xander was asking if the woman had seen any strange men in the neighborhood when Khaki picked up a scent she recognized. It took her a few moments to run through her mental database and pull up where she’d smelled it before.

Then it hit her—on the sidewalk that day during the bank robbery on Jackson Street.

She concentrated, trying to narrow it down even further. The scent was from the suspect she’d thrown against the wall.

Khaki threw Alex a quick look and flashed a two-fingered alert sign, then turned back to the woman in the doorway.

“Ma’am, is there someone else in the house with you?” she asked.

Khaki didn’t know if the man was there or whether the scent was lingering on something he’d touched, but the question made the woman go pale.

“N-no. I’m alone,” she said. “Look, I’m really busy. Could you come back later?”

Xander must have picked up on Khaki’s concern because he put a hand on the door as the woman moved to close it. “Ma’am, are you in danger?” he asked softly. “Is there someone else in the house with you?”

Tears pooled in the woman’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks even as she shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Really. Please just go.”

Xander exchanged a look with Khaki, his hand coming up to rest on the butt of his holstered weapon. Khaki did the same.

“Ma’am, do you mind if my partners and I look inside?” he asked.

The woman shook her head, mumbling over and over that she couldn’t come out. Xander took the woman’s hand, gently urging her to come out onto the porch.

“You can’t go in there,” the woman hissed. “I’ll get in so much trouble if you go in there.”

Xander moved the woman to the side of the porch, then nodded to Khaki. She pulled her sidearm as she entered the house, Alex at her heels. The man’s scent was much stronger, but a quick sniff confirmed he was gone.

Alex lowered his weapon at the same time she did, letting Xander know the house was clear before following her as she moved through each room, tracking the scent. His wasn’t the only one lingering there. Khaki picked up the scent of the second bank robber in one of the bedrooms. From there it wasn’t too hard to follow her nose to a pile of black duffel bags shoved in the back of the closet.

She unzipped the bag to reveal money—lots and lots of money. Alex was calling it in before Khaki even headed out to tell Xander what they’d found.

Xander was sitting on the bottom step of the porch, the woman sobbing against his shoulder. He looked up at Khaki.

“Anything?”

She nodded, dropping down to one knee in front of the woman. “Ma’am, we found some duffel bags filled with money in the bedroom closet.”

The woman lifted her head from Xander’s shoulder to look at her with red-rimmed eyes, but didn’t say anything. The fear reflected there spoke volumes.

“You know who put those bags in the closet, don’t you?” Khaki asked gently.

The woman nodded.

“Where are the men now, Shelly?” Xander asked.

Shelly shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Did they say when they were coming back for the money?” he prompted.

“No.” Shelly sniffed, wiping the tears from her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I didn’t even know my boyfriend, Craig, and his buddies were robbing banks until Greta and I found the money. Craig and the other guys weren’t too happy we found it, but promised they’d split the money with us if we kept our mouths shut.” Another tear trickled down her cheek. “I know it was wrong, but I never had money, and there was so much of it… Greta told me that if we stayed with them, we’d end up in jail or dead. She said that if we called the FBI and told them which bank the guys were going to rob next, they’d arrest them and the two of us could run off to Mexico with all the money.”

Shelly shook her head. “But it didn’t work out that way. The guys came back from the bank job and overheard Greta and I talking. They s-slit her throat right in front of me, then told me that they’d do the same thing to me and every member of my family if I didn’t do what they said. When they find out you were here…”

Her voice trailed off, sobs wracking her body.

“We won’t let anything happen to you, Shelly,” Xander promised. “Do you know where Craig and the other guys are?”

It took a while to get anything else out of her because she spent more time crying than talking. But working together, Khaki and Xander finally got the information they needed out of the terrified woman. The crew was hitting the third and last bank in less than an hour. After that, the plan was for them to come back here and grab the rest of the money, then head to Mexico.

Two patrol cruisers pulled up as Shelly finished. Xander promised the woman again that she’d be safe, then handed her off to a female officer.

Khaki barely got in the backseat and clicked her seat belt in place before Alex pulled away from the curb and switched on the flashing lights. As they sped downtown to the bank, Xander called Thompson while Khaki pulled out her phone and got the rest of the squad up to speed, asking the guys to meet them.

By the time she hung up, Xander’s conversation with Thompson had turned into a shouting match. After a lot of yelling back and forth, they finally came up with a plan. Since the bank robbers would probably follow the same MO that had worked so well before, Thompson and the rest of the feds would move in from the front of the bank, making sure that the suspects knew they were there. If the crew followed the script, they’d immediately head for their backup escape route, where she, Xander, and the rest of the squad would be waiting for them. If all went well, they’d catch the bank robbers completely by surprise and in no position to defend themselves.

There was only one problem. The whole plan depended on SWAT, the FBI, and the DPD reinforcements getting to the bank and setting up in time, during rush-hour traffic.

Xander kept his cell phone glued to one ear and the vehicle’s radio in the other, trying to get all the moving parts to come together on the fly. Khaki used her cell to occasionally check on the status of the rest of the squad, when she wasn’t checking the clock on the dash.

She, Xander, and Alex turned onto the street one block over from the main entrance of Suncrest Federal on Preston forty-two minutes later to hear the bank alarm ringing.

“Thompson and the feds just caught the crew as they were coming out the front entrance,” Xander said, gesturing to Alex to position the SUV diagonally across an alley between two buildings. “Some of them turned around and went out the back. They should be heading our way any second.”

Khaki hopped out of the SUV along with Xander and Alex, drawing her weapon and motioning for the people meandering down the street to get out of the area. She’d just herded the last civilian away when four men in ski masks came running out the back door into the alley. They all carried automatic weapons and black duffel bags that matched the ones Khaki had found in the house over in Oak Tree. The men skidded to a halt when they saw her, Xander, and Alex.

The suspects hesitated. Khaki tightened her grip on her Sig, ready to pull the trigger if the men tried to shoot their way out of the trap.

“Don’t even try it,” Xander warned, his weapon trained on them. “Your armored getaway vehicles won’t be coming to get you because we’ve already arrested your drivers while they were waiting for you in the parking garage.”

The four men looked at each other, then turned as one and started shooting.

The AR-15s they carried could fire a lot of rounds, but this time there weren’t any cars and innocent civilians for the bank robbers to hide behind. This time, they were completely exposed.

Two went down immediately and the other two dropped their duffel bags and took off running.

Xander ran after them with a snarl. Khaki followed. If Xander was going to chase them down on foot, Khaki was going to stay with him to cover his back.

It was ridiculously easy to catch the two men, even when they threw down their empty weapons so they could run faster. She and Xander slammed them to the ground before they even reached the end of the block.

Out of the corner of her eye, Khaki saw Xander’s suspect go limp as Xander twisted the man’s arm behind his back. Her suspect—the man whose scent she recognized from the first bank robbery—must have decided he had a better chance of getting away since she was a woman. He clawed his way to his feet and tried to go for her weapon.

Khaki didn’t even think. She simply grabbed the man’s wrist like Hale had taught her, threw her hip into him, and flipped him to the pavement so hard his teeth clacked together. He didn’t resist much after that. She rolled him onto his stomach and zip tied his wrists.

She stood, turning to smile at Xander when he was suddenly thrown violently backward. Three gaping, bloody holes appeared in his tactical vest as he hit the concrete. Khaki didn’t even realize what had happened until the boom of a high-powered rifle echoed in her ears. She looked around wildly, trying to see where the shooter was when another round hit Xander.

Khaki’s heart seized in her chest as she rushed over to Xander. Trying to stay out of the path of bullets, she grabbed his hands and dragged him across the pavement to a recessed doorway. She’d just reached the granite-edged corner when a bullet hit her in the left thigh. She ignored it, instead focusing on getting Xander out of the line of fire. Another round slammed into the stone wall just as she got him into the doorway. She dropped to the ground beside him, pulling him into her lap and cradling him there.

“Xander, are you okay?” she asked urgently. “Xander?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even open his eyes. Was he even conscious? She slapped her hand down on his chest, shocked at all the blood soaking his shattered tactical vest. There was so much blood.

Alex rushed into the alcove, yelling in his radio for an ambulance and trying to give a location on the shooter at the same time. Then he was at her side, ripping off Xander’s Kevlar vest and uniform shirt to reveal three bullet wounds.

Khaki watched numbly as Alex flipped Xander over.

“Shit,” he muttered. “There’s only one exit wound. The vest slowed the other two down. They’re still inside him.”

“But he can live through this, right?” she asked. “He’s a werewolf. This won’t kill him, right?”

But Alex refused to answer, flipping Xander back over and shoving his fingers into his chest, moving them around as he tried to find the bullets.

Khaki gently brushed Xander’s hair back from his forehead. “Hang on, Xander. Please hang on.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I love you, Xander. Do you hear me? I love you, dammit. Don’t you dare give up!”

Alex looked at her sharply before focusing his attention on Xander again. Khaki knew she shouldn’t have slipped up like that, but right then she was too terrified to care what Alex or anyone else heard her say.

Alex worked out one of the bullets, then went back in to look for the other. But after a few seconds, he slid his fingers out. Khaki thought it was so he could go at it from another angle, but he only kneeled beside her with a grim look on his face.

“What are you doing?” she said, trying to keep her voice calm—and failing. “You have to get the other bullet out!”

“I can’t,” he said. “The round hit some ribs and shattered them. There are bullet and bone fragments all over the place, and I’m worried some of them may be lodged in his heart. I could kill him if I go rooting around in there and do something wrong. He needs a doctor.”

Khaki’s heart was pounding in her chest like a drum. It felt like she couldn’t breathe. But she squeezed Xander’s hand and forced herself to get a grip, for his sake.

“What if a doctor figures out what he is?” she asked through her tears.

“We can’t worry about that,” Alex said. “If those fragments are lodged in the wall of his heart, and one of them tears through… Even a werewolf can bleed out from a wound like that.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said fiercely, as if she could make it true by a force of will.

“Not if we can stop it,” Alex agreed.

Khaki sat there with Xander’s head in her lap, smoothing his hair and telling him to keep fighting, that he was going to make it. She knew he could hear her. As long as she kept talking, he wouldn’t give up.

It seemed like an eternity before the ambulance arrived and the two paramedics rolled in the stretcher. When they reached for Xander, she shooed them back with a growl and a glare. Khaki refused to watch the two paramedics struggle with Xander’s two-hundred-and-forty pounds of muscle, not if jostling him could kill him. The medics didn’t say a word as she and Alex carefully lifted him up and gently put him on the stretcher, nor did they complain when she climbed in the back of the ambulance with him, then knelt down out of the way and begged him to keep fighting.

Khaki looked up as the paramedic closed the back door of the ambulance to see Alex standing there with Xander’s blood soaking his arms up to the elbows. Cooper, Becker, Max, Hale, and Trevor stood beside him, their faces etched with the same fear and concern.

Khaki looked down at Xander. She could hear his heart beating over the sounds of the monitors and sirens. His heartbeat was weak and irregular, but it was still there.

She squeezed his hand. Xander wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t let him.

* * *

Khaki was still standing in the waiting area outside the trauma center when the rest of the squad arrived. She couldn’t say how long she’d been rooted in that spot, staring at the doors that led to the operating room, but it felt like a lifetime. She vaguely remembered a doctor asking if she’d been shot. She’d looked down at the blood on her thigh and told him it wasn’t hers. He’d left her alone after that.

Sergeant Dixon strode in right behind Cooper and the other guys, looking half-pissed, half-worried.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“Cooper, Hale, Max, Becker, and I found the two getaway vehicles and took them down,” Trevor said. “At the same time, Xander, Alex, and Khaki caught four of the bank robbers as they were fleeing the rear of the bank.”

“We had all four suspects cuffed when a sniper hit Xander with three rounds in the chest,” Alex said, picking it up from there. “Whatever the sniper was shooting, it went right through Xander’s Kevlar vest like it was nothing. One of the bullets fragmented too close to his heart for me to dig it out. I made the call to get him to the hospital.”

Dixon nodded. “You did the right thing. What has me confused is why the sniper waited until after his guys had been arrested to start shooting.”

Nobody had an answer to that. Until that moment, Khaki hadn’t given a single thought to the sniper and why he’d done what he did.

“We had a helicopter conduct a sweep of the area where the sniper had been positioned moments after he shot Xander, but he was already gone,” Trevor said. “We questioned the other bank robbers before the FBI took them into custody, and according to them, they didn’t have a sniper with them. Whoever the guy is, it’s going to take a lot for those assholes to give him up.”

Dixon’s mouth tightened. “We’ll worry about that later. The only thing that matters right now is Xander.” He looked at Alex. “How bad was he when you rode in with him? Was he conscious?”

Alex hesitated, giving her a quick look. “I didn’t ride in with Xander. Khaki did.”

The entire squad held their breath as Dixon turned his attention to her. “You rode in with Xander?”

She nodded.

Something flickered in Dixon’s dark eyes, but it was gone too quickly for her to figure out what it was. “How bad was he?”

Khaki tried to report in the same calm, professional voice Trevor and Alex used. But the moment she opened her mouth, her throat locked up and she could barely get the words out.

“The…the surgeon came out a little while ago and said they had to open him up. The bullet fragments nicked a lot of vital areas, and a big piece is lodged in the wall of his heart. The doctor couldn’t believe Xander even lived long enough to get him on the operating table. He said Xander was still holding on, but he…he warned me…us…to prepare for the worst.”

Tears stung Khaki’s eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away when they ran down her cheeks. She’d been telling herself the doctor had been wrong, that he just didn’t know how strong Xander was. But now, standing here in the middle of the hospital with its pungent antiseptic odor and the rest of the Pack around her, she wasn’t sure about that.

No one said anything for a long time, and when Khaki finally lifted her head, it was to see Dixon regarding her with that same curious expression. She tried to wipe the tears away, aware that she was acting way too emotional about a fellow cop getting shot. But fresh tears fell, taking their place.

“Khaki, is there something going on between you and Xander that I should know about?” Dixon asked quietly.

She wanted to lie and say there wasn’t, but with Xander lying on an operating table, she couldn’t. It would feel like she was denying everything he meant to her. She blinked back another rush of tears and nodded.

Dixon swore. “What the hell were you two thinking?”

Khaki didn’t answer. What could she say? That she knew being with Xander was wrong? That would be a lie. Falling in love with Xander wasn’t wrong, and if that cost her the job, it was a small thing to give up to be with him.

Dixon remained silent, waiting for her to say something. One by one, the guys in the squad moved a little closer to her—first Cooper, then Becker and Max, followed by Alex, and finally Trevor and Hale. Their show of support made her start crying all over again.

“Okay, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this, Khaki,” Dixon said. “But when Xander wakes up, we are going to talk about it.”

Giving her one more disapproving look, he strode off and pulled out his phone. Khaki heard him talking to Mike on the other end, telling him to get some of the guys out to the bank on Preston and figure out who that shooter was.

Right then, she cared as much about the sniper as she did about her career. All that mattered was lying on an operating room table, fighting for his life. If Xander survived, she didn’t need anything else. And if he didn’t, she wouldn’t care about anything else.