CHAPTER TWO
"The mind creates a chasm only the heart can cross. ~S. Levine"
They exited the hospital together, Charlie stubbornly refusing a sling and wearing only a thin shirt soaked in his own blood. They agreed their first stop was his home because he currently resembled a character from a zombie movie.
"Where's your car?" she quietly inquired as they crept through the stillness of the parking garage towards hers. "Not that I'm going to let you drive it, but just so I can have traffic division tow it to a safe neighborhood."
He shrugged resisting sharing anything that might help her. He resisted telling her, trying to enforce his barriers against her aiding in his pursuit of her father. It was late, very dark and quiet as they walk through the garage in silence, neither sure of what to say. That was probably what saved his life, their collective silence because Jack Reese's jacket made a slight rustling noise as he brushed the concrete pylon he was hiding behind and leveled a pistol at Crews.
Charlie was caught flatfooted and he knew he was dead the instant before Jack's finger transitioned to the trigger; that long millisecond when Dani Reese stepped in front of him stretched into an eternity. Charlie was awestruck, her devotion went far beyond what he expected but it was not something he was ready for.
Dani wasn't even sure why she did it but the movement drew her attention and the gun evoked her protective instinct, but when her eyes focused on the man behind it she knew he would not shoot. If looks could kill though they'd have both been burned to ash where they stood as her father's glare lit his way.
Her hand was on her own pistol, but there was no way she'd get there in time, so she froze waiting. Her father's eyes narrowed and he spun away and vanished. She's saved her partner by placing herself directly in her father's line of sight, into the path of a bullet meant for him and only Jack's paternal instincts and SWAT honed reactions prevented a fatal error.
She relaxed and let out a long shuddered sigh. She turned to face him and found him paler than normal and something akin to anger coloring his countenance.
His voice asked her in a hoarse whisper, "Why would you do that?"
She shrugged and quipped caustically, "Someone has to save your ass."
Crews seized her by the shoulders and shook her hard. "He could have killed you. What the hell were you thinking?" He rapidly became irrationally and irrevocably angry. It was the first time she'd seen his anger directed at her. The full force of it was frightening and awesome in a terrible way.
"Now you're mad?" she responded with ire of her own. This man wore her out, infuriated, disturbed and perplexed her and yet she'd just reflexively stepped in front of a bullet for him. What the hell did that mean?
"Did you know he wouldn't shoot you?" he whispered trying to keep the rage contained.
Again he was met with a non-committal shrug and the Reese patented eye-roll. "Look at me," he commanded. "Don't you ever do that. You do that again and we aren't partners anymore. I never want you to do that, Dani." His deliberate use of her first name drove his point home. This was intensely personal to him. "Why would you do that?" his whisper begged her to explain that degree of self sacrifice to him, "I don't deserve that. Never do that, Dani," he rambled as he subconsciously reached for her.
She told herself it was the same impulse she'd felt and resisted inside – just to know she was sound, but as his hand brushed hair from her face, knuckles grazing her cheek and he gave into the desire to sink his hand into the smooth coolness of her hair, his groan was her undoing. It was subaudible, she felt it rather than heard it -but it resonated deep inside her. She licked her lips and sought his clear blue eyes and what she found there awakened a sleeping giant of need in them both.
The fire she felt flare between them had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with want, desire and something deeper she didn't want to name. He closed his eyes as a tear slipped from one and stepped closer, she leaned and he pulled and she was in his arms again for a second time that night. Her hands found his and they stilled. The air was thick with potential energy. Molecules paused in their constant elliptical arcs and time stood still.
"You can't do this. Please…" he begged quietly. "I can take almost anything else, but can't handle losing you. Promise me you won't make me lose the only thing I still care about Reese." For a long time they just stood there breathing. Dani did not trust herself to speak for fear of emotion coloring her voice. Then a door slammed, an engine sparked to life and reality flooded back in.
"Let's go home," she told him, forcing herself free from what she desperately wanted and pulling him toward her car. His long lean frame squeezed into her tiny compact car and they drove home in silence. The consecutive brushes with death and a ride on the adrenaline roller coaster had taken its toll on the battered and bruised man beside her. His eyes shone, though with tears or glazed over in pain she could not tell. Nothing was said of his impassioned plea and he stared out the window into the abyss in as dark a place as she'd ever seen her sunshine clad Zen warrior.
Crews allow himself to wallow in the notion that to save Dani - he had to push her away. This chaffed against his heartfelt desire to hold her hold her close and it was more than physical draw for he wanted her with body, mind and soul. It was the fiercest need he'd felt in a century, one he struggled to suppress – tonight he was losing that battle.
