Mission: Out of Control by Susan May Warren

rescue one of her patients.”
    Derek frowned. “I’m sorry.” He squinted, as if trying to read Brody, and then—probably because the kid was his spittin’ image on the inside as well as the outside—said, “You were there.”
    Brody sucked in a breath. Nope, it hadn’t worked. The pain had returned, filling every pore, burning, shaking through him. “Yeah. She died in my arms.”
    Derek looked away, following his glance to the darkening horizon.
    They sat in silence, listening to the cicadas, the cars motoring home into suburbia. Any moment now, Mom would have a roast on the table. Dinner would be loud and noisy, the perfect escape from this moment. From every moment over the past year when the image of Shelby, looking up at him with fading eyes, paralyzed him.
    â€œHow’d she die?” Derek asked softly. Brody recognized the compassionate tones of their mother in his kid brother.
    Brody’s own voice turned hard. “She trusted the wrong people. She heard a woman and her son had left the camp, and she went after them. Such a stubborn woman. I told her not to, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. Just had to do it her way.”
    Brody, for once, will you just follow your heart instead of your head? Emotions did that—put his brain, his common sense, on the fritz. Which was exactly why he’d never let them out of their box again.
    â€œIt was a trick. She was ambushed. Shot by a bunch of rebels.”
    Derek didn’t move. “But you took them out.”
    â€œYeah.” Brody nodded, his body steeling against his words. “I took them out.”
    Derek said nothing as he stretched his fingers out over the ball, then held it up in his grip. “Is that why you quit? Why you’re doing this mall-cop stuff?”
    Although it tore through him and turned him inside out if he let it, Shelby’s death wasn’t what drove him from his life in the military, just short of his retirement.
    It wasn’t her screams that woke him in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, gasping.
    It wasn’t her blood spilled that made him long for the mindless, easy job as a security specialist for Chet Stryker’s international security firm.
    She’d known the cost and was ready for it.
    But there could never be a healing, a catharsis, a forgiveness for killing ten-year-olds. Even if one of them did have an AK-47 aimed at Brody’s head. No wonder God seemed so quiet, although it had been Brody’s hope that He would forgive him that kept driving him to his knees, reading the Bible. Hope, however, had started to wane.
    So, Brody took a breath, dug deep into his training, and found his decoy voice. “I’m a little more than a mall cop but yeah. I needed something a little less life-and-death.”
    â€œI get that.” Derek spun the ball. “You ever going to go back, into the military?”
    No, he just wanted to lie low, put the pieces together, try to live with himself. He didn’t really mind babysitting five-year-old princesses or running security checks on international bankers’ vacation homes. Anything to keep his mind off the past, to make him feel like he wasn’t a complete failure. “That life’s over.”
    â€œSo is that why you’re watching over Vonya?”
    Was that why? To keep him from looking over his shoulder, or salvaging his future?
    Maybe.
    But somehow, over the past week, it had become more. Little Miss Pop Star had all his instincts firing—she had something to hide, and he wanted to know what it was.
    Last time he’d ignored his instincts, people died.
    Never again. He simply couldn’t live with himself if it happened again. Even if she did drive him a little crazy along the way.
    â€œI just hope she’s not as much trouble as she seems.”
    Derek passed him the ball. “I have no doubt that you know what you’re doing, bro.”
    Until