“Just in case,” he croaked. “Mining company tallied up what Colt and his men stole. Some drills, some jackhammers... and you were right: explosives.”
“Did they use them at the bank, to open the vault?” asked Corrigan.
Earl shook his head and pointed to a man in a suit, across the ER. “I talked to the bank manager, when they were bringing us in. They didn’t blow the vault door, they drilled it. And they stole eight crates of explosives. Enough to put a hole in the world.”
All the talking exhausted him. His eyes closed and he passed out, leaving Corrigan and me staring at each other in fear.
* * *
The next few hours were a blur. I was way, way, way out of my element, right at the center of the chaos. Every few seconds, another patient stopped breathing and needed to be intubated, or they crashed and needed resuscitation. When I was doing surgery, it wasn’t anything like I was used to. There wasn’t time to be careful or neat, or to plan or double-check. I was cutting, clamping and suturing as fast as my fingers would move. Every patient was thirty seconds from death: if I made one mistake... it felt like being in a falling elevator, waiting for the impact.
There wasn’t time for Corrigan and I to speak but I could feel his eyes on me as we worked. Rooting for me, believing in me, willing me on.
Eventually, the blood started to arrive and that bought us some breathing space. Earl got the first bag and his color started to improve. Maggie ran in to check on him, then ran back to the waiting area to keep the blood drive running. From what I could see, she was doing everything short of physically dragging people out of their homes and squeezing the blood out of them.
Second by agonizing second, we started to claw our way back from the brink. The number of patients crashing slowly fell. First we could think, then we could breathe and, finally, I stepped back from one patient and looked around and there wasn’t another one waiting.
My exhausted brain couldn’t wrap itself around that concept. There must be something I needed to do. I hurried off to see who needed help but, as soon as I took a step, I staggered on legs that had become limp noodles. Strong hands caught me under the arms and a solid, warm chest pressed against my back. Lips brushed my ear, Corrigan’s voice a low, silvered rumble I felt as much as heard. “Stop.”
I was so wired on adrenaline, I tried to shake him off. But he wrapped his arms around my waist. “Stop,” he said again.
I stopped. I let my body flop against him and it was the best thing I’d ever felt: a big, warm, vertical mattress. As soon as I stopped, the tiredness soaked in. My arms hung limp and heavy from my shoulders and my fingers were throbbing and aching from clutching a scalpel. I felt used up and wrung out: I’d never been in such a state of tension for so long. I looked up at the clock. That must be wrong. It was eight in the morning when the shooting started. Now it was after three. Seven hours?!
“We did it,” he told me. “We saved them all. You did great, Beckett.” He looked at someone behind me. “You too, Taylor.”
I turned and saw an exhausted Taylor nod in thanks. Then I closed my eyes and the world became a big, warm, dark bath I could sink into. Corrigan’s chest was the most comfortable thing in the world. It occurred to me that I was in the middle of the ER and I wasn’t freaking out. It was still busy, still loud, still chaotic, but compared to the last seven hours it felt like a freakin’ Japanese meditation garden.
Corrigan gently turned me to face him. Warm fingers tilted my chin up—
I realized at the last second what he was going to do and my eyes flew open. For a second, all my shyness came back. This wasn’t like the cafe, this was the hospital, the middle of the freakin’ ER, surrounded by people I knew. I wanted to bolt, but his arms were like iron around my waist.
And then his lips met mine. I sort of squeaked, shrinking under him... and then I just melted and opened. There was a deafening hush as everyone stopped working to stare. I swear even a patient who’d been coughing non-stop went silent. Corrigan’s hand slid onto my cheek, his fingertips sliding into my hair. My surgical cap tumbled off my head and fell to the floor. There was an undercurrent of raw, sexual need: there always was, with Corrigan. But the kiss just throbbed with love. It poured into me, lifting me up right when I was at my lowest. I went giddy and light: my hands grabbed his shoulders and I clung on as if I was on a roller coaster.
I gulped and panted. Opened my eyes and saw Krista staring at me, open-mouthed. Then she grinned, but she gave Corrigan the look. You know the one I mean, the that’s my best friend so you’d better watch it look. I had a feeling that pretty soon they’d have the conversation. I got butterflies. No one had ever had call to have the conversation about me before.
When I looked back to Corrigan, he was staring down into my eyes with such helpless, possessive want, I swallowed and crushed my thighs together. Those eyes that had once been like a frozen sky had thawed completely, but it meant I could see the pain inside him fighting with the love. The more he felt for me, the more he felt he was cheating on Chrissy and Rachel. How do I get him to let go? And then a stab of guilt. Is it wrong to want that? I just wanted him to be happy, to be free!
Krista came over: but not for the conversation. At least, not yet. “I just checked Rebecca’s levels,” she said. “The Sorbitol worked. You could do the pyeloplasty... if you want to.”
I closed my eyes for a second and felt the room tilt around me. I still had no idea which was the right option: operate and risk Rebecca’s life, or play it safe but sentence her to a lifetime on dialysis. What if there was another emergency, while I was operating? What if I messed up? Krista, like Corrigan, was playing it carefully neutral. I understood why but it was maddening. Someone tell me what to do! I’ve never felt so alone.
And then I felt a soft hand take mine. And another, bigger hand take my other hand. I wasn’t alone. I opened my eyes and looked at the two of them. They couldn’t tell me what to do, but they were there for me.
I drew in a deep breath. I didn’t know what I was going to say until I said it.
“Prep her for surgery,” I told Krista. “Get Lina and Adele. Let’s do this.”
41
Colt
OUR CAMP was just that, a half-dozen tents pitched in a clearing, deep in the forest, along with some pickups and the van. We’d put a snow plow on one of the pickups so we could keep the backroads we used clear but we couldn’t do anything about the bitter cold. At night, the water would freeze in your canteen if you didn’t keep it in your sleeping bag with you. Sleeping on the ground, pissing in a latrine pit...we were living like savages. It hurt. It hurt bad. Time was, I’d have been lounging in a fat armchair by the fire with my feet up, a whiskey in my hand and an adoring wife by my side. The land I owned stretched so far, the boundary was out of sight.
They took all that away from me. But I was taking it back.
I bent down next to one of the bags from the bank and opened the zipper. As the light from the snow hit the contents, my face was bathed in a glorious yellow glow. Fifty. Million.
I’d rebuild. The CGF would be stronger than ever.
But only if I kept us pure. No dead weight. If someone screwed up, they were done. Mostly, they’d already been punished for their mistakes. Harry had already paid with his life. Max, who’d gotten all that razor wire around his leg, was likely crippled for life but, if he lived, I figured I could find a place for him as quartermaster or something. But there was one more source of weakness.
The other guys were sitting around the fire, desperately trying to keep warm, but I found Seth at the edge of the camp, pale and antsy and gazing down towards the town.
I fingered the knife on my belt and started walking towards him. He was too smart to run. I’d chased him down enough times, when he was a boy, pinned him to a tree and taken my belt to him. But he started to back away, keeping six feet between us.
“You had one job,” I told him. “Didn’t ask much. Just one thing.”
“I n
ever asked to be part of this!”
I frowned at that. ‘Course he hadn’t had to ask. I’d let him have that honor, something any real man would covet, because he was my blood. “I told you to keep Isaac safe. Nobody else mattered.” My voice was loud enough for the other men to hear but I didn’t care. They all knew they might have to be sacrificed for the cause. “But instead, you were cozied up to that blonde with the big tits.”
“Don’t talk about her like that!” It was the first time I’d heard some fire in his voice.
“Is it because she’s a doctor? She remind you of that bullshit where you thought you were going to be one, and go work for the government? Where you forget where you came from?”
“No! I just—”
I drew the knife and it cut off his words as surely as if I’d sliced them out of the air.
“Isaac,” I told him, gliding the blade across my finger to test it, “was the one person we needed.”
Seth swallowed. “Please—”
“Without our pilot,” I grated, circling around him, “we can’t use the chopper. Without the chopper, we have no way out.”
He turned to follow me as I circled him. “Sir—”
“I need you to know how disappointed I am.” My voice was tight. “My entire plan could fail, because of you. The CGF could end, because of you.”
“Dad—”
I ran at him. I’d been slowly creeping forward as I circled, too gradually for him to notice. He tried to get out of the way, but, too late, he realized I’d tricked him into standing with his back against a tree. There was no place to run. Three quick steps and my knife went up and in—
Seth cried out in shock and fear.
“Damn you, boy,” I muttered. I was pressed right up against him, chest to chest. “Damn you to hell.” There were tears in my eyes, at the weakness.
Not his weakness. Mine.
I stepped back. I’d stabbed the knife between his body and his arm, burying the tip of the blade in the frozen wood. It was his eyes. He has his mother’s eyes.
I tugged the knife free, turned and walked away. “I got to go fix what you messed up,” I said.
His voice was shaky. “The hospital? You’re going there? No!”
I kept walking. He cursed and ran to catch up.
42
Dominic
IT DOESN’T MATTER which hospital you’re in or even which country you’re in: worried people look the same. Mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Sons and daughters—that’s always tough. They cry and they pray and they drink too much coffee as they wait for news. But most of all, they pace. I must have watched a thousand people pace.
I’d never been the one doing the pacing, before.
The surgery had started four hours ago and I was as worried about Beckett as I was about Rebecca. If it went wrong, if the kid didn’t make it, Beckett was never going to forgive herself. I could tell, just from watching them together, how much she liked Rebecca. She’d make a great mom. There was a part of me that was already imagining some idyllic existence with me and her and, someday, kids. But then the memory would slam into me. That night. The dark house. So much blood.
How could you? How could I feel this way about someone who wasn’t them? And it was getting harder. I felt like a swimmer clawing for the surface, the memory dragging me down by the ankles and the future just out of reach, bright and glorious above the surface. The more I fell for Beckett, the harder my past dragged me away from her. I either had to break free and be with her or let her go and sink down into the darkness forever. Right now, though, I just wanted her to be okay.
She emerged from the OR. “How is she?” I demanded. She was still in gloves and mask so I grabbed her wrists instead of her hands. “How did it go? Is she okay? Are you okay? Talk to me!”
She was saying something, but it was muffled.
“What?” I asked, heart pounding.
“Let me take my mask off!”
Oh. I let go of her wrists, chastened. Too much coffee.
She pulled down her mask. “It went well.”
I knew by now how much of a perfectionist she was. If Beckett said it went well, the surgery must have been a work of art. I picked her up and hugged her.
“I’ve got her on a ventilator for now,” said Beckett into my shoulder. “But she should be able to come off it in a couple of days.”
I gently pushed her back so that I could look at her. Both of us were drunk with relief. The ER was under control, Rebecca was okay... we made it. I leaned down and kissed her. Soft and sweet at first, exploring her lips as I breathed in her scent, my hands sliding down her back to her rump. Then it turned hot and dirty as I squeezed her there, our mouths open and frantic, panting—
We broke as Krista, Adele and Lina emerged from the OR, pushing the sleeping Rebecca and her portable ventilator on a gurney. They were heading down to the ER but there wasn’t space in the elevator for us, too, so we let them go ahead. Krista winked at Beckett as the doors closed.
I realized it was dark outside. The operation had taken the whole afternoon and it was past seven. “Come on,” I told Beckett. “We need to get you something to eat. You haven’t stopped since breakfast. And I want to check on Taylor, too.” The poor kid was just a student, but she’d seen more in one day than most doctors see in a lifetime.
I couldn’t be bothered to wait for the elevator to come back up so we took the stairs, holding hands the whole way down. Both of us were exhausted. Maybe, if it stayed quiet, we could grab a few hours’ sleep in a spare room. And before we slept….
I was still thinking about sex when we emerged into the ER. The silence should have been a warning, but it was only when I heard a rifle being cocked that I pulled up short. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom of the hallway, I saw Colt in the shadows and Seth beside him. Both had guns trained on us.
“We’re here for our man,” said Colt, his voice a low rasp.
I pushed Beckett behind me, but I knew it wouldn’t do much good. Colt was carrying an assault rifle and I’d seen its power that morning. The bullets would go right through me and hit her.
I glanced around. We were in a quiet hallway near the back of the ER, thankfully away from the patients. Colt and Seth must have slipped in through an unlocked door at the rear. There were three staff nearby, all standing with their hands raised, silent and terrified. My heart nearly stopped when I saw that one of them was Taylor. We’d strolled right into a hostage situation.
“You can take your guy,” I told Colt. The fear made the Irish come out strong in my voice: my stomach was churning, thinking what one of those high-powered bullets could do to Beckett, or Taylor, or one of the patients. “Just put the gun down and I’ll take you right to him.”
Colt walked towards me. He didn’t swagger, didn’t try to prove he was a big man. There was no wasted movement at all: everything about this man was pared down to the bone. He didn’t stop until the muzzle of his gun was an inch from my cheek. “How about you take me right to him,’ he countered, “and then maybe I’ll put my gun down.”
I smelled gun oil and burnt powder. I’ve had guns pointed at me a few times, by gang members in LA and militia in Africa. But those guys—little more than kids, usually—were always fired up on adrenaline. Most of the time they were as scared as you were. Colt was different. There was no fear at all in his eyes: twenty years in jail had burned it all away and now he had nothing more to lose. His anger was still there, but time had hardened and sharpened it into a vicious weapon. No fear, plenty of anger. This guy actually would shoot. We have to get him out of here.
And then, to my horror, Taylor gave a choking sob of disbelief. An intake of breath as she prepared to speak— No, Taylor! Don’t!
“How can you be a part of this?” she asked Seth.
Colt swung smoothly around to point the gun right at her face. Behind me, Beckett caught her breath in fear and grabbed my shoulders. Taylor went stock-still.
“You got some advice o
n how my son should live his life?” Colt asked Taylor.
I thought about trying to grab the gun but Colt could easily pull the trigger before I got it off him. Seth was standing in the perfect position, behind his dad. But he wasn’t going to rebel against him: too scared or too loyal, or both. “Sir!” he said desperately.
Colt ignored him. He pushed the muzzle of the gun against Taylor’s lips. “You think you’re going to tempt him away from me?”
Taylor didn’t move. Tears were filling her eyes. Seth’s breathing changed, becoming quick and labored. He had his gun pointed at me, but the barrel started to tremble as his anger built. Taylor. The one thing that could override his fear of his father. But if it turned into a gunfight between them, we could all die.
Colt pried Taylor’s lips apart with the muzzle. She had her teeth firmly locked together, but he didn’t try to open them. He just slid the muzzle along them and the hallway was so silent, we could all hear it, chink chink chink. Beckett’s fingers dug into my shoulders and I heard one of the hostages offer up a prayer.
“Dad!” snapped Seth.
Colt twisted his head around, surprised. He frowned, then looked at his son with a strange mixture of pride and disgust. His gun was still pressed against Taylor’s mouth and his finger caressed the trigger once, twice….
He jerked the gun out from between her lips and pointed it at me. “Take me to him,” he ordered.
We moved as a group, Colt’s gun against the back of my head. This was getting worse and worse: we were entering the main part of the ER, now, crammed with staff and patients. I’ve treated shooting victims enough times to know that the worst place in the world for a gun to be fired is somewhere like this: a place with no solid walls, just curtains and partitions. The bullets would just keep going, taking lives until they finally hit something that stopped them.
Luckily, it was evening. The lights in the rear part of the ER were turned down low and most of the patients were dozing, so we crept through pretty much unnoticed. The patients who woke stared at the guns in fear, but I put a finger to my lips. I knew there were still cops hanging around the hospital and I didn’t want anyone to raise the alarm and fetch one or this would turn into a firefight.
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