Redstone Ever After

by Justine Davis

  As soon as the words formed in his mind he realized how far gone he was, how desperate he was for something, anything else to think about. As if the comfort of the furniture would do anything to ease the agony of people who got the kind of news he’d once gotten, who had had to do what he’d once done, held a person they loved so deeply until the life faded from them.

  He consciously tensed every muscle in his body, trying to fend off the shakes he felt hovering. He knew he was tired, the tension of the breakneck flight here had ebbed, and he was feeling the aftereffects. Post-adrenaline crash, or as Draven sometimes called it, an adrenaline hangover.

  He waited.

  Chapter 24

  Earlier, Josh had heard Draven issuing orders to his people, although he hadn’t paid any attention, hadn’t cared what they were. Logan Beck and Tony Alvera had departed, both St. John—not that he took orders from anyone—and Ryan Barton had set up on laptop computers on a corner table, and Sam and Reeve were on their phones making call after call.

  Josh watched all this idly, nothing really able to penetrate the numbness he was feeling. With Elizabeth, he’d known what the ending would be, had known what was inevitable. Now he did not, and oddly, it seemed infinitely worse. There was hope, something he’d finally had to surrender all those years ago, but the not knowing counterbalanced that.

  When Draven himself took a phone call and then disappeared, he bestirred himself to look at his watch, something he’d sworn off during the first hour when he’d caught himself looking at it literally every few seconds.

  They’d been here nearly four hours. Tess had been in surgery three of those. He knew from Reeve’s shooting the damage and dangers involved, and the massive repairs a gunshot wound usually required.

  Draven—from his years in the military—had seen more than his share of such wounds, and had told him this one was in one of the best spots to have one, for survival. Away from anything vital. An observation echoed by the surgeon who had introduced himself and spoken with Josh briefly and briskly before the surgery had begun.

  He also knew the operation would take time, that they had to explore thoroughly for any other possible damage that might have been done, and make sure nothing had been damaged by fragments of bullet, or bone if any had been hit; even a nick to the large intestine or an artery made it a whole different ball game.

  So many uncertainties, so much unknown. The only thing Josh Redstone was positive of at this moment was that if Tess didn’t make it, he might not, either. He’d been through wracking, debilitating grief before, and had no desire to go through it again. Didn’t think he could, not with Tess.

  And he hadn’t told her.

  Ironic, he supposed, that even Pinky had noticed before he’d realized it himself. The man’s words echoed in his head.

  You think I haven’t seen the way you two look at each other? Electric, man….

  A gentle hand touched his shoulder. He jerked upright, staring into the face of a young woman who looked very much but not enough like her sister. Francine Marqueza O’Brian was six years younger and a couple of inches taller than her big sister, married to a gruff Irishman who would die for her without a second’s thought, just as Eric would have for Tess. And had, for all of us, Josh thought.

  “Francie,” he said, softly, starting to rise.

  She stopped him with a gesture and sank down into the chair beside him.

  “Josh,” she said, one of the few people he’d never had to ask to abandon the formal “Mr. Redstone;” she’d never used it. She’d heard of him, and vice versa, long before they’d actually met.

  “Tess always calls you her Josh because we have a cousin named Josh, so that’s how I think of you,” she’d explained when they were eventually face-to-face.

  Her words had pleased him immensely. As did the idea of Tess calling him “her Josh.” And as he recalled the encounter, he wondered if, even then, he’d already been well on the way down the path he’d finally, belatedly—God, please, not too late—realized he was on.

  “No word yet?” she asked now.

  He shook his head.

  “She will be fine,” she said firmly, and with utter conviction.

  It was the same kind of certainty Mac and the others had displayed. It seemed only he was having doubts. But then, none of them had been down this path before. Even Gabe, although a widower before Cara, hadn’t. Not that his situation, with his first wife vanishing and being found dead eight years later had been any easier, just different.

  And once again it struck him that the person he knew would understand completely, the one person who could, as always, find the right words to help him through this, was the one under the knife right now.

  And she wouldn’t be in there now, her life in the balance, if not for him.

  He shook his head sharply. It wasn’t like him to whine, and he didn’t like the sound of even his thoughts. Tess never whined, ever, even in the darkest days after Eric’s death. She had wept, wrenchingly, and for a very long time afterward he had seen it engulf her just as it had him, at odd moments.

  “The big stuff—birthdays, anniversaries—you know they’re coming, you can armor up,” she’d said one day when it had caught up with her while they were in his office discussing the scheduling for the test flights of the Hawk IV. “It’s the stuff that catches you off guard, the silly stuff, that’s the worst.”

  Josh had nodded, knowing too well exactly what she meant. “I was on an elevator…somewhere, shortly after Elizabeth died. A woman got on. Wearing Elizabeth’s perfume.”

  Tess had instantly understood.

  “Oh, God,” she’d gulped, fighting her own tears down. “For me it was a stupid football. Some guys playing in the park where Eric played with his friends when he was home. One of them missed a pass, and it bounced right into my windshield. I lost it. Poor guy didn’t know what to do with a sobbing woman.”

  Even then, Josh had guessed what the guy—what any guy—would want to do when faced with a woman like Tess, weeping or not.

  With an effort that felt exhausting, he yanked himself out of the past and managed to ask about Francie’s now several-months-old son. “The baby?”

  “He’s fine. Growing like a weed. My mother-in-law, bless her, has him for the moment. And,” she added firmly, “his beloved Aunt Tess will be up and around to spoil him soon.”

  He nodded, not because he felt it, but because it seemed the thing to do.

  “Do you know what Tess told me when I asked her how she stood being married to a soldier, and a special-ops soldier at that? How she lived with knowing every time he walked out the door on deployment he might not come back?”

  That that was exactly what had happened didn’t seem the right thing to bring up just now, so Josh merely shook his head.

  “She said ‘I try not to waste energy going to meet a plane that hasn’t landed.’”

  That was so quintessentially Tess that Josh smiled in spite of himself, in spite of the churning inside him.

  “My big sister is a very wise woman.”

  “Yes,” Josh whispered. Then, louder, stronger, he repeated it. “Yes, she is.”

  And for the first time a bit of conviction crept in, a bit of her sister’s certainty that he would never have to make the dreaded shift to past tense when speaking of the woman who was more a part of the fabric of his life than almost anyone. That fabric had been torn and mended, was a bit frayed around the edges, but was still strong, and Tess was a big part of the reason.

  And for the first time he saw his panic, his anticipation of the worst possible outcome as an insult to her, a denial of her strength and her determination and her courage. And he resolved to fight it as never before.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed when Draven finally returned. The man hadn’t said a word to him about the foolishness of his actions, and Josh knew it wasn’t because he was intimidated or afraid to speak sharply to his boss; he’d done it more than once. He wished he’d do it
and get it over with.

  When his security chief had been given the update on Tess, he came and sat down beside him.

  “There’s nothing you can say I haven’t already told myself,” Josh said.

  “Oh, I might manage a thing or two you haven’t thought of.”

  “If I’d waited another minute—”

  “Who knows what would have happened. You did what you had to do, when you had to do it. You were dealing with amateurs, Josh. By nature unpredictable. And if I hadn’t expected you to use them, I never would have had the weapons stashed aboard your plane.”

  That, even for the new Draven, was practically a speech. And there was that, Josh supposed; why have the weapons aboard and then not use them when you had to?

  And then the sense of what else Draven had said registered. He wasn’t sure he even cared, not now, not when Tess’s fate still hung over them, but he felt he should ask anyway. “Amateurs?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they did this on their own? On impulse?”

  “No.” Draven’s voice was flat, his jaw tight with suppressed anger.

  The import of that hit Josh quickly. “Someone hired them?”

  Draven nodded. Waited. Josh knew this man, knew what that silence meant; he was waiting for him to reach the inevitable conclusion.

  Josh got there quickly for the simple reason that it hadn’t been public knowledge where he was going; only St. John and Draven—and Tess—had known.

  And the man he’d gone to see.

  He’d half suspected it all along; it had been clear to him the man was near desperation. He’d expected Josh to bail him out of the mess of his own making, and when he’d been turned down…

  “Brad,” Josh said wearily.

  “Not exactly.”

  Uncharacteristically, Draven hesitated. The cryptic response, reminiscent of the old, pre-Grace Draven, also surprised him. But he in turn stayed silent, waiting. And finally Draven, with a wry quirk of his mouth at one corner to acknowledge his own tactic, gave in.

  “It was—”

  Draven broke off as the outer door swung open to reveal a man in hospital scrubs. A hush fell over the room as everyone turned to look, literally holding their breath. The doctor looked much wearier, Josh saw, than he’d looked when they’d spoken briefly before he went off to begin his delicate work. Josh rose, feeling the stiffness of having sat unmoving for so long.

  And for an instant that dread flooded him as the man looked around the room; when he’d gone in, only a few of them had been here; now the room was full, the core of Redstone was here, because the heart of Redstone’s life hung in the balance.

  “You’re all here for Mrs. Machado?” the doctor asked.

  “I am her sister,” Francie answered, “And this—” she included them all in a wide gesture “—is also her family.”

  Josh felt a spark of gratitude for the woman who, in her own way, was as cut from the same cloth as her sister. All the while he was still holding his breath. A breath he didn’t let out until the man in the surgical scrubs smiled.

  Josh barely heard the words, the man’s expression said it all.

  Tess was going to live. He hadn’t lost her.

  The tenor of talk in the room changed instantly when the man told them they could see her as soon as she was out of recovery, many of them repeating what they’d said all along—that they’d known she was going to be fine. But Josh simply sat back down, afraid that if he kept standing he was going to start shaking all over again.

  She was going to live.

  He hadn’t lost her.

  The world righted itself with an almost palpable snap.

  Chapter 25

  “Did you tell him about Odell?”

  Draven looked at his wife and shook his head.

  “Good,” she said, surprising him. But then, she did that a lot. Along with many other things that had turned his life from a bleak, barren place to the joy-filled haven it was now. “You know he’ll feel responsible. He’s not, not in any way, but this is Josh.”

  “I know. Time enough for him to find out later. He doesn’t need to know now.”

  “Tony was right. He took the easy way out.”

  “Yes.”

  Draven stared at the woman who had never taken the easy way, but who had fought back from pain and mutilation to become the vibrant, incredible woman who made his life worth living.

  “I love you,” he said suddenly. The words, once so difficult, came easily now.

  “I know,” Grace said with a promising smile.

  Every once in a while Josh would look up at the monitor that hung over the bed, reassuring himself that the numbers were steady, safe, that they said “alive” as clearly as the word itself.

  Francie had finally gone to call her family at home to assure them their beloved Tess was going to be fine.

  Their Tess.

  My Tess, he thought, almost fiercely.

  And now he had to figure out how to do this when she woke up. How to tell her, how to say what he had to say, what he couldn’t wait any longer to say because he’d almost been too late in realizing. Before, the risk of losing her precious friendship had loomed hugely over the idea of speaking at all.

  Now, all that was dwarfed by how close he’d come to losing her completely. Forever.

  He glanced around when someone stepped into the ICU room, where he’d been told Tess would be until she was past the chance of infection, always a concern with gunshot wounds. Harlan McClaren looked at the small shape in the bed connected to various machines by leads and tubes. Looked at the numbers on the monitor much as Josh had done, and nodded.

  “Tough as nails, our Tess.”

  My Tess, Josh thought again, but didn’t say it.

  “The triumvirate is intact,” Mac said.

  “I’ve never thought that was exactly right,” Josh said. “I’ve always thought it should be the four cornerstones of Redstone. St. John, Tess, Draven…and you.”

  For an instant Mac just stared at him. But then he smiled. “Better than the four horsemen,” he quipped, but made no effort to hide the pleasure in his voice.

  After he’d gone, others came in and out, the whole security team at various times, and the others who made Redstone what it was. All in tribute to this woman who had done so much for so many of them, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and sometimes even risking her own life to save theirs.

  When it was St. John, there were no words spoken, as if the man had reverted to his old, laconic self. The only sign anything was unusual was when the usually undemonstrative St. John put a hand on his shoulder. But when Josh looked up and met his steady gaze, he realized that no words were necessary. Josh knew what this man—who had survived such hell, who had been a kid near suicide on that rainy night on a bridge when Josh had found him—was telling him. The miracle of the change in his own life had St. John believing they were possible for anyone.

  Josh nodded; message received. He didn’t know yet if he would get the rest of his miracle, he only knew that what he’d gotten so far today would do. Tess was alive, and that was all that mattered.

  Only when he saw Draven come in did he recall that they’d never finished that conversation. Who had done this hadn’t mattered to him, not until he’d known Tess was going to make it.

  If she hadn’t, if she had died, he would have hunted who was responsible to the ends of the earth, and they would have paid his own, personal kind of price.

  Draven looked at Tess, shaking his head in a kind of awe Josh had rarely seen on the man’s face.

  “Amazing. So much nerve and smart and giving in such a small package.”

  “Yes.”

  “Glad you know it.”

  “I’ve always known it.” Josh grimaced. “I just took it for granted. I took her for granted.”

  “Some of us need our cage seriously rattled before we realize we’re even in one.”

  And that was about as philosophical as John Draven had ever
gotten, Josh thought.

  “So what did—”

  Josh broke off suddenly; Tess had moved. Only slightly, but he was sure her head had turned a fraction. He glanced at Draven, who nodded; he’d seen it, too.

  “Looks like our lady’s on her way back to us,” he said. Then, with another steady look at Josh, amended his statement. “Your lady.”

  Before Josh could respond—not that he would have known what to say, anyway—Draven quietly left the room.

  Josh pulled his chair closer to the bed and sat down. Then he reached out and took Tess’s hand, cradling it in his. He studied it, it seemed so small, delicate, the fingers long, slender and graceful, and he shuddered again at the thought of how close he’d come to losing her.

  “Josh….”

  His head snapped up. And he couldn’t stop, nor did he try to, the joy that flooded him at seeing those dark, sparkling eyes open and looking at him once more.

  “You shaved,” she said as he leaned over the bed.

  Instinctively, his hand rose to his now-smooth jaw. “Didn’t need the beard anymore.”

  “I’ll never mention it again. It saved you.”

  “You saved both of us. If you hadn’t kept your cool—”

  “I should never have let those steps down, opening the Hawk to them. I should have figured out a way to warn you, stopped you from coming on board in the first place.”

  Josh bent closer. “If you had warned me, if I’d known you were alone with two armed extortionists, there is no way you could have stopped me from boarding.”

  “But—”

  He held up a hand to cut her off, then softened the gesture by reaching out with that hand to gently, tentatively, longingly touch her cheek.

  He had thought it would be hard. That he’d stumble, mess up the words. He’d spent a long time sitting by her bed, trying to figure out what to say. And in the end, he’d decided to follow the tenet that ruled most of his life.