by Cindy Dees
Emily hovered, feeling in turns helpless and protective as Lyle started an IV drip on Jagger, rigging the saline bag to one of the floor lamps from the kitchen last night. Into it, the medic injected a cocktail of antibiotics and sedatives. And then he ordered her to take another shower, announcing that she still stunk like rotten seaweed.
Under other circumstances, she’d have savored the hot rainwater, sluicing the remaining salt off her skin and out of her hair. But today she raced through her shower, impatient to get back to Jagger.
He was quiet through the day and into the night. But late in the evening, his temperature started to rise once more.
“Here it comes,” Lyle announced grimly. “The primary infection. We’re in for a fight, girl, if we want to save your man.”
She sat up with Jagger through the night, her panic rising exponentially along with his fever. Funny how just a few days ago she was so mad at him she could hardly stand to think about him. And now here she was, praying nonstop for him to pull through this crisis.
Just when she thought she had life all figured out, it went and threw a monster curveball at her. She spent hours staring at Jagger’s face, rememorizing the planes and angles, sharper now, but still the old Jagger. The new lines and shadows gave him more character, an added maturity that was intensely appealing.
Lyle had told her to expect Jagger to say all sorts of crazy things and not to freak out over it. Thing was, Lyle had no idea that most of what Jagger talked about was real. That was a burden she got to bear alone.
Lyle took his turns looking after Jagger so she could catch a nap now and then, and he ordered her to wake him up if Jagger’s temperature hit one hundred and five.
When it was just her and Jagger alone in the quietest, darkest heart of the night, her thoughts strayed to the first time she’d spent a night with him, that magical New Year’s Eve two years ago. It had been about as different from this as was possible. But the sense of rightness, of peace way down deep in her soul at just being with him, remained the same. She didn’t know what it was about him, but she’d never met another man like him. He was simply meant for her and she for him. There was no logic to it, no reason for it. It just was.
She’d spent the past two years fighting this thing between them, but after a single day back in his company, the old attraction was back full force. And this time they had so much more between them. Not that he was aware of it at the moment, of course. After he beat this infection she would tell him all about it. And maybe they could properly celebrate the past two New Year’s Eves they’d missed.
Of course, first he had to live. His temperature climbed steadily to one hundred and four degrees and then passed up the mark. And that was when he began to talk again. At first it was just mumbled words and phrases. And then his rantings began to take shape. He muttered her name several times.
She leaned over him and whispered, “I’m here, Jagger.”
“Bitch,” he muttered.
She stared, shocked.
“Set me up…great actress…actually believed she gave a damn about me…alone so long in my job and then she came along…so innocent…but it was a lie…led me right to you bastards…”
She recoiled in horror. No. It can’t be. It’s just the fever talking.
“If I ever find her…”
“What, Jagger? What will you do if you find her?”
“Kill her…no…too easy. Make her suffer…Yeah, suffer…”
Oh. My. God. He couldn’t possibly believe she’d set him up on that New Year’s Eve two years ago! But as he continued to mutter about how she’d been in league with his kidnappers and had served him up to them on a silver platter, it was clear that was exactly what he did believe.
She spoke urgently. “Listen to me, Jagger. I didn’t set you up. I swear. I had no part of AbaCo’s goons kidnapping you. We met by chance and I was crazy about you.”
His head turned back and forth restlessly. “No chance about it,” he mumbled. “I needed into that party…I approached the girl…thought she’d be such an easy mark…I never dreamed…”
Emily sat back, frowning. Was she the girl he was referring to? Memory of him standing in that parking garage waiting for the elevator flashed through her head. He’d been using her? She tried again to penetrate his delirium, asking forcefully, “Jagger, what were you going to use me for?”
“Had to find our men. AbaCo snatched them…need proof to move on the company…grand jury wants some evidence before they get involved…”
AbaCo had kidnapped someone else? Were these other men riding around the world in cargo containers, lost and forgotten, too? “Who were they?” she asked.
Jagger sat bolt upright and his eyes popped open. The expression in them was wild. Unfocused. “Gotta find them!” he burst out.
“Lie back down, Jagger,” she soothed. “We’ll find your colleagues when you’re feeling better. I promise.” She’d learned the hard way over the past several hours that she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to force Jagger to do anything. With a little more cajoling from her, he finally lay back down.
She smoothed his damp hair off his brow, worried by the fine sheen of perspiration there. She stuck the electronic thermometer in his ear again. Up another tenth of a degree, 104.5. She pondered waking Lyle, but the medic had gotten practically no sleep last night and wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. He’d mentioned trying to bathe Jagger to help cool him, but it was imperative that his wounds stay dry.
Inspiration struck. She headed for the kitchen and rummaged around until she found a mixing bowl. She filled it with water and ice and then snagged every dish towel she could find.
She soaked a towel in cold water and laid it across Jagger’s chest. She folded another wet towel and laid it across his forehead. Another one across his hips below the bandages, several more on his legs. By the time she laid the last one across his feet, the first one on his chest was warm to the touch. She dipped it in the cold water, wrung it out and replaced it.
Jagger’s body was much as she remembered, powerful and lean, brimming with vitality, even in his current state. As she worked, though, she spotted a myriad of new scars. And something hot and demanding began to build in her belly. Rage.
A thin scar on his neck looked like some sort of slashing wound. His captors must have toyed with slitting his throat. Several small round scars clustered on his belly looked like cigarette burns. Then she found a whole series of tiny marks on his back over both kidneys. She recalled hearing somewhere that the most painful form of torture was to stick needles in the human kidney. Apparently, the nerves from the incredibly sensitive organ were wired to the brain so a human couldn’t pass out from that pain. And then she found the scars on the bottoms of his feet. Dozens of them. Scars on top of scars. The width of her finger in a crisscrossing pattern as though they’d caned his feet bloody. More than once. Many times more than once.
And that was when her rage spilled over.
She was going to kill someone for this. No, Jagger had the right of it. She was going to hurt someone very badly and then kill them. How could anyone visit this sort of damage on another human being? Whoever’d done this to Jagger didn’t deserve to live. She’d track them down. Hunt them herself if she had to.
No wonder Jagger was so furious with her if he thought she’d had some part in doing this to him. Frankly, she was amazed that he was only enraged. How had he clung to sanity at all? New awe at his mental and physical endurance filled her.
She continued draping him in cool towels all through the night. His temperature stabilized at 104.5, but he continued to drift in and out, sometimes still and apparently asleep, and other times mumbling and tossing. And sometime during that endless night, the worst of her rage settled into grim resolve to help Jagger find his captors and do whatever he wanted to them. But first he had to live.
A little before dawn, Lyle came into the living room to check on his patient.
“How’s he doing?” Emil
y asked anxiously.
Lyle shrugged noncommittally. “The next twenty-four hours will tell the tale. Go get some sleep and I’ll take over towel duty. Good idea, by the way.”
As skeptical as she was that she’d get any sleep, she lay down in Lyle’s bed—the only bed in the house—and closed her eyes. She awoke to brilliant sunlight streaming through the window into her face. Shading her eyes, she glanced over at the alarm clock and was stunned to see it read nearly noon. She jumped up and rushed out to see how Jagger was doing.
She frowned. His head was lying in the mixing bowl she’d used earlier, and the thing was half-filled with ice water. “Are you washing his hair?” she asked in surprise.
Lyle glanced up grimly. “No. I’m trying to keep his brain from frying. His temperature spiked about an hour ago, and we’ve got to keep his head cool or he’ll get brain damage. Go get me another tray of ice, will you?”
She headed for the kitchen. Dismayed, she stared at the array of shallow bowls and plates of half-frozen water now filling the freezer along with several ice-cube trays. Lyle must think this fever wasn’t going away anytime soon. She grabbed a tray of ice cubes and rushed back to Jagger’s side.
She worked towel duty while Lyle dumped the ice cubes in Jagger’s head bath. “How long do you think this fever will last?” she asked.
“Until it breaks or he dies.”
Dread filled her, as icy as the water bathing Jagger. “When will we know which way this is gonna go?”
Lyle frowned. “I’ve seen a lot of wounds go septic. Guys usually last a day. Maybe two at most.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” she cried.
“I doubled up the antibiotics this morning. I’m giving him all the help I can.”
“I’ll call Don to come get him. Fly him out to the nearest hospital.” Frantically, she fumbled for her cell phone before she remembered it had been ruined in the ocean.
Lyle shook his head. “Boy’s too sick to move. The flight would kill him. Besides, there’s not much more a hospital could do for him. They have fancy refrigerated blankets to help hold down fevers, but your towels will work nearly as well. They’d give him the same medications I am, and then they’d wait just like we are. If you want to do something more to help, say a prayer.”
Lyle enlisted her to help to change the dressing on Jagger’s wounds, and she flinched to see the angry red swelling around them. The medic commented, “I’d open those up and clean ’em again, but the kid can’t afford to lose any more blood than he already has.” He shook his head direly.
Emily piped up, “My blood is O positive. Anyone can take that type, can’t they?”
“Yeah,” Lyle answered cautiously.
“You’ve got needles and tubes and all that intravenous stuff, right? Take a pint of my blood and give it to Jagger. That way you can clean out his wounds.”
Lyle studied her speculatively. “Any chance you’ve got AIDS or hepatitis?”
She shook her head in the negative. “Haven’t had an injection or slept with a guy in two years and I don’t do drugs.”
“It might be worth a try. He’s not doing so great.”
“Do it,” she urged. “Please. We’ve got to do everything we can.”
“All right. Lemme go sterilize up some needles.”
In a few minutes, Lyle came back with a big glass of orange juice in hand. “Drink this. I don’t need you passing out on me, too. One sick patient at a time is enough for me.”
She downed the juice quickly.
Lyle explained, “I’m gonna stick you and then plug you directly into his IV.”
She winced at the needle stick in the bend of her elbow, but in a matter of seconds, the clear tube turned dark red as her blood began streaming into Jagger’s arm. Satisfaction filled her. This felt right. Her life force flowing into him, becoming part of him. Lyle timed the transfer carefully.
“There. That’s about a pint,” he announced.
She actually felt bereft when he disconnected her from Jagger. But then Lyle drafted her to assist while he carefully snipped the stitches and lanced the wounds. She did her best to block out seeing what emerged from the wounds. Suffice it to say it was a good thing that Lyle opened Jagger back up again. The amount of blood was alarming, but eventually it ran a healthy red, and Lyle stitched Jagger up once more.
Maybe it was the blood she’d donated, but she felt utterly drained both physically and emotionally by the time it was over. Jagger was more pale than ever and utterly still now. She almost wished for the return of the thrashing and ranting. At least then she knew he was still alive, still fighting. But this deeply unconscious state of his was the most frightening of all.
He was the same through the evening, lying zombielike on the sofa without so much as a twitch. Lyle’s expression went from grim to grave. She was losing him. Jagger was slipping away before her very eyes. She prayed and then she cried and then she prayed some more. She felt so damned helpless! Surely there was something she could do.
Around midnight, his breathing started to labor, coming in painful rasps. She called out, “Lyle, do something!”
The medic came in from the kitchen and examined Jagger yet again. Then the man said gently, “Honey, there’s nothing more we can do. It’s up to God and Jagger now. Either he has something to live for, some work left undone here on earth, or it’s his time to go.”
And that was when she knew exactly what she had to do. “Could I have a moment alone with him?”
The older man nodded and stepped outside onto the porch. The door closed behind him.
She knelt by Jagger’s side and took one of his hot, limp hands in hers. She put her mouth close to his ear. “Do you need something to live for? Well, try this on for size. That night we spent together two years ago? New Year’s Eve, remember? You and I have a daughter, Jagger. Her name is Michelle. She’s fifteen months old and looks just like you. And she deserves to meet her daddy someday. Don’t you die on her. You fight, by God. You live—you hear me? You owe it to her. You left us before, but now you’ve come back to us. Don’t you dare leave us again.”
Chapter 9
Jagger gradually became aware of floating within a peaceful silence. It cocooned him gently in a white, weightless mist. It was a nice change from the constant dark and he was in no rush to get back to the real world. But eventually, he couldn’t resist checking in on reality and opened his eyes.
He squinted into bright sunlight. That was odd. He was awake, but he wasn’t in his box. What were his captors up to now?
Someone moved nearby. He looked off to his left and saw a strange man approaching. He surged up, then collapsed back, gasping as hot knives of crumpling agony stabbed his left side.
“Easy, kid. I’m one of the good guys,” the stranger soothed. “But I’m gonna be pissed if I have to stitch up your side again.”
The man sounded American. All of his AbaCo captors had been distinctly German. Suspiciously, Jagger asked, “How do I know you’re one of the good guys?”
The man frowned. “That’s a good question. How ’bout this?” He shoved up his sleeve to reveal a Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor tattoo on his left biceps. “Don’t know too many bad guys sporting one of these.”
Jagger sagged back to the cushions in relief. “Semper fi,” he sighed.
“Semper fidelis, my young friend. Lemme go wake up Emily. She’s gonna be over the moon that you’re coming around. Girl’s been sitting up with you practically around the clock.”
The gray-haired man left the room before Jagger could ask any more questions. Emily was here? He’d have pegged her for the type to cut and run when the shooting started. And she’d been sitting with him around the clock? Why? How long had he been out of it, anyway? Two years ago, he’d have described the pain in his left side as excruciating. But now…now he’d classify it as annoying but tolerable. Funny how pain was all a matter of perspective.
“Jagger?” Emily rushed into the room, h
er hair sticking up every which way. It was actually incredibly cute. She looked like a rumpled kitten. “Are you really awake? How do you feel?” To the older man she blurted, “Has the fever truly broken?”
The marine grinned. “Yup, 102.1 and dropping.”
Fever? He’d been sick, then? He felt as if he’d been run over a couple of times by a Mack truck.
She moved to his side, smiling down brilliantly at him—in relief if he wasn’t mistaken. “I knew you’d make it.”
She said that as though it had been in serious doubt. He asked, frowning, “How sick was I?”
The man answered, “’Bout as sick as I’ve ever seen anyone be and still live. That was a hell of an infection you got, boy. Had to lance your wounds twice. Finally had to install tubes in ’em to drain ’em.”
Wounds? Plural? “What’s wrong with me?” he asked in alarm.
The man said, “Name’s Lyle, by the way. Marine medic, ’Nam, ’66 to ’72. You took a piece of fiberglass through your left side. I’ve got it in the kitchen if you want a souvenir. ’Bout the size of a bowie knife blade. Did about as much damage as one, too.”
Jagger reached gingerly for his side and encountered heavy white gauze wrappings.
“Easy, son. Tubes are still in. Shrapnel missed your lung by a hair. Tore up your diaphragm—breathing may be a bit hard for a few weeks. Don’t run any marathons for a couple months, okay?”
Jagger nodded. Now that the immediate concern for his health was past, the next pressing concern was…“Where in the hell am I?” he blurted.
Emily fielded this one. “When we realized you were hurt and you refused to go to a hospital, Don diverted his plane into this island so Lyle could look after you.”
Jagger glanced over at Lyle, who added, “I own this chunk of rock. It’s just a pretty little spot in the middle of nowhere.”
From a box to a rock. Jagger supposed that was a step up.
Lyle continued. “Stay as long as you like. It’s kinda nice having some company for a change.”
