by Lexi Blake
“You’re not angry?”
She shook her head. “I gave her a lot to do. Likely she thought I would get him out.”
“When did you realize he wasn’t safe?”
The scene shifted and suddenly she was in her operating room. She and Anya were working on the man. Anya sucked away much of the blood and Steph could see the wound more clearly.
“I was working on the patient and I heard Nate through the monitor. I had my hand inside the man, trying to get the bullet free, and I heard my son wake up.”
She watched herself falter, the horror of what was happening dawning on her face.
“Don’t you stop, Doctor.” The boss was standing right outside the room, looking inside. “I’ll take care of the child. It’s a good trade-off, you see. You take care of this man, ensure he doesn’t die, and I’ll do the same for the child.” He turned back and shouted. “Find the baby.”
“That must have been a horrible moment,” Kai said.
One of many. “He’d already explained to me that he would kill me and my nurse if we didn’t save the patient. That’s not what he called him. No.” Her mind was working. He’d called the man something else. Something weird. “Verse…something.”
“Go back to that moment. This isn’t the real world. This is your movie and you can fast forward or slow it down. You can select the scene. Go back to when you first spoke to the boss. Run through the scene again. Concentrate on that moment.”
He’d called the man something else. Not a name, but a word. It had been all jumbled up in her head, but now she thought it was important. He’d spoken in English most of the time. But this once, the word seemed to fail him and he’d spat out something in his own language.
What language was it?
“I’ll write it down and we’ll figure it out. Stop trying to force it. Let it slip and flow,” Kai ordered, his voice as calm as the world around her was chaotic.
Because Alfi was trying to step in front of her, putting a hand up as the boss got in her face. She could still feel the tension of the moment, waiting for the small room to explode in gunfire.
“Step back, mate,” Alfi was saying. “This doesn’t have to get violent.”
“If I have to kill you, I will. Do you understand me?” The boss’s face had turned a florid red, and now she was surrounded.
“They were all around me,” Steph told Kai. “They flanked us like they were setting us up for slaughter. I was strangely calm about it. I knew he wanted me to save someone, but Alfi was being overprotective.”
“It sounds like Alfi was being properly protective,” Kai said. “How often do you get armed men threatening you?”
“In that part of Sierra Leone? Almost never,” she admitted. “I set up the clinic there as a base camp of sorts. I did it because it’s stable. So I knew I would have somewhere to go back to. The problems are to the east and south, mainly. We do have issues with emergent diseases. We had an Ebola epidemic, but we don’t have mercenaries normally.”
“Yet you had a plan in place for how to deal with them. You didn’t wait to send your second nurse off with the children,” Kai pointed out.
“I’ve been in much darker places. I’ve learned to be prepared.” She watched as Alfi finally put his hands up and let her take over. It was obvious Alfi had run out of options besides being horribly murdered, and the man loved his own face far too much to allow that to happen. “This is where the boss threatens me. He’s good at the intimidation thing.”
The boss was looming over her, his accent thick as he spoke. “I need this man alive. Can you understand that, Doctor? If you can’t save him, no one will be able to save you.”
He turned and walked away.
Steph looked to what appeared to be the second in command. “Is this his son? Someone close to him?”
The man shook his head. “Verslaggever. Don’t know the word in the English. You need to know the word alive. He will kill you. We must to keep this verslaggever living.”
“Excellent,” Kai said. “I’ve got it. We’ll run it through a translator after we’re done here. What happened after the surgery?”
She let the scene shift to the small room where she and Anya had taken turns watching over the patient. “He was still critical, but for several hours we had him stabilized. Once the boss saw that all the monitors were functioning and he had one of his men confirm that it seemed like the patient would live, he gave Nate back to me.”
Steph stood outside the room, Nate swept up in her arms. She was talking to Anya, though tears were running down her face. Yes, she remembered that moment. Once she’d had Nate in her arms again, she hadn’t been able to stop crying.
“He’s awake?” Anya was asking, her voice hushed.
Steph looked around as though trying to make sure they were alone. “Briefly, but his pain was intense and I had to give him something. He wasn’t speaking English. I think he speaks the same language these guys do. I tried to talk to him, but his blood pressure spiked. He needs rest.”
“The boss has already been in here demanding to speak to him,” Anya explained. “I had to tell him that if he tried to wake him up too soon there could be dire consequences. I don’t think he cared. The only thing that stopped him was one of his own men. I wish I knew what he’d said. I don’t speak Dutch.”
Dutch. Anya had believed it was Dutch they had been speaking.
“Very good, Stephanie.” Kai’s voice encouraged her. “That’s important information. Do you have any recollection of speaking directly to the patient?”
“Only the once before I gave him pain meds, and I couldn’t tell you what he said. Shortly after that Anya and I talked, and then I fell asleep with Nate. I woke up to Alfi telling me the patient had died and we needed to run before the boss found out.”
The scene shifted to a small room in the back of the clinic. She hadn’t been allowed to go back to her cabin. The soldiers had told her they needed to keep an eye on her. She was fairly certain the soldiers had taken her bed and the one she’d had brought in for Brody. That was where the boss had disappeared. She hated the fact that he was sleeping in Brody’s bed.
She watched as Alfi entered the room, Nate’s diaper bag already in his hand.
“Stephanie, wake up,” he said, not bothering to turn on the light. “You gotta wake up. We have to get the hell out of here. He’s dead.”
Steph sat up, trying not to disturb Nate. “What?”
Anya walked in behind him. “It’s true. I think he threw a clot. I tried to save him, but he’s gone and any minute now the guard will walk back by. I have to be there to tell him everything is fine. He’s an idiot. He won’t notice. Come on, you have to go.”
“At the time the words didn’t make sense to me,” Steph explained to Kai. “I was very tired. I understood that the patient was dead, but now I remember that Anya knew I was leaving. It happened quickly. Alfi hustled me out to the car and we left then and there. I think Anya believed the guard would do what he’d done all night. He’d been checking in and then doing a long perimeter sweep so he could smoke. She could have snuck off then, but she was trying to give us some cover.”
And she’d probably died for it. She’d gone from being a brave young nurse with an infectious smile to being a dead body in a doorway.
What had happened to her before she’d died? What horrors had she gone through?
“Stay with me, Stephanie.” Kai’s voice soothed her and she forced herself to focus.
“The only people who were alone with the patient were me and Anya,” she said.
“What about Alfi?”
She stopped. How could she have forgotten about Alfi? “Yes. He sat with the man for a little while. But he didn’t say anything about the patient talking.”
“All right. I think we’re in a good place but I need you to do one more thing for me,” Kai said. “Go back. Go back to that first moment when the boss strode in.”
She let the scene shift and flow back and she
was standing in the lobby of the clinic again, in that moment right before the day had gone to hell. She was talking and laughing. She watched herself look up, see the problem coming, and go into action. “I’m there. What am I looking for?”
“I want you to think about that moment when you realized this was serious,” Kai explained. “That moment when the boss strode in and you knew he could kill you.”
What was Kai looking for? She let the moment happen, running up to the second that the boss had looked at her with cold, dead eyes. She watched as a blank look came over her own face. “I’m there.”
“Tell me what your first thought was.”
Without thinking, she spoke. “I thought I’d been waiting for this moment since I was sixteen years old. I thought finally, I get what I deserve.”
The memory fell apart and she was back in the present, staring at a flame. Her heart seemed to seize as she acknowledged the truth.
Kai touched a button and daylight started to stream in.
Why had she told him that? “I don’t really feel like that. It was a momentary lapse.”
Kai turned to her, his intelligent eyes narrowing. “Oh, I doubt that very much. I think that was the most honest you’ve been with me and yourself in a long time. This is what your friends are worried about.”
She knew it was what Avery was worried about. “I’m fine, Doc. I might have those feelings from time to time, but I’m not punishing myself anymore.”
“You used to?”
“I was behind the wheel in an accident that killed two people and left one without the use of her legs for years. And I barely had a scratch on me. Yes, I punished myself. When I was younger I did it all, Dr. Ferguson. I used hardcore drugs, drank anything I could get my hands on, and I don’t remember all the times I used sex to try to obliterate myself.”
“And now you’re involved with a man who enjoys a particular lifestyle.”
She wasn’t going there with him. “Oh, don’t you even judge him for that. It’s not the same thing. Not even close. I’ve hurt myself in an attempt to kill whole parts of my soul, and that is not what happens between me and Brody. It’s not about pain or hurting myself. It’s about connecting and the fact that only that one man in the world can give me relief, can make me feel safe enough that I can let go. I’ve been out of control before and I know what it feels like. It’s nothing like being with Brody. When I’m with him, I can hand over control knowing he won’t use it against me and I’m safe. I’m surprised that you would even think that way. I thought you were in the lifestyle.”
A smile spread over his handsome face and she realized she’d been perfectly manipulated. “I am, and you explained it quite properly to me. You’re cleared for play at Sanctum if it comes up. Now let’s look up that lovely word of yours. Dutch, you said?”
She stopped, confused at his turnaround. “I didn’t expect you to say that. I thought we would have to have more sessions.”
His eyes came up from the tablet in his hands. “You know what your problem is. You admit you made a mistake. I can’t force you to forgive yourself. You know what you have to do. You have to find the meaning in what seems meaningless. I personally would say you’ve done that. You’ve worked tirelessly to save people who wouldn’t have been saved if your life had taken the path it would have without the accident. But I don’t think you’re at peace with it. You can’t be if that was your first thought when confronted with a monster. It wasn’t that you would save your son. It was that you had been waiting for this, deserved this.”
She felt tears gather. “I love my son.”
“I believe you, but Stephanie, how will you teach him to love himself if you can’t do the same? Forgiving oneself is something you have to decide to do. I’m here if you want to talk, but I otherwise think you’re doing fairly well at handling things. When you find the true meaning in what happened to you, that’s the moment you’ll forgive yourself.”
Meaning. There was no meaning in what had happened. There had been only death and pain and long years of misery. Avery thought saving people in Africa made up for the horror of that night, but it wasn’t true.
It wasn’t a calling. It was penance.
Did she intend to force Nate to live in her version of Purgatory? She’d stayed away from the States because she could pretend to be someone else when she wasn’t here. She could separate Stephanie, the idiot teenage girl, from the selfless doctor, but something had changed when she’d met Brody. She’d wanted, really wanted something for herself. For the first time, she’d wanted to be free of the cage she’d put herself in.
Avery had opened the door years before. The cage was no longer locked because Avery’s kindness had busted it open.
But Steph was still inside. She might always stay inside. Could she keep Nate in there with her?
“Ah, there it is.” Kai turned the tablet her way. “Journalist. Verslaggever is Dutch for journalist or reporter. Now that’s interesting.”
It was, but her mind was somewhere else. She tried to shove all the dark thoughts back and concentrate on the problem at hand.
“Can we call Adam Miles and see if he can run a search to see if anyone’s missing a Dutch journalist?” Steph asked.
“I’m on it.” Kai smiled like this was going to be a fun afternoon.
She wasn’t sure about fun, but she’d learned a lot. Not all of it welcome. She turned to the job at hand, trying not to think about the future…or the past.
Chapter Nine
Brody nodded at Wade Rycroft as the door swung open, allowing him into Club Sanctum. The big dark-haired former cowboy was not only a bodyguard employed by McKay-Taggart, but he served as the club’s Dom-in-residence.
“Carter, good to see you.” He started walking up with his hand out but stopped as Brody walked in and he got a good look at the fact that he wasn’t alone. “Whoa. When did you have a kid, man? Or is that a new fashion accessory?”
Taggart had sent over something called a sling. Naturally, because he was a bastard, the sling was pink. “Big Tag swears by the sling. This is my son, Nathan Avery Carter.”
“Except his last name is actually Gibson because he refused to call the mother of his child back,” Tucker explained. “He’s not good with women.”
“And this is my…partner while I’m over here. He’s one of the lads from Dr. McDonald’s experiments. Apparently, we can’t lock them up forever so I had to take this one out in the field. Ignore him completely,” Brody said. “I was told I could set up in the conference room for the afternoon while Steph is working with Kai.”
Wade nodded. “Sure thing. I think I’ve got that information you wanted, too.”
“I thought you were protecting the royal couple.” Brody followed him through the lobby, hearing the locks on the front doors resetting. Anyone else coming in would need a key card, or someone with access to one. Not that he expected guests. The club had a gate around it as well. Having the first Sanctum blown up by a double agent had obviously taught Tag a thing or two about security.
“They’re not as exciting and fun as I’d expected a king and queen to be,” Wade said as he moved toward the big conference room. “They mostly watch movies or work out. Never together. They eat meals as fast as they can and then go back to doing things alone.”
“And when they think no one is looking, they stare longingly at each other,” a new voice said. “It kind of makes me sick. Shouldn’t arranged marriages be less emotional? I kind of thought that was the point.”
“Brody Carter, this is our resident romantic, Declan Burke,” Wade said with a bite of sarcasm. “He’s got day duty with me and then he’s providing security for the party tonight.”
“Because what you need when you’re hiding from royal assassins is a play party,” Burke replied. “You think if the assassins show up, Big Tag wants us to spank ’em?”
“You know he’s doing this because Kash is going stir crazy,” Wade replied.
“I think Tag is doing
that thing where it looks like he’s doing one thing, but he’s actually being a gossipy matchmaker. Again, didn’t realize this job would be so touchy-feely.” The big guy’s brow rose over one eye. “Or that there would be all those babies. What’s up with all the kids? Most people leave them at daycares or something.”
“He just found out he has a kid,” Tucker offered helpfully. “So now he’s afraid to put the kid down in case the mom runs with him again. Not that she really ran. She didn’t have to. She left him a voice mail saying she was pregnant, but Brody here erased it without listening to it and now she’s twelve kinds of pissed, except she’s also horny and apparently big Aussie dudes do it for her.”
He sent Tucker a dark look. “Do you mind?”
Tucker shrugged. “Not really. Although all that moaning and screaming made me think about hookers again. I don’t think it’s normal to go without sex for your whole life. I’m a virgin. I don’t think I want to stay a virgin.”
“You’re not a virgin,” Brody pointed out. “I’m sure you’ve had sex before.”
“I don’t remember it so it didn’t really happen. That’s the hardest part. I can’t remember if I’m a tender lover or like a sex machine. It haunts me.”
Burke stared at Tucker for a moment and then a smile of pure joy crossed his face. “All right, he can stay. He amuses me. Come on, weirdo. I’ve got to do a perimeter sweep. You can tell me all about the things you can’t remember.”
“And Burke can tell him about how he sees things that don’t exist,” Wade said with a shake of his head.
“Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there, asshole.” Burke put a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “Tell me about the hookers, buddy.”
“That is one weird dude.” Wade opened the conference room door. “Big Tag finds him amusing, but I worry about that kid. Kai claims he’s perfectly sane, but he talks in his sleep sometimes. I have no idea what language he’s speaking and he claims to have zero memory of any dreams.”
