by Bruhns, Nina
She spotted a hastily scribbled note on top of the monitor.
Profolol drip running on pump one to keep him under, watch the TPN bag, you’ll need to piggyback lipids to give him enough nutrition, and the oxynovine (detox med) needs to run at 12 cc/hr for 18 hrs, then discontinue all. After waking and alert, the oxorelin flush should run at 12 cc/hr for 6 hrs. Monitor closely for forty-eight hours.
She flipped over the paper. There was nothing more. Outrage zinged through her anew. Oh, thanks ever so much for the great instructions. She knew all that stuff. What she didn’t know was how the hell she was supposed to do all of it single-handed. The procedure took twenty-four hours to complete, plus observation time. At least at Bellevue she’d had round-the-clock help.
God, did she ever hate this—having to run the experimental protocol without knowing all the variables and being able to plan for them. Especially when someone’s life was at stake.
Someone who just happened to be her lover.
Seventy-two hours.
This was insane! Hadn’t that colonel said something about being on a plane to Egypt in thirty-six? She had to talk them out of it. Kick wouldn’t even be past the critical stage.
Unfortunately, no one came for her to talk to. As the hours ticked by, her outrage at Forsythe continued, but at least her nerves calmed a bit. As well as her anger at the man lying helpless in the bed. Kick moaned, his body twitching and jerking as it rid itself of the toxic drug, especially the leg with the scars.
She sponged his brow with cool water, held the bowl when he puked, pulled the blanket up again when he kicked it off, tenderly stroked the damp tendrils of hair from his forehead. During the worst, she took his hand and held it in hers. She might still be upset with him, but there was no way she could sit and watch a man in such pain and not be touched deep inside.
But seeing him unconscious and vulnerable, fighting his addiction, and having experienced the full brunt of his former employers, she had a hard time staying angry that he had tried to use her to escape all this. Hell, she would have done the same thing. But why couldn’t he have just been honest, instead of pulling that gun on her?
The day had definitely been an emotional roller coaster. Panic attacks always left her drained, and ones involving guns or violence usually sent her straight under the covers into a long, troubled sleep. It happened at the ER every once in a while; over the years she’d learned to control and cover her reactions at work, holding the fatigue at bay until she got home. But today the threat had been all too personal. The reaction more vivid and exhausting.
All the more so because of last night with Kick. That had been personal, too. Draining in a whole different way. Especially the part in bed. Even without subsequent events, she would have been wiped out after a night like that.
But now wasn’t the time to think about the night they’d spent together.
She definitely wasn’t ready to face those memories yet, not even in her mind.
THAT night Rainie was barely able to stay awake. She drank about a million cups of coffee and forced herself to keep her eyes open and on the monitor. Because Kick needed her.
A couple of hours before dawn, Forsythe finally came to see her.
Wordlessly, he handed her the early edition of the New York Times, folded into thirds. With a buzzing head, she glanced at it.
At the top of the page, the column headline read:MILLION DOLLAR DRUG THEFT AT BELLEVUE
GENERAL: MISSING NURSE SUSPECTED
She was so tired that the meaning didn’t occur to her until she read the first paragraph of the story. There, her own name was prominently listed as a “person of interest” in the investigation.
That’s when it hit her.
She gasped in indignation. “Me? I had nothing to do with any theft! I was here all last night! You have to tell them!”
Forsythe met her with a level look.
Then it dawned on her. “Oh, my God! You did this!”
His gaze chilled. “Just a little insurance. So you understand the stakes.”
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.
“Mr. Jackson’s detox is nearly complete,” he said. “This evening he’ll be taken to New Jersey and put on a military transport to Egypt. And you along with him.”
Rainie’s pulse went into hyperspace. “What? You promised I could go home after this is over!”
“And you will. The doc said it’ll be seventy-two hours before he’s completely out of danger. It’s only been eighteen.”
She shook her head emphatically. “I can’t go to Egypt.”
Forsythe crossed his arms. “You’ll never have to leave the plane. I promise.”
Oh, God. “No, you don’t understand. I’d be useless. I have severe panic attacks in any kind of vehicle. Ask your men. I freaked out completely in the SUV coming here. I can’t even imagine how I’d react to being confined in an airplane over the ocean for hours on end. I’m hyperventilating just thinking about it.”
“Here are your options, Miss Martin,” Forsythe said evenly as he handed her the form she wouldn’t sign the day before. “You can show your patriotism and see Mr. Jackson through his whole treatment as you promised. Or . . . you could go home to your apartment and never see us again.”
She glanced back at the newspaper article. And be arrested for stealing drugs and never work again, was the clear subtext.
“You’ll be generously compensated for your time,” he told her. “And the police will be provided with evidence of your innocence in the drug robbery, of course.”
“Of course,” she said, really feeling like she was about to faint.
“I’m sorry about the emotional trauma, Miss Martin. But the plain truth is, you really have no choice. You will be accompanying Mr. Jackson to Egypt.”
SHE could do this.
Rainie’s best friend, Gina Cappozi, reached for the phone and picked it up determinedly. Hadn’t she just spoken to Special Agent Wade Montana yesterday? Yes. She had. And it had gone very well, thankyouverymuch. They’d both been cordial, polite, and to the point. The fact that she’d been totally distracted over her friend’s überstrange request to confirm the name of a freaking CIA officer, and had not exchanged a single personal word with Wade, was completely irrelevant. She’d begged for his help, and he’d given it. End of story.
No wounded silences. No angry recriminations. No heartfelt pleas. Just business.
See? They could be friends.
Why should today be any different?
Maybe because she’d spent the entire night agonizing alternately over Rainie’s terrible choice in going off with that burnt-out druggie loser she’d met at the speed dating, and Gina’s own choice last year of not quitting her job, marrying FBI super-agent Wade Montana, and following him to Washington, D.C., to live happily ever after in comfortable obscurity.
Was Wade still pissed off about that?
Courage failing her, she hung up the phone for the twentieth time.
He hadn’t sounded pissed off. But voices could be deceiving. How well she knew. The whole time they’d gone out together she’d sounded perfectly normal, like a woman who wasn’t completely terrified of falling in love and losing her whole identity because some man decided he didn’t approve of his wife or girlfriend being smarter than he was.
She’d taken a chance on handsome, sociable Wade, and he’d proven to be everything she’d always feared and more. So she’d told him where to stuff his two-carat diamond ring, and went back to dating younger men who couldn’t care less about her career, because they were brainless studs only interested in one thing. It was an arrangement that worked well all around.
Though the ring had been really fine.
Ah, well. She could afford to buy herself a four-carat diamond now if she wanted to—thanks to a small but increasingly lucrative patent she owned—and not have the downside of being tied for life to a conservative, old-fashioned, opinionated, dictatorial, if handsome and sociable . . . Neandert
hal.
She glanced at the clock. A Neanderthal who’d be leaving the office for lunch if she didn’t stop being such a wimp. She picked up the phone and dialed.
“Montana.”
“Wade, this is Gina again.”
There was a short silence. “Twice in two days. Don’t know if I can stand the excitement,” he drawled. “Is this your cleverly disguised way of telling me you’ve changed your mind and can’t live without me?” His tone said he knew very well changing her mind was the last thing she’d ever do, but he just couldn’t help twisting the knife a little. Nice guy.
“No,” she said crisply, striving for cheerful indifference to the nasty undercurrent. “That Forsythe guy I called you about this morning? The one for Rainie? I need you to give me his phone number.”
Another pause. “You know I can’t do that, Gina.”
“It’s important, Wade. It’s been over a day and Rainie still hasn’t come home. Or called. Or answered her cell.”
“File a missing persons report.”
“I have, but—”
“Then try letting NYPD do their job, babe.”
She ignored the dripping sarcasm. “They called me a few minutes ago asking about her. Stupid me thought they’d taken my report seriously. But instead they started implying she could be responsible for a break-in at the hospital last night. A lot of drugs were taken.”
“If they’ve got evidence, maybe she—”
“There’s no way Rainie had anything to do with that break-in. Please, Wade, I’m really scared. I’m afraid the CIA is trying to—”
Wade made a rude noise. “A conspiracy theory? Jesus, Gina, I thought you were supposed to be a fucking genius or something. Or has your obvious distaste for me colored your entire perception of federal law enf—”
“Oh, stop it and grow up!” she snapped. Then reined in her temper. “I’m sorry. I’m just so worried about Rainie. Why would she have disappeared like this?”
“Maybe she likes sex with a real man. Someone over the age of, oh, say, twenty-one. She’s probably spent the last two nights with that guy you disapprove of so much, fucking his brains out.”
Gina felt like she’d been slugged in the stomach. Tears stung her eyes. “Don’t you dare give me that shit, Wade Montana. I liked fucking you fine. It was all your goddamn male chauvinist baggage I couldn’t live with,” she said between clenched teeth.
“Oh. Yeah. Because you have no baggage at all,” he shot back. “Especially none of that goddamn feminist garbage.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten. Twenty. Thirty. Then she opened them again and said, very, very calmly, “Give me the phone number, Wade. Give me the damn phone number now or I swear I’ll e-mail all your FBI buddies and tell them how much you like being tied up and spanked. And you know I’ll do it.”
There was another long silence. “You are such a fucking bitch,” he finally said.
“Yeah, well, you used to like that about me. The number?”
“Hold on.” A moment later he read it off to her. “And just for the record,” he said, quiet fury ringing in his voice, “you liked it way more than I did.” Then he slammed down the phone.
Slowly she let out the breath she’d been holding. Okay, then. Wasn’t that a barrel of laughs.
But at least she’d gotten the damn phone number.
KICK woke up feeling like shit on a stick. If the stick had been made from glowing hot metal and shoved the long way through his bad leg and was lodged there like a spear. A glowing-hot, poison-tipped spear.
But all things considered, it could be a hell of a lot worse. A day of his life was gone. But then, so was his addiction. Well. Sort of. The cravings would still be there for a while. Okay, probably for the rest of his fucking life. But cravings Kick could handle. As long as the crippling physical need was gone. Which it was. Mostly.
A noise attracted his attention. He cracked his moist eyelids. And saw Rainie. Standing over him fussing with the sheet.
Hell. What was she still doing here? That worried him. He’d really hoped they’d let her go once they had him in their clutches. No good would come of her being anywhere close to him. He’d been down this road before and it hadn’t been pretty.
But she sure was. Pretty, that was.
“Hey,” he said, unreasonably glad to see her at his bedside. God, he was a selfish bastard.
“Welcome back,” she said, and gave him a genuine, if tired, smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than I have a right to be. You okay?”
She nodded. She was holding his hand. He smiled back and passed out again.
But this time he remembered his dreams. Pretty Rainie was in every one. Smiling sweetly as he shot her in the head.
HE woke up several more times, until finally he was able to stay awake for over an hour. After changing his IV, Rainie gave him a cup of water with a straw in it, and fed him apple-sauce with a plastic spoon, and he was even able to keep it down.
“I feel like a baby,” he said. It was kind of embarrassing. Big, macho commando man.
“Your second infancy,” she teased. “Enjoy it.”
“Hmm. I’m fairly certain I was breastfed,” he said.
She gave him a sardonic grin. “You are feeling better.”
“Yeah.” He eased back on his pillow and looked up at her gratefully. And nervously. “Why are you still here?”
A shadow of unease flitted across her face. “They, um, persuaded me to stay.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. So goddamned predictable. “What did they threaten you with?”
She handed him a folded-up newspaper. He read the headline and cursed under his breath. “Bastards.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. They might be bastards, but Al was right. He was the bigger one for getting her involved in the first place. And he knew better. He knew better. “God, I’m so damned sorry I dragged you into this.”
“Me, too.” And yet, as he gazed into her tired green eyes, they softened. Her cheeks grew pink. “But the sex was really nice.”
He couldn’t believe she’d brought that up. A tingling spilled through him, his body suddenly remembering what pleasure was, rather than merely painful torture.
Nice? “More like amazing,” he said. Was it possible she’d forgiven him for using her? “Look. Maybe . . . if I survive this thing and get back to New York, I could maybe look you up sometime?”
For a second, she looked surprised. Hell, he’d surprised himself. Since when did he make dates? Even when the sex was amazing . . .
But her deep, hesitant intake of breath as she looked deliberately down at the floor was more eloquent than words.
He held up a hand, actually shocked at the letdown he felt at her rejection. Not that he blamed her one damn bit. It wasn’t like he’d shown her a real good time. Besides, that crazy emotional disappointment he was feeling? Probably just a residual influence of the drugs. “Never mind,” he agreed. “You’re right, not a good idea.”
She gave him a bleak smile. “Different worlds” was all she said.
But that pretty much summed it up in a nutshell. She was a nurse, for crying out loud. He was . . . what he was. They came from diametrically opposed worlds, and wish as he might to dwell in hers, no sane, normal woman would ever knowingly accept the things he’d done, the person he’d become, in his. Not even for amazing sex.
In the end, it all came down to one thing.
She saved lives.
He took them.
LATE that night, they were driven to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, and escorted out to where a huge, lumbering C-17 was being loaded with cargo bound for Cairo, Egypt. From there they’d transfer to a private transport south and over the border to the Sudan. Kick’s ticket to hell.
He was still weak and shaky, but he’d completed the whole course of the detox treatment itself. Feeling better. Almost human. Okay, maybe not that good, but getting there.
/> At the sight of the plane, he stifled a groan. So much for feeling human. He wished he had a dollar for every time he’d had to strap himself onto one of those hard-as-rock, spine-cracking cargo seats that lined the walls of the giant flying warehouses, while headed out on a mission too covert to risk flying commercial. He’d be a rich man.
Even richer than he was now. Hazardous-duty pay wasn’t bad, and he’d earned plenty of it. The numbers added up quickly when you were never home to dip into your portfolio.
Too bad he probably wouldn’t be around to enjoy his nest egg now that he’d finally found something . . . someone . . . worth spending it on.
But despite the fragile hope he’d momentarily let slip to Rainie, this Sudan mission would be a bitch to survive. Realistically, he probably wouldn’t.
Afghanistan had been bad enough, but at least that theater had been full of regular US military support. When his spec ops ZU team had been ambushed trying to take out the fanatical al Sayika leader Jallil abu Bakr, help was just a walkie-talkie hail away. That wasn’t going to be the case in the Sudan. The closest thing to friendlies he’d find there would be the wandering Bedouin, and a few refugee camps scattered around the Sahara Desert, such as the Doctors for Peace camp that his buddy Nathan Daneby had started a hundred clicks or so south of the Egyptian border.
Kick wondered if Nate was still there at the DFP camp. He doubted it. Last he’d heard, his tireless friend was helping the UN set up another field hospital somewhere down by the equator. The Sudan was a huge country—three and a half times the size of Texas—and it seemed every inch of it was being ravaged by some kind of pestilence, drought, or war. And now the virulent terrorist Jallil abu Bakr had come to add his sick agenda to the country’s burden of problems.
Kick’s mission was to rid the world of the scumbag once and for all. He’d failed last time. This time he wouldn’t fail. So help him God, he wouldn’t.
