by Kaylea Cross
Sinking to his knees on the grass, he shifted her onto his lap and tucked her in close, resting his chin on the top of her curls. And just held her. Giving her a safe place to hide while the shock and adrenaline tore through her body. Giving her the only comfort he could.
Finally, she calmed a little, her shoulders hitching with her jagged breaths. He eased his grip but kept her close, rubbed a hand up and down her spine.
With a heartbroken little sigh that twisted his insides, she went limp against him. The scent of blood swirled strong in the air. He wanted to take care of her, clean her up and stay with her.
“Sweetheart, look at me,” he murmured.
Her hands stayed locked in his shirt. She drew an unsteady breath and lifted her head from his shoulder to look up at him with puffy eyes.
Gabe slid the hand in her hair down to cup her cheek. Her skin was warm, like velvet as he swept his thumb across it, wiping the tear track away.
“I didn’t want him to die,” she whispered. “I thought I hated him, but… I wanted him to go to prison, not die that way.”
Ah, sweetheart.
“They’re all gone.” Her tone was wooden, empty. “My family’s all gone.”
You’ve got me.
He wanted to say it so bad he had to choke the words back. Because he couldn’t say them. It would cruel to give her false hope that anything between them could last when she was in WITSEC.
But staring down into those pain-filled, red-rimmed eyes, Gabe couldn’t take it.
He tipped her face upward, caught the slight flare of surprise in her eyes and the hitch in her breathing as he brushed his lips over hers. Once. Twice.
Her hands released his shirt to curl over his shoulders and she leaned up to press her mouth to his. Gabe swallowed a groan and slid his fingers into her curls, squeezing gently instead of gripping tight and crushing his mouth to hers as he wanted. He couldn’t help but skim his tongue along the seam of her lips, steal inside to touch hers, caress lightly when she parted for him.
Before things got out of hand, he lifted his head, flexed his fingers in her hair. The curls wrapped around his fingers, clinging as though they didn’t want to let go. He felt exactly the same way.
Oceane stared up at him, the shock and pain momentarily gone from her face, a slight flush on her pale cheeks visible in the moonlight. “Oh…”
Yeah, oh.
What the hell he was going to do about this, he didn’t know. But that was something for him to worry about later. “I’ve got to take you to talk with the head of the taskforce,” he told her, wishing they had more time. He would love to be able to take her away from here.
To some fancy hotel where he could strip those bloody clothes off her, carry her into the shower and clean her. Dry her off, then carry her to bed and hold her in the darkness. Be there when the pain came back to attack her in the middle of the night.
Because it would. And it would keep attacking her for weeks and months yet.
She sagged, closed her eyes. “I can’t.”
It sucked that they wouldn’t give her time to decompress, but with a case this important there was no time to lose. “I’ll stay with you.”
Her eyes opened and she stared up into his face. “Thank you.”
She didn’t have to thank him for that. “Come on.” He slid her off his lap, wrapped a steadying arm around her waist and stood, pulling her with him.
“Did you get Brock out?”
His heart squeezed that she would think of Cap at a time like this. “Yeah. We got him out.”
“And he’s alive?”
“Yeah.”
She exhaled, sagged against him. “Thank God.” She looked into his eyes. “Will he be all right?”
“Not sure. Khan was checking him over when we found out what was going on with you. I dropped everything and ran.”
She stayed pressed to his side as they emerged from their hiding spot. “Where is Victoria? Does she know Brock’s been rescued?”
“Not sure. I’ll make sure she knows.”
A group of agents spotted them. One of them waved at someone behind him and rushed toward them.
“Two good things came out of this mess,” she said as they kept walking.
He glanced down at her in surprise.
Her face was set. “You rescued Brock. And I know who el Escorpion is.”
Chapter Twenty
Brock surfaced from the blackness when a nurse came into his room to hook up another bag of fluid to his IV drip. He pried his left eye open, could barely see through the slit between his lids, the right one swollen shut.
He felt like he’d been hit by a fucking truck.
The last thing he remembered was Khan working on him, then Taggart saying Oceane was in trouble. Everything after that was a blur. His entire team had raced off to help her, leaving him with paramedics. He’d faded in and out on the way to the hospital.
The nurse smiled at him, the first rays of dawn coming through the window behind her. “How is your pain?” she asked him in accented English.
“Okay.” It sucked, actually.
On a scale of one to ten, he was at a nine-point-eight. All the jostling around and examinations by the medical staff seemed to have aggravated everything. He’d still been hypothermic when they’d put him in the ambulance. Bringing up his core temp had been their first priority. They’d given him warmed IV fluids, wrapped him in layers of blankets until he’d probably resembled a mummy.
It had been hours since his team had rescued him. He hadn’t heard anything since. Had no idea whether Oceane was okay or whether the Mexicans had managed to take Nieto into custody. And of course, he’d been thinking a lot about Tori. About what she meant to him, and what he was prepared to do to be with her.
He had a lot of thinking to do about what he truly wanted going forward. Almost dying had a way of making things so clear. All he knew was, he had to find her. Had to figure out a way to make it work between them. He needed her.
He bit back a growl as he shifted on the bed. His body was a mass of bruises. His wrists were bandaged up and they’d immobilized his right shoulder after reducing the dislocation. They’d taken x-rays of his face, arms and ribs. Nothing was actually broken except his nose, but he had a lot of soft tissue damage and there were two hairline fractures on the right side of his ribcage.
But at least he was still breathing. For a while there he hadn’t been sure he would make it.
“The doctor said a plastic surgeon will be in soon to stitch your face,” the nurse told him, gently tucking the blanket around his shoulders, careful not to jostle him.
“Okay.” The Emerg doc had closed the gash with adhesive strips in the meantime.
“Do you need anything? Something to eat?”
“No. Thanks.” He just wanted to know what the hell was going on with his team and the op.
The plastic surgeon arrived a few minutes later. He injected freezing into Brock’s face and began the task of stitching up the skin that had split over his nose and beneath his eye. Brock couldn’t feel the curved needle going in and out, but he could feel the tug of the sutures as they pulled through his skin.
He closed his eye, focused on taking slow, shallow breaths to spare his ribs, and thought about what he’d just survived. That had definitely sucked way harder than SERE school, and he’d fucking hated SERE school.
A knock sounded on the door. Brock cracked his left eye open as Taggart walked in.
“Making you all pretty again, I see,” his commander said with a slight smile as he approached the bed.
“What happened?” Brock demanded. “Did you get Nieto? Is Oceane safe?”
“Can you not talk?” the surgeon asked, intent on his work. “I need you to keep your face perfectly still.”
Taggart walked around to the side of the bed opposite from the surgeon and gripped the side rails. “Nieto’s dead. And yes, she’s safe.”
Good. Bastard. “Who got him?” He barely moved
his lips as he spoke, keeping his face as still as possible for the surgeon.
“His bodyguard.”
“Seriously?”
Taggart nodded. “He and the bodyguard apparently got into an argument about Oceane. Nieto wanted to take her and the bodyguard wouldn’t let him. They shot each other.”
“In front of her?”
“Yes.”
Ah, shit, the poor thing had been through hell. “She all right?”
“She’s holding up as well as can be expected.” Taggart’s pale turquoise eyes swept over him, coming back to his face to watch the surgeon put the last few stitches in.
The doctor cut the last suture and sat back to study his work. “You won’t look like new when it’s healed, but the scars shouldn’t be too noticeable.”
“Thank you,” Brock said.
“You’re welcome. Rest if you can.”
Taggart straightened and crossed his arms as the doctor left. “How you feeling?”
“Fantastic.”
One side of that hard mouth lifted. “You gave us all one hell of a scare, Cap. Pull a stunt like that again, I’ll kick your ass.”
Brock snorted out a laugh, winced as it pulled his ribs. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Roger that. I’ll make sure no one lets Maka or Granger in here.”
“Good idea.”
“What’s the prognosis, any idea yet?”
“Mostly just soft tissue damage. They put my shoulder back into joint. Not sure yet if I’ll need surgery. I haven’t talked to an orthopedic surgeon yet, so I don’t know what kind of recovery I’m looking at.” He just prayed this wasn’t a potentially career-ending injury.
“Don’t worry about all that right now. We’re all just glad you’re still with us.”
“Me too.”
“I know you’re supposed to be getting some sleep, but I brought someone I thought you might want to see. You up for another visitor?”
Brock focused on him, wondering if maybe Taggart had called his parents. He could just picture his mom out there, wearing a hole in the hallway floor outside his room right now. “Who?”
“Hang on a sec.” Smiling to himself, Taggart got up and headed for the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
The door slid shut behind him, then opened a moment later, and his heart did a crazy cartwheel at the sight of Tori stepping into his room. “Hey,” she said softly, a wobbly smile on her face as she rushed over to him.
For a moment it felt like his chest might explode. Emotion closed off his windpipe, making it impossible to breathe, let alone speak. “What are you doing here?” he finally asked, overwhelmed as she bent and kissed his forehead, then brushed her lips over his.
She scanned his face with worried brown eyes. “I threw a tantrum, basically. Yelled and swore at people in both English and Spanish. Refused to cooperate or be reasonable until someone brought me here to see you. Taggart finally took pity on me.”
His throat thickened. God, he loved her. But he still wouldn’t say it. It would only hurt her more when she had to leave this time. That was the only thing holding him back. “I want to hug you so bad but I can’t move my arms.”
She sank into the chair the plastic surgeon had used and cupped the side of his face gently, running her tear-drenched gaze over him. “God, look what they did to you.”
Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. “There goes my modeling career,” he said dryly.
She gave a watery laugh. “No. You’ll still be as heart-stoppingly gorgeous as ever when you heal up.”
Not even close, but he didn’t care because he was alive and she was here. “You’re biased.”
“Maybe.” She stroked his hair. “I saw the video they sent. I think I died a little.” Her voice wobbled and his heart squeezed.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
She nodded. “You heard about Nieto?”
“And Oceane.”
“Did you also hear he told her who el Escorpion was?”
No way. “Really?”
“Yes. They’re planning a sting to catch him right now.” She gave him a little smile. “So it’s almost over. And I’ve bought myself a couple of days to stay with you until they transfer you back home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And the best part—I get to be your personal nurse as long as you’re in here.”
“Hope I’m here a long time then.” He grinned, feeling no pain in his face as his numb skin pulled with the movement. “Do you give sponge baths?”
Her eyes twinkled. “For you, yes.”
“I can’t wait.” He wouldn’t think about her leaving yet. It hurt way worse than the damage done to his body. He couldn’t stop looking at her. What would she say if he broached the idea of him going with her when she left D.C.? Would she even consider it?
“Good.” She sighed, ran her fingertips down the unfrozen side of his face. “Get some sleep. It’s over and you’re safe now. I’ll stay right here beside you, like you did for me the night we met.”
He appreciated that, but this wasn’t even close to over. Not with Montoya and el Escorpion still on the loose.
****
Fernando’s hand froze when he heard the noise, the forkful of beans inches from his mouth. He swung his head around to stare at the back door, listened intently.
Rapid footsteps. Someone running toward them.
He shot to his feet, grabbed the pistol lying on the table and aimed it at the door. It flew open, revealing the young boy he had paid yesterday to act as a lookout. “Señor, they are coming,” he blurted, his eyes wide and frightened.
Cold ripped down his spine. They’re here. But how?
“Run,” his bodyguard said, shoving from his chair, their breakfast barely touched on the table as he reached for his rifle. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
A spurt of panic flashed through Fernando as he raced out the back door of the small house they had stayed the night in. The sidewalk out back was all but deserted, the first rays of daylight spilling around the buildings and onto the street of the quiet village.
“Diaz! Stop and put your hands up!” someone shouted behind him. Pounding feet thudded on the concrete.
He threw a glance over his shoulder, a wave of terror flooding him when he saw the uniformed men moving along the alleyway. They wore military fatigues and black balaclavas to hide their faces, carried assault rifles.
Mexican Special Forces. How the hell had they found him?
He put his head down and ran, focused on executing the escape plan he and his bodyguard had gone over last night, just in case. Part of him had known this day was coming. It was why he had left his family and set out on his own a few days ago. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
His feet flew across the pavement. He couldn’t surrender. They would just use him to get to his family.
Saying goodbye to them the other night when he’d tucked them into bed was the hardest thing he had ever done. The children were too young to realize what was happening. What his words had meant. But he had known. And so had his wife and mother.
Gunfire erupted behind him. Fernando risked a glance back to see his bodyguard standing at the corner of a building, firing at the approaching men. Buying him a precious window of time to escape with.
Fernando jumped into the waiting vehicle, fired it up and screeched away from the curb. A military vehicle veered out onto the street ahead of him and stopped, blocking his way.
He slammed on the brakes, threw it into reverse, turned to brace one arm across the back of his seat as he sped backward, wrenching the wheel to one side to make the turn. The vehicle skidded around, jerked as he put it in drive and hit the gas. Gravel sprayed from beneath the tires as he sped back the other way.
His bodyguard lay dead on the sidewalk, sprawled on his back.
Fernando whipped past him, desperation pushing him to go faster. Figure out how to escape.
More vehicles shot out ahead of h
im. He hit the brake again, his body jerking against the seatbelt. His gaze darted up to the rearview mirror. The vehicles behind him were closing in now.
He was trapped, the alleyways between the houses too narrow for his car. And he would never make it out of here on foot.
He pursed his lips. He would have to ram through them. It was the only option he had left.
Gripping the wheel tight he stomped down on the accelerator. The car shot forward, picking up speed as it hurtled toward the stopped vehicles ahead. It was going to be one hell of a crash, but he had to try. If he could just get through he could escape to a neighboring village, pay someone to get him to safety.
Men jumped out of the vehicles, raised their weapons.
Fernando sucked in a breath and braced himself, ducking down low in the seat.
Shots rang out, slamming into the hood like hail in a storm. They smashed the bullet-resistant windshield, blinding him. They kept coming, like angry bees, too fast for him to count.
The engine screamed as he raced toward the vehicles.
But the windshield finally gave way.
Bullets pierced the glass. He gasped as fire burned in his chest, the pain staggering. His hands dropped from the wheel. The vehicle skidded sideways. Crashed into something.
Stunned, blinded by pain and the blood on his face, he fumbled with the door handle, managed to shove it open. He fell out of the vehicle, tried to drag himself along the sidewalk.
To his right he caught a flash of movement. An elderly woman stood frozen in her doorway, her eyes wide with horror.
“Help me,” he begged, trying to drag himself toward her. They were coming for him. He needed to get inside. Hide.
She whirled away and slammed the door in his face.
Fernando groaned and pulled himself up onto the curb, his energy already fading. The burn from the bullet wounds was agonizing, far worse than he had imagined. It stole his breath, made his vision blur. The scent of his own blood filled his nostrils, making his stomach lurch.
Running footsteps echoed in his ears.
He was half-sprawled on the pavement, his arms struggling to bear his weight. Unable to summon the strength to go an inch farther. It was getting harder and harder to breathe now, his heart racing. Too fast.
