Breaking Point

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m sorry I left you. I thought . . .” She laughed her disgust as she shook her head. “I was wrong. I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have let you chase me away just because you were scared.”

  “Hail, Gina,” Jones said. “Queen of the perfect timing.”

  “What?” she said. “I’m supposed to wait to say this? Until when? Until we have some privacy—oh, except for the platoons of soldiers outside, some of whom have high-tech listening devices?”

  “Maybe they don’t,” Jones said. “In this part of the world, there’s not so much of the high-tech—”

  Gina didn’t care. “That’s what you did, isn’t it?” she asked Max. “Chased me away?”

  “Can you at least let my patient get on the table,” Jones said, “before you grill him?”

  “Please,” Gina said with a grand gesture, stepping back. “I didn’t mean to slow down the process.”

  Max gave it one last try. “I’d rather you weren’t in h—”

  “No.”

  Max glanced at Molly.

  “I’ll catch her if she gets woozy,” she assured him.

  He just shook his head, no doubt recognizing that if there ever were a time to surrender, it was right now.

  At least it was here, in their makeshift operating room. Dealing with the army that was gathering out on the street was a different story.

  Max climbed onto the table and settled himself face down, head on his folded arms.

  Jones lifted the edge of the bathrobe and . . .

  “Oh my God,” Gina breathed.

  That was no mere scratch. That bullet was going to hurt coming out. And then he had to clean the wound.

  “Oh my God, is right,” Molly said, admiration in her voice. “Nice butt, Bhagat.”

  “Hey,” Jones said, mostly because he knew she expected him to. As usual, the woman who probably had cancer was working to keep things upbeat.

  Sure enough, she looked at him wearing her “What?” face, a picture of pure G-rated Sunday School innocence as she told Gina, “His wound really is very superficial. I mean, yeah, he’s going to have a cute little scar . . .” She turned to Jones. “You have a very nice butt, too, honey.”

  “Oh my God,” Gina said again, more faintly and Jones quickly looked over at her. She was living up to the reputation she’d gotten back in Kenya. Get an extra bed ready for Vitagliano, Sister Double-M would mutter when Gina came into the hospital tent to help. Right now she was green.

  “Mol . . .” he warned.

  “Yup, I’ve got her.”

  “Gina, come here and hold my hand,” Max said through gritted teeth, as Molly pushed her into a chair, pushed her head down between her legs. “Jones, will you please goddamn tell her that I’m going to be fine?”

  “Gina, he’s going to be fine,” Jones repeated. He kept the second half of that sentence to himself: Provided that army outside didn’t get hold of some demolitions experts and figure out a way to blow a hole in Emilio’s assault-proof castle.

  Jules heard voices.

  It was possible that they were good voices—the real kind, not the kind that were in his head that urged him to close his eyes just for a moment, to surrender, just for a short time, to the darkness.

  He’d found it worked best to talk back to them—the inside-his-head voices. “We all know if I close my eyes, it’s over.”

  Wouldn’t it be nice for it just to be over? It’s called eternal peace for a reason . . .

  “Shut up, shut up. Shut up, shut up.” He used it as a mantra. Or maybe it was more like a marching cadence. Right elbow out on the first Shut up, digging in, pulling him forward on the next. He mixed it up occasionally with the longer version. “Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up . . .”

  But now the voices he heard were coming from an external source. Unless, of course, the inside-his-head voices’ powers were growing stronger, combining forces with the double vision and the relentless pain. Unless they were now able to make him hallucinate.

  In which case he was screwed.

  Okay, that was so not Jules.

  That was one of the voices, pretending to be him. He was not screwed. He refused to be screwed. He would just keep on ignoring them.

  Because eternal peace sounded way too boring. He didn’t want to be eternally peaceful. He wanted to be eternally on vacation in Provincetown with the man of his dreams. He wanted to be eternally loved, married even—with two kids and a dog.

  That was just a myth, that kind of love. What he really wanted was to be eternally laid.

  “Shut up,” Jules said as he kept crawling, the sun now hot on the back of his head. “It is not a myth. And eternally loved comes with the bonus of being eternally laid.”

  Yeah, right. He didn’t really believe that, did he?

  “Stephen found it. Shit, I was going to tell Gina about Stephen, about going over to his place . . .”

  After he’d gotten home from a recent trip to Los Angeles, Jules had finally gotten up the nerve to go over to Stephen-the-fabulous-but-no-longer-new-neighbor’s apartment and ring the doorbell.

  “I was going to ask him out to dinner,” Jules said. “You know, on a date? Like, ‘Hey, how’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while. I was wondering if you were free tonight . . .’ ”

  Except Stephen hadn’t answered the door. Brian had. Brian the cop, who looked like a weird musclebound knockoff of Jules. Compact, cute, dark hair, brown eyes. Funny and friendly. And clearly head over heels in love with Stephen, who was so happy, too, that he glowed.

  “So I stayed and had dinner with both of them,” Jules told Gina, except wait. She wasn’t there with him.

  Regardless, she’d been right about Stephen. He was perfect.

  It could have been Jules instead of Brian, packing to move up to Massachusetts to get married.

  “I meant, he’s perfect for Brian,” Jules told the voices.

  Jeez, it was hot. Why was he suddenly so freaking hot?

  And why were the voices suddenly shouting at him, in a language he couldn’t understand?

  There were lots of them, talking all at once, talking to each other—which was a pretty powerful parlor trick, since the voices were part of him. They were his dark side, true, but since when had his dark side gone and enrolled in a Berlitz class without his light side knowing about it?

  “Hey,” Jules said to them, “if you don’t speak English, I’m just going to keep on ignoring you.”

  But whoa, his voices suddenly had feet. Lots of them. Both bare and clad, in worn boots and sandals.

  Feet and legs and . . . Jules tried to look up, but the sun was too bright.

  One of the voices leaned down, turning from a shadowy shape into a blurred, doubled face. Asian—dark hair, dark eyes, killer cheekbones, Fu-Manchu mustache around a mouth that spoke. “Sorry about your shirt.” But like a badly dubbed movie, his mouth kept on moving.

  “Okay,” Jules said. “You’re definitely not real.”

  Another face—faces—appeared. “Steer clear of that mean Peggy Ryan.”

  “Not funny,” Jules said. This was very, very not funny. That was what Robin, whom he’d cared very much about, had said to Jules the last time they were together—instead of good-bye. “Go away!”

  The first face was back. “I hope we can be friends again some day.”

  Enough was enough. “Get the fuck away from me!” Jules shouted, and they all backed off. He reached for his weapon, fumbling to pull it free from inside that oven of a leather jacket.

  And one of the feet came toward him, like his head was a soccer ball. He couldn’t move, but so what. A hallucination couldn’t hurt him—

  Crunch.

  Jules both heard and felt the connection, felt himself flung back, his body following his head. Which was probably a good thing.

  New pain blended with old. Stars sparked and faded. But before the grayness turned to black, Fu-Manchu came back into view, leaning close. “Goal!” h
e said, like the TV announcer of an international soccer game.

  Jules fought to speak. “American,” he managed. Embassy, he tried to say, too. In Dili. But the world went black.

  “This might hurt,” Jones announced.

  Might hurt? Might?

  Forget about the implication that everything that had come before this hadn’t hurt.

  Max had his eyes closed, teeth clenched, sweat pouring off him.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  “On three,” Jones said. “Ready? One, two—”

  “Hold up.” Gina’s voice. Softer now, but close to his ear. “Max, it’s really all right if you scream.”

  “No, it’s not,” he ground out.

  “Yes, it is. And open your eyes. I read somewhere that it hurts less if you open your eyes. With your eyes closed, you focus on the pain and—”

  Max opened his eyes. Gina was right there—her eyes, her face. She was looking a little pale, sitting in the chair that Molly had dragged over, holding both of his hands in hers.

  “I don’t need to scream,” he told her.

  “I made a bet with myself,” she said, “that you wouldn’t. Don’t let me win.”

  What?

  He tried to loosen his grip on her hands. He was squeezing her too tightly, but she wouldn’t let him go.

  He’d survived a lot in his life, and the past five minutes had been particularly hellacious. Still it was nothing—nothing—like the past few days.

  “Three,” he told Jones. “Just do it.”

  Mother of God! Max closed his eyes—he couldn’t help it.

  “Open your eyes,” Gina urged him. “Come on, Max, scream.”

  “Come on, Max,” Molly chimed in from somewhere down near the source of that pain. “We’ll all scream with you.”

  “Don’t want . . . to scare you. Ah, God, Gina . . .”

  “No.” Gina’s voice shook. “You don’t want to scare you. You don’t scare me. Haven’t you figured that out yet? You don’t scare me at all.”

  “Almost done,” Jones announced as the pain let up a bit.

  Of course, then it was back, worse than ever.

  “God,” Max gasped again.

  “You know, you were the best friend I ever had, too,” Gina told him.

  Still past tense. He opened his eyes and there she was. She had a scratch across her cheek that marred the smooth perfection of her skin, probably from their asinine flail through the jungle. It was mostly a welt—slightly pink and raised—although up this close, he could see several tiny beads of blood where the branch that had whacked her had broken the skin.

  And even though she was fighting it, tears made her eyes luminous. One of them escaped and slid down her cheek.

  Life—wonderful, abundant life. She was so filled with it, so beautifully alive, it was seeping from her.

  It slipped through her lips as well.

  “Although, I probably would’ve used different words,” she told him. “More like the love of my life.”

  Maybe his confusion had something to do with the goddamn fire in his butt, but he had to ask because her tense wasn’t clear. “Were?” he ground out. “Or are?”

  Gina held his gaze with that same determination that had so impressed him the very first time he’d talked to her, over the radio of a hijacked airliner. “What do you care?” she asked. “Didn’t you purposely not call and tell me that Ajay died so that I would leave you?”

  “Almost done,” Jones said again.

  “Don’t fucking say that unless it’s true!” It was more of a howl than a scream, and yes, Gina was right. It scared the hell out of him.

  “I played right into your hand,” Gina told him. “Didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Max said through gritted teeth. “Yes, all right? I’m a selfish asshole—I told you that right from the start!”

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” She was pissed. “That you’re selfish? Is that easier to handle than the truth—that you’re scared?”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “What would’ve happened, Max, if you’d let me in? What would’ve happened, if you’d given yourself permission not just to grieve for Ajay, but to share what you were feeling with me?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he told her. “Jesus, Gina. Jones, what the fuck . . . ?”

  “Almost done.”

  “God . . .” Now he wanted to howl, but he fought it, and the words came out little more than gasps. “Damn . . .”

  “Why are you so afraid to let yourself be human?” Gina asked. “That’s why I love you, you know.”

  Present tense. Jesus, Jesus, present tense!

  She didn’t take so much as a breath as she kept going. “Because even though you try to hide it, I can see you in there. You’re not perfect—no one’s perfect. Shoot, Max, don’t you know? I don’t want perfect. I want you. I want the little boy who watched Elvis movies with his grandfather. I want the man who put his fist through the wall because he couldn’t stop some bad people from hurting me. But you know what? I even want the man who makes himself so . . . cold and, and . . . distant, who blames himself for all of his so-called failures. I just wish you’d realize that human beings learn from failure. We learn and we grow and we let our mistakes go, because we know we’ll do it differently the next time. If we’re lucky enough to be given a next time.”

  Still holding his hands, she wiped her cheeks on the sleeves of her T-shirt, then added, “Are. To answer your question directly. You are the love of my life. And guess what? I’ve learned. If you can forgive me for quitting on you, if you can give us a second chance, I will not let you scare me away again.”

  Jesus.

  “Got it,” Jones said triumphantly. “Sorry, there was this one little piece of shit or fabric or something, but I finally got it. Ready for a little 151 cleansing action?”

  “Yeah,” Max rasped. Are. Present tense. If he could forgive her? Yet Gina was serious.

  And, yes, he was ready for damn near anything now.

  As Jones poured high octane rum onto his bullet wound, Max opened his mouth and roared. “Jee-zus Jee-zus Jee-zus!”

  Just as they’d promised, Gina and Molly shouted and screamed right along with him, although Gina might’ve been laughing. It was a little hard to tell—she exploded into tears.

  There was so much noise—even Jones was howling—they almost didn’t hear it.

  A voice. Over a megaphone. “Grady Morant.”

  Molly was the last to hear it, and both Gina and Jones hushed her.

  “Grady Morant,” it came again.

  “Oh, God,” Gina breathed as Max finally released her hands.

  Jones quickly bandaged Max’s wound, and moved to the sink to wash his hands. Max pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. “Has anyone seen my pants?”

  “They’re soaking wet,” Molly informed him. “I tried to get the bloodstains out, but . . .”

  “I’ll get you something else.” Gina vanished.

  “Grady Morant, you are completely surrounded,” the megaphone voice continued. “Surrender peacefully for the sake of your companions. Surrender peacefully, and no one will get hurt.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Gina ran an armload of clothes from what had to be Emilio’s closet back into the kitchen, as the man with the megaphone continued to ask for Grady’s surrender.

  Molly and Jones had already gone upstairs to use Emilio’s binoculars to peer out the window.

  Max was over at the sink, splashing water on his face. “It’s the moment of truth,” he said, shutting off the faucet.

  Gina dumped the clothes onto one of the kitchen chairs, then handed him the towel that was hanging on the refrigerator door.

  “Thanks.” He dried himself off. “This is where we find out who Emilio was working for. It’s possible the soldiers who tried to kill us weren’t acting on official orders. If not, whoever’s in command out there might be willing to let us surrender to a special conti
ngency from the American Embassy in Dili. If I can set that up, we’re home free.”

  Gina nodded. But if he couldn’t?

  “If I can’t . . .” Max met her gaze. Smiled ruefully. “No one can. And that’s not just me being cocky.”

  “I know.” She sorted through the clothes. “Do you mind wearing Emilio’s underwear?” She turned back to him with the two different styles that she’d found. “You’re about the same size. And they’re clean. They were wrapped in a paper package, like from a laundry service.”

  Max gave her a look, because along with the very nice, very expensive pair of black silk boxers she’d pilfered from Emilio, she’d also borrowed one of his thongs.

  “What?” Gina said. It was definitely a man-thong. It had all that extra room for various non-female body parts.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not,” she said, trying to play it as serious. “One, it’s been a while, maybe your tastes have changed. And two, these might actually be more comfortable, considering the placement of your bandage and—”

  He took the boxers from her.

  “Apparently I was wrong.” She turned away and started sorting through the pairs of pants and Bermuda shorts she’d grabbed, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. To make sure he didn’t fall over.

  Right.

  After he got the boxers on, he took off the bathrobe and . . .

  Okay, he definitely wasn’t as skinny as he’d been after his lengthy stint in the hospital. Emilio’s pants probably weren’t going to fit him, after all. Although, there was one pair that looked like they’d be nice and loose . . . There they were. The kelly green Bermuda shorts.

  Max gave her another one of those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding glances as he put the bathrobe over the back of another chair. “Do I really look as if I’ve ever worn shorts that color in my entire life?”

  She tried not to smile. “I honestly don’t think you have much choice.” She let herself look at him. “You know, you could just go with the boxers. At least until your pants are dry. You know what would really work with that, though? A bowtie.” She turned, as if to go back to the closet. “I’m sure Emilio has a tux. Judging from his other clothes, it’s probably polyester and chartreuse, but maybe the bowtie is—”