by Ranae Rose
Movement flashed in the doorway – a nurse.
“Up already?” she asked. “How’s your pain?”
“I’m fine.” Other than the muscle cramp cutting through his lower back. Holy hell, hospital beds were awful.
“Well, we want to keep you that way. I’ll be right back with your next dose of medication.”
“I don’t want anything that will impair my judgment,” he said. “No narcotics.”
“The medication Dr. Ashland prescribed for you before the end of his shift is a narcotic. You’ve been stabbed. There’s nothing wrong with using appropriate pain medication on a short-term basis. As long as you avoid things like driving or operating other heavy machinery, you’ll be fine.”
“I won’t take it, and I won’t argue.” A nurse had tried to give him something narcotic the night before, and he’d flushed it down the toilet.
Sasha chose that moment to pop up from her curled position on the pull-out sofa, which Henry sincerely hoped wasn’t as bad as the bed.
“It’s no use arguing with him,” she said. “Trust me. He might as well be a mule, he’s so stubborn.”
Henry didn’t need drugs. Yeah, he’d been stabbed, but the tip of the knife had hit his collarbone. Which had hurt like hell, but the actual damage to muscle tissue had been minimal. It’d only taken ten stitches to close the surface wound, and while he ached, he certainly didn’t need to be plunged into a drug fog to deal with it. Impaired judgment could mean the difference between life and death, especially at a time like this.
The nurse agreed to talk to the doctor currently on duty and get him something non-narcotic. Henry didn’t bother telling her that he’d be leaving shortly and could pick up his own bottle of Tylenol on the way home. At the moment, all he wanted was to have her out of his hair, even if it was only temporary.
“How’s your wrist?” he asked, standing and frowning as his head throbbed. He’d had a few stiches there too, to close the wound Levinson had dealt him with the butt of his rifle. Damn it, it set his teeth on edge to think about. It was beyond shameful that he’d let him get away. He’d had him right there, and then—
“It’s sore, of course,” Sasha said, waving her good wrist while she let her splinted one rest in her lap. “I’ll be okay though. It hurts a lot less than yesterday. What about you? And don’t tell me you’re fine – I know you at least have to have a headache.”
“A headache is nothing I can’t handle.”
“Technically, you have a concussion.”
“A minor one.” He picked up his phone from the bedside table and sent a text to Liam.
He got a call back in about ten seconds.
“Morning, Sunshine,” Liam said. A coffee maker gurgled in the background, and spoons clanked against bowls.
“Any news from Jeremy?” Henry had last seen Jeremy at his own home. He’d been one of the responding officers to the shootout.
According to Jeremy, the incident was ‘a shit storm unleashed’, and he’d likely be working around the clock for at least the next 24 hours. But he’d promised to give Liam – his cousin – whatever updates he could share, when he had a chance.
“Uh, yeah. Hey Alicia, honey – could you pass that butter over here?”
Alicia’s syrupy-sweet reply reminded Henry that her and Liam’s wedding was just around the corner. Though it was weird to hear Liam talk like that, Henry was just glad they were safe. If getting revenge on PERT officers was Randy Levinson’s goal, he could’ve gone after Liam or Grey, like his brother Troy had.
Did Henry’s location have anything to do with why he’d been targeted? The thought hit him like a ton of bricks. Maybe Levinson had been hiding out nearby – maybe he still was. Something to mention to Jeremy.
“They searched the hell out of the woods behind your house last night,” Liam continued. “In fact, they’re still looking. They did find something already, though: two bodies.”
CHAPTER 23
Henry’s stomach clenched as the information washed over him. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it sure as hell wasn’t welcome, either. “Who?”
“They haven’t been positively identified yet,” Liam said, “but one was a male and the other a pregnant female. Civilians, as far as anyone knows. Investigators think that if they’d been involved in law enforcement, he would’ve made a show of their murders, like he did the warden’s, instead of hiding them.”
“Pregnant? Jesus!”
“Yeah. They were buried about half a mile from your house, in the woods. Somebody dug a shallow grave beneath a rocky little ridge and covered it with stones to keep animals out.”
“That’s all they found – no sign of Levinson?”
“Afraid not. If he left any tracks, the rain washed them away. It’s been torrential.”
“He was bleeding when he fled.”
“There was a little blood spatter on a tree trunk not far from where the confrontation took place, but that’s all.”
“Damn it. If I’d just—”
“You and Sasha are both alive. No major harm done. That’s the important thing, trust me. Levinson is hurting, and he lost the rifle he stole from the warden. He’ll be caught soon.”
“Yeah, but how many other people will he kill first? If the police had just called the prison into the search from the get-go, as soon as the warden was found—”
“Yeah. Maybe we’d have found him. And maybe not. That doesn’t matter now – there’s no going back. Anyway, I gotta get ready for work. The morning news is about to come on – a reporter trekked into the woods yesterday evening and got some footage from the crime scene. Turn the TV onto channel 7 if you want to see the report.”
Henry hung up and didn’t bother to switch on the TV. Whatever they had to report, Liam had already filled him in on.
“Who’s pregnant?” Sasha stood in front of Henry, her hands on her hips. “And what did the police find?”
With a sour taste in his mouth, Henry told her everything. By the time he finished, she was pale.
He took one of her hands in his – he hadn’t gotten to touch her much since shit had hit the fan the evening before. The heat of her fingers curled up inside of his hit him like a tidal wave, submerging him in a bittersweet mixture of delayed emotions: relief that she was okay and fear that he’d still lose her, admiration for her and shame directed at himself.
Slowly, she met his eyes, then held his gaze for several seemingly endless seconds. Though her face was still pale, it was beautiful. Her golden hair was backlit by the sunrise, and her black eye didn’t look that bad anymore.
“Admit it,” she said softly, “you were wrong about me and my Shun.”
He snapped his gaze from her mouth back to her eyes. “You attacking Randy Levinson with that kitchen knife was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I thought it was pretty incredible, myself. I mean sure, I almost had a heart attack at the time, but in retrospect, I think I was pretty badass.”
“Why did you take your dress off?” It was a question he hadn’t bothered to ask until now, but one he’d been wondering about ever since she’d come charging onto the scene in nothing but her swimsuit.
“I tripped over it and didn’t want it to get in my way again.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you were trying to create a distraction.”
“That was just a lucky side-effect. I wish I’d thought of that. You have to admit, it was pretty effective.”
For a split second, he thought he might actually laugh. Then his good humor crashed and it all came back down on him: the guilt and the anger, the fear he still couldn’t shake, even though she’d come out of the confrontation without any serious injuries.
“You saved my ass,” he admitted. “Don’t think I don’t know that, and don’t think a part of me isn’t impressed by how crazy you can obviously get on behalf of the people you care about. But Jesus, Sasha, you could’ve been killed. You’re lucky you weren’t.”
“I would�
��ve done the same for anyone I love, and it’s not crazy. It’s what people do.”
“Do you really think I would’ve wanted you to come to my rescue if it would’ve meant you getting hurt or killed instead of me? Fuck that – I’d rather be dead than alive and living with that kind of guilt.”
She tried to protest.
“I mean it,” he said. “Every word of it. I wish you’d never set foot in those woods. If Randy Levinson didn’t have you on his hit list before, he does now. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I care about you. I love you. I’d do it all over again, if I had the chance.”
He didn’t know whether or not to be furious. A part of him was absurdly happy to hear her say she loved him, no matter what the context.
“If what you said is true,” she continued, “and you love me too, then you know how I feel and you know I couldn’t have done anything differently.”
He squeezed her hand, hard. “I do love you – I just didn’t expect you to love me back. At least not so soon. I definitely don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve it.”
“I don’t love you because you’ve checked every box on some sort of secret list of heroic acts,” she said, “although you are the bravest person I know. I’ve loved you almost since I met you, and I swear up and down I’ve never said that to anyone before. Up until recently I’ve been trying not to let you know how crazy I am about you, because I didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Jesus. All along you’ve been trying not to let me know how much you like me?”
She grinned, and her cheeks turned pink. “You have no idea how hard it’s been.”
She just sort of melted into him then, somehow wrapping her arms around his neck without touching the bandage that covered the stitches running over his collarbone and down his chest a short way. When her lips touched his, his dick jumped to instant attention. It was hard to believe how bad he wanted to take her, right there on the hospital bed.
“Come on,” he said, pulling away before he could lose control, “let’s get out of here before they try to serve us hospital food.”
“Going to cook breakfast for me?” Her tone was teasing, and she still held his hand. Tightly.
“I have a better idea: let’s go to IHOP. It’s just down the road from here.” Between his injury and what she’d just told him, his head was spinning. He needed coffee ASAP and he was hungry enough to stop at a restaurant.
“Sounds good to me.”
She slid slowly off of him, her gaze drifting to the call-a-nurse button on the side of the bed.
He kept his hold on her hand, meeting her eyes. “Promise me one thing, Sasha.”
“What?”
“I know you care enough to put yourself on the line. But if you love me, don’t ever put yourself at risk for my sake again. If it comes down to it, I don’t want to be saved. When I say I’d rather die than lose you, I mean it.”
* * * * *
“Does anyone ever actually use the strawberry syrup?” Henry poured some of the original old fashioned flavor over the pancakes that’d come with his omelet.
“I’ve always wondered that,” Sasha replied. “I like the butter pecan.”
She leaned forward in the IHOP booth, taking a long sip of her coffee. Henry sat across from her, the hospital band shorn from his wrist, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt Grey had brought to the hospital for him.
Sasha wore an outfit a friend had brought for her too – Kerry had a spare key to her apartment, and had gone there to retrieve a clean top and pair of shorts for her.
But Sasha hardly thought of that now. All she could think about was Henry – the deep line between his eyes, and what he’d said to her before they’d left the hospital.
Of course, there was no way she’d do as he asked: abandon him in a time of danger to save herself. If she had to go back in time, she’d charge into the woods and face Randy Levinson a thousand times over. But she’d heard real anguish in his voice when he’d told her he’d rather die than lose her, and it was written all over his face now.
In light of the fact that she was perfectly fine, it seemed obvious that he’d lost someone else he cared about before and was thinking about it now. She could practically see that person haunting him – whoever he or she was. She thought of the scars on his back, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
“Henry, you seem really upset.”
He looked up from the full cup of black coffee he’d been staring into. “Shouldn’t I be? Randy Levinson is on the loose, and it’s my fault. He wouldn’t be if I hadn’t fucked up yesterday.”
She shook her head. “I know you’re furious about Randy, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What you said to me at the hospital, about not wanting me to help you… What made you say that?”
She wanted to reach out and take his hand, but he had both of his under the table. It was kind of sad that they’d told each other they loved each other less than an hour ago, and now the table between them seemed like an insurmountable barrier.
She didn’t doubt his love for her, but this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined things going after declarations like the ones they’d made.
“What do you mean? Is it really a surprise that I don’t want the woman I love starting knife fights with a psychopath on my behalf?”
Hearing him refer to her as the woman he loved sparked a glow inside her, despite the context. “You’d do it for me. Why shouldn’t I do it for you?”
He sighed, and finally took a drink of his coffee. Then, for a while, he said nothing at all.
“Henry, I—”
“For fuck’s sake, Sasha, can’t you just agree to this one thing?” He kept his voice low, but there was an edge to it – one that hurt to hear.
“No. Because I’m afraid of losing you too. You don’t have a monopoly on worry, no matter how justified it is.”
He met her eyes, and his seemed darker than usual, a deep gunmetal grey, like the Atlantic Ocean when the sun was tucked away behind hurricane clouds. “You’re not going to lose me. I have an incredible ability to survive, even when I shouldn’t.”
His words hurt, not in the way cruel words did, but because she could sense the deep well of pain he’d drawn them from. “You mean in Afghanistan, right? You’re talking about whatever gave you those scars on your back.”
“It was an IED. One of my friends stepped on it. It tore him apart, and he died. So did my other friend, who’d been right behind him. Piece of shrapnel hit him in the neck, sliced right through an artery. Me though – I’d turned away to check something else out. All I got were a few scratches on my back. I was fine.”
Sasha certainly wouldn’t call his wounds scratches, but in that moment, she could see that they were shallow compared to the marks the event had left on his mind. Survivor’s guilt, and memories he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.
“I’m not going to look at you and turn away because everything seems fine,” he said. “I’m not interested in being the last one standing. Not again.”
CHAPTER 24
“Fucking hell on a stick.” Randy’s hand shook as he squeezed the rubbing alcohol bottle, and he ended up dumping most of it all over his shoulder and chest.
He splashed the rest of it onto his face and bit his tongue in order to keep from crying out. The last thing he needed was for someone to hear him.
“God damn it.” He shoved the empty bottle back into his backpack, the one he’d stopped by the trailer to retrieve before fleeing into the woods again, in search of a new hiding place.
The trailer wasn’t safe anymore – the police were sure to find Sean and Chloe’s bodies, now that they’d be combing the woods behind Dryden’s house. It was only a matter of time before they identified them and went to the trailer to notify Joseph Reynolds.
This place – where he was now – had called to him. He’d stumbled upon it last night coming out of the woods, and it had promised sec
recy, shelter. Maybe it was the fact that the shadows around it had seemed a little darker than all the rest, but he felt in his bones that this was somewhere where he could regroup, figure out what he was going to do next.
The contents of his bag shifted, and he heard the rattle of what little bit of food he had in there: nuts and beef jerky, enough to last a couple days, if he rationed it out.
He’d eaten a few pieces of the jerky for breakfast, though his face was so busted up he’d had to suck on it instead of chewing. The backpack held his essentials for survival on the run: money and a little food, first aid supplies, gloves and a flashlight. A couple knives, of course, and a 9 mm, among other things.
He’d lost the Blaser in the fight with Dryden and his girlfriend, and damned if that didn’t grate on him worse than his wounds did, even with the alcohol burning his lacerated flesh. The dog had bitten deep, but the crazy bitch’s knife had cut deeper, laying open his arms and face.
The gash on his right arm was the worst. He could tell it’d hit muscle, because he couldn’t move it right anymore. Other than that, he was pretty sure Dryden had broken one of his cheekbones. It hurt like a bitch, and he burrowed a hand into his backpack, reaching for a certain bottle. He had to go by feel because it was pitch dark, and the batteries in his flashlight had gone dead the night before, though they’d been a fresh set.
Unfortunately, they’d also been his only set.
After dumping three times the recommended dosage of painkillers into his mouth and swallowing, he drew in a deep lungful of damp air. This was how he’d spent the night before, and how he’d spend the day: in the dark popping pills, healing and figuring out how he was going to pull off all that he’d planned.
* * * * *
