by Lexi Blake
The world seemed to be spinning. Nothing seemed real, but then he saw her face and it stopped. He focused on her as he felt something jab into his arm.
Remember her. Remember River. She was all that mattered.
The world went dark, but he wasn’t alone this time.
Chapter Twenty-One
River paced outside the small OR. It had been hours since they’d gotten to the tiny hospital in Del Norte, CO, but Jax was still in surgery.
“I brought you some coffee.” Robert held out a Styrofoam cup. “I didn’t know how you like it.”
“Black is fine. Thank you.” She took a long drink. It tasted like motor oil, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was what was happening behind those doors.
“Tucker says he was stable during the helo flight,” Robert said, leaning against the door.
That flight had been the most tense forty minutes of her life. After Dr. Burke had gotten Jax stable, he’d decided to move him. He needed to remove a portion of Jax’s liver and resection some of his lower bowel.
She’d explained that unless he wanted to do it surrounded by a CIA crew who would likely arrest or shoot them all, he’d better do it in an actual hospital. Dr. Burke liked field surgery way too much in her opinion.
Still, she would have done anything to ensure Jax lived through this. That moment when she’d realized he’d been shot…she’d been ready to lie down and die with him.
She wasn’t letting him go. Not to death, and certainly not because some crazy doctor lady thought he would be fun to experiment on.
“Dr. Burke thought he was stable enough for the helicopter ride.” She sat down on the couch in the small waiting room. “What happened? How did they know where to go?”
She was calm enough now that she could ask a few questions.
The door came open and Ezra, Big Tag, and Henry strode in.
“Is he okay?” Ezra walked right up to her, his eyes tight with obvious anxiety.
Did he know about Solo? “Jax is in surgery right now.”
“And everyone else?” Ezra asked.
Stubborn to the end. “Andy’s dead and Solo was stable the last time I saw her. But she did take a bullet to the chest.”
“She was alive?” The question seemed forced from his mouth.
“She was alive. Levi Green took her with him.”
Ezra nodded and stepped back, like he knew all he needed to know. “Well, it’s good to know Levi takes care of his people.”
Ezra was working under a mistaken impression. “She didn’t want to go with him. She came to try to get us out of there before Levi showed up. She knew he was coming for us.”
“Yes, because she knows Levi quite well. He’s her lover,” Ezra said. “They’re playing a game with us.”
“Or she is what she says she is and she’s trying to make it up to you,” Big Tag pointed out.
Ezra took a seat opposite from them, completely ignoring Big Tag’s opinion. “River, I need you to tell me everything that happened.”
“First tell me how you found us.” She still couldn’t believe it happened. One minute she’d been crying over Jax and the next, she’d had hope.
“Levi Green called me,” Big Tag replied. “No idea how the fucker got my number. He said he was on his way to The Ranch but there’d been trouble and I should get my guy out because the Agency was on its way. He also said I should send a doctor. Then he texted me longitude and latitude and I sent Owen and Tucker into town. Nate Wright let us borrow the county emergency rescue helo and Henry got Doc Burke to go with them. I would have gone, too, but they needed to run light.”
“We’re lucky Owen, Tucker, and Burke aren’t in custody right now,” Ezra complained.
“And that’s probably why he called me,” Big Tag shot back. “He knew you would be far too stubborn. Green is an asshole but he’s played fair about this so far. He didn’t want the Agency getting their hands on Jax, either.”
“Because then they would have listened to him about Green being there,” Henry pointed out. “Jax doesn’t have the information, I assume. Did Green take it all?”
River nodded. “We found the files. I found a diary of sorts, too.”
“On who? Who were the files on?” Robert asked. The question was asked in a soft tone, but his hands were knotted on his lap.
She didn’t have good news on that front. “Just Jax. Or rather, Harvey. I was going to take them all. I didn’t know if she changed your name when she rebooted you, so to speak.”
Robert sat back. “She didn’t. I was there several times when she wiped Theo’s mind. He was always Tomas. I’m fairly certain I was always Robert. I don’t know about Dante and Sasha. They were held with Jax. It’s possible she treated the other team differently.”
“What you’re saying is Levi has all the files.” Ezra seemed impatient to get to core of the problem. “You found everything we needed and Levi has it all now.”
She nodded.
Ezra cursed and stood up, striding out the door.
Big Tag sighed. “Don’t mind him. He’s worried about his wife.”
“I bet Levi will send an update if only to fuck with Ezra’s mind,” Henry said, sitting back. “Do you know anything about why those two hate each other?”
Big Tag shook his head. “No idea. I never worked with either one of them, and we both know I didn’t go through the same training they did. I was recruited from Special Forces.” He looked up and suddenly there was a bright smile on the man’s face. “Ah, there’s my girl.”
“And mine.” Henry was beaming, too.
A gorgeous amazon with strawberry blonde hair walked in beside Nell Flanders. “We got here as soon as we could. I have Sasha and Dante cleaning up the cabin. We’ll leave for Dallas as soon as Jax can fly. What crawled up Ezra’s butt and died a painful death? He was not pleasant to me.”
Big Tag held out a hand, drawing the redhead onto his lap. “I’ll kill him for you, baby. River, meet my wife, Charlotte Taggart. Charlie, this is the reason Jax lost his damn mind and probably why he got shot. It’s a pattern. Fall in love, get your ass kicked and hard.”
Owen was grinning as he walked in. “Precisely why I’ll avoid the condition altogether. I’m too much man for one woman. Besides, I don’t like getting shot.”
Nell sat down beside River. “Are you all right?”
It was good to have a friend around. She slipped her hand into Nell’s. “I will be once Dr. Burke walks out here and tells me Jax is going to be fine. That’s what I need.”
He was going to walk through those doors any minute now.
Any minute.
“Charlie, I’ve got an assignment for you,” Big Tag was saying. “I need you and Chelsea to put those old skills to work and dig up some information on Kimberly Solomon.”
Charlotte wrapped an arm around her husband’s shoulders, looking perfectly comfortable in his lap. “Ezra’s ex-wife? I can do that. It’ll be fun. Are you looking into why Levi Green seems to think she’s a prize of war?”
“Absolutely,” Tag said.
“There’s something going on here, something under the surface, and I don’t think Ezra will come clean,” Henry agreed. “He’s too close to this. We need to figure out why Green is playing things the way he is.”
“He said something about forced reciprocity.” She hadn’t understood it at the time, but then she’d been busy trying to hold Jax together.
Henry laughed, but it wasn’t an amused sound. “That’s why he did it.”
“Of course, that’s why he did it,” Big Tag replied.
Robert leaned forward. “Are you saying Levi Green thinks because he called us and told us where to find Jax that we’ll give him a free pass?”
Tag sighed and seemed to find comfort in his wife’s presence. “He thinks I won’t send an assassin after him. He’s also sending a message. He knew where we were going. He knows how to get to us and all he took was data. He’s telling us he’ll play nice as lon
g as we will.”
She couldn’t think that Levi Green viewed humans as anything except pawns. “Jax wanted me to tell you that he thinks Levi has an endgame in mind. Whatever that means.”
“It means Jax is thinking ahead,” Tag replied. “I suspect he told you to tell me because he was certain he would die and you would live on.”
Charlotte slapped at her husband’s chest. “Don’t you make fun of the emotional stuff. I’m pretty sure you didn’t take my near death on the yacht with a sigh and a shrug.”
“Baby, I knew nothing as wimpy as some water could take you out,” he replied. “I just sat back and waited for Satan to ship you back to me with a note requesting I not send you to him again. Jax was overly dramatic about it, I bet. He was probably all ‘you’re best thing that ever happened to me’ and shit.”
He had been. But it was easy to see the way Big Tag’s hands had pulled his wife closer. She was starting to understand these guys. Sarcasm was a tool. It was how they showed they cared. She would bet if Big Tag didn’t give a damn, he likely wouldn’t say anything at all.
“So it was all a bust,” Robert surmised.
Not entirely. She’d retrieved the note from Jax’s pocket. “Levi gave Jax a choice. He could have the file on himself or the name of a doctor McDonald worked with. And I read enough of her journal to have some things we can investigate. She was working with a man named Dr. Reasor. She described him as being young and particularly ambitious. He was there when she started her experiments on Jax. I think Jax might have been her first subject. Well, the first one who lived. I know Sasha was there when he woke up, but from what I can tell, she rebooted Jax a lot. He was her problem child.”
“Dr. Reasor?” Owen asked, paling a bit.
Robert shook his head. “It’s a coincidence.”
“We don’t know that,” Owen argued.
Tag sat forward. “Reasor and Razor are awfully close, but it doesn’t mean Tucker was working with her.”
River gasped. “Tucker? Tucker was Dr. Reasor? She mentioned she used him on the really bad stuff because he liked getting his hands bloody. That’s not Tucker. He’s sweet. Of course she also mentioned that if he got out of line, he could be her next patient.”
“No one mentions this to Tucker,” Tag ordered. “Charlie?”
“I’ll get with Chelsea and see what we can find out,” she promised.
She couldn’t believe it. It was like Robert said, a coincidence. She stood up and reached in her back pocket and pulled out the note. “Have you ever heard of a Dr. Rebecca Walsh? It says she’s in Toronto.”
Taggart held his hand out and she handed him the note. “No, but I’ll have Adam find out everything he possibly can about her. It’ll be a trap, but we might need to follow the trail. We’ll regroup in Dallas and figure out what our next move is.”
Robert sighed and let his head fall back. “I can’t believe we went through all of this and we came out of it with one name and it’s from the evil guy, so we can’t trust it. Why would Jax do that? Why wouldn’t he take his file?”
“Because Levi mentioned she might be the key to a cure.” Because Jax would never put himself above others. He was a hero. He was definitely her hero.
She started to sit back down and that was when she felt it. Oh, she’d forgotten all about it. They’d taken everything she’d put in her pack. They’d taken the files she’d dropped when Solo had been shot. Jax had lost his computer and all the data he’d collected, but they hadn’t searched her personally. When she’d first walked into McDonald’s office, she’d found the doctor’s laptop and taken the USB drive. She’d shoved it in her pocket. “I might have something better than that note.”
Robert’s head came up and everyone was staring at her. She pulled the drive from her pocket. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I found it connected to the laptop in McDonald’s office,” she said.
Taggart’s eyes lit up. “And we all know the good doc liked redundancies. I believe that’s her backup. River, you are my favorite of all the chicks I don’t sleep with.”
Charlotte hit him again.
Taggart shrugged. “Well, when was the last time Serena brought me a shit ton of intelligence? Phoebe spied on me, never for me. Avery makes some delicious cookies, but I think data on the crazy person who tried to kill my brother wins.”
Before she could say anything else, the door opened and Tucker walked in with a smile on his face. “He’s going to be okay. Doc says in a few weeks, he’ll be as good as new. One of us can go back and sit with him. He’s unconscious but Dr. Burke says it’s fine.”
Every eye was on her, but she was already moving. That was her place and no one else’s. They might be his brothers but she was going to be his wife.
She walked through the door, determined that nothing would separate them again.
* * * *
Jax came awake, the white light stirring him to fear. He was back. He was back in the bad place. He was supposed to remember something. His head was foggy and his body ached like a motherfucker. What had happened?
River. He was supposed to remember River. He couldn’t let them take her memory away. He could survive as long as he knew she was out there, alive and happy.
“I’m here, babe.” A warm hand found his. “Don’t move too much or you’ll tear your stitches.”
His stitches? He forced his eyes open and there she was. The pain seemed dim compared to the smile she gave him. “River. You’re here.”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else. And you need to understand right now that I’m coming with you to Dallas and wherever you go afterward. I know you have to stay with the group for now, but the group just got a little bigger.”
“You’re not bringing the dog,” a grumpy voice said.
“I am so bringing the dog,” River replied, though she never stopped looking into his eyes. “Ezra thinks Buster will cause problems on the road, but I don’t care. He’s our mascot now.”
“Ezra thinks Buster will pee all over the nice private jet the billionaire loaned him and then the billionaire won’t loan him a jet anymore.” Ezra’s face came into view. “Good to have you back, Jax. And to have you conscious again. You were out for fourteen hours. Time to get a move on.”
“He’s resting,” River insisted.
He wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise. “What happened? I remember Levi showing up and I thought he was going to kill us.”
“He just stole everything we found and pinned the whole theft of government property thing on us, so there’s probably another warrant out for your arrest,” River admitted. “Not that Nate’s going to rush in here. We’ve got a day or so before he thinks we could get in trouble. He can work it from the Bliss end, but he can’t promise that if your picture gets out in Del Norte that law enforcement here won’t rat you out.”
Then he would end up back in a cage and that wasn’t happening. Not when River was here and they were whole.
Mostly.
“I’m ready to go.” He would walk to the plane if he had to.
Ezra smiled down at him. “You have some time. We’re not going anywhere without you, man. And apparently we’re not going anywhere without the dog.” He shook his head. “I’m going to go let the rest of the guys know. They moved you into a private room this morning, but they still don’t want more than two of us in here at a time. River won’t give up her spot.”
“Nope.” She sat down in a chair beside his bed, her hand still in his. “You’ll pry me out of here over my dead body.”
“Then I’ll send them in one at a time,” Ezra promised. “But I’ll give you two a minute before I do. And Jax, good work, man. You handled everything as well as any operative could. I’m proud of you.”
Jax breathed a sigh of relief. If Ezra wasn’t trying to murder him, it couldn’t have gone too badly. He’d been shot and then some crazy-eyed guy had told him to make the decision to live and he had. He’d held on to the memory of Riv
er and she’d gotten him through. “Where the hell am I, baby?”
She kissed him, butterfly busses across his face. “You’re in the hospital in Del Norte. Levi Green did exactly what you said he would. He put us in his debt. He called Big Tag and gave him our location. Big Tag said he’s seen enough to know to send a doctor along. But he couldn’t have done it without Levi’s help. Although, when you think about it, Levi was the reason you got shot in the first place, so I don’t think we owe him anything.”
He definitely didn’t owe that bastard a thing, but he bet Green’s offering would keep the peace. For now.
“River, have you thought about this? What will happen if you come with me?” He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to tell her she couldn’t come with him. But he had to point out the problems with her plan. He had to make sure she understood the dangers.
“What will happen is I get to be with the man I love.” She gave him the sweetest smile. “That’s all that matters. And you should understand that if you think you can get away from me because you have this misguided sense of self-sacrifice, you should know that I’m a fairly good tracker.”
As she’d proven. She’d found The Ranch. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t save the information. You gave that to me, baby. I wish I’d been able to secure it for all of us.”
Her smile went wide. “I smuggled out the USB attached to McDonald’s computer. It was in my pocket. Big Tag says it’s a gold mine. And some guy named Adam Miles says he thinks there’s enough data that he can figure out who you are.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Will you still love me if I have a wife and three kids?”
“You don’t, baby. They would have looked for you.” She turned serious. “I will love you no matter who you are. I’ll love you forever.”
He took her hand and put it to his heart. He couldn’t ask for anything more.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dallas, TX
