Love Plus One ('G-Man Series')

by ANDREA SMITH

  I knew that he would blame himself, then me, then himself again. I knew if I died, he would be twisted up inside, that he would wonder about what might have been, that he would have a broken heart.

  As much as I thought about the important people in my life, I knew that eventually, all of them would be okay with my passing, except Taz.

  Maybe it’s because when one hovers between life and death, things suddenly become crystal clear in their minds, and the realization hits about what is truly important to the ones you love, the ones you leave behind.

  I wasn’t ready to part with Taz in this life. There were still things we hadn’t done, arguments we hadn’t had, laughter we hadn’t shared, tears we hadn’t cried, and the realization that we were meant to be.

  I realized if I died, then I would have left this earth not sharing with him one, vital piece of information, and that was that I loved him, and that my heart belonged to him.

  Leaving this planet without letting Taz know that I loved him? I didn’t wish that for me.

  I slept and felt pain. I felt pain and slept. I had dreams that made no sense, heard voices that I didn’t recognize, and prayed to a God that didn’t seem to be listening to me at the moment.

  And then one day the pain started to ebb, the sleep started to feel restful, and the voices were familiar to me. My skin didn’t burn, my bones and muscles no longer ached, the chills no longer racked my body and I did this very wonderful thing: I sneezed.

  I felt the sneeze and I heard the sneeze. I also heard a familiar voice say, “Bless you.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, my voice sounding almost foreign to me.

  Someone was at my side, taking my hand into his strong, warm one. I knew that hand; I knew that presence.

  “Taz?” I opened an eye, squinting into the sunlight coming in from a window somewhere.

  I looked up and there he was, the sunlight framing his beautiful face as if he were an angel. And I saw his smile, and he truly was my angel, and I thanked the God I presumed had been ignoring me.

  “I’m alive?”

  “Yes, baby girl, you are alive and awake.”

  I saw the IV tubes stuck in various places in my arms. There appeared to be a feeding tube in my stomach, as near as I could tell. It was obvious I was in the hospital, but how long had I been here?

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Of course I do, Taz. That son-of-a-bitch Kyzer tortured me beyond anything you could imagine.”

  I saw his smile fad into a grim line. Apparently, Taz had been clued in as to the extent of the torture.

  My voice was hoarse and raspy. Taz grabbed a Styrofoam cup from the bedside table and poured water from a pitcher into it. He placed a bendy straw in it, and held it to my lips.

  I drank and drank and it tasted so good, so soothing to my throat. I stopped sipping, feeling quenched. He was staring at me so intently, so seriously. He looked so tired.

  “Before you say anything, Taz, I know I need to apologize. You were right, I was wrong. He was a monster, pure and simple. If I had listened to you-”

  “Stop,” he all but shouted, causing me to jump. “Oh, I’m sorry, baby girl, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I won’t have you blaming yourself or apologizing for anything. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. He was strangely calm and quiet.

  “If I had been allowed to share with you the Intel that I had, you might have taken it all more seriously. I couldn’t, so you didn’t. You have no reason to apologize. I am the one that needs to apologize, baby. I didn’t keep you safe.”

  I wasn’t going to let this fight for blame continue. The bottom line was that monsters like Kyzer Stanfield needed to take responsibility for the things they did.

  “Taz, please tell me that Kyzer has been arrested.”

  “He has,” he replied.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, mentally thanking the God who had been watching over me once again.

  “And Susanne?”

  “Yes.”

  Another “Thank you, God.”

  “Then, I guess I have a lot to be thankful for, Taz. Those are really the important things, right?”

  “The most important thing, baby, is that you woke up and you are still alive, because you don’t know how close it was at times.”

  “I think I might have a clue,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I made my intentions known to the higher-ups while I was out.”

  He cocked a beautiful eyebrow at me which reminded me of some unfinished business I had with him.

  “Taz?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Come closer, please?”

  “Lindsey, honey, there’s all this stuff,” he said, indicating the tubes and IVs that were like spaghetti going in and out of my arms and stomach.

  He saw my look of determination and carefully picked his way through them to hoist himself up on the edge of my hospital bed so that he was next to me.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. It hit me while I was off in dreamland.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m listening, baby girl.”

  “I love you, Trace.”

  “I love you, Lindsey. Haven’t you been listening?”

  Now it was my turn to be puzzled. He saw the frown crease my forehead.

  “I’ve told you that each and every day for the past three weeks. Will you ever get with the program?”

  He leaned over and gently kissed my lips several times and I knew that God had done me well.

  We were still cuddling when the nurse came in and seemed pleased that I was awake.

  “Well, finally,” she said, shooing Taz out of the bed to take my vitals.

  “I knew you’d be coming around,” she said, taking my wrist to verify my identification band. “I told this one as much every day seeing him here, moping around with that hang-dog look. It takes a while for those injuries to heal and the infection to clear up. Your surgery was done by one of the best, Ms. Dennison. He flew in from Boston General to reconstruct your bowel. You were lucky to have him.”

  Surgery? Reconstruct my bowel?

  Taz was watching me closely, reading my confusion. He cleared his throat. The nurse looked at him and I saw him shake his head “no” a couple of times. What in the hell was that about?

  “Where’s my mother?” I asked, finally realizing that it was strange for her not to be here since I had apparently skirted death by the skin of my teeth.

  The nurse was clearly puzzled that I had asked that question.

  “Sweetie,” Taz said, taking my hand again. “You are at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. You were air-lifted here once you were assessed at the trauma center in Atlanta because of the type of injuries you sustained.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

  “Your mother suffered a bit of a setback with the news of what had happened to you. She’s at Walter Reed now. She lost one of the twins.”

  Oh my God! This has got to be killing her.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Everyone is hoping. They have to do surgery on her tomorrow. This happened just a couple of days ago. She got really, really ill. She has been here to see you several times, but only briefly. It was too much on her, babe. She didn’t obey doctor’s orders, she insisted Slate bring her here. It’s been a mess.”

  “What surgery?” I asked.

  “They need to do some type of laser surgery so the remaining twin gets enough blood from the placenta on account of that TTTS condition.”

  “Oh God, Oh God, Taz.”

  “I know, baby. I know. But your mom wants you to focus on recovery, okay? That’s why I’m here. She knows I won’t let you slack off.”

  He was trying to tease me now to make me feel better. I once again prayed to God that everything would be okay for Mom and her baby. How much worse could anything get?

  The nurse was recording my blood pressure, checking my urine output from t
he catheter bag.

  “Now,” she said, “Let me check your colostomy bags.”

  What?

  I heard Taz clear his throat. “I’ll just step outside to give Lindsey some privacy.” He departed quickly from the room.

  The nurse shook her head.

  “He’s been here daily and observed me doing this. He has plans to give you your post-release care. I don’t understand why all of a sudden he turned bashful,” she said as if this was nothing. “He knows how to change these bags better than me.”

  I was frozen to the spot. I was unable to speak or comment. Suddenly, as I watched her lift my blanket and check the contents of two very distinct plastic bags on opposite ends of my abdomen, I was ready to rescind my prayers of thanks to the God who had played a monumental, crazy, sick joke on me.

  CHAPTER 46

  (Taz)

  I walked down the hallway of the hospital, raking my hands through my hair. I couldn’t handle it. I was such a fucking, fucking coward. I had left Lindsey’s room because I couldn’t handle the expression that had crossed her face when she saw those colostomy bags. She would have questions. I didn’t have answers.

  It had been just over three weeks since Agent Hardesty and I had opened that locked door to find her. No matter how hard I tried, I would never get that picture of her, arms up over her head, tied to the headboard of that bed, lying in her own blood out of my head.

  She had been so pale; her skin so hot to the touch. She was not conscious and I could only hope that she hadn’t felt too much pain prior to passing out.

  Someone had tossed a blanket on top of her. Hardesty went over to her first. I had been frozen like a statute to where I stood. As Hardesty, lifted the blanket, I could see she was only wearing ripped panties and a bra. I quickly un-froze.

  “Don’t touch her,” I had practically yelled to Hardesty. I shoved him away and he sensed I wanted to provide what privacy I could for her at that moment.

  I pulled my Kydex knife from the sheath and cut the ropes that were binding her wrists and ankles. I wrapped her feverish, limp body up in the blanket, noticing all kinds of cuts and belt marks on her skin.

  At that very moment, for just that instant, I wanted to go back twenty minutes in time, when I had my weapon pulled and pressed against Kyzer Stanfield’s temple. I wouldn’t have paused for a second in releasing the entire clip into his fucking, sick brain.

  The locals were there within minutes, along with paramedics who quickly got her into the truck headed for a hospital in Marietta.

  She had been assessed at the trauma center, and then air-lifted to Vanderbilt for the anticipated surgery required to reconstruct her lower bowel and rectum that had been torn apart by Kyzer’s brutal rape.

  The bacterial infection had prevented the surgery from taking place for over a week. Her surgeon had said that her situation was critical if the bacteria got into her bloodstream, she could go into septic shock which ultimately could result in organ failure and death.

  Once the surgery was performed, signs of infection appeared once again, and for the next ten days she had been in the ICU. The doctor had performed the temporary colostomy as a means to minimize infection traveling to the area reconstructed and promote healing.

  Lindsey was alive and she was healing. I had prayed over her constantly, bargained with God for her to survive. All I hoped for was that she could accept that her survival might mean having to live with the colostomy for a period of time, possibly forever. The doctor said it could be reversed, but it was dependent on how well Lindsey healed without complications.

  I thought about how much I wanted to kill Kyzer Stanfield then and even now. It wasn’t enough that he was arrested, it wasn’t enough that we got Susanne in the process, and that the barrels of cathine had been located at the R & D site, I wanted more. I wanted someone to pay with their blood for what Lindsey had endured at the hands of those maniacal thugs. I wanted retribution.

  I couldn’t think about that now. I needed to get back to her. Her doctor would be coming in shortly for his daily check. They had induced her coma for the purpose of getting her through the pain of the surgery and infection.

  She would need a few more days here and then I was taking her home, to my home to care for her as long as she needed me.

  I retraced my steps down the corridor. I was prepared now to answer the questions that I could, to reassure her that everything was going to be okay.

  When I breezed back through the door to her room she was wiping her eyes. The nurse had been back in to remove the catheter. She told me on her way out that the doctor had ordered the feeding tube removed, and it would be done shortly.

  I sat down next to Lindsey’s bed.

  “So babe,” I said, “Everything is going to be okay. You know that, right?”

  She looked over at me, tears fresh in her eyes, shaking her head.

  “How can you say that, Taz? How will my life ever be the same like, like this?” Her hands motioned towards her abdomen as sobs escaped from her.

  I leaned over, taking her hands and putting them to my lips, kissing them.

  “Baby girl,” I said, “You are young and healthy. Your doctor says that this will probably be temporary until you fully heal, okay?”

  “Really?” she asked, looking hopeful. “How long?”

  “I’m not sure, sweetie. You need to discuss that with your doctor when he comes in today, okay?”

  She nodded. I could tell that she felt a little better.

  “Taz how is it you’ve been able to spend all of this time here with me?”

  “I took a leave of absence from the bureau. I want to take care of you, Lindsey.”

  She looked puzzled, not saying anything right away.

  “I don’t understand. Don’t you need a paycheck?”

  I smiled at her. Always the pragmatist.

  “I’ve tucked some money away, not to worry.”

  “Taz, I love you,” she said, “But I’m not comfortable with you seeing me like this, you know?”

  “Seeing you like what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “No, Lindsey, you see I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Like this; shitting in baggies taped to my abdomen, how’s that? Do you understand now?”

  “Lindsey, what I understand is that you’ve been through something horrific, something horrible. But because of the strength you have, you have survived. You’re tough. So, if you have your shit going into a baggie for a few weeks, a few months or forever, so what? Do you recall me telling you that I loved you?”

  “Yes, but that was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I knew what I know now.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means, Taz, you are off the hook. What happened to me was not your fault. So, please, just lose the guilt, okay? I am damaged goods here, but you are not responsible for that. I won’t rely on your misguided sense of guilt or pity to get me through the night.”

  She pulled her hand from mine and rolled over, her back to me now.

  I stood and walked over to the other side of the bed, standing right in front of her. I lowered myself to my haunches, looking into her pale green eyes.

  “Lindsey, don’t you ever take the love that I have for you and fling it back in my face like that, do you understand?”

  Her eyes widened as she watched me. She nodded.

  “When you are released from this hospital, you are coming home with me. It has nothing to do with guilt; it has nothing to do with pity. It’s about love, Lindsey. I love you and I want to show you just how much I love you. I don’t want you to stay with me until you’re healed. I want you to stay with me for as long as we love each other, okay?”

  She nodded again, a tear rolling down her cheek. I leaned in and kissed it away.

  “So, then, we’re on the same page?”

  “Yes, Taz,” she replied, softly.

  CHAPTER
47

  I had been out of the hospital and safely ensconced with Taz for more than a week. The doctor at Vanderbilt had referred me to a colleague of his located in D.C. for my follow-up care.

  The surgeon had explained to me that the internal healing had to be complete with no scar tissue present in order for the colostomy to be reversed. He was confident that I would be a prime candidate for the reversal, and it was fairly minor. I was to see the physician he referred me to in a few weeks for a re-check and pre-operative consultation.

  Mom was getting out of the hospital today. Grandma had been taking care of Bryce at their home. Slate had been running himself ragged. I had visited her in the hospital the day we returned, but she had been heavily sedated. I wasn’t sure if she was even aware of my being there.

  I dressed in sweat pants, which was my usual garb these days with the colostomy bag attached. At least there was only one now. I had learned the second one was simply for the post-operative drainage. The surgeon had closed that one off a couple of days prior to my release. All I needed to do for it was to keep antibiotic cream on the sutures until fully healed.

  Taz was a nag about all of that stuff. He reminded me of a mother hen at times, but I liked that he fussed over me. I felt safe with him. We cuddled all of the time. When we slept in his bed, he was always curled around me protectively. He didn’t let me out of his sight.

  I did insist on privacy in the bathroom. I didn’t feel comfortable showering with him any longer because of the obvious. He rolled his eyes at my insistence, but I held my ground.

  I pulled one of his clean FBI hoodies from the drawer and put it on. It was big, bulky and it swallowed me up, but it made me feel secure at the same time.

  I brushed my hair and surveyed myself in the mirror. Most of the scars had healed on the outside. The marks from the beating Kyzer had given me with the belt had faded into nearly invisible lines. The scars inside were going to take a lot longer.

  Taz had asked me several times if I wanted to talk about it with him. I had declined. I knew he thought it was therapeutic, he was a Psych major for Chrissake, but it was too soon, the memories were too raw. He told me when I was ready he would be there to listen. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready, and if I was, I wasn’t sure Taz would be the one I needed to tell.