In the fading light, the last thing he saw of his old enemy was a swarm of men falling on their boss. A slave driver was more like it. If the bullet didn’t kill Nador, Luke was betting that one of Nador’s men would do it. A man like that didn’t inspire loyalty.
The Jeep bumped and jostled all the way down to the desert floor. Ahead and behind them, other vehicles dotted the sand, heading in a dozen different directions.
“We can circle around and go back when the fire dies down.” Abigail settled in her seat.
“No, you need a doctor.”
“Luke, this is more important than me.”
“Nothing is more important than you.” His snarling voice rang in the cab, too loud, too forceful, but the truth.
She was important. More important than she realized, and he’d damn well tie her up if it meant keeping her alive.
Abigail could barely lift her hand. Her fingers were numb. Her head spun, and not in the fun, dreamy way Luke had made her feel since meeting him. This was a bad, slowly suffocating sort of sensation. Oxygen deprivation was an awful way to go.
She’d had broken ribs and a collapsed lung once.
This was worse.
If she had to guess, her windpipe was constricted, either due to swelling or some sort of internal damage from Nador’s attempt to strangle her. The blows had to have cracked a rib, probably messed up a lung, further compounding whatever problem she’d had from The Pit. No matter how deeply she tried to breathe, it hurt, and she wasn’t getting enough air.
She was dying.
Slowly.
But she was dying.
Abigail sat back and watched Luke fuss under the hood of the Jeep with only the desert stars and moon to light his way. They had a full tank of gas due to some enterprising individual who’d stashed the back with gallons of fuel. Luke would make it out of here.
Her?
It was probably best this way.
Luke didn’t need her in his life, and she didn’t know how she’d go on without him.
Zach was out there somewhere, but Baron and Mossad would track him down eventually. That vendetta felt cold and lifeless next to the brilliance of Luke’s passion.
Her only regret was that he would feel some responsibility for her death.
It wasn’t his fault.
It was always going to end like this one way or another.
At least her death would mean something.
Luke would still be alive.
She’d launched a half-baked plan into action with nothing more than a hope and a prayer. In reality, she’d never expected to get out alive, she’d just…thought things would end a lot faster. It was probably fitting that her end would drag out like this.
She was so tired…
“Hey, Abby?”
“Abigail,” she muttered.
“Just making sure you’re still awake.”
“How could I fall asleep with all the racket you’re making?”
“You know how to sweet talk a guy. Hey, you ever been to Canada?”
“Never had the pleasure.” She gritted her teeth as the Jeep rolled over more uneven terrain.
“Don’t think coming to rescue me means I forgot you left.” Though Luke’s tone was playful she could still sense his anger, the hurt.
They’d become too entwined for her to not know how personally he’d take it. This was Luke she was talking to. He wanted to be a hero. Her hero. But that path only led to death.
“You hear me?” His tone rose, a slight note of panic in there.
“What is there to say? I left.”
“Why? Damn it.”
“Because you would have insisted on helping me. There’s blood on my hands, Luke. You don’t want to be involved with me.”
“What the fuck do you think I did in the SEALs? Tiptoed through the tulips?”
“That’s different.”
“How the hell is it different? You did what you were told.”
“No one told me to kill the Smiths.”
“You didn’t kill them.”
“I would have. And I’ve killed other people.”
“Were any of them innocents?”
“No, but—”
“No. They weren’t. And I bet if it was possible, Mossad would have had you take them out anyway.”
“You’re making me out to be a hero. I’m not. I killed people.”
“And so have I. You think I don’t have regrets? That things didn’t go sideways a time or two? That my hands are clean?” Luke shook his head. “We were ambushed once… People died. Innocent people.”
“Bad things happen in war.”
“Bad things happen in life, Abigail.” Didn’t she know it? She stared straight ahead even while her heart was bleeding out.
What was it Marco had said to her? Don’t be a martyr?
“If I’d have gone with you, or asked you to come with me, it would put your mother in danger.” Was it her imagination, or was it getting darker? Were clouds rolling in? “You’d never be safe. The only reason I haven’t been murdered in my sleep is because people think I’m dead. Anyone close to me attended my funeral. Now…”
“Now we have each other.”
She loved him.
“I didn’t want to leave. Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t want to leave.”
It wasn’t fair that she’d find something like this at the end of her life, when the only thing left for her to do was kill or be killed. What would life have been like if she’d met him when she was younger? When they weren’t weighed down with the burdens of life?
She’d like to have been the carefree woman who could have loved him. But she wasn’t. She was broken inside, and though he’d grieve her, he’d be better off without her.
“Abigail?”
His voice sounded so far away, as though a great distance separated them.
Where had he gone?
Had he finally left her?
“Abigail, stay with me. Stay with me, damn it.”
Luke’s head almost hit the top of the Jeep. They bounced along, finally hitting a dirt path he’d seen in the distance. He had one hand on Abigail, the other on the wheel.
“Abigail, say something!” He was yelling. Yelling didn’t fix problems, but he didn’t know what else to do.
His soul was shredded.
He couldn’t find her again, just to lose her.
There was no way to tell if he was headed toward a town or deeper into the desert. The other trucks had peeled off, striking out off the trails until they were alone. Abigail needed help, the kind he couldn’t give her. Wounds he could stitch up, but this? This was something inside of her. And that was beyond his ability. He needed Marco, or a doctor. Someone who could help her.
He spared a glance at Abigail.
Her head lolled to the side, and her mouth was open. He couldn’t see her breathing or hear the rattle in her lungs that’d been there before.
He was losing her.
She was dying.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
“No, no, no.” He jammed the Jeep into park, clawed at his seatbelt until it released and slid across toward her.
Life wasn’t fair. It was a lesson he’d learned living under his uncle’s roof.
If whatever god she believed in was about to take her away, he wasn’t going to spend these last seconds driving nowhere fast.
He cradled her to his chest.
There.
She was breathing, but it was faint and fading.
“No, no, Abigail, don’t go,” he whispered into her hair.
He rocked her, keeping his face against her neck, feeling the fluttering heartbeat under his palm.
From the moment she’d looked at him, he’d known she was special. Diving deep into her world, he’d seen someone just like him. Someone who could understand him, accept the kind of hard choices they made in life. And now he’d lose her.
Loving her had been easy, losing her…he could alrea
dy feel the pieces of himself breaking, shattering into a million tiny bits.
He didn’t hear the gurgle of the diesel engine until the headlights sliced through the darkness, momentarily blinding him.
Abigail had precious moments left, and he wasn’t about to let some mercenary scum take those from him. He lifted the rifle from the floorboard with one hand and pointed it at the truck, big enough to move a unit.
If he spoke, they’d know he was an American. So he kept his trap shut.
“Luke?” a familiar voice called out.
No.
It couldn’t be.
He blinked, peering through the bright headlights at a familiar, brutish figure dropping from the cab to the sand.
“Marco?”
Holy shit. Something was going right.
“Abigail’s hurt, she needs help!” He turned his face into her hair one, last time. “Hold on, sugar.”
He prayed she heard him, that they weren’t too late.
20.
Abigail knew what knocking on death’s door felt like. She was pretty sure she’d had one foot through the door for half her life.
The voices around her were foreign and unknown. The English registered, but not the words. She kept her eyes shut, testing one finger and then one toe at a time, taking stock of what hurt, what didn’t, and gathering the shreds of her memory.
Amman. The Smiths. Luke and Ethan. The bomb. Running. More Luke. The Pit. Baron. Zach. Always Luke. The mercenaries.
She could account for almost all of it, except toward the end.
Her last memories were from the desert and being on the road with Luke.
It was the perfect way to go, in a sense. Except for the part where Luke would be left with her body. But that appeared to be anything but the case now.
A voice drew nearer, unfamiliar and brisk.
Abigail waited until it came and went, leaving her with only the chorus of whirling and beeping to fill the air.
She peeled one eye and then the other open.
Hospital rooms were fairly uniform the world over with some differences. At a glance, she was willing to bet they were either in Europe or America. Knowing Aegis as she’d come to, her money was on America.
A cot lay parallel to her bed.
She didn’t have to ask who it was for, because he was curled up there, feet hanging off the end, his shoulders too wide for the cot’s narrow frame. A surge of longing pushed her heart up into the back of her mouth and tears pricked the corner of her eyes. Laughter bubbled up her sore throat.
Luke’s eyes popped open and he tossed the blanket back.
“Abigail?” He nearly tripped over himself standing and taking two steps in his socks to get to the side of the bed. “Shh, don’t say anything. They just took the breathing tube out this morning.”
She reached for his hand, wrapping both of hers around his. Whatever energy she’d regained was gone, and she lay back, letting the plush hospital bed cradle her.
Luke smoothed her hair out of her face, stroking her cheek and stared at her.
Dying would have solved her problems. It would mean an end, finally. Luke would be free of her. This terrible burden she’d carried would be gone. All of her worries would pass to someone else. Living, that was where things got tricky.
How could she leave him again?
Once was hard enough.
She couldn’t do it again. There had to be a way to make this work.
He bent his head and kissed her brow.
“We’re home—my home, I mean. You scared me so bad.” He leaned his head against the railing, watching her.
“W-What—”
“Shh. Your throat’s got to be really raw.” He stroked his fingers over her lips. “What happened?”
She nodded.
“Nador must have partially crushed your windpipe. Mama Dean—she’s our surgeon—she thinks your broken rib put pressure on your lung and it’s been filling with fluid. Combined with Nador strangling you, you weren’t getting enough oxygen. You nearly died.” Abigail felt a tear roll down her cheek.
It would make sense. She was trained to work through pain, to ignore it until she was able to tend to her injuries. Popping the pain killers had dulled the edge of what she couldn’t handle. Her ribs had just about all been cracked at some point, and the only thing to do was wade through it.
“Bomb?” she whispered.
“I haven’t told anyone yet. I was thinking…you could leverage it. Use it.” His steady gaze left no question about what using it meant. He wanted her to make a deal for her life. And it wasn’t a bad plan.
“I hear voices.” It was the same brisk, sing-song voice from earlier. “Abigail, you’re awake. The boys call me Mama Dean. Hi.”
Mama Dean was an older woman with a trim, fit build. Motherly was not a word Abigail would use to describe the way her baby blues bored holes into Abigail’s skull.
They shook hands, Mama Dean never once looking away from Abigail.
“Luke, wait outside while I go over my patient, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Luke leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead, ever so gently.
Abigail wanted to call him back, to hold his hand. There was something about the way Mama Dean stared at her that…wasn’t quite friendly.
The door clicked shut behind Luke. She could see his figure through the blinds, how he paced the hall, but that was it.
Mama Dean started with some questions, peering down Abigail’s throat.
“How’s your throat feeling now?” Mama Dean asked after Abigail drank a few sips of water for the first time.
“Better.”
“Good. You’ve been out for a few days. Now, I need to do a third pregnancy test.”
“Pregnancy test?” Abigail stared at the woman. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“Really?” Mama Dean arched a brow. “Who told you that?”
“My—The doctors told me—”
“Honey, I have a stack of files thicker than the Bible on your medical history. Your ex-husband has been more than helpful. Nothing I’ve seen indicates your pipes are in anything but working order.” Mama Dean leaned one hand against the bed.
“I can’t be pregnant. There must be something wrong with the tests.”
“That’s why I’d like to do it again. The first one was positive and the second was negative.”
“I was divorced due to my inability to bear children.”
“Really? And when was that?”
“I was seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” Christ.” She shook her head. “You must have been a tiny thing at seventeen. I’d be willing to bet you weren’t yet able to have a child. Being sexually mature and being able to carry a baby are two different things. Now, I’m not one to speak on childbirth, my job has always been to patch these boys up, but I can read a file and what I’ve seen does not indicate anything’s wrong with you.”
“Wait—What are you saying?”
“Honey, I’m telling you that from what I’m seeing, there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re knocked up.”
“No.” Abigail shook her head. That was impossible. Literally impossible. She’d been told over and over again by her Mossad handler…by the doctors…that…her greatest usefulness was that of doing her duty…
“I do not have the gentlest bedside manner.” Mama Dean sighed and pulled a stool over. “I’m pretty sure they work that out of you in the Navy.”
“I can’t be pregnant.” But Abigail wanted to be. “Luke.”
“Considering he all but scrubbed in when we patched you up, I’d guess, yeah.” Mama Dean continued to stare at Abigail. “That boy has been through hell and back.”
Abigail nodded and gripped the blankets with both hands.
“All our boys are special, but Luke is—”
“One in a million?”
“I was going to say a head case, but I suppose that’s right, too.”
“Is this your ‘Don’t hurt him or I h
urt you’ speech?” Abigail swallowed. She could feel the rawness where she was still healing.
“Nail on the head.”
“He should have let me die, then. I can’t be pregnant, can I?” Fear and hope warred with each other, eating away at her. “I need to see those files.”
“Of course.” Mama Dean rolled the stool to a closet, opened it and pressed the buttons on a small safe. “I thought it was best to keep these in here, just in case.”
Abigail reached for the folders. She’d always asked to see the results afterward, but she’d never thought to request her medical file. Mama Dean settled the tray table over her lap and Abigail leafed through the first file.
It was her last surgery. The bullet through her abdomen. But these were not the pages she’d been shown. The one she’d seen was burned into her mind.
She scanned and flipped pages while Mama Dean watched her.
The answer was at the bottom, among her entrance physicals. It first appeared as an official memo, then a footnote.
“I hadn’t made it this far back. Hell, I can’t read half of it,” Mama Dean said.
Abigail stared at the memo.
She recognized Baron’s handwriting, the neat, precise way he formed his words.
“This instructs the doctors to issue a false test.” She swallowed, but the lump didn’t go anywhere. “He lied to me. All this time…”
Abigail leaned back against the pillows and stared straight ahead, the years of her life scrolling past. He’d manipulated her from the very beginning.
“What else was a lie?”
“I don’t know, honey.” Mama Dean’s voice softened. “We can run another test. Have the results in a few minutes.”
“Do it. I need to know now. What else is a lie?”
“I don’t know, but we can give you a thorough once over. I’d need different equipment to check your plumbing though, I suppose we have our answer there.” Mama Dean tapped the memo in Abigail’s hands. “The admiral wanted to keep you out of the hospital system if at all possible, so I haven’t brought this up with anyone yet.”
“Good.” Abigail smoothed the blanket out. “Tell me what it says? As soon as you know? And—you said you spoke with Baron?”
“Hell, someone had to tell me what was going on. You’ve been through hell, missy.”
Dangerous Assignment (Aegis Group Book 4) Page 24