“Jake?” she shrieked.
Alex stood drenched right behind Jamaal. “Get your coat,” he ordered hoarsely. “We’ve got someone you need to see. Step on it.”
She flew, snagging Jake’s denim jacket off the back of her couch. Shuffling into a pair of flip-flops on her way out the door, she was ready to run.
Alex stopped her. “Real shoes, damn it. It’s December.”
She would’ve argued, but he was right. She wasn’t thinking clearly, not one bit. Tossing the beachwear, she pushed her feet into her worn clinic slip-ons. “Where is he?”
“Downstairs,” Jamaal answered. “I almost made it back when this guy here ’bout ran over the top of me.”
“Dumbass,” Alex growled and waved his hand at them to follow him down the stairwell. “You should’ve gone straight to the authorities. Hell, you probably passed a dozen Coasties on your way here. They would have helped get him to a hospital.”
“Doubt that,” Jamaal muttered. “They’d have put him in jail. Poindexter’s still on the loose, you know. He would’ve killed us both if—”
“Poindexter’s in son-of-a-bitchin’ custody,” Alex growled. “Two of my guys caught up with him. He never made it to his helo pad.”
Lacy listened as much as she could to the information flying back and forth, but her heart was pounding out of control once more, making it hard to think, and these were big guys she was running down the stairs with. Fast big guys who could run. She couldn’t keep up. Nonetheless, Alex stopped at the ground floor door and held it for her to exit first.
“Paramedics haven’t left yet,” he said even as he shot another dark look at Jamaal. “Climb in. They won’t wait.”
A blue uniformed medic waved her to the rear gate of the ambulance. “Over here, ma’am. You need to hurry.”
She climbed onboard, and there he was. Jake. Her heart pinched at the sight of him, gray, lifeless, and glassy-eyed, but—thank God! He’s alive. Isn’t he?
Lacy looked closer. They’d stripped him bare and wrapped him in heated blankets. His eyes were open, black and sunken, but he didn’t move. Didn’t even shiver. She wasn’t sure he was breathing. “Is he…?”
When the medic crouching over Jake didn’t meet her eyes or answer her unfinished question, Lacy’s heart sank. This was no happy reunion. They were just going through the motions, giving her time to say goodbye.
“Don’t even think it,” Alex barked behind her. “He isn’t dead. These guys aren’t qualified to declare time of death, are you?”
The grim professional at Jake’s side didn’t speak, just pinched his lips in a tight line like he had something to say, but didn’t dare.
“You’ll take extra good care of my man there, won’t you?” Zack asked pointedly. “Because that guy’s a decorated war hero, and he deserves every last lifesaving measure you fellows have up your sleeves.”
The medic looked up from his array of tools and supplies at the implied threat. “What do you think I’m doing?” he bit out. “Back off. Let me do my job.”
Zack mellowed and took a step back. “Yes, sir. Meet you there, Lacy,” he said before he closed the door, locking her inside with Jake.
“Friends of yours?” the medic whom Zack scolded, asked.
She didn’t get a chance to answer. A terse female voice came over the radio snapped to his collar. He passed Jake’s stats to the woman on the other end of the line while she barked medical terms Lacy didn’t understand back to him. Only one term stood out from the others. Her worst fear. Hypothermic.
Slowly the ambulance pulled away from the curb, but the EMT kept working on Jake. “Someone cut him up pretty good,” he muttered as he slid a stethoscope beneath the blanket to the center of Jake’s chest. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Just so you know, I’ve already given him one unit of O negative. We’ve packed him with heat packs, but ma’am...” His gentle dark eyes pierced straight to her gut. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. Cardiac dysrhythmia is the real threat here, not his wound and not his temp.”
“Are you telling me his heart stopped?” she asked quietly as the vehicle rolled quickly over the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge and into D.C. proper. “Is he dead? Is that why his eyes are open?”
“No, ma’am. I’m telling you that ventricular fibrillation is the number one killer of all hypothermic victims. His buddy back there might’ve thought he was helping by dragging this guy home, but that’s the worst thing he could’ve done. He should’ve left him on the frozen ground and gone for help. Guys who’ve been in the river when it’s this cold shouldn’t be moved, especially not carried over someone’s back like he was. The heart can only take so much. And his eyes are open because he’s in a coma.”
“His name is Jake,” Lacy whispered. She lifted Jake’s icy hand from beneath the blanket and encapsulated it within hers. “This is USMC Sergeant Jake Weylin. He’s one of the best men alive, and that man who carried him is Corporal Jamaal McCune. You need to know that a good Marine never leaves his buddy behind.” She hated that her voice rapped up with every word, but these men were heroes. The world needed to fucking know that!
The medic blew out a patient sigh. “I get that, ma’am. I was Army. I saw my fair share. Let’s just hope his buddy didn’t kill this Marine tonight by saving his life.”
Chapter Thirty
He drifted on waves. Warm waves. Bright waves. Noisy waves. Maybe floated was a better word. Though why he was in the middle of the ocean on a bobbing raft escaped him. How he got there didn’t matter. Only the fifty-pound weight on his chest. Breathing was damned difficult. Thinking was harder. Instinct told him he’d be safe as long as he stayed on the raft. He was dying maybe, but warmer than he had been. Not a bad way for a man to go.
A gentle hand skated over his forehead and raked through his hair. It lingered at the side of his face, holding him. Cupping him with something that felt a lot like loving him. Lacy cut my hair, he wanted to tell that person, so they’d know someone had cared about him once upon a time. Instead, he let the darkness win. He drifted away.
At last he opened his eyes to quietly beeping monitors. Wires. Tubes. A godawful cannula stuck in his nose. Where’s my raft? He wasn’t bobbing any more. A ceiling came into view overhead. A shimmery ceiling.
I’m sick, he quickly deduced. Not adrift. Not dying. Not yet.
He saw her before he heard her. Lacy came out of nowhere as silent as a Christmas angel, like she’d been standing post and watching for this precise moment. Tender green eyes peered down at him from above. She rested one soft hand on his arm, the other to the side of his face.
Lacy looked a thousand times prettier than an angel, but she was crying. Wordlessly, she laid her head on his chest, wetting the thin material of his hospital gown with warm tears. He breathed the fragrance of her hair back into his soul. There was nothing better than knowing she’d survived; that she was the only person with him. That the first thing he laid his eyes on wasn’t Jamaal like he had every other day the last few years.
Drapes of red hair rolled over her shoulders, falling on his arms and neck like silk, draping him in silence. The very private place it created was filled with only him and only her. He fingered the strands that brushed over his fingers. She trembled in the way of all good women, and he could feel her breathing deep breaths the same as he was, as if they both needed each other’s air to live. There wasn’t anything better.
My Lacy.
Jake could barely lift his right hand to the side of her head to hold her against him. To never let her go. His heart swelled with love, but damn, he had no strength. Darkness tugged at him. “Lacy,” he growled, not wanting to go. Not yet.
She lifted the blanket and climbed into bed, pushing her long legs alongside his and covering them both with the blanket. The woman he adored was completely dressed, but nothing felt better than her warm body snuggled close to his. Still she didn’t speak, but snuggled under his arm like she’d always belonged there.
He lowered
his face into her hair and drew in a deep breath of—oxygen. Damned cannula. Lacy took the hint. Lifting the thing off his mouth, she traded it for a small kiss. It wasn’t a barnburner like her other kisses, but it warmed him better than any blanket.
“Love you,” he muttered thickly.
She didn’t answer, just replaced the mask and melted her body against his with one hand over his heart. He was pretty certain she was crying again, and he wanted to comfort her, but his mind lost its focus. Floating was over-rated. This felt more like falling.
The darkness took him.
“How is he?” Zack asked quietly as he entered Jake’s very nice private hospital room and made himself as comfortable as he could on one of the regularly sized plastic molded guest chairs. For a big guy like Zack, that had to be a tight squeeze.
“Better,” Lacy replied. She’d grown fond of this gentle warrior who kept faithful guard over his friend and her. Zack reminded her of Jake in a lot of ways. He’d always been somewhere in the background, taking care of his buddy—and now her.
The FBI confirmed that Rafe Poindexter and his men had murdered all of the clinic’s night shift personnel. The cruel deaths of her friends, Roxy, Jeanette, Carol, and Bonnie, even the unlikeable Dr. Anderson made Lacy sad. She’d never cared for the man’s abrupt bedside manner, but no one deserved what Poindexter had done.
And that sixth person? Sapphire Dawn, a sixteen-year-old runaway who’d ended up a hooker in Foggy Bottom’s dark back alleys. No one knew yet how she came to be in that basement or why she’d been murdered. The FBI was still sorting through a wealth of DNA evidence taken off her body, but that little girl had a mother and a father somewhere, and Lacy wanted to meet them. She wanted to paint poor Sapphire Dawn home. Every little girl and boy deserved one last chance.
While Jake slept the first days after being rescued, Zack made sure she took care of her heart problem. Turns out all that shock treatment she’d been given by Dr. Death had either caused heart damage or further exaggerated an existing condition. She didn’t know which, just knew the medication she was on now resolved the problem, and those scary palpitations were gone. Plus she now had a no kidding cardiologist who actually cared about his patients.
The afternoon after she was properly diagnosed and treated, Zack had brought his pretty wife, Mei, and their three daughters to visit their Uncle Jake. It was Christmas day, and it was all Lacy could do to not cry when sweet LiLi climbed onto the bed and gave Jake a big sloppy hug.
“I love you, Uncle Jake,” she told the sleeping man in no uncertain terms while tears dripped off her nose and ran down his neck. She pulled a wad of green tissue paper out of her coat pocket and tucked it into the palm of his limp hand. “You were supposed to come visit me cuz I got you a Christmas present, see?” Her lower lip quivered. “You’ll like it. I did chores for Daddy and saved my money and bought it just for you.”
Lacy had to wipe her face. Kids. Damn. They hit below the belt.
Zack and his family weren’t the only visitors. Before the day was done, Alex had stopped by with his wife, Kelsey. Some big bruiser named Mark dropped off a picnic basket of snacks, so she’d have something to munch on besides hospital food while she waited at Jake’s bedside. Then a bunch of other agents from The TEAM shuffled in with a piping hot Starbucks for her and a flower arrangement for Jake that declared, ‘Get well, buddy!’
Everything made her cry, but them calling a guy they barely knew ‘buddy’ did her in. She wrote their names down so she could tell him who all stopped by when he finally woke. Taylor, Gabe, and Maverick. On Christmas evening, Rory and Ember.
Last of all, Jamaal had stopped by with a plush teddy bear he’d gotten from who knew where. He hadn’t stayed long because he’d started bawling and Lacy understood. A man could only lose so much, and Jamaal knew how close he’d come to losing everyone important to him that day. She’d told him to go back to her apartment where he’d been staying, then she’d hugged him and that started another teary downpour that ended with Jamaal blubbering how much he loved Jake and her. Poor Jamaal.
The few times she’d run home to change or bathe, she hadn’t run into him, but her tiny place was always spotless and the refrigerator filled, so she knew he’d been there. Once Jake recovered, they might need to move into a bigger place.
A lot had happened in the short time since Jake had been rescued. Zack hit the headlines when he planted a fist into the belligerent face of one Mr. Manny Prentiss, whom the FBI, along with Zack’s assist, had been caught red-handed with his pitiful human cargo from Cambodia. During the arrest, Prentiss pulled a gun, but Zack disagreed with him, and—BLAM. His fist came up and Prentiss went down. Lacy cut the newspaper article out and taped it by Jake’s bed where he could see it the moment he opened his eyes.
“His hearing any better?” Zack asked, pulling her out of her reverie.
“He keeps talking. Sometimes he grumbles in his sleep, but of course I can’t tell him that he’s deaf. He hasn’t woken up long enough for conversation yet.”
“Could be a lot worse. Alex been by?”
“Yes, a lot of other people too. I kept a list so I could remember all their names.”
“He leave anything for Jake?”
Lacy nodded toward one of the flower arrangements on the counter. “The brown and yellow flowers. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.” Zack shot her a cute smile like he knew something she didn’t.
“Will you stop teasing and tell me,” she hissed.
“Alex should be the one to tell you, but…” Zack leaned forward. “He’s hiring Jake if Jake’s willing.”
“No. Really?”
“Sure. Jake’s the kind of guy Alex respects. He’s no quitter, and the dumb-butt went into hell with nothing more than a fancy suit and a nine mil he never intended to use.”
Zack certainly knew his friend. “Do you think Jake will accept the job offer?”
“Probably not,” Zack admitted. “Guess we’ll know when he wakes up. How’s your heart?”
She smiled. “As good as his. Thanks for making me see a doctor. I do feel better.”
Zack winked, the big flirt. “Don’t you think it’s bizarre that you’d never had a heart problem until Jake was in trouble?”
“What’s bizarre is that his heart survived despite him nearly freezing to death. That’s how most hypothermic victims die.” Lacy reached for Jake’s hand, needing to touch him, hoping he’d open those dark grays and offer that serious crooked smile of his.
“What’s even more bizarre is that the two of you had life threatening heart problems at the exact same time. Hell, Lacy. You were as gray as he was by the time Alex and Jamaal showed up at your front door. Either of you could’ve died that night.”
“I was gray?” She hadn’t known that.
“Yes, you were. Maybe it’s true. Maybe two hearts combine once they finally hook up with the right one. Maybe that combination kept you both going when you should have died.”
Lacy stilled. Zack’s words rang true. The real problem that day had nothing to do the erratic electrical impulses of her battered heart. Jake had been scary close to dying, yet somehow their hearts had reached for each other across time and space. Cried for each other. Found each other. Maybe even strengthened each other. Definitely saved each other.
She shivered and it had nothing to do with being cold. “Maybe,” she said at last. If there was one thing the last few days had taught her it was that anything was possible during Christmas, the season of the heart.
“And another thing. Why did you decide to paint Jake’s heart in the middle of a snowflake instead of something else?” Zack asked. “It was as if you had a premonition of his death, Lacy. In doing that, in putting that one little drop of red paint in the middle of all that frost, I think somehow you also captured his future. You painted a single speck of life in a frozen wasteland. You painted him home just like you’ve done with your other pieces.”
Tears filled her eyes, and Zack
needed to shut up. He was too damned insightful for a man with bulging muscles all the way to his toes. She didn’t know why the inspiration had hit her to place a heartbeat in the middle of frozen death. She just had. After making the kind of love she and Jake had made, it just felt right that morning, to sit there close to the man she loved and paint the gift of a heart for him.
“I love him,” she admitted quietly. “He is my heart.” Every last beat of it.
Zack sat so close that he bumped her with his brawny bicep. Lacy didn’t have to look at him to know he was emotional. That was why she liked Zack. He was another tough guy with a marshmallow heart.
“How did Jamaal get away from Poindexter’s men?” she asked to change the subject.
“Said he faked being knocked out once they dragged him down to the basement and left him for dead.” Everyone else being Lacy’s friends from the clinic. “Said he’d never been so scared in his life, so he ran like hell. Least he was smart enough to stick close by. That alone saved Jake’s life.”
True. Jamaal was the unlikeliest of heroes, and God, she loved him for watching over his buddy like he had. “They’re two lost souls,” she told Zack.
His head bobbed. “They are, but those tunnels,” he murmured. “Back in the day, Foggy Bottom was a breeding ground for gang activity. Irish. German. Black. You name it. The neighborhood was full of bootleggers and prostitution. Used to be known as ‘Round Tops’, named after one of the worst gangs. Poindexter must’ve tapped into one of those underground alleys. God knows there were plenty of them.”
Lacy swallowed hard, the memory of Rafe’s tunnel and the smells in it were hard to forget.
Zack kicked a long leg out. “Jake better wake up pretty soon. I’m damned tired of looking at his ugly face while he gets his beauty sleep.”
Lacy smiled, her fingers intertwined with Jake’s and her heart beating with his. She wasn’t tired of looking at Jake, but, yeah. He’d better wake up soon. She needed to kiss the stuffing out of him.
Jake (In the Company of Snipers Book 16) Page 21