by Julie Rowe
“Max needed me to do my job. I decided what I could do in the here and now was worth the risk.”
“You lied to me,” Con said.
She opened her mouth, but he wasn’t finished yet.
“You also lied to Max. Me, I’m just a soldier, but Max? He’s not happy with you and I think you’re going to find out there’s a steep price to pay for what you did.”
“Just a soldier?” She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. “You’re my partner.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “Let’s talk about the price I’m going to pay.” Fuck, he was going about this all wrong.
“My lifespan isn’t going to be counted in decades, Connor. Where else could I make the most of the time I have than in this team?”
“This isn’t some suicide squad,” he barked at her. “The Army needs you long-term.”
He had never seen a more resolute face than hers. “I don’t have a long term to give them.”
“Don’t say that, Goddamn it, don’t even think it.” He wanted nothing more than to hunt Akbar down and finish killing him.
“I had to do this,” she said after a moment. “I had to keep the truth to myself. If I had told Max, he would have immediately put me on a plane and sent me back to the United States.”
“Damn straight.”
“Then we wouldn’t have found out just how insane Akbar is. We almost did catch him, and now we know his goal isn’t just to kill, it’s to cause as many people as possible pain while they die.”
She wasn’t listening. He needed to try a different tactic. “You wanted to do something worthwhile with your life. Something worth dying for. Isn’t that what you said to me the day we met?”
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Hell, yes, I remember that. It’s almost word for word what I said when I wanted to get back on active duty.” He leaned down and said in her ear, “And it was the truth, as far as that goes, because I also wanted, in the worst way, to die in the performance of my duty.”
“I figured that out the night those goons tried to kidnap me. You threw yourself into taking those men down with no thought to yourself. None at all.” She held her breath for a moment. “There I was, fighting so hard to live just a few weeks longer, and you were trying so hard to die.”
“I’m not trying to die anymore. I hung around this crazy, gorgeous doctor for too long. I have something to live for now. I’m hoping she feels the same way.”
She stared at him with tears in her eyes and it nearly killed him to act casual and say, “Now stop arguing with the lab tech and let her take some blood so you can figure what’s wrong with you and fix it.”
“It’s never that easy,” she whispered.
“You’re the smartest and most stubborn person I know.” He kissed her on the nose. “I’ve got some paperwork Max is squawking at me to fill out. I’ll see you later.”
“You’re not just a soldier, by the way,” she said before he could go three steps. “You’re my soldier. Remember that.”
For the first time since the explosion, he smiled with no hint of sorrow at all. “Sounds good to me.”
An hour later, one of the doctors came around to talk to Sophia. Twenty minutes after that, a nurse set up a unit of blood plasma for transfusion for her. Then a unit of blood.
He asked when he could visit her and was told he couldn’t. She’d requested no visitors.
What the fuck?
Smoke distracted the nurse so Con could sneak into her room.
“How did you get in here?” she asked, glaring at him.
Wow, where did Miss Crabby come from? “Smoke is making your nurse’s life difficult.”
“I don’t care.” She looked away. “Get out.”
Something had happened to cause this about-face. He wasn’t leaving until he knew what it was. “No.”
She frowned at him, then deliberately turned on her side and stared at the wall.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked her.
“You’re what’s wrong with me.”
“Sophia.”
“I told you before, all my cell counts are low.”
That didn’t sound like cancer.
He had to work to keep excitement out of his tone. “You don’t have leukemia?”
“No.”
No cancer. “The nosebleeds?”
“Not enough platelets and too much stress from idiots who can’t take a hint.”
Not cancer.
Thank God. “I’d go, but we have some unfinished business.”
“Tai Chi lessons?” she asked hesitantly.
She was pushing him away, probably thinking it was for his own good.
Sometimes, it was good to be bad.
If he told her how he really felt, how much she really meant to him, she’d fight him every step of the way. It was time for a little tactic called fishing, and he had the perfect bait. He bent down so he could whisper in her ear, “Sex.”
Her breath caught right before she inched away. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“You? Ms. I’ll get it done or die trying, you’ve changed your mind?”
She didn’t answer for a long time, then she sighed and said, “It was a nice idea, but the reality is, I’m in no shape for it now.”
“Nice?”
She rolled over to stare at him.
“Sweetheart, you’re covered in bruises and every time you sit up you have a nosebleed. I know I can be an idiot sometimes, but I’m not that stupid.”
“Max is going to have me on a plane for the lower forty-eight within the next twenty-four hours. I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again, so there’s no point in...discussing it.”
He’d deal with the I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again statement in a minute. “Why is Max putting you on a plane so fast if you’re not dying?”
She sighed. “Because he thinks, and I agree with him, that I have aplastic anemia—my bone marrow has gone on strike—and I’m too sick to remain on active duty. I need to have more testing to determine what my next treatment steps are, but I will likely receive a medical discharge.”
“But not dying?” he asked, holding steady to his determination. Hope was too wild an emotion to let loose inside him.
She hesitated for a long couple of seconds. “It’s just as deadly as any cancer if my bone marrow doesn’t respond to treatment.”
“So, that’s it?” He couldn’t believe it. “You’re just giving up?” This woman always had a will of steel. Where had that gone?
She rolled over to look at him, and he saw that her face was wet. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to live. I was incredibly lucky to have you as a partner and battle buddy. You’re big and sexy and you make me laugh. I wish I could have had more time with you, but it’s not going to work out that way.” She smiled. “I hope you continue to kick terrorist ass, and you find happiness, because you deserve it.”
Her words gutted him. She was leaving him so she could die where he couldn’t be with her, comfort her, love her.
This wasn’t a casual brush-off.
She was saying goodbye forever.
No fucking way.
He’d fought for her, lived for her and he wasn’t about to let her give up on herself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sophia hurt so much, like someone had taken her right arm and ripped it off. The last thing she wanted was to be away from Connor, but her cell counts weren’t going up on their own. It was looking like her bone marrow had given up the ghost and wasn’t producing much of anything.
Losing Connor, never seeing him again, not being able to touch him, was a sort of emotional torture, but he had a life to live and now he might actually want to live it.
She hated the confused hurt she saw on his face. She’d done that, wounded him, but she couldn’t take it back. It was better than letting him watch her die.
He froze, absolutely motionless for a second, then his expression morphed into confusion and uncertainty.
So much pain on his face, and she’d put it there.
She wanted to take it all back, apologize for hurting him and promise whatever he needed to give her back her confident soldier again, but her death would hurt him so much more.
This was the lesser of the two evils.
The pain receded from his face, replaced by anger, irritation and resolve.
Uh oh. The soldier was back.
“You shut that shit up.”
Great, he was going to get stubborn. “Connor, this isn’t something you can bulldoze your way through. You can’t stare it into submission, or order it to stop. I’m deathly ill.”
“Exactly,” he said, bending down.
What was he doing? Unlacing his boots?
“You think I’m going to leave you to deal with this alone?” He toed his boots off, then began unbuttoning his uniform shirt. “I’m not going anywhere you aren’t.”
“But—”
“No buts. You can order other people around. Not me.” He threw his shirt on the floor and crawled onto the bed.
“What are you doing, you stupid man?” she hissed. He was supposed to leave. Hurt, yes, but better than the prolonged agony of watching her die a slow death. “The nurse could come in at any moment.”
He gathered her up, sliding one arm under her while the other coaxed her into rolling up against him. It didn’t take much coaxing. He gave heat off like a furnace and she was so cold. Despite her brain telling her body to push him away, she snuggled into him and returned the full-body hug. “You are the biggest stubborn idiot I know.”
He rubbed her back and nuzzled her hair, temple and the back of her neck. “But I’m your stubborn idiot.”
She was glad, so glad he was, but oh how she was going to hurt him.
She started to cry.
He held her, his hands cradling her close as he murmured gentle words in her ear.
Someone opened the door to her room, paused, then closed it again.
At some point, she fell asleep.
She wasn’t sure where she was at first when she woke, but it came back to her in a flash. The rustle of paper pulled her attention to the chair next to her bed. Max was sitting in it, reading out of a file folder.
Connor was gone.
“Max?” She tried to sit up, but he raised his hand and gestured for her to lie back down.
“Relax, Doctor. Everything is okay.”
She doubted that very much. “Did you find Akbar?”
Max’s face grew cold. “No, the bastard got away.”
“Oh no.”
Max nodded. “He’s leading us on a merry chase. He’s even started a correspondence with me.”
“How is he doing that?”
“He’s writing messages on corpses and leaving them where they’ll be found.”
He was devolving? “He’s turned into some kind of mass serial killer.”
“Yes, and unfortunately, he’s not done killing.”
Her throat was so tight, she could hardly swallow. “How many people died in the refugee camp?”
“One thousand six hundred and four. We’ve done anti-mortem testing on several of the dead. All of them had rabies.” Max gave her a questioning look. “What’s your feeling on Akbar? Will he continue to use rabies?”
She sighed. “He’d gone as far as he could go with the virus and he wasn’t satisfied with it. That’s why he wanted me. He thought, with my knowledge of the virus, that I could manipulate it in ways he couldn’t.”
“Is that why you destroyed your lab?”
“One of the reasons.” She thought about Akbar, how he talked, and what he said and didn’t say. “I think he’ll move on to a different pathogen. He doesn’t want us ready to combat anything he releases.”
“That’s not good news.”
“I did make an observation about him. He’s a chemist, not a doctor, so he approaches disease from a different perspective than we do. He looks at what he’s doing like a mathematician looks at a math problem—A plus B equals C. But diseases aren’t rational or linear. A plus B could also equal F or Y depending on any number of other factors that he’s not aware of.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t care about the other factors, or he’s willing to take risks to see if it makes things even worse than he intended?”
“That, too, could be true.” She looked at Max. “He’s completely uncaring about the pain and suffering of other people.”
“Oh, he cares.” Max looked particularly grim. “He wants them to feel as much pain as possible.” He put down the papers and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I’m sending you home. Your cell counts are all down. Without transfusions, you’d be impossible to transport.”
“My bone marrow has shut down.”
“Likely, but we’re not going to do a bone marrow aspiration here to prove it. I want it done in a hospital that can provide the right treatment immediately after a determination is made as to what’s going on.”
“Are you discharging me?”
Max frowned. “Here’s what I would like to do. It’s likely that you’ll be forced into a medical discharge. I want you to take it. After you’ve recovered, I can hire you as a contractor, much like Grace’s man, Sharp. I want access to your brain even if your bone marrow is misbehaving.”
If she survived. “Assuming I do recover.”
“I have a friend, another hematologist, who’s got some outside-the-box ideas,” Max said with a hint of challenge in his gaze. “I’d like you to meet him. I think, between the two of you, there’s a possibility of a creative solution.”
“You’re grasping at straws, Max.”
His mouth tightened. “I’m trying to save one of the best minds I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” Max said with strained patience. “You’re a doctor with unique skills. I never brought you in because you’re killer soldier material. You’re here to save the lives of soldiers and civilians alike from weapons they can’t see or combat on their own. Believe me, you are highly respected for what you did at the camp. Even General Stone, though in public he claims not to be happy with some of your more explosive actions. In private, he wishes he could have seen the look on Akbar’s face when he realized you were blowing your lab up rather than let him have it.”
One corner of her mouth quirked up. “Angry, that’s how he looked.”
“I refuse to think anything other than positive.” Max smiled. It had a sad edge to it, but it was still a smile. “I don’t want to lose my friend and colleague, period.”
Her throat was so full of unshed tears all she could do was nod.
“River is going Stateside too, and Smoke is going on a six-week leave to rest and build strength after the bullet wound he took in the shoulder. He’s been on deployment for almost eighteen months, so he’s due for it.”
She cleared her throat and managed to ask, “What about Connor?”
“I’m keeping him with me for a little while,” Max said. “We’re going to work on predicting Akbar’s next possible moves and targets.”
“That’s good,” she managed to say, though her throat was so tight she found it difficult to breathe. “He’s very intelligent.”
“He’s still your official partner-slash-bodyguard. If you’re a contractor, no one can cry fraternization either.”
Heat infused her face. Max had known about their intimate relationship?
He gathered up his papers and stood like he’d just delivered a weather update. “I promise to return him to yo
u undamaged.”
“When is that going to be? Six months? A year?” She blinked away tears and couldn’t help asking, “What if I don’t get better?”
Max shook his head. “Are you with me on the plan or not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
An hour later, Eugene and Jones arrived, but didn’t have time to fill her in on their adventure, which started the moment they got on their transport plane. It hadn’t gone to their planned destination.
Though they didn’t touch each other, Sophia could see they were together in every sense of the word. “You’re not going to fool anybody,” she told them.
“About what?” Eugene asked.
“You two. No canoodling where anyone can catch you at it.”
“Who the fuck says canoodling?” Jones demanded.
“I’m sick, I can say whatever I want.”
Eugene was laughing too hard to add much to the conversation after that.
An hour before her plane was to leave, Connor invaded her hospital room. He glanced around at the air-med-evac people and said, “I need a minute with the captain.”
Nobody argued, though a couple looked irritated with the interruption.
As soon as they were gone, Connor kneeled on the edge of her bed and leaned across her to brace his hands on the blankets. “You are going to be okay.” He paused, his shoulders tense, his knuckles white. “Say it.”
She had to fight tears, but managed to croak out, “I’m going to be okay.”
He clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Again.”
Tears rolled down her face. He looked terrified but tenacious, so she repeated, “I’m going to be okay.”
“Again.”
She smiled and cupped his cheek. He needed a promise to convince him. “Kidnappers couldn’t stop me, a fire couldn’t stop me, rabies couldn’t stop me and an insane madman couldn’t stop me. I’m going to be okay.”
He bent his head and let out a huge breath. “Okay.” His chin came up and he kissed her. “That’s my girl.” He kept kissing her until she was dizzy.
Was he going to be okay?
She should remind him she needed him, too.
“I’m sad,” she whispered to him as he nuzzled and nipped at her neck.