Her fate and the fate of their baby now rested in the hands of two surgeons who were doing everything they could to save the only pieces of himself that had ever truly mattered.
“Clay, how is she?” Mark asked as he and the rest of the family entered the waiting room. Mark had a protective arm around Clare who still looked mighty shaken.
Clay looked at them and then at the clock. It was 8:20 p.m. He had jumped out of the ambulance almost four hours ago.
“I don’t know. Nobody’s been out since they told me they were wheeling her in to surgery.”
Clare and their mom were crying. Their dad walked up to Clay and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I didn’t get there fast enough,” Clay admitted as he hung his head. “I was supposed to protect her and our baby. Now I’m standing here while they’re fighting for their lives and there’s nothing I can do.”
“I heard you had a mighty big hand in keeping her going until they could get to the hospital,” Mark said as he cleared his throat and hugged his wife closer.
Clay shrugged his good arm and asked, “Is Campbell okay? What happened?”
Mark tried to smile. “He’ll be fine. I’m sure he’s cussing the nursing staff at the moment, trying to get up here, but they said he had to stay overnight. Maddy…April…whatever, beat him over the head with a metal clothing rack after she yanked out his ear piece, when she realized he knew it was her.”
“So close. We were so close.” Clay shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked up every time he saw movement inside the double doors, but no one walked in their direction.
He looked over at Clare. “Thank you. For what you did. You were damn brave. I’ve seen Marines lose their shit in situations like that.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t going down like that. Mark and I’d always talked about what I was supposed to do if I was ever attacked. Self-defense and all that. Took me a few minutes to focus. But I got there.” She squeezed Mark tight. “I’ve got way too much to live for.”
“You did great, baby.” Mark kissed her head and held her. His eyes were far away.
Lost in what-if, Clay guessed. He knew that place well.
They were all silent for a couple minutes. The doors opened again. They held their breaths. Nothing.
“Distract me. Anything.” He stared on the ground, blinking back tears. “I’m gonna lose my shit if somebody doesn’t tell me something soon.”
“She stole Maddy’s identity.”
Clay focused on Mark. “What?”
“April Ashford. That’s her real name. Wicked smart. Stole the identity of an NYU student. Maddy Jenkins. Same build. Eye color. Glommed onto her social security number after she died in a car accident. No family. No relatives. So no one to check up anything after she passed away. It’s why the background check came out clean.”
“How did they find all this out so damn quick?”
“Another team was dispatched to her apartment as soon as she pulled the gun. Bomb squad and all that jazz. There was a whole room filled with newspaper clippings and photographs. Journals. And her guest bathroom had been turned into a makeshift dark room. They even found a prescription in her bedroom for Moban, which is apparently a really strong antipsychotic. It was prescribed to April Ashford. They’re running prints and comparing blood samples now. Pulling medical records on April, but it all seems to match.”
“She had journals,” Angela’s father added. “Maybe there will be more answers in there.”
Clay looked at him and he nodded. “But why? Why do all that? Why Angela?”
Mark shrugged. “Who knows? Saw her picture in the paper a few years ago? Met her at an event and latched on? Turned into the stalker from hell. From that scene back there you could tell how off she was. As if she didn’t know who she was anymore. She played all of us, and she played us very, very well.”
“If we just would have figured it out yesterday, none of…” Clay started.
Angela and Mark’s dad interrupted. “Clay, what-ifs aren’t going to fix this. Everything happens for a reason. You can’t go back and change any of it, son. All of you boys did everything you could to protect her, and now she’s in the hands of the people that can put her back together.”
“I wish it were that easy,” Clay sighed.
He turned back around to the double doors again and a woman and a man dressed in scrubs emerged, looking very tired.
They both extended their hands to everyone and then the woman focused on Clay and asked, “Are you the husband?”
Before he could deny it everyone else answered, “Yes.”
He nodded, with a huge lump lodged in his windpipe and he was unable to ask any questions. He’d never been so mortified of the answers in all his life.
Several hands settled on his shoulders and his back and it felt as if his insides had all turned to a rolling mass of fire. His body started to shake apart.
The female doctor handed Clay a black-and-white sonogram photograph.
He took it without thinking and looked down. After staring he looked back up into the woman’s face. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.
The man standing behind her said, “We all thought you might like a picture of your son since, God willing, you won’t see him for another few months if your wife follows the bed rest instructions we just put her on.”
Clay looked back down at the image. The haze of fear slowly receded from his vision and he could see him.
My son.
A beautiful little face jumped off the picture at him. He could see he had Angela’s nose and his own little lips that were held in a soft pucker. His focus blurred as his eyes swam in tears.
“I don’t know what to say, other than thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
The woman wiped her eyes and said, “You’re the reason they both survived. If your arm hadn’t slowed the bullet down, it would have ripped through a major artery in her abdomen and she would have bled out in less than a minute.”
The other surgeon spoke up. “She is lucky to have all of you. And so is that baby. Rarely do we have such a wonderful outcome. She’ll be in recovery for around an hour or so and then you can all see her briefly. She was still coming out of the anesthesia when we told her everything was fine, so it would be great if one of you could be with her when she wakes up to reassure her.”
“I won’t leave her side.”
Chapter Thirty
Several hours later, Clay sat in a chair next to a hospital bed that held the most precious possessions in his entire world.
Mark, Clare and Angela’s parents had been in and whispered love and wishes of recovery, but had left to get some much-needed rest.
They all knew Angela would need Clay when she woke up, and they would have days and weeks to talk about everything else. Sort it all out and try to make sense of all they had learned.
He held her hand and stroked it ever so gently. The nurse had come in to take her blood pressure and check her bandages and he asked quietly, “Why hasn’t she woken up yet?”
She patted his arm gently. “All of the anesthesia is out of her system, but when the body goes through that kind of trauma, sometimes it takes people awhile longer to relax their mind enough to wake up. Our mind is an amazing thing and can protect itself, until it is ready to try again. Don’t worry, young man. She’ll wake up as soon as she’s ready to. Just keep talking to her and she’ll come around.”
Clay watched the woman leave without a sound and focused back down on Angela’s sleeping face.
Her eyes opened slowly.
It was dark outside and there was only a soft glow of lights in the sterile white room.
There was a dip in the mattress next to her and she moved to look over and pain shot up her side.
She gasped and her hand went to her stomach.
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But there was no panic, no drug-induced anxiety about the health of the baby. She was sore as all hell, but alive.
“Everything’s all right, Angela,” Clay said with a contented smile. He wiped tears from her face and bent down to kiss the wetness from her cheeks.
“You were there, in the ambulance,” she stated when he gently sat down beside her and took her hand.
He wound his fingers through hers and agreed. “Yes, I rode with you to the hospital.”
She was exhausted but fought through the grogginess. She needed him to understand before she fell asleep again. “No,” she whispered as her eyes found him. “You were there when we died.”
Clay looked up at her face. He probably expected to find her with glazed-over pupils or still more asleep than awake, but he found her eyes bearing down on him. “Yes, I was there. Did a nurse tell you what happened?”
She closed her eyes and saw two lovely faces still fresh from her unconscious memory. A smile tugging at her lips. “I don’t remember talking to anyone after the ambulance ride. I told you I loved you and I said I was sorry that I couldn’t fight anymore and then we died.” Her free hand stayed on her belly as she looked into Clay’s eyes again.
He sat speechless for a while. “How do you remember that? How do you know you died if no one told you here in the hospital?”
Her hands reached out to hold his face. He moved a bit closer to her on the bed and moved her palms to his chest trying to understand.
She didn’t answer his questions but continued on, “You said you weren’t going to lose me that easily and you told me to fight. I saw you like I was sitting next to you. Kind of like now, but then I saw the paramedic leaning over my body and you were getting ready to breathe for me but it was all in slow motion. I can remember it all so clearly, but one thing was different.”
Fresh tears washed down her face and she took a small breath. “Our babies were with me. Melena sat on one side of me. She looked like a little angel with a little pink dress on and her hair was your color, with a beautiful bow to match her dress. She told me she wanted to wait with me before I went back. And the whole time I was holding our little boy who slept in my other arm. I told her how sorry I was that I couldn’t save her. That I didn’t get to hold her and comfort her in life, only in death. And then do you know what she said?”
Clay blinked rapidly and choked words out, “What did she say?”
Angela smiled so radiantly. “She thanked me for sending her home to heaven. She thanked me for loving her so long ago and for each day since. Her little fingers were so perfect and she held my hand so tight.
“I told her that I missed her and I felt so lost without her. Then she smiled this big toothy grin. She said that it just wasn’t her time to be with me, but someday we’d all be together. Then she told me that I shouldn’t be sad anymore, that her Daddy loved her, too, and her baby brother. She stood next to me and kissed my cheek and said we all had to go home.
“Then she leaned over and whispered something to her brother and kissed him on the forehead. He opened his eyes and looked right at her and then to me and he smiled. Then the next thing I remember we were back in the ambulance and everything went black again until now.”
Clay lay down next to her in the hospital bed and pulled her gently against him, careful of her injuries, and cried.
“Clay!” Angela demanded as she took his hand and placed it on her stomach.
A kick.
He felt a kick, and it was a sturdy one at that.
In that moment, they were truly a family, and Clay thought he heard a little girl laughing.
He felt another good kick and he and Angela laughed through their tears.
“I promise to love you all forever,” Clay admitted with the lightest heart a man could possess.
He caressed her hair and stroked her face. “Sleep, Angie. I’ll be here when you wake up. Oh!” he exclaimed a moment later, remembering the picture in his pocket he had been given with their son’s beautiful little face. “I’ve got a picture of our son from the sonogram. Do you want to see it before you go to sleep again?”
She closed her eyes, on the verge of sleep already, completely content as Clay rubbed her belly. “No. I know exactly what he looks like. He’s got my nose and your lips. He’s beautiful.”
Clay smiled a true and wonderful smile. It was the last thing he expected to be doing that night. After a morning of anxiety and a day filled with soul-deep fear, to lie next to his soon-to-be wife, talking about the son he thought he had lost and the daughter he had finally found. It was a miracle and he had never thought he could ever be so lucky.
He closed his eyes and slept next to the woman and baby that held his heart.
Epilogue
The night had been spent with Angela in horrible pain, but for once it was for a joyous reason. In just a few more minutes, they were going to get to meet baby Wyatt Campbell Waters for the first time.
She had gone into labor the day before, a couple weeks before her due date, and now they were all suited up in the delivery room. Angela had gotten her epidural around an hour before, so she was nervous but comfortable.
“Are you ready, Mrs. Waters?” one of the nurses asked her, after the OB made sure everything was set for the delivery.
Angela smiled at her new name. She and Clay had gotten married as soon as she left the hospital, standing on their thinking spot. It had been four months and she still smiled every single time someone called her Mrs. Waters.
“I’ve never been so ready for anything in my life.”
Clay took her hand and kissed her fingers, and moments later she was pushing.
The proud daddy filmed every moment and Angela made funny faces at him in between contractions.
“Ready, Daddy?” she asked Clay as she pulled her legs back again in anticipation of the coming push.
“Ready, Ang,” he declared with a beautiful grin she thought she’d never see again.
In the past months they had become a team. An equal partnership made with love and trust. They still argued, he was overprotective, but they made it work.
“Come on, Ang, you can do it,” Clay cheered. “One more and he’ll be here.”
With a rush of pressure, the doctor lifted baby Wyatt up to the world and he let out the sweetest cry.
Angela and Clay cried along with him. “He’s perfect,” they exclaimed together and then laughed with delight.
A few minutes later, after he was cleaned up and wrapped in a receiving blanket with a little hat on his head, a nurse laid him in Angela’s arms.
They both looked down at him in awe.
Clay turned the video camera around to see Angela and Wyatt and said, “That’s your mama, Wyatt, and you are so lucky to have her.”
Angela grinned and wiped tears from her face. “And that goofball over there is your dad!”
She touched his nose and his little mouth and moved his hat up so she could see his eyes better as he opened and closed them.
Clay watched her pause and then got closer when she said, “Clay, look at his forehead.”
One of the nurses walked up. You could see a faint birthmark on his soft forehead.
The nurse smiled and said, “They say that birthmark’s called an angel’s kiss. That a baby born with it has been kissed by an angel and will be protected for the rest of their life.”
“Melena,” whispered Angela. “Oh, Clay…”
He reached down and brushed the back of their son’s hand, his little fist opening to grasp his Daddy’s finger so tight.
“We’ll never be the same, will we?”
“Not if we’re lucky,” Angela admitted on a sigh as she stared at her family. “Not if we’re lucky.”
About the Author
Jennifer Kacey is an award-winning writer, mother, and business owner living
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A man with a past is her only hope for the future.
Non-Stop Till Tokyo
© 2014 KJ Charles
Kerry Ekdahl’s mixed heritage and linguistics skills could have made her a corporate star. Instead, she’s a hostess in a high-end Tokyo bar, catering to businessmen who want conversation, translation and flirtation. Easy money, no stress. Life is good—until she’s framed for the murder of a yakuza boss.
Trapped in rural Japan with the gangsters closing in, Kerry doesn’t stand a chance. Then help arrives in the menacing form of Chanko, a Samoan-American ex-sumo wrestler with a bad attitude, a lot of secrets, and a mission she doesn’t understand.
Kerry doesn’t get involved with dangerous men. Then again, she’s never had one on her side before. And the big, taciturn fighter seems determined to save her life, even if they rub each other the wrong way.
Then her friends are threatened, and Kerry has no choice but to return to Tokyo and face the yakuza. Where she learns, too late, that the muscle man who’s got her back could be poised to stab it.
Warning: Contains graphic violence, swearing, and implied sexual abuse.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Non-Stop Till Tokyo:
Jun threw me out of the car at Ameyokochō.
The traffic had been so dreadful on the way to the station, and I had been so trapped in my own frantically circling thoughts, that he had apologised three times before I realised what he was apologising for.
Final Surrender: The Surrender Series, Book 1 Page 29