Johnny knew the pain in his eyes was evident, and raw as his open wounds, but Alexa understood. It wasn’t about physical agony—not now. She swallowed hard.
He closed his eyes. To admit this—this truth, was something he wasn’t ready for. As much as he tried to tell himself these feelings between them were due to the unusual circumstances, he knew that wasn’t all of it.
This woman had meant something from the moment she’d entered his life, and she became more important with each passing minute. His survival had depended on her, but there was something more—
How he could think that way—that there was something more important than surviving at stake—surprised him.
He’d never been good at lying to himself. And he’d sworn never to try to do it again, after his disastrous marriage had ended. Brutal honesty had been a good thing over the past years—since Sharon. It had kept him from making mistakes. Yet, Alexa wasn’t a mistake—was she? She sure as hell didn’t feel like one…
“Johnny?” Alexa leaned closer, looking into his eyes through the darkness. So close now that he could lift his head a scant couple of inches and put his mouth on hers—give her the answer to her question with no words spoken between them. He closed his eyes, feeling her warm, sweet breath mingling with his, her fingers tightening on his arm.
He slitted his eyes open again just in time to see her nervously moisten her lips, waiting for his response. What the hell. He moved upward slowly, and Alexa met him halfway. Their lips touched, tentatively for just an instant, then melded in a warm rush. Alexa gently pushed him back to the floor to ease the straining muscles at his side. Johnny’s hand came up to the curve of her jaw. He ran a roughened thumb over her smooth skin, memorizing the feel of her. He opened his mouth to her and felt her hesitate briefly, as if she was unsure. He wasn’t. His tongue delved into her sweet mouth and she moaned, moving even nearer, the kiss deepening.
“Yeah,” Johnny muttered finally, close to her full lips. He opened his eyes, looking up at her. “I’d say—he’s got damn good reason.” He studied her in the dimly-filtered light a moment before adding, “If you…feel the same, Lex.”
“This is crazy,” she whispered, but Johnny could hear the smile in her voice.
“Are you—crazy—with me?” he asked quietly, his own lips curving as he posed the question.
Alexa nodded. Johnny watched as she struggled for the words she wanted to say. He could see she was wary of her own feelings, not trusting herself either. Oddly, her hesitancy served to make him even more certain of his emotions.
He moved his arm slowly, his hand reaching to touch her hair in a gentle caress. She sat up and took his hand in hers.
“I feel like—like I’ve known you forever.” She raised her eyes to lock with his. “No, even that doesn’t say what I mean. I was married to a man I thought I loved. We married very young—just out of high school. Neither of us had dated much—other than each other. I spent over half my life with Richard,” she went on.
Johnny squeezed her hand and she gave him a wry smile. “Well, I guess back then, I believed in storybook endings—happily ever after, and all that.”
“It could happen,” he murmured. “I’ve…heard of it.”
“I guess it could have. But it didn’t. The day our youngest daughter turned eighteen, he told me he wanted a divorce.” She shook her head. “Looking back on it now, I’m just surprised it took him as long as it did.”
“He had—another woman?”
“No.” She bit her lip. “Somewhere through the years he learned that he much preferred—men.” She shrugged and glanced away. “So, you can understand how—I couldn’t compete. Not with that.”
Johnny’s mouth went dry at the lingering hurt he saw in Alexa’s face.
“I didn’t actually find out about his—lovers—until that day. He told me everything—” Her eyes went past Johnny into the blackness of the tubing. “We hadn’t had sex for years. He—He told me he couldn’t anymore; because of his blood pressure medicine. He said he couldn’t—perform.”
She tried to smile, but Johnny could see the brightness in her eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that. You see how easy I am to fool? I believed him. He said there was nothing the doctors could do. God, I was so—dumb!”
“Don’t,” he muttered. He reached for her. She took his hand between her palms, holding on tight. She wouldn’t look at him, and he could hardly bear that. Words were all he had, now. He swallowed hard, ignoring his own physical pain.
“Alexa—” he began, then stopped.
She raised her eyes to meet his.
Johnny knew, in that moment, that he loved her. There was no denying it. He would have sold his soul to hell just to see the lingering sadness vanquished, to glimpse the teasing light in those green depths once more.
“I’d never hurt you.” The whispered statement hung between them…a start—but inadequate to express all he wanted to say.
“I know that,” she told him softly. “It makes me realize all over again how naïve—how stupid—I was, all those years. But I guess I kept believing in him because I had no choice. I believe in you because I do have—choices, I mean. It’s up to me, finally—”
Johnny could hear the ragged sound of tears edging her voice. “Don’t cry, Lex,” he murmured. “Never meant to make you cry, sweetheart.”
“It’s not you. It’s me. I’m thinking that maybe I haven’t been happy for a long time. A lot longer than I realized—”
“Yeah. Me too.”
She gave him a quizzical look and he smiled at her wearily. “But you make me happy, Alexa Bailey. And if you can do that under these conditions—I think I could almost believe in miracles again.” He studied her a moment, then added, “I haven’t done that in a very long time.”
“Me, either,” she answered shakily.
His grip tightened on her hand. “Do you think we could get that other bullet out? Speaking of miracles, I mean.”
Alexa nodded. “Let me get the stuff,” she said softly. As she turned from him he noticed the silver medallion for the first time—familiar, somehow…
“What’s that, Lex?” He reached up to touch it, and she stopped what she was doing as he caught it in his hand.
“It’s our protection. St. Christopher—”
“Where did you get this?” There was harsh urgency in Johnny’s voice, a note of accusation he couldn’t stop. His fingers wound tightly around the chain and he pulled her down to him slowly. “Alexa—where?” His thumb traced the engraved lettering on the backside of the medallion. Letters he knew by heart. Words he had had the jeweler put there.
“A—A friend,” she stammered. “One of the waiters—he gave it to me—loaned it to me when he showed me how to get up here on the roof. He was nice—young—” she looked down. “He—didn’t make it—”
“Alexa…” It was a gasp of pure anguish, but his fingers loosened just a bit as his eyes seized hers and held. “His name—”
“José—José Mendez—” she murmured.
He shook his head, his eyes squeezed shut, then laid an arm across her shoulder. She let herself be pulled down into his embrace, into his anger, his pain, and all the promise of the miracle between them spinning crazily away in the glinting silver sheen of the medal.
“Johnny?”
He held himself still to keep himself from breaking. He wouldn’t.
“You—you knew José?” she whispered, only able to guess at the source of his desolation.
Johnny nodded. “Yeah. I knew him.” His voice was raspy, but steady. “He was my nephew.”
Chapter 14
“Here, lad, have a drink o’ water—then we’ll see if we can’t get somethin’ a bit stronger down ya—”
Feminine. Irish.
Pete felt the beveled edge of a glass being pressed to his lips; lips that must look like bloody, raw meat from the pain that shot through him at this simple task. Farley and Latham had done their jobs well.
&n
bsp; The water was good—the first drink of it sliding down Pete’s throat with the lingering taste of blood, then the metallic taste disappearing altogether with the next gulp, and the next. He drew the back of his wrist across his mouth, wincing at the rough contact of the sleeve against his bruised and cut skin. Unable to place the voice, he tried to open his eyes. The left one was swollen completely shut—the right, a mere slit.
A young woman, her voice raspy with years of smoking, knelt beside him. One of them, he thought. Eileen…Eileen… The last name eluded him, his thoughts scattering like fragments of glass shattering as the pain rolled over him.
“Easy, now,” she murmured. “Don’t be tryin’ to move. I won’t bite, y’know.” Sardonic amusement tinged her voice, and she pressed the glass to his lips again. “Well, the boys made a mess of ye’, that’s certain sure.”
“Doin’ their…job—says McShane,” Pete muttered. The effort to speak exhausted him, and he slumped back into the leather recesses of the plush sofa he’d been deposited on after he’d lost consciousness.
She didn’t reply, but he felt her hand on his forearm a little heavier, as if she steadied herself to turn to someone else. “Thanks,” she murmured, low, and Pete tried to open his eyes and see whom she spoke with, but he was too late. Almost soundless footsteps receded, and Eileen gently laid an icepack across his eyes. “Too late to hold the swellin’ down much, but at least it’ll feel good.” She sighed, adjusting the compress over Pete’s eyes and forehead. “It usually takes Sorley a while to do things, but he always manages. He’s very thorough.”
Pete moistened his lips, his tongue thick. “I appreciate it.”
He heard Eileen suck in her breath. “Evidently, Kier doesn’t.”
Pete felt himself slipping toward the black edge of unconsciousness.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered.
“Eileen?” McShane’s voice sounded behind her.
Pete felt the same tightening of her hand on his forearm as he had earlier. She had turned to face McShane. Pete forced himself to take deep, even breaths, as though he was sleeping.
“What’re ya doin’, lass?” Although the question was innocent enough, Pete could hear the steel behind it. Was McShane jealous? No, he was more likely upset with her for the care she was showing the enemy.
“Just tendin’ the goods, Kier,” she responded. “He’ll be of no use to us dead, as ye’re so everlastin’ fond of sayin’.”
There was a moment of measuring silence, as if McShane was sizing up the situation…how much gentleness was in Eileen’s touch; how much care in her eyes as she watched after the hostage.
“I didn’t have him beaten for you to make a bloody martyr of him, Eileen.”
Pete felt her stiffen, knew McShane had laid a hand on her somewhere. This was wrong, though he couldn’t figure out just why he thought so. Weren’t they lovers? Was McShane jealous of her attendance to another man—even one of the hostages? It was Eileen’s curt responses, the tightening of her hand momentarily over Pete’s wrist, the casual way she tried to pass off what she was doing as what McShane would expect…and knowing it was not. McShane could sense it all, too, Pete thought. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know that; it practically oozed from every pore in the Irishman’s slight body.
Eileen stood abruptly. “Seems it’s harder an’ harder to please you, lovey.” She set the glass down with a bang on a nearby table. “Can’t seem to do anythin’ right anymore.”
McShane chuckled. “Calm down, Eileen.”
Pete heard him move forward, catch Eileen in his embrace. “You do a lot of things right,” he muttered. There was a silence, then he repeated a bit breathlessly, “A lot of things.”
“Well, then…”
“Leave off with him, love,” he replied, suddenly cold. “He’ll have to do with a drink and the ice pack. You’ve been more than—generous.”
“I—I didn’t think.”
In the hesitant words, Pete heard so much more than her almost-apology. He wondered, in the heartbeat of ensuing silence, if Kieran McShane had read the nuances as well. Eileen Bannion was playing McShane. Pete couldn’t say how he knew it so readily, or how McShane could not see it just as plainly; he could read no censure in the terrorist leader’s tone when he spoke.
“You know what I always say, Eileen. You don’t get paid to think…I’m the brains of this army. You’re just here to follow orders…any orders.” The soft chuckle sounded again, and Pete worked hard to remain impassive, not allowing an expression to mark his features. His breath was regular and deep, despite the hot sweep of blood through his body. He wanted to kill Kieran McShane—but he was not fool enough to believe he was capable of doing so at this point. Not now, when he couldn’t even open both eyes; not now, when every breath he took made his ribs feel as if they were going to shatter…not yet…not yet, damn him…
He waited, listening as Eileen swallowed hard; waited for her answer, wishing the fucking icepack wasn’t covering the slits of his pummeled eyes.
He heard the hatred for McShane as it was pushed below the surface, the actress’s deceptive note of mingled flattery and submission as she answered softly, “You know I will.”
With those few words, Pete Logan understood. And if Eileen could wait—so could he.
♥ ♥ ♥
Daniel had always loved the way emergency lights looked in the blackness of the night. When everything else was dark, it was kinda nice to see those lights flashing and realize that help—of some kind—was on the way.
That was why he’d been a medic in the Army—in Nam. Seemed like that was the only time in his life people had depended on him, looked up to him—until now.
Daniel fitted himself to the shadows more securely. Not that there was anything to fear, he thought grimly. There had been no more choppers since they’d shot down that one earlier. No more searchlights. He was safe, on his favorite perch, and he could see everything down below; the police cars, and farther out, the ambulances and a few fire trucks.
Two people depended on him now. Alexa loves Johnny. Alexa loves Johnny.
He shook his head roughly to try to rid his mind of the singsong, schoolyard chant. What did it matter, anyway? He narrowed his eyes, making the red and blue glare of lights blurry around the edges. Almost like he had tears in his eyes, or something. Johnny. In the way. But he wasn’t—not really. That was wrong thinking. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault.
Now, he wished he’d said something to Ronnie last week; he sure ’nough did. He’d been in the ductwork, listening into room 413…Kieran McShane’s room. The vent grate was over the bathroom door, but from there, Daniel had a view of the bed, the front door to the suite, and the small kitchen.
He’d seen McShane and the woman have sex. It had been hard not to make any noise. McShane had been rough with the woman. She was small, delicate…but she was one of them, he’d realized later. McShane took pleasure in hurting her, and it disturbed Daniel to watch, unable to help her. Why did she come to McShane, he wondered, knowing what he would do? Daniel had balled his fists, squeezing his hands so tightly that it left the bloody crescents of his nails imprinted in the flesh.
The girl had seemed somehow used to McShane’s careless brutality. A flash of anger, quickly hidden, let Daniel know she would be all right. And when they’d finished, and McShane went into the bathroom, Daniel watched the woman, Eileen, as she viciously rubbed the place between her legs with the sheet, as if she was ridding herself of something so vile it couldn’t be tolerated a moment longer…as if it would melt her skin like napalm.
She hated Kieran McShane. There was no doubt of it. And Daniel had wondered how McShane couldn’t see it, for all her quiet words and averted looks.
It wasn’t your normal “afterward” conversation, either. They had talked of things Daniel had some knowledge of—weaponry, killing, and hostages.
The thing on it was, he hadn’t been able to hear everything because the compressors kept turning
on, and whatnot. And finally, he had lost interest, chalking it up to “scare talk”, as Ronnie would call it. But it had been more than that.
Daniel thought of Johnny, an undercover police officer, lying wounded in the ductwork. And then, of course, his mind caressed the memory of sweet Alexa. The worry and care—in her expression. For Johnny.
Some things never changed. He’d always love the way the emergency lights flashed—kinda reminded him of a Christmas tree…the kind they’d had at home when he and Ronnie were just boys.
He’d always be a day late and a dollar short, as Mama used to say. He knew he wasn’t smart, but damn, he wished he’d of told Ronnie what McShane had been talking about with that girl, Eileen; yes, he surely did. Now, there was all kinds of dead people, and it was his fault for not telling what he’d heard.
He pounded his fist against the concrete, and though the pain streaked up his arm, he didn’t flinch. He deserved it, after what he’d done. Those people down below were depending on him, even though they hadn’t known it. Funny, to think about people depending on you to save them and they didn’t even know they were dead until it happened…really happened. Kinda like Jesus, in a way, when you thought about it. Wasn’t nobody even knew they was hellbound til Jesus came along to save ’em. And even then, lots of people didn’t believe it.
Daniel stood up. He needed to get back into his shelter. He had to protect his home. Those damn Irishmen had ruined everything. They’d be coming soon.
Mama used to say he had the sixth sense—being able to kinda tell things was gonna happen beforehand. He guessed that was true, most times. He sure wished he’d of known where that land mine was before he stepped on it. He grinned to himself as he started back for the doorway, keeping to the shadows.
But Mama was right. He knew something was about to happen. Someone was coming. He quickly opened the door and slipped inside. He didn’t want to kill again; but, if it came to that, he would defend his home—no one could blame him, could they? His fingers curled around the cell phone he’d put in his pocket when he’d cleaned up the blood. Officer Johnny Logan’s phone, laying just under one of the vent tubes beside where Johnny had slid down to the floor. He knew Ronnie’s number. He remembered it. Sometimes, Ronnie reminded Daniel that his memory wasn’t good, on account of the metal they’d put in his head in Nam. But it was good enough to remember Ronnie’s phone number. And he sure needed to talk to him…to ask him what he oughtta do.
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