Chain Lynx (The Lynx Series Book 3)

by Fiona Quinn

  “As far as we can tell, that contact is clean. Their surname was changed to Garcia here in the US. They’ve moved into the FBI protection program. FBI will call Franco and Elicia to the stand at Maria’s kidnapping trial, though now I think they’ll be adding murder one to her charges.”

  “For me?”

  “The authorities think you’re dead. So yes, for you.”

  The nurse came back in. “How about peaches?” She looked at Striker with a scowl. Probably ticked that he was contaminating my room with his search party filth. Striker sent her a wink and a grin, which had its usual disarming effect. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Okay. I can try peaches. Just no beans, no rice, and no oatmeal.”

  “Got it,” the nurse said. “All right, my name is Barb, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to be the momma and you’re going to be the baby.” Barb had an aging pixie face and a friendly, crooked-toothed smile. “I’m going to be using this infant’s spoon.” She held up a red plastic spoon that would hold about a quarter teaspoon of food. “I’m just going to put a little in your mouth so you start to salivate, and we’ll watch how things go from there. Are you hungry at all?”

  “No.”

  “Thirsty?”

  “No.” The thought of swallowing past the glass shards that seemed to line my throat made me reticent to down anything, even something as smooth as baby mush. Okay, I was really reticent to find out that I could never eat again. A life without food?

  Seven

  “Who’s here?” I asked, since I couldn’t turn my head.

  Striker moved into my view. “Hey, you’re awake. How’s your stomach?”

  “I’m okay. What time is it?” I had woken up in semi-darkness.

  “Seven,” he said, rubbing my leg.

  “A.M. or P.M.?”

  That got me a smile. “P.M. It must be weird to have so little context.”

  I let my gaze travel over Striker. He was a handsome, handsome man. A dichotomy - hard as stone, capable, and smart, and at the same time. . .something in his full lips, his soft mossy eyes that made him. . .huh, I wanted to use the word vulnerable, but no. That was definitely wrong. Striker was strength personified. Chivalrous, and complex were much better descriptors. I smiled weakly. “That’s for sure. You look cleaner.”

  “It’s your turn now. The nurse was waiting for you to wake up so she can give you a bath and change your catheter. Since we watch every move that the staff makes, I thought you’d prefer it if it was my turn to do the watching.”

  “You’re watching every move because you think the staff might have an Omega operative?”

  “Never know - can’t make assumptions.”

  I blew out a huff of air and turned red.

  “Are you okay?” Worry edged into Striker’s gaze.

  “Yeah. Are you sure you can’t just trust the nurse?” I grimaced.

  “Lynx, I’ve seen it all before. I’ve seen you naked, and I’ve seen your catheter changed – they have to do that every time you’re unconscious.”

  “Striker, it’s hard to be embarrassed when I’m unconscious.” I was whining like a three-year-old again. I blamed it on my restraints, and how infantile they made me feel. Completely incapable, which I hated with a capital H. “And then, when I wake up, I can pretend it never happened.” I twirled the sheets between my fingers.

  “Okay, well, I’ve seen you mostly naked when you were up and prancing around.” He stroked a hand over his chin. “I remember very vividly New Year’s Eve when you were down to a pair of heels and a couple of pieces of string.”

  “And that’s the only way I want you to see me naked. When we were in Miami for New Year’s, you looked at me like I was a piece of art. You told me I was beautiful and soft. I’m not sexy now, Striker. I’m disgusting, about as far from desirable as a girl can get, and that whole body-fluids thing is gross.”

  Striker’s face was serious, but his eyes sparkled with laughter. “Lynx, I never thought of you as vain before. This is a whole new side of you.”

  “I don’t think it’s vanity as much as humility. This is going to be humiliating.”

  “You’ll make it through, Chica.” He dropped a kiss onto my forehead. “You know, when you love someone, you take the good with the bad.” He reached over and pressed the call button. “And when we’re through this little chapter, I’m planning to take you away to somewhere very pleasant and very private, and put a whole lot of energy into the good.”

  The tone in Striker’s voice and the glimmer in his eyes gave me a rush that left me breathless. He must truly love me if he could imagine past the visual I was presenting. Striker was watching my reaction with satisfaction when the nurse came through the door.

  “Whoops! This looks like a private moment. Sorry to interrupt, but we’re about to get personal in other ways.” The nurse moved over into my field of vision so I could get a look at who was talking to me. “Best if I start by introducing myself - I’m Peggy.”

  “Hey, Peggy.” I wasn’t sure if I should introduce myself back, or if I was Jane Doe here, so I left it at that.

  Peggy wore her gray hair cut like a man’s. She was short, squat, and very good at what she did. Even though Striker was watching her every move - and Peggy was letting him - she still managed to drape the sheet in such a way that the most private things were kept mostly private.

  Peggy spent a long time trying to comb out my hair so she could wash it. “I don’t know, honey, it might be that you’re going to end up having to cut your hair short. You’re just this side of being a Rasta, and it’s still full of sand and debris.”

  “Crap.” Tears stung my eyes – partly pain, mostly self-pity.

  “I’m not giving up, though,” Peggy said. “I’ve got all night. You’re my only patient, so if you can take the tugging and yanking, I’ll keep working on it.”

  “The pain meds help. If you don’t mind, I’d be grateful if you can try to save my hair. Right now, it’s my only vanity.” I looked over at Striker “Don’t say anything,” I commanded.

  “What? My mind was a complete blank.” He grinned. I was holding both of his hands and squeezing them hard with every tug.

  “Here’s some good news,” she said. “You’ve been gaining weight. You weigh 92 pounds now. How much did you weigh before your. . .” Peggy stopped to search for a word, and then said, “circumstance.”

  “130.”

  “And you’re how tall?” Peggy asked.

  “Five-foot six.”

  “Hmm, 130 is a little underweight for five-six. But you have small bones.”

  I grimaced as Peggy ripped a snarl free. “I was athletic.”

  “And you will be again, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of time. You have a PT coming in to assess you tomorrow morning. Actually, you have a lot of tests tomorrow. They want to do another MRI, and a neurologist is going to be in doing a work up. They’re hoping to take you off traction and leave you in a collar for a few days. That way, we can start you trying to sit up.”

  “That would be a relief.” I sucked in some air, sending sharp pain across my chest.

  “No doubt. Your skin’s in much better shape. The sunburn faded, and the open sores have closed. Since you aren’t scratching at yourself and picking at the scabs, it seems to me the scarring will be pretty minimal. How’s your stomach feeling?”

  “Okay, I think. Are they going to give me more baby food today?”

  “Yup, peas later this evening.”

  I whimpered from behind tightly sealed lips.

  “Hey, are you okay? Should I stop pulling at your hair?” Peggy asked.

  “It’s not the hair. It’s my back. Yowza. That really hurts.”

  I heard Peggy go out and come back in. She put some medicine into my IV. Snap. I was out.

  The bright oscillating mirage of a “knowing” framed my dream. I was Snow White, with black hair and ruby lips, dancing through a meadow strewn with wild flowers and singing songs with twitt
ering-bird back up. A craggy old woman approached and complimented me on my voice. She reached into her basket to offer me a shiny red apple. She held it up, and as I reached out my hand. I saw that the side pointing away from me was dripping with. . .

  “Pea time,” I heard Peggy calling to me. I didn’t want to wake up for peas. I tried to cling to my dream, but it wavered out of reach.

  “Come on, I need you to open your eyes whether you want to or not. We have to do this on a schedule, so we can monitor your progress.”

  I blinked my eyes open and made a face.

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” She smiled encouragingly. “If you do well with this, tomorrow we get to try green Jell-O and a soft boiled egg,” Peggy said. “Same as you did with Barb, I’m going to be using the smaller spoon.” She held it up for me to see. “If you start gagging, or feel like you might be getting nauseated, give me a sign. We don’t want you aspirating vomit. That would give us a whole new set of problems, okay?”

  “Yup.”

  Peggy spooned mushed peas in my mouth. I let it sit so I would start to salivate, reminding my body of its duties.

  “You’ll be glad to know that while you were sedated, I was able to get the knots out of your hair.” She slipped another spoonful of peas between my lips. They needed salt desperately – or something. Blech.

  “Took a few hours, and I was a lot less delicate about it, since you couldn’t feel anything. Your head is probably a little sore.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “Oh, the price we women pay for beauty.”

  Before I could answer, Peggy put another micro-spoon of green in my mouth.

  “I washed your hair. Didn’t use the institutional stuff, either.”

  My stomach wasn’t so happy with peas. I tried shallow breathing, hoping I could finish. I definitely didn’t want a feeding tube.

  Peggy kept chattering and spooning. “Since I knew you were going to be getting a thorough cleanup today, I brought my shampoo with me and a deep conditioning mask. You have beautiful blonde hair.”

  I realized Peggy was trying to distract me. “Thank you. And thank you for your kindness.”

  “Not at all,” She winked. “We women have to stick together, help each other out. It can be tough holding on to your humanity when you’re lying here like this. I was in a car accident once. I know what I’m talking about.”

  When Peggy left, I shifted my focus over at Striker. “You look beat. What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight. I should hit the rack, but I don’t want to leave you.”

  “Afraid I’ll disappear?” I rubbed at the rash around my IV tape.

  He laughed softly. “Last night, I lay awake considering microchipping you. That way whenever I wanted to know where you were and what you were up to, I could check a computer.”

  “And you think I’d let you do that?” My voice sailed up a full octave.

  “You’d never know. The chips are the size of rice, and I’d just shoot one under your skin with a hypodermic.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve done this before?”

  “Only for my niece’s dog.”

  I didn’t doubt for a minute he’d try something like that. My voice dropped to a horrified whisper. “Did you do that to me, Striker?”

  “Nope. In the end, it might give me peace of mind, or it might be a treasure map for any pirates out there.”

  “Looking for booty?”

  “Yeah, I’m the only one who’s allowed to chase after your booty.” He wiggled his brows rakishly, making me giggle.

  “Good one, funny man. I know that technology doesn’t exist. There’s no way to power something like that. The best you could do is microchip me so if someone found me, they could contact you. Even then, they’d have to know to run a scanner over me, and who in their right mind would do that?”

  “Yeah. It was all just aimless thoughts before I fell asleep. Would you like me to tell you about some of my other thoughts?” Striker asked, bringing my hand to his lips, making me smile with his kiss.

  “Maybe later.” My eyelids were heavy. It seemed that I could only stay awake for little snippets of time. I was having a love-hate relationship with my pain meds.

  “Okay, later. Deep is outside; Blaze is inside for the next four hours. I’m actually going to have to rotate people home to DC to make appearances and get them back here undercover.”

  “Explanation?”

  “If we gave up on finding you, we wouldn’t be hanging out at Lackland anymore. Jack and Gater have headed home now. They’ll turn right back around after they’ve made some appearances, and sneak back out. Then Blaze and Deep will go. I’m the last to rotate home. I’m really hoping we’re going to get some excellent news from your doctors tomorrow. As soon as we safely can, we need to get you out of here.”

  Eight

  “What does ‘out of here’ look like to you, Striker?” I blinked back the fatigue, but each blink made it that much harder to open my eyes.

  “We have some options. I want to know what you want to do. Are you up to weighing some pros and cons with me?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I yawned deeply. Striker looked dubious, so I gave him a reassuring smile.

  “We have the option of taking you out of the country. It would mean everyone would have to have a new identity. We’d have little to no support if things went bad. And Iniquus is concerned about things coming to a head off American soil. We need to protect our reputation and America’s diplomatic interests.”

  “Agreed, I think out of the US is a no go. Even something like Hawaii is bad. It’s too limiting.” I reached up and scratched at my nose where the oxygen tubes tickled my nostrils.

  “We talked about somewhere else, maybe west coast. The thing is that our group has been working as a dedicated team since last fall, when you were under our protection at the safe house. If Omega has done their homework on any level, they’d know who your teammates are. That means in order to keep you safe, we’d have to leave Strike Force back in DC, and assign a new team.”

  The idea of being alone with strangers fired adrenaline through my body and wiped away all my fatigue. It put me in survival mode. Panic must have shot into my eyes, because Striker squeezed my hand. “I nixed that idea out of the box.”

  I breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Yes, thank you.”

  “The team has narrowed our choices down to DC, either at Iniquus, or you know I have a house on the bay. At Iniquus, we could get you medical help easily. You would stay in my barracks apartment.”

  “You don’t seem happy with that option. Why?”

  “Frith thinks Omega’s got eyes on the lawn. That means they think we might sequester you at Iniquus, and if you came outside, you’d be targeted.”

  “That’s ballsy.” I wiggled my nose to readjust the breathing tube. I’d be glad when that was gone.

  “Yeah. I’m not going to repeat what Command said about that. At Iniquus there’s the added benefit of the shelters under headquarters.”

  “You mean in case Omega starts bombing?”

  “It’s a stretch of the imagination. I’m just offering the pros and cons. The big con about sequestering you in my apartment - without your being able to go outside - is your mental health. If you felt like a prisoner there, I’m afraid of how that would affect your working for Iniquus, your relationship with the team, and frankly, your relationship with me.”

  “What about the bay house? Gater says it can’t be traced to you.”

  “I’m no-profile when I’m at my house. No one in the area knows me or has seen me. There’s a lot of land around the place, and I go there for seclusion. The house has plenty of room to bunk the team. There’s a gym for your rehab. And there’s a lot of fresh air.”

  “No one knows you own the place?” Why would anyone have a house on the water, big enough to bunk a team of people and not invite guests? All right - women. Why hadn’t he taken women there?

  “I picked the area for safety. I thought one day I’d
end up having to safeguard my sister because of her associations, and I’d need to hide her and Cammy away. Believe me when I say it’s state of the art for protecting my family.”

  No doubt. Striker would go to any length to keep Lynda and Cammy safe.

  “The added benefit for being there is that we could take you, under false identity, to the local emergency department if you needed to be hospitalized again. And we could do that without raising alarms.”

  “So you’d just have the team make a show of being home, and then being sent off grid?”

  “Exactly, then we can work with you to figure this mess out – who thinks you’ve broken what law? Why is there a bounty on your head?”

  “Big ass bounty.” I meant to be funny and relieve some tension, but the look in Striker’s eyes made me understand there was nothing humorous about my situation. “Would we leave Randy and Axel on the outside loop to do footwork?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they’ve been off grid since they left for Honduras, so they’re the obvious choice.”

  “The bay is your preference.”

  “I’ve thought it through, and I feel confident in either the Iniquus option or the bay option. I’m not confident in any of the other options.”

  “Agreed. And based on what you just said, I would suggest we go with the bay option, with Iniquus as back up.”

  “Then we have a plan. All we need now is for the medical team to sign off, and we’ll get you moved.”

  “Gotcha. Now go to bed. That’s an order.” I tried to screw my face into a serious scowl to put weight behind my words, but somehow, laying there looking at Striker, all I could conjure up was a dopey grin.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gave me a salute, then bent over to give me a soft kiss.

  Nine

  The door opened and there was a quiet exchange. Blaze came into view.

  “Hi, beautiful. You look nice all washed up.” He leaned over, scrutinizing my face. I was starting to feel like a circus sideshow. “Your cheeks are starting to get softer. You were pretty skeletal when we found you. Scary.” He gave a mock shiver from head to foot.