Bodyguard/Husband

by Mallory Kane

  “Jack. Where the hell are you?”

  “He’s got her in the subbasement of the gym. He knows I’m here.”

  “There are three field agents on their way, along with Detective Polk. You wait for them.”

  “Can’t.” Jack’s chest was becoming tight. His hands and feet were tingling. It was getting hard to breathe. “No time. Listen. Have the…lab check Danny’s body—” His breathing was becoming short. “DMSO. Check…hands, feet.”

  “That’s how he was poisoned? How do you know?”

  “Gotta go, Decker.”

  “Jack!”

  “Tell T-Bone…door in the linen closet. Men’s locker room. Hurry. And call an ambulance. I think I may be going into anaphylactic shock.”

  Jack heard Decker’s shout but he didn’t have time to explain. He thrust the cell phone back into his pocket without turning it off. Decker could listen in. He licked his dry lips, noticing that his tongue already felt swollen.

  He’d never gone in much for praying, but he prayed now—for the strength to get to Holly, to see her one more time, to save her from Hanks. He prayed for the courage to tell her how much he loved her, how in three days she’d changed his life forever.

  He stepped into the blackness.

  HOLLY HEARD THE HEAVY THUDS above their heads. Hope pumped through her veins like adrenaline. Was it Jack?

  Stanley turned from replacing the textbook. He made a sweeping gesture toward the ceiling of the tiny room, his ruffled sleeve waving. “Listen, my love. It is your lover. He has found us.”

  Her heart pounded in her breast. Jack was here. All she had to do was keep Stanley focused on her, to give Jack a chance to sneak up on him.

  “You think he will rescue you. So fickle. You have yet to learn that I am the only one who is true.” Stanley turned a page in the book. “Worry not about your husband. If he did not succumb to the heavy weights that felled him, he will soon feel the wasp’s sting.”

  Holly jerked in shock. Dread tasted like gall in her mouth. “Wasp’s sting?”

  Stanley cocked his head and glanced up. “Right now, your defiler is either dead from the weights that crushed his head, or dying from the wasp venom that swirls in his veins. Either way, he is doomed and you are mine.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Holly shouted in frustration, jerking on her bonds. She felt some give in the knot that tied her hands to the brass headboard. A thrill of hope raced through her with such ferocity that she almost cried out.

  Her arms ached, but she couldn’t afford to let them relax now. If the knot was coming loose, she had to hide that fact from Stanley until she could get the drop on him.

  He was so strong, though, and her arms hurt so badly.

  “Why? Because you are mine, my love. I waited so long for you to come to me. I carefully eliminated those who turned your head and I waited. Now there is only one last barrier to our love.” He gestured again.

  How had Stanley lived for so long in this small town without anyone realizing he was insane? He’d always been quiet, kept to himself, never said much. He’d been practically invisible. She could hear Jack’s voice echoing in her head. Classic serial-killer profile.

  Now he was going to kill Jack. She didn’t understand everything he’d said, but she believed his vow to eliminate the last barrier. And she knew that last barrier was Jack.

  “Stanley, please don’t hurt him. I’ll do what you want, I promise.” Her pulse beat frantically in her throat. She needed to get loose, to somehow immobilize Stanley until Jack got here.

  Stanley stood and paced. “Don’t you see? It’s too late now. You did not come to me. We could have been so happy. We could have lived together, and chased each other through the house, and slept together and written in our journals together. But you wasted your time and your love on those unworthy of you, and now, all that’s left for us is the ultimate. We must die together.”

  He stopped and listened. “I must go see if your husband has succumbed to my efforts.”

  “Wait!” Holly looked around frantically, searching for something to distract Stanley long enough for Jack to find them. Carefully she pulled on the strips of cloth. They gave a bit more as Stanley turned to look at her.

  “What is it now, my treacherous love?” he asked.

  Her gaze lit on her wedding gown. “Let me wear my wedding gown for you,” she said, her voice quavering. She swallowed hard and fought for control. “If we must die together, let us die as bride and groom.” She watched him carefully. She didn’t remember much of Browning, and she wasn’t very poetically inclined, but maybe she could entice him with her pitiful efforts.

  His pale blue eyes narrowed on her, and for a moment she was afraid he’d seen through her ruse. But then he turned and looked at the dress.

  “Bride and groom,” he said thoughtfully, then turned back to her. “I like you better in your virginal gown, but it cannot restore your purity. I saw you and your faithless lover entwined. I saw you betray me. I waited patiently, but you liked their defilement, didn’t you. You wanted it.”

  Holly could see the whites around his eyes. He was raving.

  “Perhaps…” he whispered, looking back at the gown hanging beside the desk. “Perhaps it would be fitting. You dying as a bride, with I your true groom.” He reached to pull down the dress.

  With a fierce tug, Holly pulled the knot on her bindings loose. The muscles in her arms cramped with pain, but she bit her lip and pushed through the agony. She grabbed the ends of the cloth that had tied her wrists to the headboard. In a swift, jerky movement, she pulled her bound feet under her and lunged at Stanley, throwing the strip of cloth over his head and crossing her wrists, tightening the impromptu garrote around his throat.

  He yelped and shoved himself backward, falling on top of her on the bed, knocking her crown against the headboard.

  As she fought to clear her blurred vision, a crash sounded at the door to the little room and she saw Jack, bathed in all the stars that were bursting in front of her eyes.

  Jack looked like an angel. A wavering angel, holding himself up by sheer force of will, his left hand gripping the door facing, his face marred by red patches and his breathing rasping loudly in the quiet room.

  “Get off her, Hanks,” he croaked, leveling his gun at Stanley, who was still on top of her.

  Struggling to pull air into her lungs, Holly tugged on the cloth she’d wrapped around Stanley’s throat, but he got his fingers around it and thrust it over his head, jerking her bound wrists.

  “Go ahead, O’Hara. Shoot. My true love and I wish to die together, anyway.”

  Jack struggled for one more breath. His throat was fast closing up. His lungs weren’t working right, and he could barely see. He knew if he tried to shoot Hanks he might hit Holly. But he didn’t have long, and if he didn’t do something, Holly would definitely die.

  His hand was burning like fire and his fingers would hardly move, but he squeezed the trigger.

  Hanks cried out and lunged at him, knocking him backward. The man was quick and strong. Knowing he didn’t have much time before the full force of the wasp venom kicked in, Jack tried to get off another shot, but his fingers wouldn’t work—he was losing motor control.

  He saw Holly moving. “Holly, get out of here,” he shouted, hearing his voice come out choked and hoarse. “Go get help.”

  But as Hanks lunged at him, Holly, with strips of cloth dangling from her wrists, appeared behind him and stabbed him with something. Hanks screeched and arched backward, knocking Holly down, then lunged again at Jack.

  Jack wrapped his hand around his gun, concentrating on making his hand work. He endured the force of Hanks’ head butting him in the stomach, and went with the blow.

  He felt he was moving in slow motion as he stuck the barrel in Hanks’ ribs and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Holly paced back and forth in the Intensive Care waiting room. After she’d been examined and released, Debi had b
rought her some clothes. Holly’s brain was still hazy from the effects of the chloroform, but she had refused to leave the hospital until Jack’s condition could be determined.

  The paramedics who’d rushed Jack to the hospital had explained how he’d been poisoned. Holly had heard of DMSO but she’d never seen it used. In the ambulance, Jack had been intubated to help him breathe, and then, before they could get to Forrest General, he’d convulsed, his body writhing in a violent seizure, and the EMTs had pushed her aside to administer more epinephrine.

  Jack had been rushed straight into the Intensive Care Unit to receive life support while physicians assessed the damage wrought by the wasp venom and the anaphylactic reaction on his system.

  So Holly waited. As a physical therapist, she’d worked in and around hospitals her whole career, but today she felt helpless and lost.

  Please, God, don’t let him die, she prayed silently. I can make myself go on without him in my life if I have to, but I can’t live knowing he died to save me.

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  “Holly?” an unfamiliar voice said.

  She turned to face a tall, powerful man with kind eyes and wind-tousled hair.

  “I’m Mitchell Decker.”

  “Special Agent Decker.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Call me Mitch.” He took her hand. “I understand he’s still sedated.”

  She nodded, tears clogging her throat. “I haven’t seen him. They took him straight into ICU. He went into anaphylactic shock. Stanley poisoned him—” She couldn’t continue.

  Mitch put his arm around Holly’s shoulders. “I know,” he said quietly. “Jack called me on his cell phone. He figured out that was how Hanks killed Danny. Hanks must have entered Danny’s apartment after he’d fallen unconscious from the poison and stuck a wasp stinger in his neck, then removed whatever object he’d coated with the venom and planted in the apartment.

  “As soon as Jack realized that Hanks had coated the doorknob in the gym with poison, he preserved a sample in an evidence envelope, labeled it with all the necessary information and put it in his jacket pocket.”

  Holly laughed, a little hiccuping sound. “He never gives up, does he.”

  “That’s how the Ice Man is.”

  She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. “Ice Man?”

  Mitch’s clear blue eyes went round. “He didn’t tell you his nickname?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I can see why people might think of him that way.”

  “People who don’t know him.”

  Holly smiled and nodded. “People who don’t know him,” she agreed. Then she sobered. “Do you know if Stanley made it?” She couldn’t believe she had actually stabbed him with his letter opener. But he had been attacking Jack, and she’d had to do something to stop him.

  “Hanks is upstairs in surgery. Your stab wound punctured his lung, and Jack’s second shot hit a rib and glanced off his side. He’ll live to stand trial.”

  “Thank God I didn’t kill him,” she breathed. “Although, for a minute there…”

  Decker patted her hand.

  A doctor came into the waiting room, and the sight of him sheared Holly’s breath. But he stepped over to another family. “Oh God, I can’t stand this. I need to see him.”

  “Let me see if I can use my influence.” Mitch disappeared.

  About twenty minutes later, he returned, took her hand and sat down with her in the corner of the waiting room. The terror that had grabbed hold of her when she’d first realized what Stanley had done now squeezed her insides. She could barely speak.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered, not wanting to know the answer.

  “Jack is very sick. His body is fighting off the effects of the venom, but he may be going into renal failure. We’re helicoptering a specialist down from Jackson. And as soon as he can be moved, I’m taking him back to D.C.”

  Holly’s eyes brimmed over with tears. Just as she’d known from the beginning, Jack would finish his job and leave. He had a life, a career that had nothing to do with her. She was just an assignment, although she could have sworn at times that she meant more to him than that.

  But the most important thing was that he was all right. “He’ll be alive, won’t he?” Her breath caught in a little sob. “Can I see him?”

  Mitch’s soft blue gaze held hers. “I’m not sure you should right now. He’s intubated. He’s going to look pretty bad, and he can’t talk.”

  Tears flowed down Holly’s cheeks. “I just need to see him for a minute. I just need to—” She paused.

  Mitch waited.

  “Touch him.” More tears spilled over.

  “Come on.”

  Mitch took her through the ICU doors and into a room on the left. There was a nurse fiddling with an IV pump, but Holly saw no one but Jack.

  He was intubated, and a ventilator helped him breathe. His right hand had an IV line in it. His chest was bare, the scars on his shoulders bright red.

  She studied his face. His eyes were closed, lashes resting against his hollowed cheeks. His face and neck still bore a few spots of red.

  She touched his hand. “Oh, Jack.”

  His fingers twitched but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “He’s asleep, Mrs. O’Hara,” the nurse said on her way out of the room. “He probably won’t know you’re here. He might be more alert the next time you come in.”

  Holly leaned over and kissed Jack’s stubbled cheek.

  “I’ll wait outside,” Mitch said.

  She pushed Jack’s hair back from his forehead and smoothed the corner of a piece of tape on his hand. He looked thin and vulnerable in the white hospital bed. And his face was so pale.

  “Jack, the nurse said you don’t know I’m here. That’s probably good, because I have to say something to you, and I’m not real sure I could say it if those icy gray eyes were staring at me.” She smiled through tears.

  “Thank you, Jack O’Hara. Thank you for making me feel safe and protected. Thank you for making me feel like I was the most important thing in your life. Thank you for treating me like an equal, and not letting me feel sorry for myself. Thank you for sharing a part of your life with me that I don’t think you usually share.”

  She sobbed and clamped a hand over her mouth. “I swore I was not going to…cry.” She wiped her eyes. “And I’m not.”

  Sitting up straight, she caressed his forearm above the IV site. “I know you’re very sick, but I also know you never give up. So I know you won’t give up this time, either. Special Agent Decker is going to take you back to Washington so he can take care of you.

  “If I know you, you’ll be back on the job in no time. Save as many of them as you can, Jack. It’s what you do best. And thank you for saving me.”

  A nurse tapped on the glass door of the room.

  Holly looked up and nodded. “I have to go now, but I’ll be back during the next visit schedule. I’ll be here as long as you are.”

  She stood, then leaned over and kissed his cheek gently. “I love you, Jack O’Hara.” She wiped her tear off his cheek, then left.

  EVEN BEFORE THE GRUMPY evening-shift nurse informed him, Jack knew he wasn’t being a good boy. He was sick of the hospital, sick of the tests and sick of the nurses that came around every fifteen minutes to check his vitals.

  He knew he should be grateful and appreciative, and he was. But he wasn’t sick anymore. He needed to get out of here. Decker had informed him that he was taking Jack back to D.C. this morning. Jack had protested, but Decker was firm.

  “It’s not like I’m injured,” Jack had insisted.

  Decker had given him his patient look. “No, it’s not like you almost went into renal failure and died.”

  “That’s just it. I didn’t.”

  But Decker had won the argument by default, because an orderly had come in to wheel Jack downstairs for some final tests.

  Now he was pacing his room, waiting for the doctor to write dis
charge orders and contemplating leaving the hospital AMA—against medical advice.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Jack barked, “especially if you have my discharge orders.”

  Holly walked in, bringing all the sunshine in the South with her. Jack’s heart did a flip and he couldn’t help but smile. She had on a bright yellow dress that emphasized her delicate curves and left her sleek legs bare.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling at him.

  He studied her face. Was that sadness back? “Are you okay?”

  She pressed her lips together for an instant, then smiled even wider. “Of course I am, thanks to you.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was so beautiful it made his heart hurt. He could see evidence of bruises on her forearms and wrists. Each one was a testament to her bravery and strength. He’d love to hold her close and kiss away the pain.

  He lifted his gaze back to hers and felt the arc of fire that jolted him each time their eyes met. He held out his arms.

  She came right to him, wrapped her arms around his waist and put her head against his chest. He breathed in the strawberry scent of her hair.

  “Look at you,” she said, her voice strained. “You’re all dressed and ready to go. The last time I saw you, you were still groggy.”

  He pushed her away so he could look at her. “That’s right. Where have you been the past twenty hours since you visited me?”

  Her eyes grew wide. Did it surprise her that he knew exactly how long it had been since he’d last seen her?

  “Today was my first day back at work. It was a really busy day. I just came from the Rehab Center.” She looked away, out the window, then back at him. “I wanted to see you before you left.”

  Jack felt a strange sensation. He recognized it. He even remembered the last time he’d felt it. It had been a long time ago, when he was just thirteen years old. It was the feeling of tears burning the backs of his eyes. He cleared his throat.