by Amelia Autin
Mandy. Cody spared a moment to think about her, contrasting what he’d felt for her then to what he felt for Keira now. There was no comparison. Losing Mandy to Callahan all those years ago had torn out his heart. But he had survived. Losing Keira would tear out his soul. He would never recover.
“So where’s McKinnon?” Callahan asked, breaking into his thoughts, almost as if he knew what Cody was thinking and wanted to distract him.
“Picking up the pieces,” Cody replied. He laughed humorlessly. “At least that’s what I figure he’s doing—implementing the agency’s special rule eight—when all else fails, pick up the pieces.”
“You mean make them disappear?” That was a side of Callahan that was after Cody’s own heart—he called a spade a spade, and didn’t resort to euphemisms.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what it means.”
“I don’t like it.” Long before Callahan had become the sheriff of Black Rock, long before he’d gone undercover with the New World Militia, he’d been a New York City cop—a good one.
“I don’t either,” Cody admitted.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” There was a challenge in Callahan’s voice.
“Not a hell of a lot I can do about it.”
“If that’s the case, seems to me the agency isn’t much better than the organizations we’re after,” Callahan said slowly. “No one should be above the law—not the New World Militia, not NOANC, not Michael Vishenko. And not the agency.”
“So, what are you suggesting?”
Callahan told him, in clipped sentences, and Cody considered it. “It would almost certainly mean the end of my career with the agency,” he said finally. “But—”
Just then the double doors swung open, and a tired-looking man in blue hospital scrubs walked out. Cody’s breathing grew ragged, and his heartbeat kicked into overdrive.
“Are you waiting to hear about Keira Jones?” the surgeon asked. Cody and Callahan were the only ones around, so he had to know...
Cody took a step toward him. “Yes?”
“She’s stable. That’s about all I can tell you at this point. We got her heart started again....” At Cody’s quickly indrawn breath he explained, “It’s a condition called hypovolemic shock—she lost a lot of blood, and the drop in blood pressure caused her heart to stop beating. But we got it going again, we’ve replaced the blood volume she lost, and her blood pressure is up—these are all good things.
“The bullet was a through and through, so it didn’t bounce around inside doing more damage, and we didn’t have to extract it. One lung collapsed, but that’s okay now, too. Our biggest concern at this point is the loss of blood, and whether we were in time to prevent irreversible organ failure. I’m afraid all we can do now is wait and see.”
She’s alive, a little voice whispered in Cody’s head. She’s alive! “Is she conscious? Can I see her?”
“You can see her, subject to certain conditions, but she’s not conscious. We’ve medically induced a coma to help her body deal with the trauma. She won’t be coming out of that for some time.”
“What conditions?”
“We try to keep the ICU—the intensive care unit—as sterile as possible, to minimize the risk of infection to the patient. But we don’t exclude a patient’s loved ones—even though she’s in a coma, she might be able to hear you. We can’t quantify how much that matters in cases like this, but...” The surgeon made a face of frustration. “It does help. I’ve seen it myself.”
“I need to see her,” Cody said simply.
The surgeon nodded. “One of the ICU nurses will tell you what you need to do.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, scrubbed and clothed in blue surgical garb, Cody walked into the dimly lit room where Keira lay. A nurse was there in attendance, checking readouts and doing things to various pieces of equipment, some of which Cody vague remembered from his own hospital stay. But he ignored her.
He walked to the bed and gazed down at Keira with love welling inside him. She looked so small and fragile lying there; readout wires attached everywhere, a saline drip connected via a clear plastic tube to her arm, a breathing tube in place. Her chest rose and fell, the movement slow and measured. But she was alive.
They’d washed all the blood away, and she was deathly pale, which made the sprinkling of freckles on her nose and cheeks stand out. Her red-gold curls were subdued beneath a paper cap, and her expressive brown eyes were closed, but she was still his darling. And she was alive.
He started to take her hand but caught himself and asked the ICU nurse, “Can I touch her?”
“So long as you don’t interfere with anything connected to her,” the nurse reassured him in an undertone. “And don’t touch any bandages.”
His left hand enfolded Keira’s left hand, the only part of her he dared touch as he stood by her bedside. There were so many things he wanted to say, all the things he’d thought of while he’d been waiting to hear if she’d survived—love me, need me, marry me. All the things to which he desperately wanted to hear her say, “I will” in response—but the presence of the nurse inhibited him.
Instead he squeezed Keira’s hand and said, “I’m here.” She didn’t respond, but he hadn’t expected her to. The fingers of his right hand brushed gently against her cheek. She never stirred, but her skin was warm to the touch. That meant she was alive.
He glanced at her right chest and shoulder swathed in bandages, and relived in slow motion the moment that would haunt him forever. Keira stepping in front of Callahan, firing her weapon. His own anguished cry of rage and denial. The bullet slamming into Keira, spinning her around and knocking her to the ground. Callahan firing his Smith & Wesson. And he, emptying his Glock’s thirty-three-round clip with deadly intent and even deadlier accuracy.
The veneer of civilization had vanished in that instant; he had wanted nothing more than to obliterate the men who had shot his woman. It was primitive, visceral. It was nothing like when he’d helped kill Pennington, the only other time he’d ever taken a human life. He’d known as he fired tonight he was too late to protect Keira; but he could avenge her. And he did.
Now as he stood watching each breath Keira drew he accepted that he was only human after all. His conscience troubled him, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Deal with it, he told his conscience, remembering another time and another place, and Callahan telling him the same thing. Deal with it.
Not every man would understand what had driven him tonight, but Callahan would. Cody drew a small measure of comfort from that knowledge. He felt a kinship with the other man, almost as if they were brothers. Maybe, in a sense, they were. They both knew what it was like to love a woman to the edge of death...and beyond. And each of them had been willing to kill or die to keep his woman safe. The only difference was Callahan had saved Mandy every time. Cody had saved Keira twice, but...
Don’t let her die, he prayed. Not now.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, his hand tightening around Keira’s, and in his heart he heard the echo of her words from that very first night, “I will.”
Other words crowded his throat as he realized he’d never said he loved her. Even when he’d told her he wanted all of her, even when he’d told her that he needed her trust in every way there was, somehow he’d never been able to get the words out. Each time he’d started to admit it to her and to himself, he’d drawn back.
You were afraid.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Yes, he’d been afraid. He’d made love to her, and the beauty of that one night and her priceless gift to him he would take to his grave. He’d told her she was his woman, and he’d meant it, then and now. He’d even told her he wanted nothing less than her heart, mind, body and soul. But he’d never said...
“I love you, Keira,” he whispered, squeezing her hand.
Had she known what was in his heart? When she’d told him, “I love you, Cody,” had she known even then he loved her, too? G
od, he hoped so. Somehow it seemed important that deep inside her she knew how much he loved and needed her. That she remembered it in the recesses of her soul, so that wherever she was, wherever she went, she carried that knowledge with her.
And that the knowledge would bring her back to him.
“Stay with me,” he whispered again. He bent down and brushed her cheek with his lips, and when he straightened he had to blink several times to clear his vision.
* * *
He was still there twenty-four hours later. He’d dozed fitfully in the chair beside her bed, but he refused to leave or even to relinquish the left hand lying so still and white against the sheet for more than a couple of minutes. When his own arm turned numb, he switched positions and switched arms, but he refused to break the connection.
It was almost as if he could somehow transmit his own breath, his own blood, his own strength into her body by holding her and never letting go. “Stay with me,” he whispered time and again. And throughout the endless night and the following day she did, her quiet breathing reassuring him that she was still alive.
He was still there when they came the next morning to tell him she would live.
Chapter 23
Cody stood in D’Arcy’s office. “I can’t go along with it,” he said steadfastly. “It’s not right. You know it and I know it. I’ll do whatever I have to do to stop you from applying special rule eight in this case. Even if means the end of my career here.”
One corner of D’Arcy’s mouth lifted up in a half smile. He shook his head. “Don’t worry, Walker. I had no intention of applying special rule eight. It won’t be easy, but this case is going to trial.”
Cody sighed with relief as a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Not that his job was safe, but that he hadn’t been wrong about D’Arcy after all.
But D’Arcy wasn’t finished. He said softly, “And it’s not the end of your career with the agency. Just the end of being a special agent.”
Cody’s brows drew together, puzzled. “I don’t follow you.”
“You can’t be a special agent if you’re sitting behind this desk.”
Stunned, Cody said, “What?”
“I’ve been waiting years for someone with enough courage and conviction to buck me on special rule eight...and the guts and determination to make it stick. I knew when the agency first crafted it that special rule eight was too broad, too vague. But I trusted myself to know when and how to apply it...and when not to. I just needed to find someone else I could trust knew it, too.” Now both corners of D’Arcy’s mouth lifted in the beginning of a real smile. “I thought all along it might be you.”
“You’re leaving the agency?”
D’Arcy chuckled. “Hardly. But the head of the agency in Washington wants to retire next year. He’s been pressuring me to become his deputy, preparatory to taking over the whole organization when he retires. I just couldn’t do it until I found a replacement for me here.”
Cody still couldn’t believe it. “Me? Become you?”
D’Arcy threw back his head and let out a belly laugh. “No, Walker,” he said when he finally stopped laughing. “That would be a mistake on both our parts. You can’t be me, and you shouldn’t even try. But you can make the job you. That’s all I did when I started. That’s all anyone can do.” He paused for a minute. “So, what do you think? Are you willing to give it a shot?”
Cody took a quick turn around the room. He’d come in here thinking his career with the agency was over, and now...unexpectedly...he was being offered the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to head up the Denver branch of the agency. The one who had the final authority, but also the crushing responsibility.
Could he do it? And even if he could, did he want to do it?
“The agency needs people like you to run it,” D’Arcy stated, as if he sensed Cody’s dilemma. “There aren’t many absolutely incorruptible people, but you’re one of them.”
Cody smiled faintly as he remembered when he’d said the same thing to himself...about D’Arcy. If D’Arcy believed he could do it, how could he turn it down?
Then he remembered Keira and frowned. No. If he were in charge of the Denver branch, it would be impossible for her to work here, and he couldn’t do that to her. She loved both her job and him. If he asked her to choose, she’d be torn, but he knew she would choose him. He just couldn’t ask that of her. Not now. Not ever.
It was a tough decision, but...
“If you’re thinking about Special Agent Jones,” D’Arcy said, reading the play of expressions over Cody’s face, “I have an idea about that.”
“How did you know I—” Cody began.
“It’s my business to know everything,” D’Arcy said, his grin lighting his face. “Didn’t you know? Why do you think they call me Baker Street behind my back?” He waited for that to sink in before adding, “And soon it will be your business to know everything, too.”
Cody shook his head firmly. “I can’t ask Keira to give up her career with the agency. And even if I could, she’s too damned good at what she does. The agency needs people like her, too.”
D’Arcy nodded. “With her skills at research and analysis, that’s just what I was thinking. But there’s a way around that. What if she worked directly for me—” He held up one hand as Cody started to interrupt. “Just hear me out, Walker. What if she worked directly for me, but on detached status...here in Denver?”
Cody’s heart thudded suddenly, as he realized it just might work. “Permanently?”
“As permanent as I can make it.”
He considered the offer from every angle and couldn’t see a flaw. “She’ll have to agree first,” he said, already knowing in his heart what her answer would be. We can have it all, he thought suddenly, wanting nothing more than to see Keira’s expression when he told her, and his smile lit up his face.
“Then it’s a done deal.” D’Arcy held out his hand, and Cody shook it. “Welcome to your new job.”
* * *
The door to Keira’s hospital room swung open, and she turned her head toward it eagerly, hoping against hope that this time it was Cody. He hadn’t been near her for three days, and she missed him so much it was like a physical ache...worse than the one in her chest because there was nothing the nurses could give her to alleviate the pain in her heart. A tall blonde walked through the door, and the eager light in Keira’s eyes faded. Mandy Callahan.
The last time Keira had seen Mandy she’d been wearing a sling containing her dark-haired baby daughter, with her two blond sons at her side. Now she was alone, and even more stunningly beautiful than Keira remembered. “Hi,” she said, knowing without being told why the other woman was here. But she didn’t want thanks for doing her job. She just wanted...
“Ryan’s been like a bear with a sore head,” Mandy said out of the blue. “He’s mad at me for asking you to protect him, and he’s mad at you for doing it.” She laughed a little but with a touch of hysterical relief thrown in, and Keira couldn’t help but smile.
“Cody told me once that your husband was a tad old-school. I said he’s a dinosaur.”
Mandy moved toward the bed. “You’re right, he is a dinosaur. But he’s my dinosaur.” A glitter of silver sparkled in her eyes, and she blinked several times to hold back the tears. “And I...I just had to thank you for saving his life.”
Keira started to shrug, but the stabbing pain in her chest radiated to her right shoulder, stopping her. “It was my job,” she said quietly.
Mandy surveyed her for a moment. “No, you don’t want gratitude, do you? Not mine, not Ryan’s. All you want is respect.” At Keira’s sharply indrawn breath, Mandy added, “For what it’s worth, you have it. After Ryan told me what happened, he said, ‘In my whole life no one’s ever taken a bullet for me.’ It shocked him, I think. Not just that someone would do it, and not just that a woman would. But that you would.”
Something in Mandy’s voice told Keira everything she needed to know about h
er. “You would have done it, too,” she said. “You would have taken that bullet for him.”
Mandy nodded slowly. “And he knows it. But I love him. You don’t. That’s the difference between us. I would do it for Ryan and my children in a heartbeat. But I don’t know if I could have done what you did for someone I didn’t love. I don’t think I could. But Ryan could. Cody, too. They’re protectors...just like you.”
Keira couldn’t help the way her pulse kicked up a notch at the mention of Cody’s name, but the respect in Mandy’s eyes warmed her to the core. “Thanks,” she said gruffly.
Mandy edged backward toward the door. “That’s all I really came to say. I didn’t want to intrude, but I just had to—”
The door to Keira’s room opened again, and Cody walked in. Keira didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to—she knew everything she was feeling was written on her face.
“Time’s up,” he told Mandy, but he smiled to soften the order.
Mandy smiled in return, then leaned up and brushed a kiss against his cheek. “Thanks for letting me go first,” she said. She cast one more glowing smile in Keira’s direction, then went out quickly.
* * *
Cody stood with his back to the door, watching the warm color come and go in Keira’s face, loving it. Loving everything about her. She looked a thousand times better than the last time he’d seen her, still in intensive care, but safely out of danger.
“Miss me?” he asked as lightly as he could, his heart racing at the terrible memories he would never be able to blot out. Not completely. He crossed the room to the left side of the bed before she realized he’d even moved. Then he was cupping her face in his hands, turning it up to his for an endless kiss. When his lips finally left hers, all he could manage was a husky, “Yeah. You missed me. Almost as much as I missed you.”
“Where were you? I—” She chopped off the rest of her sentence, as if she didn’t want to betray to him just how abandoned she’d felt, even though he knew she’d had visitors—the twenty-four hour guard on her door had kept a detailed list. Her mom had been there every day—she’d flown up from Denver as soon as she’d heard the news—and a few close friends, including some ex-marine buddies, had driven up to see her. And all four of her brothers had called several times to check up on her. Cody had kept a close enough tab on Keira to know about every visitor, every caller.