Fatal Courage: Shadow Force International, Book 3 (Shadow Force International Romantic Suspense Series)

by Misty Evans

  For several seconds, the only sound was the rain hitting the metal overhead. Jax shook his head, ignored Colton’s shuffling feet, and without thinking, began barking orders.

  First up, they had to stop the bleeding and fast. The jet fuel could catch fire, even in the rain, with the slightest provocation, but there was way too much blood pouring out of Ruby for Jax’s comfort.

  He padded her wounds with squares of gauze and wrapped them with long strips of the same stuff. As soon as he finished, he and Colton carefully lifted her from the seat and shifted her to the stretcher.

  A moan escaped her lips and Jax patted her arm. He and Colt worked quickly to strap her in. “I’ve got you, Ruby. Hang on.”

  Straps secured, Jax noted sirens in the distance. “On three,” he said. “One…two…”

  They lifted her, then fought through the debris on the floor, stepping over Izala and Al-Safari, with careful steps to the inflatable ramp.

  “I’ll go down first,” Jax told Colton. “Then you send her and the equipment down.”

  Colt nodded as they lowered the stretcher to the lip of the ramp.

  Jax jumped and slid, rain lashing at him. All around him, lightning cracked and popped. Poised on the ground, he waved at his wingman. Ruby, strapped tightly to the stretcher, glided down the ramp.

  She barely weighed anything, Jax realized as he shifted her out of the way. Colton tossed down Jax’s bag, the first aid kit, the defibrillator. Jax caught each of them, then yelled, “Come on.” A pool of ugly blue-black fuel was gathering a few feet away.

  All it would take was for one of those lightning strikes to hit the plane and boom. They’d all go up. Crispy critters.

  The way his luck was running today, the probability was too high for his liking.

  Colt’s boots hit the ground and he started to gather Jax’s black bag and the first aid kit.

  “Leave it,” Jax yelled over a crash of thunder. “We need to get away from here.”

  But Colton, the stupid kid, piled the black bag and defibrillator between Ruby’s legs. He grabbed his end of the stretcher. “Ready!”

  The Jeep was fifty feet away. Through the wind and the rain, they kept their heads down and ran as quickly as possible without putting too much stress on their patient. They were closing in on the muddy Jeep when lightning flashed so brightly, they both flinched and nearly lost their hold on the stretcher.

  A sharp crack of thunder followed, making Jax duck instinctively. Silly, but muscle memory of bombs and other violent bangs from his days in the military still made him hunker down.

  He and Colt and their precious cargo had only taken another step when the plane erupted behind them in a vicious explosion. Colt went to his knees; Jax’s knees nearly gave out too.

  Yep, just as he’d suspected. God or Mother Nature or some weird, fucked up karma, was after him.

  The first aid supplies rolled off, but Ruby stayed on. Colt jumped up, hollered, then laughed up at the heavens as the jet burned. Jax knew it was a reaction to the adrenaline, the stress. He’d seen it plenty of times in the field when fellow soldiers had barely escaped death.

  “Is everything all right?” Beatrice asked in Jax’s ear. “Was that an explosion I just heard?”

  Jax suddenly felt like James Bond, M asking ridiculous questions in his comm. “Everything is peachy. Also, tell Hunter I need to cleanse my aura or my karma or whatever the fuck he calls it, because I have somehow pissed off God in one big motherfucker of a way.”

  Colt tossed the black bag, AED, and first aid kit onto the stretcher.

  “I’m sure Trace will help you with that,” Beatrice said. “Although I doubt it’s your past that’s the problem. How’s our client?”

  “Unconscious.”

  “Then you should get back to work.”

  Easy for Beatrice to say. Jax pinned his end of the stretcher against the Jeep and flung open the back door. “Help me slide her in.”

  “Don’t you want to put the backseat down?” Colt asked.

  “No time.” The stupid thing was stuck anyway.

  It took a bit of work, but they wedged Ruby into the backseat.

  The sirens drew closer. “Let’s boogie,” Jax said.

  “Where am I going?” Colt asked as he started the car.

  Jax handed the earbud to him. “Rory will give you directions.”

  With the jet burning behind them, and fire trucks and police cruisers heading in their direction, Colt elected to take the route they’d entered, going back through the hole in the fence at the far end of the runway.

  That route involved less confrontation, but was bumpier. Jax straddled Ruby, checked her pulse. Too slow. Too erratic.

  Her chest rose and fell in jerky gasps. Had they caused further damage to her ribs? Had she inhaled rain as they’d carried her across the tarmac?

  Something niggled at Jax’s brain. Her skin had a gray cast to it, her lips, blue-tinged. As he checked her pulse again, he found it was now racing as if she’d run a mile.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d think she had internal organ damage. Something was shutting down.

  From the crash? The shock? The blood loss?

  Palpating her stomach, he found it rigid and hard.

  Scanning her body again, willing the problem to surface under his hands or his eyes, his gaze zeroed in on a small bulge in her front pants pocket.

  The syringe. She’d shown him the tiny thing in her bathroom before she’d stuck into her pocket.

  Wiggling his fingers into the pocket, he carefully drew it out.

  The cap had come off the needle. A little more than half of the liquid was gone. Throwing the syringe down, he unzipped her pants and inspected the smooth skin over her hipbone, her upper thigh. Places he’d only recently kissed and sucked on.

  The pinprick was minute; he almost missed it in his hurry.

  But it was there. The telltale sign.

  In her attempts to get loose or possibly when they’d moved her, the syringe had penetrated her skin, sending whatever was in it into her system.

  And he had no idea what the drug was, or how much—or how little—could kill her.

  “Drive faster!” he yelled.

  The kid was already going well over the speed limit, flying around cars that had slowed because of the severity of the storm. It was nearly a replay of their earlier drive as Colton did his best Indy 500 imitation.

  Yet, they were still miles from the hospital.

  Ruby didn’t have miles.

  There were few times in Jax’s life when he’d felt utterly defeated. He hated the feeling, did anything he could to avoid it, and he’d learned to suffocate it, kill it, when it did raise its ugly head.

  At this moment, he couldn’t find the resolution to do any of those things.

  “She’s been poisoned,” he said to no one in particular. He knew it in his bones, regardless of the fact he didn’t know what was in the syringe. “She’s dying and I don’t know how to help her.”

  “What?” Colt yelled. With the windshield gone, he was taking a pounding from the storm. “I can’t hear you.”

  Jax reached out and took Ruby’s hand. Her fingers were cold, lifeless. He’d seen plenty of death in his years, but nothing left him feeling like this.

  Empty. Gutted.

  He sank his back against the door, chin down as he watched her chest rise and fall in small, uneven bursts. The rhythm, already slow and unstable, seemed to slow even more.

  “Beatrice wants to know what’s going on,” Colton yelled. He tossed the earbud over his shoulder. It landed on Ruby’s stomach.

  Jax stared at it, unmoving for a moment. Then he picked it up and spoke over the wind into it. “Ruby had a syringe in her pocket, Beatrice. I don’t know what was in it, but half the drug is now in her system and her body is shutting down.”

  “So do something.” Beatrice’s voice sounded distant since he didn’t have the ear bud in. “You can’t just let her die.”

 
; Let her die? Let her die? White-hot rage ripped through him like the strong surge of wind blowing around him. “What the fuck do you want me to do? I don’t have an antidote. I don’t even have a goddamn IV because I used it on fucking Elliot!”

  Ruby’s body seized. Everything went rigid. If the straps hadn’t been holding her down, she would have come right off the stretcher.

  The earbud fell from his fingers and he grabbed her arms and held her. “I’ve got you,” he said.

  And then her heart stopped.

  He knew it the minute her body went lax. “Ruby,” he said, feeling for the pulse in her neck. “Ruby!”

  Bending over, he listened at her heart, heard nothing—either because it had truly stopped or because the cacophony of noise around his head—as well as inside it—was too great. Fumbling in his black bag, he grabbed his stethoscope.

  He listened. Hard. Held his breath.

  Nothing.

  He glanced at the AED. In cases of sudden cardiac arrest, the portable devices checked the patient’s heart rhythm and could send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore it to normal.

  From his cardiac training in school, there were two things Jax remembered clearly.

  Ninety-five percent of sudden cardiac arrest patients died.

  CPR might be as effective as shocking the heart, but would only keep the blood flowing until they reached the hospital and figured out what caused the heart to stop in the first place.

  Unfortunately, the defibrillator needed a dry environment.

  Something else he didn’t have.

  Plus, Ruby had rib damage. The shock from the AED could cause further injury.

  His brain cramped, going back and forth. He began chest compressions, humming under his breath.

  Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

  Two minutes. He needed to do two minutes of CPR before hooking up the AED and checking for a rhythm.

  He’d gone about one when he couldn’t take it anymore. Ruby looked horrible. She looked…dead.

  He couldn’t hear her heartbeat. When he checked her pulse, he thought he felt a kick, but with the weather and the rough ride—and the fact he was losing his shit—he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  He sat back, wiped his face.

  Quitter.

  The old, nagging voice grabbed him by the balls.

  Fuck off, he told it.

  Ripping open her shirt, he fumbled to remove her bra. No metal could be around the AED when he set it off, not even the thin support of an underwire.

  He threw open the AED box, keeping it away from the windows and blocking the rain coming in from the broken windshield with his body.

  Her chest was damp with rain and blood and he used gauze to wipe it dry. Next, he tore open the packaging on the sticky pads with the electrodes. He positioned one on the right center of her chest above the nipple, the other under her left breast toward the ribcage.

  “Fight for me, Ruby,” he said, making sure he wasn’t touching her anywhere before he hit the machine’s ‘analyze’ button.

  The machine was fast, the AED confirming the worst. Her heart needed to be shocked into normal rhythm.

  Now.

  Jax hit the ‘shock’ button.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  _____________________

  ______________________________________________________

  TWO DOCTORS, SEVERAL nurses, and a man in a suit met them at the ER doors.

  Jax was back to doing CPR. Ruby’s heart was beating again, but it was struggling. It would speed up, slow to a trickle, speed up again.

  His wrists, arms, and shoulders burned with the effort to keep her alive. All the while, as sweat dripped from his forehead and his brain refused to let his worn-out body stop, he sung the lyrics to Stayin’ Alive.

  “We’ll take it from here, son,” one of the doctor’s said as he leaned into the backseat and stuck a stethoscope on Ruby’s chest. “You did good.”

  The ER team whisked her onto a gurney in seconds as her vitals were checked and orders were called out. Jax practically fell out of the Jeep and onto the sidewalk as he tried to follow the team through the whooshing doors and into the bowels of the trauma center.

  His goddamn legs wouldn’t carry him. He ended up with his ass on the ground, the man in the suit watching with his hands behind his back.

  Colt put an arm under one of Jax’s shoulders and helped him stand. The man in the suit gave them both a nod. He had the air of a proper English butler. “Mr. Megadeth. Mr. Shinedown. Beatrice sent me.”

  Yeah, whatever. The man assumed that said it all, and it pretty much did. “Follow Ruby,” Jax told Colton. “I need to tell the doctors about the poison, and her heart, and the bullet wounds.”

  “They know,” Mr. Suit said. He hit the auto button on the wall next to him and the glass ER doors slid open. He held out a hand, motioning Jax and Colton in. “Looks like you two could use some medical attention yourselves.”

  “I’m fine,” Jax ground out, letting go of Colt as he hobbled across the threshold.

  Colton, fine ex-SEAL that he was, seconded the pronouncement.

  “Very well, then.” The man edged around Jax and turned right, heading down a hallway. “Your client will be in surgery for a bit. I suggest we get you cleaned up and into some dry clothes. Perhaps I could get you a cup of coffee or some sandwiches?”

  Jax was torn between following the man and heading the opposite direction where he’d seen Ruby disappear. A couple heading past him screwed up their noses and gave him a disparaging look.

  Even in a hospital where plenty of people came in bruised, bloody, and dirty, he was a sight. Clean clothes would be good. Coffee too. But no way he wanted to be on the other side of the hospital while Ruby was in surgery.

  “Can you get me into the surgical room?” he asked, limping behind.

  Mr. Suit was Beatrice’s man after all, and Jax was due for a miracle.

  The man looked him over. “Perhaps after you shower, sir.”

  Good answer. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. You may call me James.”

  “All right, James. Where’s this shower?”

  James led Jax and Colt to an office in the far wing of the hospital. The nameplate on the door read “Doctor Null.”

  James unlocked the door and showed them in, leading them through a fancy, contemporary office and into a private bathroom, complete with a shower. “You may clean up here,” he said to Jax. “Mr. Shinedown will be across the hall doing the same. Clean clothes are on the back of the door.”

  Colt gave Jax a what the fuck look, then followed James out. Jax shed his clothes and went to work on cleaning off the mud, caked on blood, and sweat.

  As he watched the blood—Ruby’s blood—swirl at his feet and drain away, he felt gutted again. As if it were his own blood washing down the drain. She was his everything and he hadn’t told her.

  Her body had seduced him. Her brains had challenged him. Her incredible strength of character and charming charisma had made him fall in love with her.

  The thought of losing her once again hit him in the solar plexus so hard, he had to bend over and prop his hands on the shower stall wall.

  He’d cried for the first time in years today. The rain had kept him from acknowledging the wetness coming from his eyes during the drive, but now he realized he was crying again. Big, tough, SEAL, acting like a pansy. The heat that had filled his stomach so many times from anger, now rose up to his chest cavity.

  This heat was different, though. It wasn’t rage. It didn’t burn like a motherfucker. The waves of heat were warm and soothing, like the sun shining on his skin. It was…

  Satisfying.

  He let the sensation course through his system, Ruby’s face all he could see. He heard her voice in his ears. Remembered the little O her mouth made when she was coming for him.

  He loved her. Her love gave him something. Filled something. Soothed the angry demo
ns.

  He felt whole.

  Healed.

  The last of the blood swirled past his toes and down the drain. Jax straightened. Ruby had healed his broken heart. He hadn’t even realized how his parents’ rejection had split him in two. How his being kicked out of the SEALs had felt like the slap of abandonment. The people and institutions that should have offered him a family had both spurned him.

  Until Beatrice and the Shadow Force team had taken him under their wing and made him believe in himself again.

  Ruby had taken things a step farther. She’d repaired the cracks in his heart.

  He had to tell her, had to let her know.

  The clothes on the back of the door were nothing but a set of scrubs, but Jax didn’t care. They covered what needed to be covered. He had to get to the surgical unit and be by Ruby’s side.

  James was waiting in the hallway. “Very good,” he said, seeing Jax’s improved state. He handed him a mug with the hospital’s logo on it, steam rising from the coffee it contained. “Shall we visit the operating suite?”

  “Lead the way,” Jax said, accepting the coffee. “And hurry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A few minutes later, Jax was in the glassed-in, overhead gallery, looking down on the doctors working on Ruby.

  Not exactly what he’d envisioned, but James had assured him that Beatrice had pulled all the favors she could to get him into the authorized personnel-only area. Entering the surgical room itself was out of the question.

  Several video monitors gave him close-ups of the work being performed. The operating table sat in the center of the room, a host of wires, electrodes, and tubes to and from Ruby. Large lights overhead shone on her body and the anesthesia cart sat at the head of the table.

  Machines to measure her blood pressure, her pulse, and her heart rate surrounded the surgeons and nurses. A cardiac catheterization machine was also nearby.

  Jax’s coffee grew cold as he sat and watched. James disappeared. Colton joined him, sliding into the seat next to him without a word. Just a slap on the back for support.

  Over the next few hours, more people arrived. Zeb, Emit, Rory, with his cane. Hunter showed up too. They sat around Jax, not asking questions, simply lending silent support as Ruby’s system was flushed of poison, her neck stitched, the bullet fragments in her shoulder removed, and her ribs reset.