by Cindy Gerard
“Drop the gun!”
Wyatt jerked his gaze just beyond Hugh’s shoulder.
Sophie.
Aw, God, he didn’t want her to see this. And he didn’t want to see her this way: her arms stretched out straight ahead of her, a Glock 19 clutched in a two-handed grip, her face twisted with fear and horror and a God-awful dread.
“Please, please, drop the gun,” she begged as Joe Green walked silently up behind her, an H&K in one hand and Lola pressed against his chest with the other.
Wyatt caught the intent in Joe’s stance and gave a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head, a signal to hold his fire. As long as he was alive, he still had a chance to talk Hugh down from this.
“Please don’t make me shoot you,” Sophie pleaded again. There were tears in her eyes, tears in her voice, but her grip and her stance were rock-solid steady.
Hugh didn’t move. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t lower the M-4 that was still pointed dead center on Wyatt’s chest. But his face fell, then twisted into a mask of pain and defeat and regret.
“You always loved him, didn’t you?” Hugh asked with a slow nod that said he already knew the answer.
“I loved you,” Sophie said, her voice tremulous. “But you never got that. Or if you did, it wasn’t enough for you. And then you … you changed, Hugh. You weren’t the man I loved anymore.”
An awful calm came over him as he stood there. A horrible look of utter defeat. “So now, you’re willing to kill me to save him.”
“I’m not willing to do anything. I don’t want to kill you. Please don’t make me do that,” she begged on a tortured whisper that ripped Wyatt’s heart in two.
Hugh’s shoulders just seemed to collapse, as though everything holding him strong and tall deserted his body. As though everything that made him a man deserted his soul. And suddenly, Wyatt was more frightened for Hugh than he was for himself.
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” Wyatt said, trying to reason with him. “If you care anything about her, don’t do this to her. You kill me, then she has to live with the fact that she didn’t stop you. She kills you, she has to live with the knowledge that she pulled the trigger. You really care about her? Then put the gun down.”
Hugh swallowed hard. His eyes misted with tears. “And what? Watch you walk away into the sunset with the girl?”
“Yeah, that,” Wyatt said, hoping to reach him with an appeal to what was left of his integrity. “Man up. Be the man I know you are. Be the man who does the right thing.”
“The right thing,” Hugh repeated in a tone of echoing loss. “The right thing, from where I’m standing, looks like a lose-lose situation for me either way. So maybe I’ll just do the only thing that matters.”
Too late, Wyatt realized what Hugh was going to do. “No!” he yelled, and struggled to push to his feet.
But he couldn’t reach him in time.
Hugh withdrew his Sig Sauer from his belt holster, stuck the barrel into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
31
Wyatt had intimate knowledge of each and every hour of the night. It didn’t get any darker than four a.m. And no hour was quite as empty. Even the woman lying beside him in a bed that smelled of her and clean sheets couldn’t fill the void or ease the pain—both physical and emotional.
Just as there was little he could do to ease hers. He was a warm body in the dark in a cold, impersonal hotel room. Another heart beating. Another heart grieving for a man they had both loved and lost long before he’d ended his own life.
He knew she wasn’t asleep. She was beyond exhaustion on all levels. Even Lola’s happy reunion with her mother and family a few hours ago couldn’t breach the cocoon of grief that surrounded Sophie. A long, soaking shower couldn’t wash away the horror of Hugh’s gruesome suicide.
They’d both asked themselves the inevitable questions.
Why didn’t I see it?
Why didn’t I recognize that he needed help?
Why did it have to come to this?
And they’d both given up on the answers.
Wyatt wanted to believe that Hugh hadn’t taken the coward’s way out. As he’d struggled to pick up Hugh’s lifeless body and, with Joe’s help, carried him out of that bloody battleground, he wanted to believe instead that Hugh had considered his actions the ultimate act of redemption. He’d relieved Sophie of an impossible choice. He’d spared Wyatt’s life.
He could shade the picture any way he wanted, but the end was still the same. Hugh was dead. Wyatt couldn’t help him now. Just like he couldn’t help Sophie.
So he just held her. And held on to her. And prayed that a new dawn would bring new light to a tragedy they would both carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Wyatt stood looking out the windows of the hotel room, downing his third cup of room-service coffee, when Sophie walked out of the bathroom, hugging her arms around her waist. It seemed that daylight had only brought more sadness to her eyes and desolation to her bruised face.
He wanted to go to her. Wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.
But they both knew it wouldn’t be. He’d lost a friend who had once been like a brother. She’d lost a man she’d once chosen to share her life with. And nothing would ever be quite right again.
“Any news on Luke?” she asked.
He nodded. “Just talked with Gabe. It was touch-and-go, but he made it through the night. Surgery was as successful as could be, considering. Now it’s a question of time. Doctors said the first forty-eight hours are the most critical. If he makes it through them … well, he’s got a chance.”
She nodded and looked toward the windows, her expression somewhere between relief and grief and hope and tears.
“I want to go back home,” she said.
He nodded, understanding that she knew she couldn’t go back yet. Not until they got a crew in to repair the damage Bonilla’s thugs had done to the house. “Working on it,” he said.
“And I want my baby back,” she said without meeting his eyes.
Yeah. He was sure she did. “That was my next call,” he said. “I wanted to make sure they were up.”
She nodded, glanced at him, then away, embarrassed by the tears that started falling.
He swallowed hard and couldn’t do it. Couldn’t keep his distance. He went to her. Ignored the jagged pain shooting from under the dressings on his arm and across his chest and drew her against him.
And he let her cry. Let himself feel the depth of his own pain. For the friend Hugh had once been to him. For the husband he’d once been to her. For the chasm that Hugh’s actions and suicide had sliced in the common ground between them that no bridge could ever span.
A knock on the door startled them both.
Sophie jerked out of his arms. Swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand, she pulled herself together and walked to the door.
Wyatt knew who would be on the other side. He’d called Diego Montoya himself. He accepted that Montoya—the epitome of wealth, composure, and concern—was what Sophie needed now.
“Mi amor,” Montoya said, his voice thick with emotion, and pulled her into his arms.
For a long moment, Wyatt made himself look at the picture they made standing there. Montoya tall and handsome, Sophie small and fragile in his embrace.
She fit there, he acknowledged with a pain in his chest that had nothing to do with the sixty stitches it had taken the ER doc to patch him up. Nothing to do with the ache in his bandaged arm that rivaled the ache in his chest.
Yeah, he thought, and quietly gathered his gear.
They fit.
He didn’t.
That fact was never more obvious than when he walked out the door and she didn’t utter a word to stop him.
Ten days later, Wyatt sat in a chair by Doc’s hospital bed, legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. He’d laced his fingers carefully over his sore chest and closed his eyes. The soft sound
s of Doc’s breathing—steady now and, thank God, no longer powered by a ventilator—gave him reason enough to relax and catch a little rest himself. The beep and blink of machines monitoring Doc’s blood pressure and pulse and oxygen levels blended into the mix of hospital sounds and scents and reassured him that all was well.
At least, it looked as if it was going to be.
He wasn’t certain what alerted him to another presence in the room, but one instant he was drifting and half-asleep, the next he was wide awake.
His eyes flew open. And there she was.
Sophie stood just inside the door, a vase of flowers in her hands and a soft smile on her face that relayed hello and hesitance and an edgy sort of expectancy that he couldn’t quite get a read on.
“Hi,” she whispered. Glancing at Doc, who remained sound asleep, she stepped a little farther into the room.
“Hi,” Wyatt whispered back, sitting up straighter in the chair, trying his damnedest not to let her notice how hard it was to see her again. It had been only ten days. It felt like a decade. A decade during the ice age.
“How’s he doing?” She crossed the room to the window and set the vase on the wide sill along with half a dozen other bouquets.
“Good.” Her bruises had faded. The memory of how she’d gotten them hadn’t. “He’s, um, doing real good. Better than they expected for this stage in his recovery.”
“Then he’s going to be okay?”
He nodded again. “Yeah. He’s a lucky man. Tough man,” he amended when her eyes searched his expectantly. What was she looking for? He wanted to ask. Didn’t dare.
“How’s Hope?” he asked instead, because he cared and because any question was better than “What are you doing here?”
“Hope’s amazing.” Her face lit up; her smile was totally without reservation. “Of course, she’s madly in love with your Johnny Reed, but since she also adores Crystal, the break to her heart is barely noticeable. Thank you so much,” she added, her smile fading, “for putting Hope in their care. I couldn’t see through the fear, but Johnny and Crystal, Nate, and Juliana, they were exactly what she needed. They were wonderful with her. She hasn’t stopped talking about them since she’s been home.”
She stopped suddenly, as if she realized she was close to rambling, and cast a glance at Doc.
“Don’t worry. You’re not going to wake him,” Wyatt assured her to assuage the guilt he saw in her eyes. “Someone dropped a tray outside the door a little while ago. Sounded like a plane crash. He never missed a snore.”
She smiled, glanced at Doc again, then at the flowers, then back at Wyatt.
Nervous. She was nervous to find him here.
“Yeah, well, maybe … maybe I’ll just go stretch my legs,” he said, standing.
“I called Gabe,” she said, stopping him cold. “He told me I would find you here.”
Okay. Nervous but not surprised to see him. Expecting to see him.
“Yeah, well, someone’s got to hang around to run interference with the hospital staff. Doc’s not the best patient.” If only he felt as casual as he managed to sound.
She nodded again, walked to the bed, fussed with the fold of the sheet, then stood with her back to him, saying nothing.
“You okay?” he asked finally.
She turned slowly, her eyes searching. “You left,” she said.
He stared at her.
“You just … left,” she repeated. “No word. No good-bye. I … I didn’t know where you were. How you were. If … if you wanted to see me.”
He swallowed thickly. “I thought it was what you wanted,” he finally admitted. “For me to leave.”
In fact, he’d known that was what she wanted. She’d stood and watched him go when he shouldered his duffel and walked out the door, hadn’t she? Stood there beside Montoya and hadn’t made a sound.
She searched his face, then averted her gaze to the flowers again, walked over to touch a finger to a velvety petal of a red rose. “Yes, well, I thought that might be what I wanted, too.”
His heartbeat became the loudest sound in the room.
He should say something. Didn’t trust himself.
“You have to know that I love you.” She finally turned to face him.
The look in her eyes made his heart stop. He didn’t see love there … did he? Hell, maybe, yeah, maybe that’s exactly what he saw, but what struck him rock-hard was the conflict.
“But you don’t want to,” he surmised, and knew he was right when her eyes filled with tears.
“No. I didn’t want to. I was scared, Wyatt. Scared and hurting. Hugh …” She stopped and swallowed, and the pain she felt over Hugh’s betrayal and his violent suicide washed over her. “Hugh’s death … I felt responsible, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
He knew, because he felt the same sense of responsibility. It was wrong. Intellectually, he knew that. Figured she knew it, too. But emotionally, the guilt was still there. Would probably never go away.
“I married a warrior once,” she said in a soft voice, forcing him to look at her. “I lived with Hugh’s demons every bit as much as he did. And I don’t know, Wyatt … I don’t know if I’m strong enough to walk that minefield again.”
Honest. Brutal. Blunt. No amount of regret in her voice could cover her fear.
“I’m not Hugh,” he said, feeling defensive and defenseless in the same breath.
“No,” she agreed. “You’re not. And you never could be. I know that. Hugh had something inside him … something that ate at him … something that tore him apart. You were always … different in so many ways. But you’re still a warrior at heart. Next op, next adventure, you’ll be gone. Just like Hugh was always gone.”
Wyatt leaned forward in the chair, propped his elbows on his thighs, and clasped his hands together. And he waited because he knew she had a lot more to say.
“I keep asking myself. Can I go through that again? Can I keep the home fires burning while you’re off getting shot at? Can I live not knowing where you are, only that you’re in constant danger? The truth is, I don’t know.”
He closed his eyes.
“I’ve had my fill of seeing guns lying around the house. Of jumping when the phone rings and praying it’s not the worst possible news. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to spend the rest of my life coming home to see my man sitting on the sofa with … with … I don’t know. A TV remote in his hand, bare feet crossed and propped on a coffee table, a beer or a glass of wine within reach. I want to be able to ask, ‘How was your day?’ and not know in advance that it most likely involved bullets and bad guys and near-death experiences that will eventually wake him up screaming in the night.”
He finally looked at her. Tears filled her eyes, but she soldiered on, knowing it was hurting him, clear that it was hurting her, too.
“Even more, I want to be able to come home and know he’s going to be there. That he’s not bleeding and in pain in some godforsaken jungle, or worse, that he’s already dead and forever gone from me.”
Now was the time to tell her. Now was the moment to let her know that he’d been reevaluating the way he led his life. That he’d gone home to Georgia what now seemed like a lifetime ago but in fact was less than two weeks, to find answers to the questions that had been plaguing him for some time.
He was tired. He was empty. Played out. He missed things … things like the easy pace of the South. Like connecting with something other than adrenaline and danger. He wanted to see Annie’s little guy grow. He wanted to know what it felt like to be Sam Lang, at home and at peace in Nevada with Abbie and their son. He wanted … hell, he wanted out. He’d paid his dues. He’d done his job. It was time for someone else—someone still hungry for the rush and the speed and the danger that had been a part of his life for longer than he could remember—to take up the slack.
Yeah. He should tell her all that. Right now. But he kept seeing her with Montoya. And he knew that Montoya could give her ever
ything a busted-up shadow warrior couldn’t.
He finally looked up at her. She was waiting for him to say something. Maybe to try to convince her he could be that man.
“You’re right,” he said instead, and knew he was saying good-bye to the best thing he’d ever wanted in his life. “You deserve all that. Montoya could give it to you.”
She blinked, then shook her head as if she hadn’t heard him right. “I don’t love Montoya. You weren’t listening. I love you. Damn me for a fool, but I want you.”
He stood slowly, not trusting himself to believe her words, unable to deny the truth that he saw in her eyes.
“So, if you’re willing … if you can help me through it, I’ll wait it out,” she said, walking into his arms. “I won’t like it. In fact, I’ll hate it most of the time, but I’m going to hang on to the thought that you can’t do this forever. Someday, you’ll have to give it up.”
He buried his face in her hair as love rushed in and rolled over every conceivable roadblock that even attempted to throw a barrier between them. “How about tomorrow?”
She pulled away from him, her hands clutching his forearms. Dark eyes searched his with a heady mix of disbelief, hope, and love. “What did you say?”
“I said, how about I hang it up tomorrow? Okay, maybe two weeks from tomorrow. I owe Nate at least a two-week notice.”
“You’re … you’re serious.” Her smile was radiant through the tears spilling down her cheeks.
“As a heart attack,” he said. “I’m done, Sophie. And not just for you. For me. I … I’m just done,” he said, and felt the weight of a thousand tons of spent cartridges lift from his shoulders. “That’s why I was in Georgia when you found me. I’d gone home to face the fact that I wanted out and to figure out how to deal with it.”
“But you left me,” she pointed out. “Ten days, Wyatt. Not one word.”
“I was playing the hero, okay? I was clearing the way for you and Montoya. I wanted you to be happy.”
“You make me happy.”
He finally smiled, finally believed this was happening. “Well, it’s a damn good thing,” he said, “because honestly? I hit the wall today. I was coming after you. I thought I could walk away, but the truth is, I couldn’t. Not this time.” He brushed his thumb over her wet cheek. “I love you. I want you in my life. I want to be your life.”