Ryan Kaine: On the Money: (Ryan Kaine's 83 series Book 5)

by Kerry J Donovan

  Never again from Barcode.

  He’d taught her. In battle, she should never let her guard down, not ever. She’d listened. She’d learned.

  Her training. The knowledge he’d drummed into her on the beach and the dunes of Aquitaine had worked.

  Lara was safe. He could relax.

  Through his pain, Kaine smiled. So much for the “vulnerable” vet. She’d saved him. Yet again, she’d saved him.

  God, how he loved her.

  Lara lifted her eyes from the body, checked her surroundings, and dropped the wheel brace. It clattered onto the tarmac, ringing loud, a warning bell.

  She turned to face him, pain and shock in her eyes.

  “Ryan!” she shouted. “Oh God. Ryan, your arm!”

  She hurdled Barcode’s lifeless form and raced towards him.

  Kaine looked down. His left hand and wrist turned in at the wrong angle. Not possible. The bones of his forearm, the ulna and the radius, stuck through the torn sleeve of his jacket. Blood pumped out, ran down his side and mixed with the blood of another wound. The rusted end of an iron railing stuck through his side, between the lower rib and his hip.

  Pinned, he was, like … like a butterfly on a display board.

  No wonder he … couldn’t move.

  As Lara reached him, knelt beside him, his vision faded again.

  “Ryan, Ryan, stay with me, darling.”

  Eventually, his hearing faded, too. Kaine could no longer hear her worried, shouted words.

  Chapter 48

  Four Weeks Later – Lara Orchard

  Aquitaine, SW France

  With the villa at her back, Lara stood on the deck, staring out over the Bay of Biscay. She hadn’t seen it quite as calm and inviting for months. Inviting, maybe, but she wouldn’t dream of heading out there for a swim. Too darned cold. Not all that inviting after all. Although the sun still shone above the western horizon, having yet to hit the sea and extinguish its fiery glow for another day, the light wind chilled her to the core.

  Lara pulled the collar of her woollen sweater tighter around her neck and hunched her shoulders. The wind huffed again, throwing a fine mist of dry sand into her face. She blinked in reaction even though sunglasses protected her eyes.

  Oh Lord, it was so beautiful.

  Rugged, magnificent. So wide and open, she could see the curvature of the horizon and imagine a whole world stretching out beyond.

  In different circumstances, the winter weather wouldn’t have put Ryan off, oh no. If he’d been able, he’d be ploughing through the surf about now, loving it. Loving the cold, the growing chop. In the water, Ryan would be in his element. But he couldn’t, not now.

  The fierce wind tugged at her hair, whipping it into her face, working some strands under and over the sunglasses, stinging her eyes. She tucked an errant lock behind her ear, but it worked its way free again almost immediately. Given a chance, she’d have shorn it off, made it more manageable for what she had planned, but Ryan liked it long, or so he’d said once, long ago. In a rare, poetic moment, he told her it framed her face in auburn glory.

  No, her hair would stay long until she started the course. She’d do that for him. He deserved it.

  The jittery, fractured images of Ryan bounding down the school steps, screaming her name, his whole body lit by the approaching headlights wouldn’t leave her.

  Not ever.

  Once again, he’d risked everything to save her life. Her wonderful, honourable, heroic, but troubled man. Only the second man she’d ever really loved.

  The whole sequence seemed to happen both in slow motion and in stop-jerk triple-time.

  Crossing the road, hell bent on warning Ryan, she’d tried to react to his warnings to her, but it felt as though she’d been swimming through mud. Before he screamed her name, she hadn’t even noticed the car firing up until it crossed into her lane, aiming right at her.

  Ryan dived forwards, knocked her aside, pushed her out of the car’s path. She crumpled, the breath driven from her lungs, hit the road, and rolled away, the months of training taking over. She survived with little more than bruises to her hip, elbow, and shoulder.

  As she slid to a stop in a puddle, a puddle that softened her collision with the tarmac, she saw it all.

  The horror of the impact. Car versus human. No contest. The squelching crunch of breaking bones. The red spray. Ryan, sailing through the air, arms and legs flying, the car continuing in a squeal of rubber on road.

  Ryan landed in a crumpled heap, arm bent and crushed beneath him, bleeding from a head wound where he’d connected with something hard, either the wall, the pavement, or the car. The hideous, rusty end of the broken railing sticking out of his side, impaling him.

  In that precise moment, Lara knew, she absolutely knew that Ryan—her Ryan—was dead.

  She’d stopped moving, stopped breathing. All feeling left her. Her man, her saviour, her love was dead. Tears flowed.

  The screaming crunch of tearing, rending metal impacting concrete, broke her from the stunned immobility.

  She turned and there he stood, brandishing his vicious-looking knife.

  Barcode.

  The evil man, bleeding from somewhere, exposing a gap-toothed smile, swaggered forwards. Laughing. Taunting.

  Lara moved to attack. Something tugged at her waist, reminding her. She pulled on the wheel brace. At first, it wouldn’t move. Then it slipped free of her belt.

  Silently, she approached Barcode from behind.

  So fixated on his target, the killer didn’t even notice her.

  Lara swung the metal bar. Twice. Backhand, forehand. Hard as she could.

  Barcode stopped laughing. Stopped moving. Stopped breathing.

  Lara spared him no pity. Allowed herself no guilt. She stood over him, breathing hard, despite her world having ended. She dropped the wheel brace, but she breathed.

  Then, he moved.

  Her Ryan moved.

  The rest was a heady, joyous blur. Ryan was alive, but barely. She raced across the road. A man—blond, tall, handsome—appeared at her side. He’d seen it all from the Hub. He claimed to be a friend and called himself Sean. She didn’t care. Ryan was alive, and Sean helped her staunch the blood loss. He carried Ryan to his car, and from there to the safety of their hotel before the emergency services could arrive and take him away, maybe forever. It had been a wonder that no one had recognised him to that point and she couldn’t extend the risk.

  Good as his word, Sean Freeman helped her bring Ryan back to life. In the hotel, Sean even acted as her surgical nurse during the emergency operation to sew him back together.

  “Hey, lass. Are you going to stare into the sunset all night?” Ryan called from his reclining chair, wrapped in a heavy blanket. “An injured man can get awfully lonely, you know.”

  He peeled back the blanket and raised his arm as far up as the sling would allow. The sling covered his arm, hiding the lightweight waterproof cast, which Ryan insisted she fitted, claiming he’d be swimming soon and a standard plaster cast wouldn’t do.

  Remarkable the way he healed so quickly. How it happened, Lara would never know. Already, he walked without a limp, standing straight and strong. The puncture wound in his side—miraculously, the iron rod missed everything vital—was little more than a shocking memory. The scars had almost completely healed with few signs of redness and no infection.

  The swift treatment, first-class wound care, and judicious use of medication helped. Of course it helped. But Ryan’s incredible powers of recuperation fixed him faster than any patient she’d ever treated—animal or human.

  In fact, the foolish man had been making noises about resuming training in the morning, very much against his doctor’s orders. Not that he’d ever take orders from his personal medic, Lara Orchard. Captain Ryan Liam Kaine might listen to her advice, but she’d never issue them as orders.

  She turned away from the sea and returned to him.

  “Okay, buster. Hold your horses, I’
m coming.”

  She smiled as she spoke, but the image of him flying through the air refused to leave her.

  The discussion wouldn’t, couldn’t wait any longer.

  Ryan lowered his rapidly-healing wing and shuffled across, giving her a place to sit next to him in the lee of the wind. Lara obliged and they snuggled close. Warm and safe. At least for the moment.

  What would she have done if he hadn’t survived?

  The thought sent a deep chill through her.

  “Come on, Lara,” he whispered into the top of her head, his breath warm. “Out with it.”

  She pulled away, but only far enough to see his face. The cut over his eye that let out all the blood and made her think he was dead, had closed nicely, barely noticeable amongst the light wrinkles.

  “Out with what?” she asked, although she knew what he meant. He always seemed to know when she was troubled.

  His right eyebrow twitched, the merest ghost of a movement. Yes, he knew.

  Okay, here goes.

  “That night at the school. It was terrifying.”

  She paused, stalling for time. Time to form her thoughts. He jumped in.

  “You didn’t have an option. Barcode had to be stopped. Don’t waste your compassion on him. No need to feel guilty over that piece of—”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. It was you. At first, when I saw your injuries, I panicked. Froze. Although I’m the team’s medic, I had no real idea what I was doing. Sean … he helped, of course, but only with the lifting and the carrying. It was … Everything was down to me.”

  Ryan smiled and used his good arm to try to pull her close, but she resisted and he released her.

  He frowned in question. He was confused, a rare event for Ryan Kaine. “But you were brilliant, love. And here I am as living proof.”

  “No, no. Please listen,” she said, leaning in to kiss him on his latest scar. “If I’m to be an integral part of the team, its medic—”

  “But you are. On both counts.”

  “If so, I need to be better prepared, better trained.”

  He sat up, leaning on the elbow of his broken arm. At least he tried to, but the sling didn’t allow enough movement. He grunted and used his good hand to rip it over his head. Then, he leaned back as he’d initially intended.

  “That’s better. Hate slings. Okay, so what did you have in mind?”

  She took a breath and dived in. “There’s a company in Denmark, Aarhus. It runs specialist training courses. I’ve been visiting their website. One course in particular caught my eye.”

  “Really? Which one?”

  “Combat medic. Ten days, followed by a one-week clinical attachment to a hospital emergency department in South Africa.”

  He nodded, but said nothing.

  “Ryan, this is important to me, to the whole team. If any of you is hurt, I need to know what I’m doing. Please, Ryan. You know this is the right thing for me. For us.”

  He frowned again, scratched at his beard.

  “There’s a problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “That title, ‘Combat Medic’, suggests you’ll be close to the action. In danger. Walthamstow was a disaster on every front. We could both have been killed. I don’t want that for you. You need to be safe.”

  “No, Ryan. That doesn’t work for me. I can’t sit here for the rest of my life, safe and secure and under guard, while you’re off saving the world. I need to be useful.”

  Ryan closed his warm brown eyes, admitting defeat. He opened them again, stared at her.

  “No way I can change your mind, I suppose?”

  “None.”

  “No, I thought not. When’s the next course?”

  “It starts a week next Monday, but I doubt there’ll be any spaces left. The website says the course is usually booked up months in advance.”

  “No, they had a cancellation,” he said, breaking out one of his wonderfully warm smiles. “I booked you in last night. At least, Corky did.”

  “What? How did you know?”

  “Oh, love, I might not be the world’s greatest when it comes to technology, but I do know my way around a web browser. If you want to keep secrets, you really need to delete your search history.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?”

  She didn’t know whether to be angry at the intrusion and lack of trust, or relieved that he supported her idea, but would probably end up choosing the latter.

  He raised both hands, wincing slightly. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Actually, it was an accident. I was clearing my searches when I saw where you’d visited. It didn’t take a genius to work out your intention.”

  Lara relaxed. He’d put up a decent case for the defence.

  “Okay, you are forgiven.”

  “Excellent,” he said, leaning closer, angling his face for a kiss.

  She obliged, long and loving and gentle, taking care not to damage her recovering hero.

  “I guess we’re heading to Aarhus, then?” Ryan said, after coming up for air.

  “What’s this ‘we’ business? As your doctor, I’m in charge of your recov—”

  He kissed her to shut her up, and she gladly let him.

  The END

  For a sneak peek at the next episode in the Ryan Kaine’s 83 series, read on.

  Ryan Kaine: On the Edge

  “By Strength and Guile”

  by

  Kerry J Donovan

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday 13th April – Lara Orchard

  Aarhus, Denmark

  Lara Orchard, in the guise of Dr Grace Sloane, cowered under the dubious protection of a partially destroyed office block. All around her lay devastation, broken buildings, broken pavements, the suggestion of broken lives.

  Bullets cracked and popped all around her. Shells flew across a pale blue sky, crumped into the rubble two hundred metres ahead, and erupted with shocking and visceral ferocity. She ducked and flinched each time. If this represented battlefield conditions, she wanted no part of the real thing. What had she been thinking?

  This isn’t real. It’s not real.

  She repeated the mantra. If she repeated it often enough, she might actually start believing it again.

  Lord, but it felt real. So darned real.

  Her heart pounded. Breath caught in her dry throat. Dust found its way beneath her protective glasses and stung her eyes.

  Whoever had set up the pyrotechnics had done a first class job. If the shells landed much closer, she’d have considered turning tail, but she’d volunteered for this and would darned well see it through. Assuming the explosions kept their distance.

  She’d been with Ryan for what, eight months? Heck. Had it only been eight months? So much had happened since the day he’d crashed into her life, bloodied and dying. They’d faced danger so very often, they’d overcome so many challenges, mostly together, but she’d never been so bone-deep scared. And, to cap it all, she faced the current test alone.

  Without Ryan’s comforting and powerful presence at her side, everything seemed so much more difficult, so much more dangerous.

  Darn it, Lara. It isn’t real!

  Not real? The detonations pounding through her gut, inside her head, deafening even through the ear defenders, was real. Visceral. Powerful.

  Cringing in the apparent safety of a flimsy hideout while bombs and bullets rained down from above certainly, she felt exposed and vulnerable enough. Something could go wrong at any time. These were real explosives, real bullets. Even in the most controlled of situations, accidents still happened.

  Come on, girl. Get a grip.

  Another shell, the ninth, whistled overhead, tracing a white trail of death in an arc across the sky. She’d counted each one, praying for the bombardment to end. She’d seen and heard enough to take the message on board. This shell landed one hundred metres from where she and her partner for the day, Heinrich “Hardy” Krüger, hid.

  A moment later, the ground shook with
the force of an explosion so loud, the concussion drove the air from her lungs. The largest shell yet. Someone was having fun at their expense.

  Close. Too close. Ridiculous!

  Grit and sand flew through the air, peppering her back, shoulders, and neck. Mercifully, the combat helmet did its job of protecting her head.

  Lara coughed her lungs clear of dust, but that was all she could do. Despite all the tutors’ assurances, despite all her logic, fear threatened to freeze her to the spot.

  How could anyone handle this madness? How was she supposed to treat a casualty under such conditions? She couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe.

  This isn’t real. It’s not real.

  Hardy crouched beside and beside and slightly behind her, nostrils flared, breathing shallow and fast, eyes wide and shining. Lara couldn’t tell whether the big blond South African was as scared as her or having the time of his life. She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover it was a little of both.

  He smiled his slick, animal grin.

  Was he getting off on the mayhem, the noise, and the destruction? Lara shivered.

  At first, Hardy had seemed okay. A bit of a loudmouth with a barbed wit and a sharp tongue. Superficially a cheery soul with an eye for the two women on the course—just like so many military men she’d met. But underneath lay something else. The occasional sinister remark. An insult framed as a joke and laughed off. Then came the boasting. The casual aside showing him as a braggart. Apart from Lara, no one seemed to notice the viciousness, the sexism and racism underlying the thin veneer of friendliness. She should have reported the way he treated the others, his taunts, his threats, his racist jibes couched as gags. She should have reported him, but she didn’t want to bring attention onto herself. Then, to cap it all off, they’d lumbered her with Hardy as her partner for the final assessment.