Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (29 page)

Isaac shook his head. “Sorry, D
oc. She was lying on the floor, bleeding. She was conscious, but barely. She was cold.”

Dr. Ingleton nodded. “She’d gone into shock.” She sighed. “Let me tell you where she stands now, since I imagine that’s of most critical importance to you, and then I’ll explain
to you what her injuries tell me—my best guess, at least.”

Isaac nodded, but said nothing. He didn’t want to distract her from telling him what the fuck was going on.

“She lost a great deal of blood—as much as 40%. This is an extremely dangerous situation, which could result in serious organ damage. She’s very fit—really in quite good shape, with a strong cardiovascular system—so that will help her. But now, she’s in a coma. She’s breathing on her own, and her vitals have shown signs of improvement, which indicates that her organ function is recovering. But we can’t know whether there’s been lasting impact on her brain function until she wakes—if she wakes.”

“Could she die?” Isaac had to force the words to leave his throat.

The doctor was direct. “Yes. I’m sorry to say that her condition is very critical right now. But she is, again, showing some signs of rebounding. That she’s breathing on her own is a good sign.”

“When can I be with her?”

“She’ll be in the ICU for a couple of days at a minimum. Visiting hours there are very restricted. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck that, D
oc. I’m not leaving her. I’m not. Drag me out if you can.”

She sighed and considered.
“I’ll make some arrangements for tonight and tomorrow. Then we’ll have to talk.” Looking suddenly awkward, with a glance at his kutte, she cleared her throat. “There are some other issues I need to discuss with you. I’ve had to call the Sheriff’s office.”

He’d expected as much. Lilli’s injuries were obviously violent.
The Sheriff would not be a problem. “It’s fine. Why?”

“The laceration to her neck is most likely from a bullet. She has other injuries, though—broken bones in her hand, a badly sprained ankle, serious bruising, and other, smaller lacerations. She looks as if she’s been bound and beaten. Some of the wounds cause me to believe that she’s been  . . . tortured.”

Isaac put his hands over his eyes. He had seen her, lying on the rotting wood floor of the deer blind, her clothes torn open, covered in blood. He shouldn’t have been surprised. And he wasn’t, not really. But he was sickened. He needed to dig Ray back up and kill him again. He needed to make Wyatt pay.

But
he
was the one who’d exposed her plan. It was him. Maybe, if he’d let her handle it the way she’d originally intended, she would simply have made Ray disappear, and the Horde would never have been the wiser. In the end, this was on him.

“We did a rape kit.”

He dropped his hands and looked at the doctor. She shook her head. “It was negative. But I need you to understand that her injuries are extensive. The next half-day or so will be crucial. She’ll be getting transfusions at least through tomorrow. If we can get her stable, then it will be a matter of waiting for her to regain consciousness. If that happens, we’ll know more whether there has been lasting brain damage from the blood loss.”

If
. If she wakes up.

Isaac sat and let all that sink in. He tried to, anyway. All that really stuck was that Lilli could die. “
I need to be with her, Doc.”

Dr. Ingleton nodded. “She’ll be brought to the ICU shortly
. I’ll have someone bring you to her once we get her set up.”

~oOo~

It was another half hour before someone came and led Isaac to a small room with glass walls. He stopped in the doorway, cut down by the sight of her, small and frail, connected by wires and tubes to all kinds of apparatuses.

She was so
pale
. As if she were already gone.

There was a single chair in the room. Isaac pulled it as close to the bed as he could get and sat down. Taking her cool,
unresponsive hand in both of his, he laid his head on the knot their hands made.

“Stay with me, Sport. You stay with me.”

He got no answer but the whir and beep of the machines surrounding her.

~oOo~

The next morning, Show came to the door of Lilli’s room. Isaac was sitting, watching her chest move, taking what reassurance he could from that. Show knocked on the door jamb, and Isaac turned.

“Any change?”

Isaac shook his head. “What’s up?”

“Got everybody here, boss, waiting in the chapel. We brought the meeting to you. Can’t leave Wyatt in the Room indefinitely.”

“Everybody? Who’s watching him now, then?”

“I got Victor’s proxy. He’s babysitting.”

Isaac didn’t want to leave Lilli even for the time it would take to go down to the chapel and have this meeting, but he knew Show was right. Feeling a pull of conflicting loyalties, he stood, kissed Lilli’s still too-cold forehead, and followed Show out.

The men were arrayed on pews in the small chapel
, roughly in the same order in which they sat around their table. Isaac and Show went to the front. Show sat, and Isaac turned and faced his men.

“I need to get back, so I’m
gonna get to it. We need to vote on Wyatt. Two votes: his patch and his life. He went against a club vote. That action got Rover killed, and it got my old lady badly hurt. She might die.” His voice cracked, and he paused and collected himself. “Fuck, she might be dying right the hell now, so let’s get on this. All those in favor of taking Wyatt’s patch.”

The vote was unanimous. No one even hesitated.

“Carries. Next vote. Does he meet his maker? Betrayed the club, got a 24-year-old kid killed, got Lilli shot and tortured. All those in favor of sending Wyatt to his maker. Gotta be unanimous.”

It was, though CJ dropped his head as if in prayer before he looked up, steely-eyed, and said, “Aye.”

Despite the anxiety wrapped around his spine like iron bands, Isaac felt relief. He hadn’t known what he would do if the vote had gone the other way. “Carries. I want him. Hold him until I can get to him.”

“Boss, wait.” Show stood, and Isaac turned on him, ready to fight. Show put his hands up. “I know you want the kill. I understand. I’m gonna ask you to take a breath. We got girls and hangarounds in
and out of the clubhouse. There’s only so long we can keep Wyatt on ice. Longer we go, bigger the risk. Do you want to deal with him and leave Lilli? Or do you want to stay with her and let us deal with him? Your call.”

Show’s job was to pull Isaac back. That’s why he wanted him as VP
, to temper his temper. And he was right. But right now, Isaac just wanted to bloody his face. He turned and picked up a vase of flowers, hurling it across the chapel, where it hit the wall and exploded. Leaning on the small altar, Isaac strove for control. He needed to kill him. He needed to feel that fucker’s life draining out of his traitorous body. He wanted that life force for Lilli.

He couldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t.

Isaac turned back to his men. His eyes on Len instead of Showdown, he said, “You and Victor—bleed him. I want him to die slow, and I want it to hurt. I want him to watch while his ink is sliced off. I don’t want him ending up anywhere near his brother. And burn his goddamn kutte.”

Len nodded, and Isaac walked out of the chapel and back to Lilli’s bedside. He would not leave her again.

~oOo~

The days clicked past, and Lilli didn’t wake. He didn’t go farther from her than the waiting room at the end of the hall. His brothers brought him food, but most of it he left untouched. The nurses—a formidable bunch—forced him to drink and occasionally coerced him to eat, but he tasted none of it.

Twice, the Horde held a brief meeting in the waiting room, and daily, Show came in to give him an update. Victor and Len had taken care of Wyatt. The guns from Tulsa had arrived. The Horde was elevating three hangarounds to Prospect status. They’d never had three Prospects at once before—they’d rarely had more than one—but a Prospect could be called upon to do things they couldn’t trust a hangaround to do, and, frankly, they needed the manpower. They weren’t a big club, and they were facing a powerful enemy.

Mac Evans, currently playing for the home team
now, had gotten a pointed phone call from one of Ellis’s associates and had called Show immediately. The next day, Will Keller’s children had been followed home from the school bus stop by a blacked-out SUV no one recognized. Will was standing firm, but the Horde had paid to send his wife and kids to Florida to stay with her parents. Things were heating up.

And Isaac could barely find space in his head to care. Show updated him, and Isaac nodded. Show suggested next moves, and Isaac nodded.
He watched Lilli breathe and he nodded. Then Show would squeeze his shoulder and leave him be.

They’d moved her out of the
ICU as soon as she was stable. For almost three days, she’d been in a private room, and they’d brought in a sleeping chair for him. He didn’t bother with it. He sat as close as he could get to her and waited, willing her to wake. When he slept, he dozed at her bedside, holding her hand.

The first day or two, Dr. Ingleton would stop and talk to him after she’d checked Lilli. She’d explained what she was seeing, what it meant, what she thought Lilli’s prognosis was. The last couple of days, she’d only smiled grimly and left, as if there was nothing more to say.

And there wasn’t. No change. She just wasn’t waking up.

He kept his mind busy and his heart strong by imagining a future with her. He was going to marry her, mark her, bring her into his home. He imagined coming home to her, curling up on the sofa with her to read or watch
movies, taking her into his bed,
their
bed, and filling her with his child. He thought of her sitting on the tall stool in his woodshop and watching him turn and carve. He thought of traveling with her in that shitty old camper that he loved so much more now, watching her glare at people wanting to dicker down the price of a burled wood vase. He thought of her holding their child in her arms.

That was the only life he wanted. He needed her to wake so he could make it happen.

Late on the fourth day, not long before Isaac would update the count in his head to five, Lilli’s hand twitched in his. He’d been drifting on the plane between waking and sleep, and he jerked to alertness when it happened. Then he doubted it had happened. He sat up and waited for her to do it again. For long, tense moments during which he tried to see every part of her body so that he wouldn’t miss any change, he waited fruitlessly.

And then she took a deep breath.

“Lilli?”

She was still.

Jesus Christ, Sport. Wake up. Wake up, wake up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It seemed to Lilli she’d been awake for some time, because none of the sounds she heard seemed unfamiliar. She knew she was in the hospital. She knew she was connected to machines—she could feel the faint pinch of tape on her wrist and the stiff intrusion of an IV stent, and the pull of adhesive on her chest from a heart monitor. She could hear the unique sounds of a hospital at work, beeps in her room, conversations outside. Definitely a hospital. But she wasn’t sure why.

Before she’d opened her eyes, she knew that Isaac was holding her h
and, his hard, rough palms warm and gentle on her skin. Isaac. Her love. He was here; he was with her. She tried to understand what that meant. There was something she should know, something she needed to know, something important. But it eluded her.

The room came slowly into focus. The light
in the room was bright and hurt her eyes, but before she could close them again, Isaac’s hands closed around hers. “Lilli? Ah, Sport. Are you with me? Are you here?” She heard the clang of desperation in his voice, and she tried to answer him, but she couldn’t make sound pass through her throat. She tried to nod, but her neck shouted in protest. Instead, she fought to really open her eyes and see, and she curled her fingers around his.

“Oh, fuck. Lilli, thank God. Oh, Jesus, baby!” He
rose up closer and kissed her forehead. He smiled down at her; then, as if that first kiss hadn’t satisfied his need, he kissed her cheeks, her nose, her chin, her lips, and, again, her forehead. By the time he was done and looking down at her again, she could see clearly. He looked awful, his bright eyes sunken in shadow. She lifted the hand he wasn’t holding and was surprised to find it in a cast.

As consciousness settled in more completely, so did pain. She re
alized that she hurt everywhere. She tried to think what had happened. Car wreck? What did she last remember? Isaac stroked her face and then picked up something near her shoulder.

A voice came through a speaker somewhere in the room, asking, “What do you need?”

Isaac answered, “She’s awake!”

The voice responded, “Somebody’ll be right there.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. “You’re gonna be okay, Sport. You’re gonna be okay.” She had no reason to disbelieve him. She closed her eyes.

~oOo~

Lilli woke with Isaac almost lying on her, his hands pressing down on her shoulders, his chest heavy on hers. “Wake up, baby. It’s okay. Shh. Don’t hurt yourself.”

The dream receded quickly, becoming broken pieces of image as she understood where she was. She squirmed under Isaac’s weight, feeling irritated at his words, which sounded condescending to her ears. She felt helpless and weak enough without Isaac treating her like a child.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged again, and he released her and sat back in the chair at the side of her bed.

“The dreams are bad—worse—now, Sport.”

She shrugged again. He was right—they were a lot worse. Still death dreams, but now they were shaded with memory, and death had a face: Hobson. But they didn’t stay long after she woke. She’d learn to deal with them the way she’d learned to deal with everything.

By
her second day conscious, Lilli had remembered what brought her there. Hobson. She’d let him best her. Again. She’d let him hurt her. She’d failed.

She knew he was dead, and that Isaac had killed him.
So the goal of the mission had been achieved. But she had failed nonetheless. Hobson had still managed to take everything he could from her. He’d wanted to take more, but he’d been unable. She remembered every second, until the one in which Isaac pulled her into his arms. After that, four days of blankness.

Hobson had done a lot of d
amage. But Lilli was recovering. After three days awake—a week since she’d gotten hurt—she was feeling her strength return. She was able to be awake for longer stretches of time and no longer felt lightheaded even as she lay in bed. She wasn’t yet able to stand for more than a few seconds before the world went grey, but she knew it would come. Her ankle was still gimpy, anyway.

She had a nasty wound on her neck, which was the root cause of her weakness. The sundry cuts and bruises making motley of the rest of her body were fading, even if the memory of them would not. Her left hand was in a cast, and that would probably be the thing that caused the most lasting nuisance.  All of it, though, would heal. She was expected to make a full recovery.

She wasn’t sure how to get her head on straight, though. Fate had taken her family. Hobson had taken everything else, even her strength. She didn’t know what was left.

~oOo~

“Where are you, Sport?” They were sitting outside in the crappy little “courtyard.” Lilli was in a wheelchair, which was more a precaution to make sure she didn’t get lightheaded and keel over than a necessity, but it still made her feel like an invalid. Isaac had his hand on her knee, and he’d given it a squeeze as he’d asked.

She came back to the moment and smiled at him. “Nowhere. Just spacing.”

“That brain doesn’t slow down enough for you to space. There’s something goin’ on, Lilli. I can see it. Been like this since you woke up. Talk to me.” He pulled the wheelchair so it turned on its axis and she faced him. “Talk to me.”

He was staring intently into her eyes, like he was trying to see what it was she was holding back. Since she’d woken up, he had a new way of looking at her. It was . . . naked, somehow, like he was holding nothing back, like he was offering her everything. It scared her, because she didn’t have anything to give him in return. She felt empty.

When her mother killed herself, she had her father. She had him when her nonna died, too. When her father died, she had the Army. When the Army kicked her away, she had vengeance. Always something to focus on, always something to distract her from her loss. In the space of weeks she’d lived after her discharge and before she’d found out about Hobson, she’d felt empty like this, and she’d just stopped. The sense of loss she’d been running from since she was ten had begun to converge on her. And then Lopez had contacted her, and she shoved it all back into its box.

Now, she had Isaac. But since she’d woken, she could only see him through her failure. Her connection with him had complicated her mission. She had made decisions because of her feelings for him which had put him and others at great risk. And then she’d failed. She’d needed rescue. She’d been at Hobson’s mercy. Again.
Two men died who would not have if she’d stayed away from Isaac and the Night Horde. There was a mountain of dead men between her and Hobson.

“Lilli. Please talk to me,” Isaac repeated his plea, caressing her thigh.

A strong voice in her head was telling her that this was her opportunity to break free from him. She could end it now, tell him that what had happened had changed her thinking. She could lie low for a while and then move on. She opened her mouth to answer.

But she loved him. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t know what was left of her, but if there was anything, it was here. Between them. He smiled at her and put his hand on her cheek, feeding his fingers into her hair. “I love you, Sport. Lilli. I know you have secrets. I understand. But don’t shut me out
.”

Feeling selfish and lost, she didn’t.
She opened up. She needed him, if only to stave off the emptiness. No. It was so much more than that. She needed him for him, for what they were together. She’d given him trust, and he’d never betrayed it. Now she needed to lean on that. She told him what she was thinking, how she was feeling. She let him in. She’d been letting him in almost since she’d met him.

When she was finished, he had her hands clasped tightly in his. “Lilli, you’re wrong. Ray didn’t take everything. Don’t give it to him now. I don’t know any other woman like you—as strong as you, or as smart. You make me stronger. It’s when we’re not working together that we’re weaker. We make a good team. We fill each other out.
We fit. I feel that. Do you?”

She’d felt a fit with Isaac she’d never felt before, almost from the first day.
Did they fill each other out? Is that what it was? “I don’t know what I fill, Isaac. Or where I fit. I don’t know what’s next. My permanent address has been a storage locker for most of my adult life.”

“Here
, Lilli. You fit here. With me. Make your home with me.”

She shook her head. This place was a cover story.
“I’m not even my real self here. I can’t even claim my own name.”

He smiled and curled his big hands around her thighs. “Claim a new one, then. Take mine.”

Stunned, Lilli didn’t answer. She stared at him; his gaze didn’t falter. “Isaac, what—?”

“Askin’ you to marry me, Sport. Be my old lady. Fuck, you
are
my old lady. I want you with me.”

Her heart pulsed
hard at the thought. But it wasn’t a solution. “No. Getting lost in you doesn’t help me figure myself out. It’s not the way.”

Isaac sat back on the bench and looked away. It was the first time since they’d come out to this courtyard that his hands weren’t on her, and she regretted the loss of his touch. “You’re wrong, Sport. For a smart woman, you’ve missed something huge. I don’t know anyone with a
s strong a sense of self as you have. You know who you are. It’s clear in everything you do. The only thing you don’t know is what you know.”

She was feeling tired and sad now. Not understanding his point and not in the mood for a puzzle, she sighed. “Don’t talk in circles. How could I
not know that I know who I am? That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

He turned back to her
. “You’re right. But I think maybe you’ve spent so much time focused on the next thing, the mission or whatever was ahead of you, that you never even stopped to consider how fucking amazing you are. But you also never stopped to wonder if you could do any of the amazing things you’ve done. Because you
knew
you could. You knew yourself enough to know you could. You never doubted it. I think that’s why Ray getting ahold of you is screwing with you like it is. But, Lilli, he’s dead, and you’re alive. We did it together. You held on. You didn’t let him win.”

Taking her hands in his again, he leaned forward. “We have something in common, you and me. A lot of things, actually. But one that’s really important. We do what we set out to do. We get what we want. So, Sport: what do you want?”

Lilli closed her eyes. She was tired, but mostly she wanted to try to put into some kind of order the clamoring thoughts in her head. She didn’t know. She didn’t know. And then one thought emerged from the cacophony and clarified. Not even a thought—an image, a memory. She remembered leaning back against him as he lay on their blanket at the second bonfire in Tulsa, the touch of his hands on her. She had felt complete, and calm, and fulfilled.

She’d felt at home.

She opened her eyes; his green gaze was still intent on her. With a smile, she answered, “You. I want you.”

His
lopsided grin was clear and open, the relief palpable in it. “Well, that’s convenient, then. I’m askin’ again, Sport. Marry me.”

She nodded.

~oOo~

She was walking on her own power and well on her way to healing by the time they released her. Only the cast on her arm and the dark red scar on her neck served as lingering reminders. She was feeling antsy already to start running and working out again, but she knew she had some weeks left before she could.

Isaac brought her to his house, where he could take care of her. It was a permanent move. He’d been able to pack all of her belongings—at least all those she had here in town—into the Camaro and drive it over. She was no longer staying in the little pre-fab house. Now she lived in Isaac’s family home.

Work
had been a problem to solve. She’d given him the key to her office, and he’d brought all of that over as well and set up an office for her on the second floor of his house. She trusted him not to look at any of it, and there were no classified documents in her files, but it was still a major breach of protocol. She’d had fires to put out, though; her absence while she was in the hospital had caused alarm, and she couldn’t wait any longer to get things straight.

Getting things straight with the NSA had turned out to be easy—they had not contacted her until two days before her release, so the big guns hadn’t begun yet to worry about secrets getting out. They were only just beginning to think twice about her silence. Rick, on the other hand, her contact for the Hobson project, was about ten seconds away from triggering their failsafe when she’d connected with him. She owed that boy something to calm his nerves.