Secret Maneuvers (30 page)

There was my shot.

My finger pulled the trigger. My body shifted slightly as my arm and shoulder took in the recoil of the shot. A sudden silence ensued as the shot hit him in the neck, stopping him mid-word of whatever he’d been saying, and then the silence was shattered by a loud crack. I watched as Belle’s body jerked, her eyes widened in surprise, and she looked down to her shoulder where there was now a bullet hole and blood pouring from it.

Jaxon fired another shot into the man’s large body as it hit the floor, but the damage was done. Belle was now sliding to the floor as I ran to get to her. There was shouting over the comm. links as Jaxon and others barked out terse commands, but all I could see or hear was the love of my life as she gasped in shock and pain. She gave a frightened scream when I picked her up in my arms, cradling her against my chest.

“Shh… baby. It’s me. It’s Bobby. I’ve got you now and I’m taking you home.”

Her fingers grasped the front of my shirt as she gave a relieved sob. I started walking away when she yelled out, “We can’t leave her, Bobby! We can’t! I promised Laura I would take her home.”

Agony and sympathy crashed over me in waves at her desperate plea. Perhaps Belle didn’t know that the woman hadn’t made it? “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but she didn’t make it.”

Belle’s head nodded in resignation. “I know that, but I still promised to take her home to her sister. Please. Please, get her and bring her with us. I felt her blood splatter down my back when she—” Belle couldn’t finish the sentence and gave a small sob.

Jaxon walked past me, headed towards the small body that apparently belonged to Laura. “I got her, Baker. Get her the fuck out of here and back to the secondary rendezvous point. The choppers are already headed there to meet you. She needs medical care ASAP. The Sullivans are waiting outside to give you cover while the rest of the team finishes clearing the house. We’re right behind you.”

Turning around and heading for the exit, I kept a firm hold on Belle, while trying not to aggravate her wounds. Cradling her carefully to my chest to hide her nudity from the others, since I didn’t have anything on me that I could cover her with. “Hold onto me, baby. We’re going to book it to the choppers. It might hurt you a little bit because I’ll be hauling ass, but it will only be for a little while. Promise.”

A slight nod of her head was all the answer she could manage. She seemed too shell-shocked or physically weak to do any more. There was no telling how much blood she’d lost. I didn’t have enough medical training to determine that, so I needed to get a move on it. So, for two and a half miles to the secondary rendezvous point, haul ass, I did. Declan and Riley had to lead us, since I couldn’t free a hand to check my GPS, until we reached the Black Hawk that had brought us here. There were heavy footfalls behind us, but I knew they belonged to my teammates because, if it had been a threat, one of the Sullivans would have taken them out without so much as batting an eyelash. Riley was first to hop up in the chopper, so he reached down to take Belle from me so that I could climb up inside myself. He then held her until I pulled down the stretcher from where it had been stored and placed it on the floor of the Black Hawk between us. Riley laid her down gently before stepping away so that I could kneel next to her.

Smoothing her hair away from her face, I asked her, “Give me a rundown of your injuries.”

Her voice was a weak croak. “Cut across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, deeper cut down the thigh, and—I’m not one hundred percent sure—but I think I was shot in the shoulder. You’ll have to double check that one…”

Snorting at her, I was relieved she was with it enough to crack a joke about getting shot. I shook my head in exasperation. “Anything else we need to know, smartass?”

Giving a weak nod, she said, “Yeah. I took a couple of hits to the head. The first one at the bar knocked me unconscious. They also injected me with something in the van when I came to at the border.”

The others finally arrived, loading quickly into the chopper as our medic, Wyatt Brooks, knelt down on the other side of Belle. I would stay be her side to offer her comfort, but Wyatt would be tending to her injuries. He was one of the best medics the Air Force had ever produced because of his Para-rescueman. He reached out a hand to take a thermal blanket that Riley was handing him as our chopper finally lifted off the ground.

“Let’s get you wrapped up before you go into shock, Ms. Roberts.” He was in business mode. Taking over, asking questions, and prepping bandages to stop the blood flow. Looking up from Belle’s red, stained body, I looked over to the other chopper, where I knew Jaxon was with Laura’s body; a body that had once been full of life, dreams and hopes for a future. A person who probably had family that was worried sick over her disappearance and would mourn her loss, once they were notified. I looked back to the woman whom I have loved most of my life; the one I was ready to admit still held my heart and soul in the palm of her hands. My emotions overloaded on me at the gravity of her situation. I’d almost lost her again, only permanently this time and we still weren’t out of the woods because we had to get her to a hospital. I had enough medical training to know that she was losing too much blood.

So I did the only thing I could do while I knelt there, holding one of her hands, and helping Wyatt when he needed it.

Prayed.

Hoped.

And murmured encouragement to my too brave girl as she laid there and dealt with her wounds better than I’d seen some highly-trained, special ops soldiers deal with injuries that weren’t half that bad. There would be no living if I lost her now and, as soon as we got her all bandaged up and on her way to healing back in San Antonio, I was going to do my best to convince her that she couldn’t live without me, either. 

Chapter Twenty

Bobby

Twelve hours later at San Antonio Regional Hospital…

With all of the pain medication they’d given her, she’d been sleeping like the dead for the last eight hours after getting the last of her stitche
s and staples put in. Thankfully the dead thing was just an analogy and not reality. Although, it’d been a close call. By the time the chopper had landed on the top of the hospital’s rooftop landing zone, she’d lost entirely too much blood, gone deathly pale, lost consciousness and had a dangerous dip in her heart rate.

It was hard to look at the staples down the top of her thigh and the seventy-some stitches on her chest between the laceration and the bullet wound, but they meant she was alive. That made those future scars some of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen because they were proof that she was living, breathing, and still with me.

She gave a low moan and started to stir, so I sat forward in the chair I had positioned by her bed, and held my breath to see if she would wake up. I’d give a limb up, at this point, to see her gorgeous green eyes and sassy smile pointed in my direction, even if it was just for a few seconds. Not to mention that our son was practically out of his mind with worry and, I was pretty sure, the only thing that would comfort him right now was if he got to see his mother awake and okay. Her eyelashes fluttered as she moaned again.

“Bobby?”

Reaching out a hand to grasp hers, I gave it a gentle squeeze. “Right here, baby.”

She turned her head in the direction of my voice and then reluctantly cracked open her eyelids. “God, I hurt. Tell me they killed all those sorry bastards in Mexico.”

“We’re not sure. When you’re up to it later, Jaxon would like you to go through the photos they took of the ones they did take down. See if you can pinpoint Rivera in there.”

“Ew... You guys take pictures of dead people?”

Shrugging my shoulders, I asked her, “It works for identification purposes, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Seth?”

“The Sheriff stayed with him overnight and then brought him in this morning to see you. I just gave him some money and talked him into going down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. I’m sure he’ll be back in thirty minutes or so, unless you want me to call him back up here.”

She shook her head. “Let him get something to eat; put something in that bottomless pit of his.”

Leaning closer to her, I used my free hand to reach up and cup the side of her face. “Does this mean when I look for a house for us in Virginia, that I should find one with a really big pantry?”

I watched her body tense and felt the involuntary squeeze of my hand. “Virginia?”

“Yeah, Virginia. I want us to be a family, babe. Can’t do that if you guys are in Texas and I’m in Virginia. I know it’s a bit highhanded of me to expect you guys to move, but I’m locked into a contract with Ex Ops for at least the next three years. You, on the other hand, are going to need some down time to recover and, after that, I thought that maybe you could transfer to a department there. I’m sure there’s one in D.C. or somewhere around that area.”

If she hadn’t been weak from blood loss and trauma, I’m sure the hold she had on my hand now would have been a death grip that might have ended in loss of circulation to my hand and fingers. She looked scared, yet hopeful, and, although I understood why, I was looking forward to the day when she would no longer second guess our future together because that would mean that she no longer second guessed me. Or have doubts or fears that I would leave her behind again. With the past in between us, it might take a while to work beyond all of that, but I was certainly willing to try. The last twenty-four hours had made me realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no matter how much she’d hurt me, I’d never want anyone except her.

Her even, white teeth bit down into her bottom lip. She took a hesitant breath and then murmured, “Are you sure, Bobby? We haven’t had much time together to make sure that this is going to work between us and we have more to worry about now than just what happens between you and I. We have to think of Seth. I don’t want to get his hopes up that this will work and then, one day down the road, you figure out that all we have is some crazy chemistry between us, with no real future. That would break his heart.”

She thought all I wanted from her was sex? That this was nothing but physical for me? I wasn’t looking for a body to fill my bed. I could have that anytime I wanted. No, what I was trying to do here was secure the one woman who was my perfect match in life. The one person that I could see loving, that I could see living with day in and day out for the rest of my time here on Earth. The one woman I wanted to see grow round with my children and watch as she told them the day that their father tried to hit on her in our high school cafeteria. How could she not realize that she’d owned me since the moment I’d truly noticed her as a woman, so long ago in Georgia? Sure, I’d fucked it all up by acting young and dumb, but dammit, nobody was perfect. Hadn’t I already suffered enough for my mistakes? Even with all of the pain between us—her secrets and my mistakes—she was still as fundamental to me as the air my body needed to live and breathe. Her kidnap and the rescue had finally sunken that into my thick skull.

Taking the hand I was holding, I leaned over her bed until I could place it comfortably over the spot on my chest where my heart laid beating under flesh and muscle for her, without taking the chance of hurting her by straining her stitches.

“This isn’t just chemistry that ignites between us. That’s a physical action and reaction stuff. What happens between you and I goes way beyond the physical. God! Don’t you get it? You’ve taken over my body! You own it just as much as you master your own. My brain belongs to you because all I ever do is think about you, wonder what you’re doing, or if you’re thinking about me, too. My arms belong around you in an embrace that conveys how much I wish to hold you until I breathe my last breath. My hands hurt when you’re not near. It’s like they have a will of their own, that they’ve decided the only time they can unclench and relax is when they’re touching you, making sure that you’re really here with me and not still missing, or one of the thousands of dreams I’ve had while we’ve been apart.

“Ever since I met you, even my feet stopped belonging to me and became yours because all they ever seem to want to do is travel to wherever you are. My heart only lives and beats when you’re where I can see you. Touch you. Kiss your lips and show you the physical equivalent of how deeply I love you. My soul fucking died after I sent that stupid letter and you disappeared. I’ve spent the last fifteen years walking around as a shell. Not a living, breathing human, but a robot going through the everyday motions. You were, are, and will always be more than my life. More than my beating heart, or any other physical reaction my body has. You’re my everything, my fucking essence. I cease to exist unless I’m with you.”

My body trembled. My rant had turned into a shout that had concluded with stinging eyes from the tears I was holding back, a hoarse voice, and a heart that was pounding so hard in my chest, you would have thought I’d just stepped off a battlefield of war instead of the battlefield of my emotions. The hope that was shining from Belle’s face made the complete dissection of my heart and soul worth it, however. Anything was worth seeing the light of love shining from those amazing, green eyes.

I was so worked up from my spiel, that when she asked me her next question, my brain didn’t stop to think, and I fired the honest answer back that would irrevocably change the tide of this emotionally soul sucking war that we’d been waging against each other for weeks. Or maybe years.