Killian
I feel the center of my gravity shift in my sleep. It’s not a spy thing warning me of danger. It’s an emotional klaxon shrieking at me that something’s not right.
Sure enough, when I roll over and reach for her, Faith’s not next to me. I’m not prone to panic. Danger, faced cold, almost always has a better outcome than a knee-jerk response. But both knees are in full jerk mode before my feet hit the floor.
I try to reason with myself, but my heart is not buying the shit my head is feeding it. There may have been a murderous light burning in her eyes each time we spoke of what’s going on a few rooms away, but she wouldn’t risk the kids by doing something stupid—like attempt to free them on her own. I know how much this mission means to her.
Still, my skin tightens with dread as I tug on my clothes and head out into the living room. We both thought sleep was out of the question when we halfheartedly went to bed. But somehow we managed to snatch pockets of sleep. When I last woke up half an hour ago, she was right there, next to me.
But she’s nowhere in sight now. Instinct makes me reach for my Glock and tuck it against my thigh as I open the door and step out into the private courtyard.
The soft lapping of the pool and the hum of the pump are the only sounds disturbing the air. I bypass the pool, noting that the two guards are absent from the rooftop. I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing, so I shove it to the back of my mind for now.
The front door to our private residence is ajar.
Okay. Fuck.
I take a breath to calm my racing heart and try not to think of all the scenarios that could unfold. None of them are good. Faith mostly likely wouldn’t have gone after our enemies by herself, but neither would she have gone for a walk in a place like this, on a night like this. Unless…
I slam a lid on my thoughts long enough to remember the layout of the hotel. We entered through the south gates. The party was held in the east wing. Our residence is west.
I take the corridor leading east. The faint sound of music tells me the party is still going on. I swallow my distaste and quicken my steps. That’s when I hear it.
The first gunshot is clear and drenches me with ice-cold dread. The second and third follow a split second later. All three come from behind me.
I spin around and sprint back the way I came, past our residence and down the west corridor.
I burst into yet another courtyard. It takes precious few seconds to comprehend the scene before me. A man I don’t recognize is lying facedown in a pool of his own blood. Another man, whom I identify as Paul Galveston when my brain kicks in a second later, is lying next to him. He’s also covered in blood.
And Moses Black is standing over her. My Faith.
She isn’t moving. And as I watch, Moses raises the champagne magnum in his hand, high above his head.
“You bitch,” he snarls. “You worthless, fucking bitch.”
He starts to swing the bottle. I don’t hesitate. My first shot hits him in the back of the head. He goes down, his body barely missing Galveston’s as he crumples into a heap.
When I reach him, I pump three more bullets into his chest for good measure. But my focus is on her. Faith.
And the blood.
Jesus. So much blood. My knees hit the ground beside her. “Faith? Faith! Talk to me, baby.” My voice is a shaky mess.
The tiniest moan signals she’s alive. Her eyes are shut but her lids quiver. I don’t allow myself to be relieved because we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, and…hell, the blood.
“God, baby, hold on.” My hands shake as I pick her up and cradle her. I’m probably making every goddamn mistake in the book by moving her, but my mind is blank to anything else but the fact that she may be bleeding out. Dying right here in my arms.
I hear footsteps behind me, and I swivel around, my finger already on the trigger.
“Don’t shoot. It’s me!”
The moment I recognize Shane’s voice, I turn back to her. “Faith, can you hear me?”
The barest murmur and a whimper of pain. A fevered search of her body shows the blood is most saturated at her stomach. I tear off my tunic and press it to the area.
“Mr. Knight? Sir, we need to go!”
“Come here. Keep pressure on her stomach,” I snap at Shane. My voice is calmer now, every inch of my focus trained on her.
I hear footsteps. Shouts from nearby. I shield Faith with my body and raise my gun.
“It’s our team, sir. They’re waiting in the next courtyard. The vehicle is outside,” Shane says. “But we need to go now.”
I don’t need a second prompt. I carefully pick Faith up and cradle her in my arms.
We tear across the courtyard and through a gated archway to emerge on a dirt road. My driver is behind the wheel. Shane, the analyst I tried to block from coming on this mission on account of his age, yanks open the back door. We pile in, Faith clutched tight in my arms, and the driver steps on the gas.
The team member in the passenger seat turns around. “Mr. Knight, what are your orders?”
I don’t raise my gaze from Faith’s face. Each blink, each puff of air she exhales is essential to my sanity. “Call the nearest hospital. Tell them we’re on our way. Call the extraction team, report what’s happened, and tell them to send a chopper to meet us at the nearest possible rendezvous point with a doctor on board. And tell them to send the authorities to get those kids out of there.”
He nods and gets on the phone immediately. The helicopter intercepts us five miles away.
At the private hospital in Cairo, the medical staff whisks Faith away from me and into surgery. And I endure the longest hours of my life. I’m ten paces from turning into a raving lunatic when the doctor enters the room. I listen to words fall from his lips but only two register.
She’s alive.
She’s alive.
I take my first full breath in forever. I must ask to see her because he leads me to a private room at the end of a long, quiet corridor. And beneath a jumble of tubes, intravenous needles, and blankets, my heart lies, pale and breathing and beautiful.
I make different, drastic plans in the four days she stays in her coma. On the fifth, the doctor updates me with news of her improvement. He thinks she should wake up in the next twelve to twenty-four hours. And she can go home in about a week. I leave her side and return to my hotel to make my report to a stone-faced Eric Biggins and to deliver the news that I’m leaving the agency.
Twenty-nine and retired sounds like the beginning of an excellent novel. Maybe that will be the title of my memoir. I make even more plans before I return to the hospital.
When I sit on the side of her bed and take her hand, her eyes flicker behind her lids. I sense that she’s awake. But she doesn’t answer me when I talk to her. She doesn’t open her eyes.
She’s not ready to face reality yet.
That’s fine. We have all the time in the world. When the doctor convinces me to go and get some sleep, I reluctantly take his advice.
I shouldn’t have. It was hands-down the worse move I ever made.
Because in those hours I was asleep in the hotel two blocks away, the reason for my heartbeat walked out of the hospital and left me behind.