Hope

Her first conscious thought was that her mouth tasted like someone had poured dehydrated cat shit mixed with chalk into it. She tried to swallow but the aridness of her throat resulted in a dry, clicking noise. A soft, rhythmic beep came from nearby, and she tried to figure out why she hurt so much and where she was. Her thoughts had a muzzy quality, like she’d awakened in the middle of the night after drinking all day.

“I think she’s waking up,” a woman said from somewhere close to her right.

Moments later big, rough warm hands cupped her face, gently stroking her cheeks. “Hope?”

The veil in her mind between dreams and reality lifted a bit and she smiled, turning her face into his rough palm. “Danny.”

Her voice came out in a croaky whisper and she forced her eyes open. She was in a dimly lit hospital room, and outside, the city lights shown against the night sky. Danny sat next to her. He wore a Michigan State tee shirt, the white bandage around his head bright against his skin. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath his eyes

“How are you feeling, Dr. Walker?”

She turned her head to look at the Middle Eastern woman in dark green scrubs. Her name badge identified her as Dr. Darwish. “What happened?”

Danny spoke before the doctor could. “You passed out and they said it would be better for you to wake up on your own.”

Frowning, she looked down at the IV in her arm. “Am I okay?”

“Any double vision? Ringing in your ears? Trouble remembering things?”

“No, none of that.”

“Then yes, you’re fine. Well, your ankle is pretty banged up, but we took care of that and bandaged it up for you while you were out. Considering what you’ve been through, you are a very lucky woman.”

She reached out and pulled Danny’s hand into hers, the strength returning to her body slowly. Sheesh, she felt like she’d just done a six-hour step aerobics class. “No, not luck. Danny kept me safe.”

He actually flushed and looked away before muttering, “Not safe enough.”

The doctor snorted, bringing their attention back to her. “Please. You should hear the stories they’re telling about Mr. Escobar and how he gunned down two men by himself and only sustained very minor injuries.”

She reached out for Danny and he leaned closer, enabling her to cup his chin in her hand. “If you ever do something stupid like that again, I’ll kill you myself.”

He chuckled, the bristle of his beard scratching her palm. “You say the sweetest things.”

“Can I have a drink?”

While Danny poured her some water from the plastic pitcher next to her bed, Dr. Darwish moved over to the computer terminal next to her bed and typed on the keyboard. “I’ll start working on your discharge papers now.” She glanced over at Danny. “I’m assuming she’ll be going with you?”

“I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

He handed her the cup and she took a long drink. The water tasted so good, washing the bitter taste from her mouth and cooling her from the inside out. She handed the empty glass to Danny and nodded when he made a gesture to refill it.

“Dr. Walker, we have given you something for pain in your IV and, since you show no signs or symptoms of head trauma, I’ll write for a mild painkiller if over-the-counter meds don’t keep you comfortable. The rest of your labs are fine. Please make sure you keep your foot elevated.” She turned and looked down her nose in Danny’s direction. “And make sure Mr. Escobar takes care of his head wounds.”

“I will.” She held up her hand with the needle in it. “Can I please get this out?”

“Of course.” The doctor efficiently removed the IV and put a band-aid in its place. “Mr. Escobar, make sure you let security escort you out. The press has gotten wind of the story and they’re camped out waiting for you.”

Flexing both hands, Hope looked at Danny. “Press?”

“Doctor, can we have a few moments alone?”

“Of course. Take all the time you need. Your discharge should go through in an hour or so.” She squeezed Hope’s shoulder as she passed before leaving and closing the door behind her.

They stared into each other’s eyes and she opened her mouth to ask him what happened but, instead of words, her voice came out in a strangled sob. Danny immediately gathered her in his arms the best he could on the narrow hospital bed. She clung to him, burying her face against his chest while he held her close. Eventually her sobs petered off to those hitching breaths she always hated after a hard cry.

She pushed at his chest and said in a watery voice, “Tissue please?”

He nodded and turned in his chair, plucking a box from the small table next to the bed. She took a handful and wiped her face before blowing her nose. When she noticed him watching her with a small smile, she glared at him. “Can you please not watch me blow my nose?”

“You’re beautiful when you blow your nose.”

Grateful for the distraction, she deepened her glare until her eyes were mere slits and tried not to smile. “Do you have some kind of mucus fetish? I mean a foot fetish I could do ‘cause that means you’ll buy me shoes and give me foot rubs, but I’m so not into boogers.”

He smiled and reclaimed her free hand, pressing gentle kisses on her knuckles. “No, no snot fetish, but I’ll keep the foot thing in mind.” The teasing glimmer left his eyes. “Your dad knows about the attack.”

“Oh God, he must be worried sick!” She tried to sit up but the weird angle of the hospital bed made it a struggle with her injured foot. Before she could ask him, Daniel was already raising the bed via the controls on the side.

“He’s okay. I talked to him, and Milton talked to him and told him what had happened. ”

“What did happen? The last thing I remember was you coming back into the room and I think there was a police officer with you.” She rubbed her forehead. As she began to move in the bed, her ankle protested by ramping up the throbbing pain from moderately irritating to outright misery.

Her gut clenched into a hard ball as a terrible thought occurred to her. “Did I kill anyone?”

“No, you didn’t.”

She let out a soft sigh and leaned back. “Good, ‘cause I don’t know if I could live with that.”

Danny didn’t say anything, just looked down at their joined hands.

Immediately she cursed herself for being so stupid. Of course Danny had killed someone. There was no way he’d been special ops in the Marines with four combat tours under his belt and without some type of fight. “Oh, Danny, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“It’s okay.” He continued to look at their hands and his grip increased. “I still have dreams about it. I wish I’d never been put into that position, but I can’t let those memories haunt me.”

She found his word choice interesting and the therapist in her head wanted to push a little further. “What do you mean by ‘haunt’?”

He glanced up and gave her a small smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not seeing things that aren’t there. It’s more like I’ll see or hear something that reminds me of being back in battle and those terrible feelings will come rushing back. Being in the gunfight back at the abandoned house brought up a lot shit I’ve tried to forget.” He reached over and stroked his knuckles down her cheek. “Can we not talk about this right now?”

“Okay.” Rubbing her thumb over his she took a deep breath. “What happened after you left the room? And why did you do such a dumbass thing?” Suddenly she realized she was angry, furious even for him risking his life like that. “What the fuck, Danny? You could have died! Why the hell did you do that?”

He sat on the edge of her bed as best he could and gathered her to his chest. “I’m sorry, baby. I just...well, I looked at you and I suddenly knew what it felt like to be a hero.”

She thumped him on the chest. “You are not making any sense.”

“Sorry, the mess in my head doesn’t make much sense to me either.”

Scooting over she pulled him more securely onto the bed, stifling a yelp when she accidentally hit her sore ankle. Danny growled at her. “Stop hurting yourself.”

Feeling irritated because of the pain, she grumbled, “I’m not hurting myself. Stop telling me what to do.”

Light from the hallway brightened the room as the door leading to the rest of the hospital opened and a familiar male voice said, “Well, isn’t this cozy.”

She looked up to see Mr. Milton coming into the room. He wore a grey shirt with perfectly pressed black slacks and casual jacket. His smile took the bite out his words and he pulled over the chair sitting next to the door over to her bed.

“I’m off duty,” Danny muttered and put a possessive arm around her shoulders.

Milton nodded. “I’m still pissed that you didn’t tell me that you and Dr. Walker used to be an item, but considering your good deeds I’ll let it slide.”

“Thanks,” Danny said in a dry voice.

“Have you brought her up to date?”

Danny shifted. “No, not yet.”

“I just woke up,” she said in his defense.

“Let me give you the basic rundown. Someone in either the FBI or the local police department gave DeLuca your route information. They had traps set up all along the way, waiting to ambush you. In order to make sure they had all the streets covered they were spread out pretty thin, which is why you managed to get away.”

“Fortunately,” Danny added as he gently squeezed her hand, “we got very lucky. Turns out earlier in the day one of the local crime lords decided to make a play for DeLuca’s territory and DeLuca had to pull back most of the guys he’d assigned to hunt you in order to defend him.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Milton leaned back with a satisfied grin. “Both of DeLuca’s men we captured were more than eager to try to make a deal to keep them out of prison.”

“Why would they do that? One of the things that made it so hard for Bonnie to escape her husband was the fact that all his men were loyal to him and wouldn’t risk getting her out.” She swallowed hard, the memory of how badly Bonnie had been beaten when she’d first arrived at the shelter with her children flashed through her mind. “I mean they stood there while her husband beat her with a chair!”

“Because DeLuca is now on the run.”

“What?”

Danny nodded. “You aren’t the only problem he’s having these days. The Feds have been using the information Bonnie has given them to shut down his money laundering operations, seize his assets, freeze all known bank accounts, et cetera. To the rest of the crime lords, he’s become a wounded lion and they’re more than ready to take him down for a chance at controlling his territory.”

Milton snorted. “I think of him more like a cockroach than a lion, but that analogy will do. I’d be surprised if he’s not in Mexico right now, going by the name of Ginger and having a sex change.”

She sat up and tugged the loose hospital gown back into place. “Does this mean I’m safe?”

The men exchanged a look and Milton frowned. “I wish I could say yes, but the truth is we don’t know yet.”

Danny quickly added, “But we do know that almost all of his men have either left him to join other cartels or are in police custody.”

“But we don’t know where he is, so your father wants us to continue to keep you safe.”

She nodded, relief and doubt mixing together in an exhausting combination. “Do you really think he’d stay around? I mean one would think that right now he’d be more worried about saving himself than coming after me.”

“That’s one thing I don’t really understand.” Danny braced his elbows on the edge of her bed. “Why does he want you so bad? I mean all you did was help his wife get away, right?”

Milton raised an eyebrow in her direction. “You didn’t fill him in on the details?”

Uncomfortable, she looked away, staring out into the night sky beyond the windows. “What’s there to tell? He wanted her and I wasn’t going to let him have her.”

Danny rested his head on his forearms. “Hope...”

“Either you tell him or I will. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of it!” She closed her eyes and willed the tears away. “I just don’t like thinking about it. I would have said that it was the scariest moment of my life but what happened today raised that bar.”

When no one laughed at her lame attempt at a joke, she snapped at Milton. “You like the story so much, you tell it to him.”

Instead of being angry, Milton gave her a look filled with understanding and patted her knee. “So, Escobar, picture this. It’s 2 a.m. and Dr. Walker is handling the nightshift at the shelter.”

Hope added, “I spend four days a month at the shelter. All of the staff does it so we always have someone available to handle any emergencies, like someone going suicidal.”

“Right, so Dr. Walker was on duty that night when someone begins to frantically ring the front gate. The security guard comes and wakes her because on the surveillance camera a woman is hysterical and trying to get in.”

Wanting Danny to understand, she added, “We could see that there was someone else in the car with her and a little girl kept sticking her head out of the back window.”

“So, following SOP, Dr. Walker calls the police and goes to the main gate with her security guard. When they arrive they are greeted by the sight of Mrs. DeLuca.”

Hope shivered. “She was so badly beaten, I can’t believe she actually managed to make it to our shelter. He’d broken her arm but she still managed to not only escape, but get her children out as well.”

“As Dr. Walker and her security guard are assessing the situation, guess who rolls up in his shiny white Bentley?”

“Mr. DeLuca,” Danny muttered.

“That’s right. He gets out of the car with two of his goons and...well, Dr. Walker knows this part better than I do.”

She didn’t want to tell this story, didn’t want to relive those moments, but how would she ever get Danny to open up to her if she wasn’t honest with him. “When he first came out of the car he was all smiles, talking about his wife being off her meds and needing to take her to the hospital. Bonnie...well, the second she saw him she dropped into a defensive ball on the ground. It was the middle of winter so she landed in a slushy puddle of snow, but that didn’t faze her at all. I’ve seen that reaction before from battered women and, even if I hadn’t, I never would have let him get near her.”

Rubbing his head, Danny asked, “Did you know who he was?”

“I had no idea. He was just some guy in a gold silk shirt and a mink coat. But as he inched closer with his goons on his heels Bonnie began to make this noise...” Gooseflesh rose on her arms at the memory. “God, it was a horrible keening wail. I stepped in front of Mr. DeLuca and he stared at me for a second before shoving me out of the way. I wouldn’t have fallen except I just so wasn’t expecting it.” Her voice broke on the last word and she looked to Danny for strength. “How arrogant is that? All these years I’d been around the result of abuse, but I never thought any of them would actually lay a hand on me. When my butt hit the cold water it slapped the shock right out of me.”

“You’re lucky all he did was push you,” Danny said as he stroked her arm.

“Yeah, well you can thank the security guard for that. He pointed out that we were all on camera and the cops were on the way. At that time, we didn’t arm our guards with anything more than mace. So the guard, Orlando, gets up in Mr. DeLuca’s face.”

“Bad move,” Milton said in a low voice.

“Yeah. Well, the goons were having none of that, so they started to beat up Orlando. I...I was frozen. I couldn’t figure out what to do. Did I help the woman on the ground first? Did I try to keep them from hurting Orlando? And what about the children? Their faces were pressed up against the glass windows of the car and they were screaming and yelling not to hurt their Mommy. DeLuca never even looked at them, just strolled over to his wife with this horrible sneer.”

“What happened to Orlando?”

“He got cold-cocked on the chin and fell to the ground. I moved over to his side to check his pulse, to see if he was still alive.” She closed her eyes, willing away the tears. “As I bent over, he looked up at me and mouthed the word ‘mace’. It took me a second to realize what he’d said but as soon as I did I pretended to throw myself on him, weeping. But in reality I was getting the mace off his belt.”

It took her a moment to gather herself enough to get the words out. “While this was going on DeLuca had made it to his wife. He...he was stepping on her broken arm while yelling at her for being such a dumb cunt.”

“Fuck,” Danny said in a low voice.

“Yeah. At that point, I wasn’t thinking about doing anything other than making him stop hurting her. This, I don’t know, this kind of clarifying rage washed over me. In my mind, DeLuca became the face of every man who’d ever hurt a woman.” Remembering Danny’s own personal experiences with domestic violence she reached out for him, wanting to comfort and take comfort from him. “I got very lucky. All three of them were focused on Mrs. DeLuca so I was able to move around to the other side of the car, giving me someplace to duck down if the mace didn’t work.”

She flexed her hands as if stretching them out. “As I crouched next to the front tire of the still running car I thought I heard the faint sound of sirens, but I wasn’t sure. My hands were so stiff from the cold that I couldn’t curl my finger around the safety tab to open the mace. I had to use my teeth instead.”

“Smart girl,” Milton murmured in a low voice.

“I got it open and before I gave myself any more time to think I stood up and maced the hell out of them.” She took in a shuddering breath. “I remember being confused as to why it was spraying shaving cream.” A laugh caught in her throat and came out as a weird croak. “I didn’t realize it was a foam type of mace. Thank goodness ‘cause I hadn’t checked which way the wind was blowing. I could have easily maced myself. DeLuca got it the worst ‘cause I was aiming at him, but the goons got a nice face full as well. I swept the canister back and forth like I was spray painting a wall so I got them good. They were all standing together, watching DeLuca stomp the shit out of his wife like they were watching TV.” Trying to keep the tears at bay she forced a smile. “A few seconds later the sirens were closer and DeLuca and his men bugged out. They were coughing, wheezing, crying, and one of the goons even started to throw up. But they made it back to their car and took off.”

“They drove away?”

“Kind of. They must have hit about a dozen parked cars but the Bentley he was driving had been specially made for him. Bonnie said he made a big deal of his car being the same one that the sheiks used over in Saudi Arabia.”

Danny shook his head and looked over at Milton. “How come we don’t have armored Bentleys?”

“We do, I’m just not letting any of you leathernecks drive them. Look at what you and Jameson did to the Navigators. Do you have any idea how expensive that windshield is?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Danny flapped his hands at him.

There was a knock on the door and both men stood. Danny reached for a gun that wasn’t there, but Milton pulled out his gun from inside his jacket. Moving together, both men walked over to the door as it opened. At the first sight of the gun, the nurse on the other side dropped the papers she was holding and said in a low voice, “Fuck.”

A second later, a black police officer came around the edge of the doorway and put his hand on her shoulder. “Gentlemen, I realize that you may be a little jumpy, but try not to scare the nice hospital staff.”

Milton actually flushed as Danny backed away to a darker corner of the room. “Sorry ‘bout that, ma’am.” He holstered his gun and bent to retrieve the papers.

The officer removed his hand from the nurse’s shoulder and got an elbow to the ribs from her. “I swear to god, the next time they try to put me with a high security patient, I’m going to quit.”

She pointed at the papers in Milton’s hand. “Those are Dr. Walker’s discharge papers. Try to not kill anyone on your way out.”