CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Shea wiped her tears. Eric’s two broken ribs were now banded and the excess blood had been siphoned out of his lungs through an incision the doctor made between two of his ribs. The poor man would have more scars than he deserved, but Eric breathed easier now. The oxygen cannula strapped to his face made sure of that.

Eric’s physical fitness had served him well. For the most part, he needed rest and time to heal. The kindly Irish doctor, a close personal friend of Murphy’s, assured Shea that all would be well.

The nurse, Miss Day, was a godsend. Young and athletic, she seemed an efficient woman who expected people to do what they were told so she could do what she did best: Keeping these two men alive. She wore her hair in a short bob, the back cut high, the front longer. Tiny red freckles dotted her pixie nose. Blue eyes. Her nurse’s uniform was different than the ones Stateside. Tan slacks. Tan button-up shirt. Some kind of a gold pin on her collar.

Jordan said he’d passed out when Carlson’s thugs injected him with the truth serum. That explained why they hadn’t made the same mistake with Eric. But because he hadn’t talked like they’d wanted, they’d beat him. Shea doubted those Legionnaires got anything useful, though. Eric could be stubborn when he set his mind to it.

She’d finally changed out of Moira’s gown and into the borrowed clothes Murphy had thoughtfully brought along. He’d proved the true mastermind behind the dubious success of this operation. Not only had he packed extra clothes, he’d also fed and watered Aishling before they’d left his home near Cashel. The man truly believed in being prepared.

The early morning sunlight filtered through the window. No sounds of busy traffic or other mechanical noises lifted to her ears, only the chatter of nosy jackdaws and the melodic whistles of finches.

Standing outside Eric and Jordan’s room, Shea stared at the lovely scene while her brain worked the never-ending puzzle of this operation. Bagani was the motorcycle rider who’d chased her and Eric. He wasn’t the money behind Abdul-Mutaal. Then who was? Surely not Carlson. Yes, he could certainly hire as many assassins as he wanted, but he had his Legionnaires, what was left of them, to do his dirty work for him.

Shea couldn’t shake the disquiet lurking in the back of her mind that she’d missed something important, that all was not as it seemed. Other than Bagani, she had no link to anyone from the Mideast, so why had Abdul-Mutaal killed Phoenix and Gordie to get at her? What was the link she wasn’t seeing?

The warm hand on her shoulder drew her back to the cottage. “Well, Mrs. Hollister, what do you think?”

Shea tipped the side of her head to Murphy’s broad shoulder. “I think it’d be nice to be Mrs. Reynolds again.”

“Don’t worry. Eric will be able to fly in a few days. Jordan can now, but I’m guessing you’d rather go home with the right man.”

“Yes, I’m ready.” She sighed, never so sure of anything in her life. She would still be inside with Eric and Jordan, but Miss Day had ushered her out to give both men a much-needed sponge bath.

Eric had yet to open his eyes after his surgery. Shea counted him lucky not to have suffered a collapsed lung. As it was, he should’ve been admitted to a hospital, but somehow, Murphy knew all the right people.

The door creaked open behind them. “You can see him now,” Miss Day announced.

Shea turned away from Murphy to go to her husband’s side. Eric had lost a shade of his handsome tan overnight, but his eyes were open. Black and blue. Swollen. A little red where the white should’ve been. But open.

He lifted a weak hand and let it drop back to the blanket covering him. “Murphy says you’ve got skills. Talk to me. What happened?”

Twining her fingers with his, she went over her encounter with Bagani, hitting the highlights, but making sure Eric knew Bagani was now incarcerated. Next came the story of the Tango with Carlson. Disgust rippled up her spine knowing what she knew now. For two cents, Shea wanted to go back in time and shoot Carlson the second he’d laid a finger on her.

Eric’s eyes grew heavy, but he still squeezed her fingers. “Love you,” he whispered.

She laid her head gently on his bandaged shoulder, needing to be closer to him than his condition allowed. “Not as much as I love you.”

He huffed, on his way back to sleep. “You owe me a dance. In a red dress. With wings.”

Shea placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Count on it.”

Eric lost track of time. The only constants in his current state of delirium were a beautiful elf in a shiny red dress that took extra special care of him, and, oh yeah, a cat that talked. Aishling came up with the weirdest things, assuring him he’d live one moment, then saying something off the wall like, “Gordie’s back,” the next. Even a delirious man with a fever knew headless guys just didn’t do that.

At last Eric woke. The room spun and damned if that black cat wasn’t sitting square in the middle of his chest. He peeled his gritty eyes open and stared at her.

Aishling purred, her pretty blue eyes half-open, as if too comfortable to stir. Her nose twitched. “Avoid travel,” she whispered in a soft, kittenish voice. Half air. Half make-believe.

He wrinkled his whole face at that nonsensical comment. There was no logic to anything this cat said. Talking felines? Just plain weird.

“Go away,” he groaned, wishing he had the strength to put her back in that Harley saddlebag.

“Ah, you’re up.” Shea lifted out of the nearby chair. “What did you say?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “This cat talks, you know. She’s bugging me.”

Shea leaned over him and planted a kiss on his forehead. “What cat? There’s no cat here. Aishling is back at Murphy’s. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

Eric patted his chest with both hands. Sure enough. Aishling was gone. Damned good thing. He shoved a hand over his face, needing a shave and an aspirin for his headache. “What’s that smell?”

“Gun cleaner,” Shea whispered, nodding toward the open bedroom door. “Jordan’s obsessed. He’s cleaned your weapons three times already this morning.”

Eric lifted his head to view his buddy just outside the doorway. The poor guy looked like shit with his arm in a sling and one black eye. But damn, he was earnestly absorbed in his work, his head bent over a disassembled pistol.

It was called field stripping, the process of partially disassembling a weapon to clean it. A man broke his rifle or pistol into its biggest components: barrel, slide, rod guide, frame, and magazine. Then, with cleaning rods and bore brushes, little wads of patches and solvent, each piece got meticulously scrubbed until those patches came out clean and mostly dry. Then lubricants. There wasn’t much to it, unless a guy developed a titch of hyper-awareness and over-compensated by cleaning the same four weapons over and over again. Like Jordan was doing.

Obviously, he needed to focus on a work well done, even a simple job. That was why he cleaned and re-cleaned. It was his way of putting the past behind him.

Simple logic. After every mission failure, lost battle, or loss of life on the warfront, when a guy was feeling like crap and his squad was sure they were a bunch of losers, their commander called them together. Sometimes they got their butts chewed. Sometimes the chaplain was there to talk about—stuff. But after that come-to-Jesus hard line meeting? The CO assigned hours, maybe days, of menial, back breaking labor. Housework. Scrubbing barracks, walls and floors. Swabbing decks. Redundant FOD walks on desert AF tarmacs. Simple chores, done right always restored confidence and boosted moral at the end of a blistering, sweaty day. Any jarhead knew that.

Shea busied herself helping Miss Day in the kitchen. Delicious aromas overcame some of the smell of the solvent. Bread baking. Some kind of soup, maybe chicken noodle.

Eric pushed his tired bones up from the bed where he’d lain too long. He needed away from the smell of solvent. By the time he’d pulled on a clean pair of jeans and shrugged into a dark blue T-shirt, he could barely manage a slow shuffle to the bedroom door.

Shea came to his side, one arm at his waist, the other on his chest to hold him steady. “You’re up.”

“For now. Sit outside with me?”

No sooner said than done. Miss Day took over kitchen duties while Shea dragged a chair outside. Shuffling past Jordan and his gun cleaning station, Eric paused. “How’s it goin’?”

Jordan grunted without looking up. “Almost done.”

“You ought to do this outside. Come on. The fresh air would do you good. Join me and Shea for a breather.”

“Nah.” He wiped the clean pistol in his hand with a soft cloth before he lifted his eyes. “I didn’t give you up, bro. I wouldn’t do that to you, at least I don’t think I did.”

Eric waved the apology off. “I don’t hold grudges, not when truth serum kicked both of our butts.”

Jordan pushed off the floor, his emotions etched on his face. Instead of a handshake, he pulled Eric into a man hug. They slapped each other’s backs, and Eric winced, but called it good. “Is one of those clean enough for me?”

“Sure.” Jordan clapped a full magazine into one of the pistols and handed it over, grip first. “Yours. Loaded. Ready to go.”

Eric tucked the weapon in his waistband and gave Jordan a fist bump on his way to all that fresh air. “How many days have we been here?” he asked Shea.

“Just three.”

“Three’s too many.” He dropped his butt into the chair on the porch, tired of being sick and sick of being tired. A man needed to work to stay sharp, damn it.

Shea lowered to the top step of the porch. Tipping back, she peered into the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready. Are you hungry?”

He nodded, grumpier than he’d expected. “Think we can walk to the road and back first?”

She bounced to her feet, a genuine light in her eyes. “Sure. Ready?”

And that was another thing. He hadn’t felt a single spark for his wife since he’d gotten beat up, and it bugged him. He wanted his old mojo back, every last inch of it. Groaning out of his chair, Eric kept both palms on the armrests like an old man with bad knees. Finally upright, he wobbled, but damn it. This weakness bullshit stops here.

It took an extra minute to take that one step to the ground, but Shea was patient. Didn’t that irk him too? He didn’t want a nurse. He wanted his woman. In bed.

The afternoon sun had grown warm. By the time he’d gone a few feet, Eric felt better. Straightening his back, he cocked his elbow like a gentleman, and he took his pretty wife for a real walk. “You like Ireland,” he observed.

“I do. Right now it’s peaceful and everything’s green. Ireland has as many wild flowers as Washington State. And look at the wild rhododendrons. They grow two stories tall here.” She pointed to the cascade of purple flowers to their left, her voice filled with contentment.

“Shea. Look at me.”

“Yes?”

Warmth flooded his chest, the good kind of warmth. “Nothing baby. I just wanted to see those pretty eyes. For a while there, I thought I might never see them again.” He zeroed in on a post at the side of the road, his turning point.

She clenched her fingers around his. “Murphy went to the market to buy a pregnancy test kit. I want to know if we’re going to be parents.”

Just hearing the excitement in her voice lit a familiar fire in his belly. “You’re ready?”

She nodded. “Yes. I want us to be a family. Will you marry me?”

That took his breath. He stopped short to tug her under his arm. “I never signed those divorce papers, baby. We’re still married.”

Those pretty turquoise pools turned misty. “But I think it automatically takes effect after a while if you don’t sign it, doesn’t it?”

He wrapped her up in his arms. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I never agreed to divorce you, so there.”

A cry hit the back of her throat and suddenly, his body sprang to attention. She clutched his chin and tilted up on her tiptoes to reach his mouth. Threading his fingers through her short hair, he reeled her in to his lips. God, I hope we’re pregnant.

They kissed. More like they devoured each other. She tried to be gentle, but her rowdy nature kept getting in the way. Eric wanted to pick her up, but his broken ribs protested too much. At last, he came to his senses. There was no convenient place to lay her down and molest her from head to toe. He had to calm his raging hard-on for now.

Easing her feet back to the ground, he murmured, “I want you” to let her know this was not over. Just postponed.

A lighthearted giggle lifted out of her. “Miss Day will be wondering where we sneaked off to.”

“Let’s head back.”

He’d no more than faced the cottage when a creepy feeling slithered up the back of his neck. The rule was simple. If you sensed you were being watched, you probably were. “Go to the cottage,” he ordered, his inner sniper on high alert. He shook her fingers free and grabbed his pistol. “Run, Shea. Go! Now!”

“But—”

“But nothing?” He stabbed a finger at the cottage. “Get inside!”

The bullet came out of nowhere. Eric never heard it. One tap to the head. Just like he would’ve done.

“Let me go!” Shea screamed, throwing her elbows into the muscled wall behind her. She was desperate to reach Eric before he died. “Jordan! Help me! Help!”

An idling engine sounded nearby. A gloved hand covered her mouth. The man who’d grabbed her grunted when her elbow connected with his throat. She threw another, but had no traction, not off the ground like she was.

Jordan’s angry face appeared at the cottage window, then at the door. “Shea!”

Miss Day ran to his side, a shotgun in her hands.

The idling engine drew closer.

A black bag descended over Shea’s head, and still she struggled. The brute that had hold of her shoved her to her knees into a vehicle. She hit the seat face first before he laid a solid hand on her ass and pushed her to the floor.

The door slammed just as Jordan hit the side of the vehicle. “Give her back!”

A gun discharged. Then another. Shea cringed. Not Jordan! Please not Jordan, too!

Panic climbed up her throat. Thrashing, Shea was still determined to run, but her kidnapper caught her left wrist and twisted it behind her back. Then her right. He snapped something onto each wrist, and she was immobilized.

An awful scent filled her nose. She’d come across it just once in her life. Blood.

She’d been caught by the man in the black robe, Abdul-Mutaal.

The vehicle came to a grinding halt when another gunshot sounded, and Shea dared to hope. But then it roared forward, fishtailing as it screeched onto asphalt.

Then she knew where she was going. Straight to Hell.