Chapter Thirty

He drifted on waves. Warm waves. Bright waves. Noisy waves. Maybe floated was a better word. Though why he was in the middle of the ocean on a bobbing raft escaped him. How he got there didn’t matter. Only the fifty-pound weight on his chest. Breathing was damned difficult. Thinking was harder. Instinct told him he’d be safe as long as he stayed on the raft. He was dying maybe, but warmer than he had been. Not a bad way for a man to go.

A gentle hand skated over his forehead and raked through his hair. It lingered at the side of his face, holding him. Cupping him with something that felt a lot like loving him. Lacy cut my hair, he wanted to tell that person, so they’d know someone had cared about him once upon a time. Instead, he let the darkness win. He drifted away.

At last he opened his eyes to quietly beeping monitors. Wires. Tubes. A godawful cannula stuck in his nose. Where’s my raft? He wasn’t bobbing any more. A ceiling came into view overhead. A shimmery ceiling.

I’m sick, he quickly deduced. Not adrift. Not dying. Not yet.

He saw her before he heard her. Lacy came out of nowhere as silent as a Christmas angel, like she’d been standing post and watching for this precise moment. Tender green eyes peered down at him from above. She rested one soft hand on his arm, the other to the side of his face.

Lacy looked a thousand times prettier than an angel, but she was crying. Wordlessly, she laid her head on his chest, wetting the thin material of his hospital gown with warm tears. He breathed the fragrance of her hair back into his soul. There was nothing better than knowing she’d survived; that she was the only person with him. That the first thing he laid his eyes on wasn’t Jamaal like he had every other day the last few years.

Drapes of red hair rolled over her shoulders, falling on his arms and neck like silk, draping him in silence. The very private place it created was filled with only him and only her. He fingered the strands that brushed over his fingers. She trembled in the way of all good women, and he could feel her breathing deep breaths the same as he was, as if they both needed each other’s air to live. There wasn’t anything better.

My Lacy.

Jake could barely lift his right hand to the side of her head to hold her against him. To never let her go. His heart swelled with love, but damn, he had no strength. Darkness tugged at him. “Lacy,” he growled, not wanting to go. Not yet.

She lifted the blanket and climbed into bed, pushing her long legs alongside his and covering them both with the blanket. The woman he adored was completely dressed, but nothing felt better than her warm body snuggled close to his. Still she didn’t speak, but snuggled under his arm like she’d always belonged there.

He lowered his face into her hair and drew in a deep breath of—oxygen. Damned cannula. Lacy took the hint. Lifting the thing off his mouth, she traded it for a small kiss. It wasn’t a barnburner like her other kisses, but it warmed him better than any blanket.

“Love you,” he muttered thickly.

She didn’t answer, just replaced the mask and melted her body against his with one hand over his heart. He was pretty certain she was crying again, and he wanted to comfort her, but his mind lost its focus. Floating was over-rated. This felt more like falling.

The darkness took him.

“How is he?” Zack asked quietly as he entered Jake’s very nice private hospital room and made himself as comfortable as he could on one of the regularly sized plastic molded guest chairs. For a big guy like Zack, that had to be a tight squeeze.

“Better,” Lacy replied. She’d grown fond of this gentle warrior who kept faithful guard over his friend and her. Zack reminded her of Jake in a lot of ways. He’d always been somewhere in the background, taking care of his buddy—and now her.

The FBI confirmed that Rafe Poindexter and his men had murdered all of the clinic’s night shift personnel. The cruel deaths of her friends, Roxy, Jeanette, Carol, and Bonnie, even the unlikeable Dr. Anderson made Lacy sad. She’d never cared for the man’s abrupt bedside manner, but no one deserved what Poindexter had done.

And that sixth person? Sapphire Dawn, a sixteen-year-old runaway who’d ended up a hooker in Foggy Bottom’s dark back alleys. No one knew yet how she came to be in that basement or why she’d been murdered. The FBI was still sorting through a wealth of DNA evidence taken off her body, but that little girl had a mother and a father somewhere, and Lacy wanted to meet them. She wanted to paint poor Sapphire Dawn home. Every little girl and boy deserved one last chance.

While Jake slept the first days after being rescued, Zack made sure she took care of her heart problem. Turns out all that shock treatment she’d been given by Dr. Death had either caused heart damage or further exaggerated an existing condition. She didn’t know which, just knew the medication she was on now resolved the problem, and those scary palpitations were gone. Plus she now had a no kidding cardiologist who actually cared about his patients.

The afternoon after she was properly diagnosed and treated, Zack had brought his pretty wife, Mei, and their three daughters to visit their Uncle Jake. It was Christmas day, and it was all Lacy could do to not cry when sweet LiLi climbed onto the bed and gave Jake a big sloppy hug.

“I love you, Uncle Jake,” she told the sleeping man in no uncertain terms while tears dripped off her nose and ran down his neck. She pulled a wad of green tissue paper out of her coat pocket and tucked it into the palm of his limp hand. “You were supposed to come visit me cuz I got you a Christmas present, see?” Her lower lip quivered. “You’ll like it. I did chores for Daddy and saved my money and bought it just for you.”

Lacy had to wipe her face. Kids. Damn. They hit below the belt.

Zack and his family weren’t the only visitors. Before the day was done, Alex had stopped by with his wife, Kelsey. Some big bruiser named Mark dropped off a picnic basket of snacks, so she’d have something to munch on besides hospital food while she waited at Jake’s bedside. Then a bunch of other agents from The TEAM shuffled in with a piping hot Starbucks for her and a flower arrangement for Jake that declared, ‘Get well, buddy!’

Everything made her cry, but them calling a guy they barely knew ‘buddy’ did her in. She wrote their names down so she could tell him who all stopped by when he finally woke. Taylor, Gabe, and Maverick. On Christmas evening, Rory and Ember.

Last of all, Jamaal had stopped by with a plush teddy bear he’d gotten from who knew where. He hadn’t stayed long because he’d started bawling and Lacy understood. A man could only lose so much, and Jamaal knew how close he’d come to losing everyone important to him that day. She’d told him to go back to her apartment where he’d been staying, then she’d hugged him and that started another teary downpour that ended with Jamaal blubbering how much he loved Jake and her. Poor Jamaal.

The few times she’d run home to change or bathe, she hadn’t run into him, but her tiny place was always spotless and the refrigerator filled, so she knew he’d been there. Once Jake recovered, they might need to move into a bigger place.

A lot had happened in the short time since Jake had been rescued. Zack hit the headlines when he planted a fist into the belligerent face of one Mr. Manny Prentiss, whom the FBI, along with Zack’s assist, had been caught red-handed with his pitiful human cargo from Cambodia. During the arrest, Prentiss pulled a gun, but Zack disagreed with him, and—BLAM. His fist came up and Prentiss went down. Lacy cut the newspaper article out and taped it by Jake’s bed where he could see it the moment he opened his eyes.

“His hearing any better?” Zack asked, pulling her out of her reverie.

“He keeps talking. Sometimes he grumbles in his sleep, but of course I can’t tell him that he’s deaf. He hasn’t woken up long enough for conversation yet.”

“Could be a lot worse. Alex been by?”

“Yes, a lot of other people too. I kept a list so I could remember all their names.”

“He leave anything for Jake?”

Lacy nodded toward one of the flower arrangements on the counter. “The brown and yellow flowers. Why?”

“Oh, nothing.” Zack shot her a cute smile like he knew something she didn’t.

“Will you stop teasing and tell me,” she hissed.

“Alex should be the one to tell you, but…” Zack leaned forward. “He’s hiring Jake if Jake’s willing.”

“No. Really?”

“Sure. Jake’s the kind of guy Alex respects. He’s no quitter, and the dumb-butt went into hell with nothing more than a fancy suit and a nine mil he never intended to use.”

Zack certainly knew his friend. “Do you think Jake will accept the job offer?”

“Probably not,” Zack admitted. “Guess we’ll know when he wakes up. How’s your heart?”

She smiled. “As good as his. Thanks for making me see a doctor. I do feel better.”

Zack winked, the big flirt. “Don’t you think it’s bizarre that you’d never had a heart problem until Jake was in trouble?”

“What’s bizarre is that his heart survived despite him nearly freezing to death. That’s how most hypothermic victims die.” Lacy reached for Jake’s hand, needing to touch him, hoping he’d open those dark grays and offer that serious crooked smile of his.

“What’s even more bizarre is that the two of you had life threatening heart problems at the exact same time. Hell, Lacy. You were as gray as he was by the time Alex and Jamaal showed up at your front door. Either of you could’ve died that night.”

“I was gray?” She hadn’t known that.

“Yes, you were. Maybe it’s true. Maybe two hearts combine once they finally hook up with the right one. Maybe that combination kept you both going when you should have died.”

Lacy stilled. Zack’s words rang true. The real problem that day had nothing to do the erratic electrical impulses of her battered heart. Jake had been scary close to dying, yet somehow their hearts had reached for each other across time and space. Cried for each other. Found each other. Maybe even strengthened each other. Definitely saved each other.

She shivered and it had nothing to do with being cold. “Maybe,” she said at last. If there was one thing the last few days had taught her it was that anything was possible during Christmas, the season of the heart.

“And another thing. Why did you decide to paint Jake’s heart in the middle of a snowflake instead of something else?” Zack asked. “It was as if you had a premonition of his death, Lacy. In doing that, in putting that one little drop of red paint in the middle of all that frost, I think somehow you also captured his future. You painted a single speck of life in a frozen wasteland. You painted him home just like you’ve done with your other pieces.”

Tears filled her eyes, and Zack needed to shut up. He was too damned insightful for a man with bulging muscles all the way to his toes. She didn’t know why the inspiration had hit her to place a heartbeat in the middle of frozen death. She just had. After making the kind of love she and Jake had made, it just felt right that morning, to sit there close to the man she loved and paint the gift of a heart for him.

“I love him,” she admitted quietly. “He is my heart.” Every last beat of it.

Zack sat so close that he bumped her with his brawny bicep. Lacy didn’t have to look at him to know he was emotional. That was why she liked Zack. He was another tough guy with a marshmallow heart.

“How did Jamaal get away from Poindexter’s men?” she asked to change the subject.

“Said he faked being knocked out once they dragged him down to the basement and left him for dead.” Everyone else being Lacy’s friends from the clinic. “Said he’d never been so scared in his life, so he ran like hell. Least he was smart enough to stick close by. That alone saved Jake’s life.”

True. Jamaal was the unlikeliest of heroes, and God, she loved him for watching over his buddy like he had. “They’re two lost souls,” she told Zack.

His head bobbed. “They are, but those tunnels,” he murmured. “Back in the day, Foggy Bottom was a breeding ground for gang activity. Irish. German. Black. You name it. The neighborhood was full of bootleggers and prostitution. Used to be known as ‘Round Tops’, named after one of the worst gangs. Poindexter must’ve tapped into one of those underground alleys. God knows there were plenty of them.”

Lacy swallowed hard, the memory of Rafe’s tunnel and the smells in it were hard to forget.

Zack kicked a long leg out. “Jake better wake up pretty soon. I’m damned tired of looking at his ugly face while he gets his beauty sleep.”

Lacy smiled, her fingers intertwined with Jake’s and her heart beating with his. She wasn’t tired of looking at Jake, but, yeah. He’d better wake up soon. She needed to kiss the stuffing out of him.

Finally. Jake Weylin opened his eyes. The weight on his chest had lifted, the oxygen cannula was gone, and someone had hold of his left hand. Oh. Lacy. She’d fallen asleep in the chair next to his bed with her arm outstretched and her fingers wrapped around his. He tightened his hold. Sweet.

Her green eyes lit up at that telling squeeze, and he was pretty sure she’d said something. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear a thing. “Eh?’ he had to ask, his throat raw and thick with congestion. “What happened?”

Up she came until she was kneeling on the edge of his bed. She braced her palms to the sides of his face and answered with a teary kiss that would’ve melted his socks off if he’d had any on. Some kind of magical energy shot straight through his tired-as-hell body to his bare toes. He cupped the back of her skull so he could get a better hold on her. Tubes and wires came with his arm, but it didn’t slow him down. He wanted more of that mouth of hers.

She cocked her head for easier access. So much warmth came with her touch as she deepened the kiss, pushing her tongue between his lips and sparking feelings no dead man had a right to own. Lacy Wright was making a meal of him, and she was the perfect desert. The only thing that could make this moment better would be if they were both naked.

For some crazy wonderful reason, his eyes brimmed with tears. She had to stop. This was too much, too soon, and, oh, what the hell. No, it wasn’t. Not really. He got it now. He might not ever deserve her, but Lacy Wright was his to love and to hold for time and all eternity.

He asked again, “What happened?”

Lacytouched her fingertips to her lips and pressed them to his chest. Jake might not have heard the words, but his heart leapt up to catch that homerun “I love you” like a rookie on second base. He pressed his lips to her forehead and let his tears mingle with hers.

The divine strains of George Frideric Handel’s chorus welled up from inside of him while Lacy’s love washed over him, baptizing him again and again. The war was finally done.

Alle-freaking-luia!