Page 82 of Peace Under Fire

Yet she remained unconscious. Her sister had never passed out during or after a healing before. This wasn’t normal. But what she’d done back there wasn’t normal either.

Even if the cockroaches weren’t monitoring the ER, what, exactly, could the clinic do for her? She couldn’t explain to the staff what had happened. They would never believe her, and God only knew how fast that tale would make the gossip rounds.

She took Jo’s pulse again. Steady and strong. Her cheeks were pinker, her breathing almost back to normal. Definite signs of improvement. At this point taking her to the ER seemed more dangerous than letting her recuperate on her own.

“I think she just needs sleep,” Mandy said, slowly straightening. “Let’s wait, see how she is when she awakes.”

If she awakes.

Mandy pushed the doubt aside and glanced around. They were several miles from the compound now and Jacob showed no sign of slowing down.

“Where are you going?” The jet still waited for them. That seemed like the obvious answer to her question. But she suspected he had a different location in mind.

He ignored her question in favor of glancing down at her thighs and frowning. “Where’s the phone?”

She found the cell lying on the floor and leaned forward to grab it.

“Is the line still open?” Jacob asked.

“Looks like it,” Mandy said, studying the minutes ticking along at the top of the cell phone’s screen. According to the counter, the call was heading into its thirty-seventh minute.

Thirty-seven minutes since they’d climbed into the Rover and left the garage. Wow, it felt like an eternity since then.

Jacob held his hand out and Mandy silently passed the phone over, watching him lift it to his mouth.

“Crusher,” Jacob said, his voice clipped, “you copy?”

Silence.

“What happened?” Grumpy asked, his raspy voice sharpening.

“We ran into some unwelcome company while you were out of it,” Jacob said tersely with a quick look in the rearview mirror. He lifted the phone even closer to his lips. “Crusher? You copy?”

“How bad?” Grumpy barked.

“Bad,” Jacob said.

“Fuck,” Grumpy growled, the curse dark and dire.

“Crusher—”

Jacob had barely gotten the name out, when Crusher’s heaving, harried voice erupted from the phone. “Copy. Hang on.”

They waited in silence, the SUV speeding down the empty, white road. The snow turned wet, hitting the windshield in fat droplets. Jacob turned on the windshield wipers. The rhythmic squeak of rubber against glass joined the tension circling through the SUV.

“Kinda busy right now,” Crusher finally wheezed. “You get the packages to safety?”

“We’re good. You boys need any help? Maybe—”

“Sit tight,” Crusher rasped. “We’re on the move. Took out a bunch of tangoes. Couple more up our ass. We’ll handle them. You sit on our packages.”

“Casualties?” Jacob’s voice was tight.

“Couple of scratches. An in and out. Nothing to cry about. Gotta go.” The line went dead.

Well, that didn’t sound so bad. At least nobody had died during the explosions and gunfire—or at least none of the good guys. She peeked at Jacob’s face, which looked grim. Why the tight lips, tense face, and hard jaw?

She replayed Crusher’s words back through her mind. “What’s an in-and-out?”

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