Page 22 of Peace Under Fire

Giulia had touched her mind before. Not often, as her sister was rabid about maintaining a shield of privacy, but she’d heard her sister’s thoughts. Still, Giulia had never been able to connect without physical contact. And to connect now, without contact, while they were two hundred miles apart, was astonishing…and terrifying.

A jumble of emotions accompanied the scream. Terror, rage, defeat.

The scream coalesced into an urgent warning.

Don’t come home.

Run!

* * *

Squish rolled off the MRI table and plucked out the earplugs the nurse had given him. A dull pressure was already building behind his eyes, a clear indication another migraine was brewing.

He was damned tired of the bastards.

He scowled as he headed across the white floor toward the changing room.

“One of our radiologists will look over the images and generate a report, which will be sent to the doctor who referred you,” the slender, bearded guy in blue scrubs said as he stepped out of the glass-enclosed control room.

Squish caught a glimpse of counters, keyboards, and computer screens through the open door.

“How long will that take?” he asked.

The guy offered a non-committal smile and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up with his index finger. “Depends on how backed up radiology is. But shouldn’t be more than a couple of days.”

Squish grunted an acknowledgement. “We done here, then?”

He was itching to get out of this damn hospital gown and back into his street clothes. More crucially, back behind his sunglasses. Yeah, wearing the shades while inside the building might turn him into a douche tool to some folks. But this room—hell, this whole hospital—was too damn bright and too damn white.

“You’re good to go,” the tech confirmed. “You remember where you left your clothes?”

Was the dude fucking with him? The changing room was less than ten feet to their right. Although, he shook his head, he had just undergone a brain scan. The guy probably didn’t know what symptoms had sent him into that giant tube.

“Haven’t lost my memory yet,” Squish drawled with a tight smile and turned toward the changing room. By the time he’d removed the hospital gown and dressed in his own clothes and pulled on his boots, flashes of light were skittering across his eyes.

He shoved his mirrored sunglasses into place. If he was lucky, the shades might cut the glare enough to stave off the headache until he got home.

He shrugged into his sheepskin jacket, dropping his keys into the right pocket and his phone in the left. As he left the changing room, he shot a glare at the big metal contraption taking up a good chunk of the exam room. It sat silent and still now, its bulk gleaming dully beneath the bright, white light. He hoped this pain in the ass test would be worth the coming migraine.

He gave the blue-scrubbed technician a chin lift and exited the MRI room. The hallway enclosed him in more white walls and bright light—but at least the shades cut the glare enough to make things bearable. For now, anyway.

He’d hoped this new, state of the art machine wouldn’t stir up the migraines like the one at the base hospital did.

No such luck.

But maybe, just maybe, this new machine would pick up some anomaly in his brain that explained the frequency and severity of these damn headaches. If they could identify the cause of the migraines, they could stop them. And the sooner the better. The damn things were making life impossible.

He grimaced, readjusted his sunglasses, and headed down the hall toward the stairs. More flashes hit his eyes, along with a not-so-subtle roll in his gut.

His mouth tightened. This migraine was shaping up to be a doozy. Sure, he’d been expecting a headache, but that didn’t make the one barreling down on him any easier to take. The damn things hit every time he slid into one of those damn machines for a scan.

Every single fucking time.

His doc thought the occurrences were caused by the stress of undergoing the testing. Squish called bullshit on that possibility. His profession was rife with stress. If you couldn’t handle it during BUD/S, you washed out and rang the bell. He’d figured out how to channel the pressure long before he’d entered SEAL training school, long before he’d been assigned to ST4. He’d been a special operator for fifteen years now. Stress wasn’t the issue.

He was still twenty feet from the elevator alcove when the first stabbing pain pierced his left eye.

Son of a bitch.

---