Page 72 of The Woman Left Behind

He checked the time, then stood. “I’ll see you when you get back.” He stood beside the bed looking down at her; she could feel that Jedi thing again, compelling her to look at him, but she set her jaw and kept her gaze on the sheet. She’d already seen enough of him, so damn big and tough and battle-weary, that intense dark gaze on her, his presence almost like a punch in the stomach.

She wanted him to go. He was the one she most didn’t want to see. None of the other guys had come back for her, either, but Levi was the one who had kissed her and held her, and he was the one who had made the decision to leave her behind. When she thought of the others, she was okay; when faced with Levi, everything in her wanted to shut down.

Because he was Levi and his will was a force of nature, he cupped her chin in one big, rough hand and turned her face toward him. She stubbornly kept her gaze down, though it felt stupid, but neither did she feel cooperative. His thumb rubbed over her mouth and he made an impatient sound, then bent down and pressed a quick, hard kiss to her mouth, staying just long enough to give her a touch of his tongue. “We’ll talk,” he said—was that a promise, or a threat?—and strolled out, his broad shoulders barely fitting through the door.

Maybe, maybe not. Three days ago—a lifetime ago—that touch, that kiss, would have had her heart pounding and her thoughts racing around like a crazed squirrel.

He’d left her behind. He’d kissed her and put his tongue in her mouth, then he’d left her anyway.

And she was so tired. She didn’t want to think about anything, deal with anything, not even that something about Levi had changed and she didn’t have the energy to figure out what it was. Maybe when she got home she’d feel more like herself.

The next time a nurse came in, Jina asked about going to critical care to check on her pals. “I don’t see why not,” she said, then looked at Jina’s bandaged feet. “I don’t think you want to walk that far on those puppies, though, so I’ll see what I can do about a wheelchair just before the next visitation period.”

But then she forgot, and Jina had to ask someone else. Finally she got that wheelchair, though, and an orderly took her to the ICU. Voodoo’s cubicle was first. He opened his eyes when she wheeled inside, and she almost collapsed with relief. He was pale, he had tubes running into his chest, an oxygen cannula in his nose, an IV stand strung with multiple plastic bags, and his left leg was immobilized.

Still, he said, “Hey.” He sounded heavily drugged, which he was, barely out of sedation.

“Hey, yourself.” So far this was a very profound conversation.

His bleary gaze went to the wheelchair. “What’s up... with that?”

“Oh. I hurt my feet. Not bad. I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Damn boots.”

“Yeah, the damn boots. They won’t cause any more trouble, though; they’re gone.” That was positively chatty of her, the most she’d said at one time in... had it really only been aday? A little more than a day? She felt as if weeks had passed.

He lifted a hand, reached for her. She rolled closer and took it. “I was... mostly out,” he said with difficulty, “but I know... you were...” The words drifted off, then he rallied and finished, “Glad you’re all right.”

“I made it. Now you have to make it, too.” She laid his hand back on the bed.

“Planning on it.” A barely there smile touched his mouth. He lifted his hand again, made a fist. She smiled, too, as she fist-bumped him.

“See you back home, buddy.”

She rolled herself down the corridor to where Crutch was. He was asleep, or unconscious. Jina watched him for a minute. He was breathing regularly, but his temp was a hundred and three and his blood pressure was up. Crutch had gone long hours before he was treated with anything but the most basic care. He was strong, but it was still touch-and-go.

Looking at him, looking at Voodoo, she didn’t know if either of them would ever be able to rejoin the team.

Life changed on a dime. Even people who lived ordinary lives were at the whim of chance: an auto accident, a fall, a walk in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nothing was ever the same again. For them, the members of the GO-Teams, fate was tempted every time they answered the phone.

Donnelly was dead. Voodoo and Crutch had come close. She herself had come through the disastrous mission without any lasting harm, but the balance could so easily have tipped the other way and she could have died in the Syrian desert. She’d been terrified during parachute training, at the time more than half convinced she wouldn’t survive, but that had been a walk in the park compared to the desert. Another mile—even another half mile—and she wouldn’t have made it. Five more minutes, and she wouldn’t have made it. The helicopter would have lifted off and she wouldn’t have been on it.

The orderly stopped chatting with the ICU nurses and took her back to her room. Once more lying in bed, her feet aching, she looked out the window and thought about the mission. A spark of interest lit, and she seized on it with relief, glad to feel something other than sad emptiness. When she got home and talked to the others, she’d find out what they thought had happened, but she’d gone over it herself and it was obvious Yasser and Mamoon had been hostile. When Mamoon had seen the computer screen and realized she would be able to alert the team to the ambush, he’d gone outside and consulted with others who had been well hidden, perhaps in the very wadi she’d used for escape, but somewhere Tweety hadn’t been able to see even in infrared. Perhaps they’d been able to contact the ambush team. Or theyhadn’tbeen able to contact them, and their solution had been to set off the explosion that burned the truck and hopefully killed her, as a way to warn them something had gone wrong. Maybe they’d thought the team would immediately turn back, leaving them vulnerable to attack from the rear.

She didn’t know why the attack had been planned as it was, if there had truly been an informant or if he had already been dead. There was a possibility they’d never know exactly what had happened, or why, but the GO-Teams had analysts who would go through every bit of information and advance the most likely theory.

In the end, she didn’t have to know why. She had information from her part of the mission, what had happened and how, but she didn’t know why, and in a way she was done with it. It was as if there was a line of demarcation in her mind, and what had happened in the before didn’t matter in the after.

The next day, she was put on a hospital flight home. Her feet were completely wrapped in what she considered a surplus of gauze, the bandages extending halfway up her shins. She wore the shapeless paper booties surgeons wore and was taken on board the plane by wheelchair. Her feet were better, still very sore and achy and no way would she have wanted to put on a pair of shoes, but she thought the wheelchair was a little bit of overkill, kind of like the bandages. She could have walked on board, though slowly.

It was a long flight. Pretty much they all were, because the GO-Teams didn’t operate domestically. She slept some, read some, and still felt like crap when the plane landed at Andrews. She was rolled off the plane, then kind of abandoned while the more seriously sick or injured were unloaded.

She’d been officially released, so really she’d hitched a ride on the med flight and wasn’t one of the patients. She was pondering the logistics of getting home—she had no cash for a taxi, her car was elsewhere, and she wasn’t exactly in good-enough shape to drive anyway while she was still on pain meds for another couple of days. She’d have to borrow a phone and call... someone, though she didn’t know who—

“Babe!”

She turned toward the call and saw Terisa coming toward her, a visitor’s tag clipped to her blouse. A few seconds later she was enveloped in a warm hug, and for the first time since being rescued she felt tears sting her eyes. Fiercely she returned the hug. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said into Terisa’s shoulder and blinked back tears.

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