Page 65 of Lethal Pursuit

Maya didn’t believe him. The bullet could have hit an organ or an artery and they wouldn’t know how bad the damage was until they operated. She reached out and took Jackson’s face in her good hand, cupping her palm around his jaw, holding his gaze with all her formidable will. “Don’t you dare leave me.” She choked on the last word, tears spilling down her face and she didn’t care who saw them. If he hadn’t thrown himself on top of her, he wouldn’t have been shot.

Jackson’s expression softened as though he understood how afraid she was of losing him. “Won’t leave you, baby. Promise.” His face contorted when they did something to the wound. She glanced down to where they were putting pressure bandages on him but then another medic appeared with two oxygen tanks.

“Matching set of his and her oxygen tanks, as requested,” he said, plunking them down and slipping a mask first over Jackson’s nose and mouth, then hers.

Annoyed, she started to bat the thing away, but Jackson stopped her by grabbing her hand and squeezing tight. When she looked intohis face, he gave a sharp shake of his head and she relented, lying back on the stretcher where they’d placed her. It was so fucking stupid to be worrying about her right now that she wanted to scream at him. She was still crying and couldn’t seem to stop, each sob tearing at her injured ribs and she didn’t care. She wanted the pain.

The medic next to her put a blood pressure cuff on her right arm and inflated it, taking her vitals and recording them before getting on the radio, she assumed to whatever base hospital they were taking them to. As Cam had promised, the flight wasn’t long, but it seemed to last forever and Maya refused to let go of Jackson’s hand. Every few minutes she squeezed his fingers to let him know she was there, and it heartened her a little when he squeezed back. Soon the Chinook’s engines began to reduce power until they finally landed.

Seconds after the tail ramp lowered the medics carried her, Jackson and Haversham out. She blinked in the blinding sunshine and reluctantly released Jackson’s hand with a final squeeze as they rushed them through the pulsing rotor wash and across the tarmac. Then she started coughing and lost track of everything: time, place and Jackson’s location.

She was sagging against the stretcher when she could at last open her eyes and found a medical team descending on her. They poked needles into her and prodded her all over, despite her growls of pain and frantic questions about Jackson. No one would tell her anything except to save her strength and not talk. Even in the X-ray room the tech wouldn’t answer her questions.

A nurse came in and injected something into her IV line that she said would make Maya sleepy. Her eyelids started to droop in seconds. With one frantic burst of strength, she fought it and snarled at the woman.

“Someone better take me to Sergeant Thatcher, or I swear to God I’ll get off this gurney and find him myself.”

The nurse must have realized Maya wasn’t bluffing, because she reluctantly wheeled her down a brightly lit hallway into another room, where other patients lay behind curtained cubicles. One curtain was pulled aside and the moment Maya saw Jackson she cried out and half sat up, rolling to her good arm to brace herself, despite the stab in her ribs. She was woozy enough from themedication that it took two tries to rip the oxygen mask away. “Jackson!”

His eyes opened and focused on her. She saw his wan smile form beneath the clear mask. “Hey.” His voice was raspy, but clear. Bloody bandages littered the stretcher and floor.

“What’s happening?” she demanded of the medical staff at his bedside.

“We’re prepping him for surgery so we can take out the metal fragments in his intestines,” a man wearing a surgical mask and cap answered. From the authoritative way he acted, Maya guessed he was the surgeon.

But oh, shit, fragments in the intestines sounded really bad. Her stomach balled up so hard it hurt. “He’ll be okay though, right?” She didn’t take her eyes off Jackson, afraid they were lying.

“He’ll be okay,” the surgeon answered. They started wheeling him away and she panicked until Jackson pulled the mask aside to speak to her, every line of his face etched with pain he was trying not to show.

“Heal fast, Maya, and come to me when you can.”

She nodded and watched with a lump in her throat as they wheeled him through the big double doors at the end of the room. The doors swung shut and all her strength vanished, leaving her limp on the stretcher. It would be okay. She’d have the chance to confess her feelings for him once he came out of recovery. When she told him she didn’t want an audience, because it was no one else’s damn business, and it went against military regulation anyhow. Not that she really gave a shit about that part at this point.

“Okay, now will you cooperate and lie down?” the nurse asked in exasperation. “You’ve got a long flight ahead and your own surgery for that wrist coming up.”

Flight? What flight?She was suddenly too exhausted to form the question. Whatever drug they had her on did its job and pulled her under.

The next time she woke up, people were standing at her bedside, discussing medical things she didn’t understand. Were they talking about her? What time was it? Whatdaywas it? She wanted to ask about Jackson but her eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

A gust of cool, sweet air hit her in the face. Her eyes snapped open and it took a moment for her to realize she was outside. A large gray aircraft loomed in front of her, its tail ramp open. Were they loading her on to it? Her tongue was too heavy and uncooperative to speak. Her heart started to race. She didn’t want to leave without knowing Jackson was out of surgery and would be okay. Where were they taking her? When would she see Jackson again?

“Whoa, easy there.” A steadying hand pressed down on her shoulder when she tried to sit up.

Her tongue wouldn’t form the words she wanted to say. She needed to know what was happening. How was Jackson? And she had to tell someone about Rahim. Had they killed him? She hoped so. The cold night air made her shiver, despite all the blankets they’d piled on her. Everything hurt and she was too tired to keep her eyes open. Her eyelids fluttered closed. The last thing she remembered was jolting awake at the roar of the plane’s engines as they powered up for takeoff.

TWENTY-TWO

MAYA SWIRLED TOWARDconsciousness slowly, becoming aware of her surroundings by degrees. The quiet hit her first. The roar of the plane’s engines was gone and there was a weird chemical taste in her mouth. She cracked her eyes open and instantly squinted at the blinding white light assaulting her. Trying again, she found herself in a private hospital room. She still had an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. That was why her breathing sounded so Darth Vaderish.

She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the brightness. Sunlight poured in from a window on the left hand side of the room. She started to raise her left arm to shield her eyes and realized how heavy it was. There was a cast from above her elbow to the base of her fingers. She’d had surgery? She didn’t remember a thing after being put on that transport plane.

“Good morning.”

She whipped her head to the side of her pillow to find Doug Haversham smiling at her. He sat in a wheelchair tucked beneath a rolling side table strewn with papers and a laptop. He looked exhausted. He’d shaved, revealing smooth brown skin and a strong jaw. His left leg was casted, sticking out in front of him on one of the chair’s pedals.

She swallowed past the dryness in her mouth and throat she guessed were side effects from the intubation and pulled off the oxygen mask with her good hand. “Where am I?”

“Qatar.”

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