Page 21 of Sutton's Shadow

“Yeah, I guess,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck again.

Finch had reached the top, and Wyatt braced himself to hold his weight as he rappelled down. As they switched places and Wyatt hooked into the rope, he said, “He was working a protection detail for her in Colombia when the project she’d been working on went south. Liam died trying to get her out.”

The other guys were all listening in on their conversation. The room went silent, as if they were paying their respects to his friend.

“She sustained a head injury at the same time he died and spent weeks in a coma.”

“Okay,” Finch said, drawing the word out. “So... it’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt sighed. “Complicated.” An understatement.

“Does she know?”

“Know what?”

“That you sat with her while she recovered.”

Wyatt’s foot slipped, and he tightened the grip his fingertips had on a crimp. His head whipped around as he hung off the wall, feet dangling, arm muscles bulging. “What the fuck, Finch? How the hell do you know that?”

Finch grinned up at him, proud he’d pegged Wyatt so well. “I know the type of man you are. You’d be there for a teammate’s family.” The other guys, who’d come closer to listen in to their conversation, nodded. Most were former military. They could understand the unspoken promise a soldier made for his fallen teammates.

Wyatt found his footing on a jug, recalling that time he’d spent with her in the hospital. A time she had never known he was there. She lay in that bed, pale and unmoving, her head wrapped in a stark white bandage. He’d studied every element of her face, his eyes drawn repeatedly to the little beauty mark on her temple. Even injured and in a medically induced coma, she’d been stunning, and he’d felt like an asshole for noticing.

He’d felt conflicted as he sat with her, unable to resist holding her hand.

The steady beat of the machines measuring her heart rate was the only sound penetrating the quiet in the room. Sutton lay motionless under the ugly hospital blanket. It’d been two days. Two days since he’d buried his best friend. Two days since he’d learned she was hospitalized. Two days since he’d first sat down next to her prone form.

She was too still. It was unnatural for Sutton Masters to be so stationary. She’d been full of piss and vinegar, as his gram used to say. Her energy was endless, drawing people to her vitality. It was how she succeeded so spectacularly in her photography; he couldn’t fault the results.

But now she was motionless. For the thousandth time, he catalogued her features, hoping for some sign of life. She was pale, the dark circles under her shuttered eyes stood out in stark contrast. Even the tiny mole by her left eye looked devoid of its usual dusky color. Her rosy lips were bereft of their natural brilliancy. Her once honey wheat hair lay on her shoulders, the strands lacking their typical luster and shine.

Everything about her appeared dimmed, and his heart went out to her. Wyatt lowered his head, unwilling to continue his study of her lax features. His eyes fell to where her left hand lay outside the covers. Her long, elegant fingers were currently ringless. Wondering where her engagement ring was, if she even had one, he glanced around the room and under the bed, looking for a bag of personal items but coming up empty. Nobody else could have kept her stuff since he was the first to visit her. She had no family except for a distant uncle who couldn’t arrive until next week. And strangely enough, none of Liam’s teammates had been by. He made a note to ask the nurse where the items had ended up.

His thoughts turned to the men who’d worked with Liam, some of them Wyatt had known from his Ranger days. They had all stood stoically beside the flag-draped casket, mourning the loss of their teammate. Wyatt had talked with them briefly, their anger palpable. As the mourners wandered away from the gravesite, he’d stood with the men, watching the cemetery workers lower the casket into the ground. His old teammate, Wade, filled him in on the clusterfuck that had ended with the death of their friend. They glossed over the details of Sutton’s injuries, appearing indifferent.

Their anger was understandable. He was angry as well. But their anger seemed to be misdirected, which struck Wyatt as odd. As he sat with Sutton, wondering why the rest of Liam’s team was not fulfilling the promise they had all made to each other during their Ranger days, he thought of their lack of concern for Liam’s fiancée. He couldn’t understand it. From his knowledge of the situation, she suffered the injury trying to document the atrocities that had taken place that day. They should praise her and use whatever evidence she had collected to go after those responsible for Liam’s death.

Wyatt glanced around the room again, this time looking for her camera. The powers that be would need those pictures to see that justice was done, but the device was nowhere in sight. Sutton had risked her life for those images; he hoped the pictures made it into the right hands.

A twitch in her fingers pulled his attention back to her hand. He slipped his hand under hers, wrapped his fingers around it, and squeezed gently, letting her know she wasn’t alone.

For nearly a week, he sat like that, her hand in his, before he had to return to work. Each day praying that when he’d pressed her hand, he’d feel her squeeze back, to no avail.

“I did as much for her as I could, but I haven’t seen her in years. She’s not the same woman I once knew.”

“You gonna tell her you’re interested?”

Wyatt shrugged his shoulders as he approached the wall. “Dunno.” He gave up trying to convince his friends he wasn’t interested.

“You should.”

“Yeah? And how do you suggest I approach that subject?” He grunted as he stretched to reach a hold.

“Umm...”

“Exactly,” he muttered, bending his knee to place his foot on a sloper, using his leg muscles to push himself up to reach a pocket hold above and to the left of him.

“How about you say... Hey, Sutton. Sorry about your dead fiancé. He was a friend and a good man. Fancy a fuck?” Finch’s words startled Wyatt, causing him to miss the pinch hold he was reaching for. He stumbled before catching himself. Laughter echoed off the walls of the gym.

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