Page 101 of Fatal Vision
Then nothing until he’d surfaced for a moment to be blinded by bright lights overhead. Masked faces told him he was going to be okay. To close his eyes and it would be over before he knew it.
Shit. He’d ended up in surgery all right.
By all that’s holy, tell me they didn’t let Jax operate on me.
Not because Jaxon Sloan wasn’t a true rock star in every sense of the word. He was. The gifted SOB could perform surgery as easily as he shot down a plane full of terrorists. Colton had been there and seen it.
And if Colton had needed surgery, there wasn’t anyone he trusted more to take care of it, but the ribbing he would take from the other guys would be brutal and endless.
He’d owe Jax too.
Colton didn’t like owing anyone anything.
“No, ma’am,” Shelby’s no-nonsense voice brought him back to now. “I don’t know what report you’re referring to.”
Ma’am. Shelby was talking to…
Beatrice.
The thought brought him fully awake, but his eyelids did a dance. Up. Down. Up. Down. He couldn’t seem to keep them open.
Finally locking them at half-mast, he managed to get a look at his new digs. The hospital room was various shades of white and off-white. Shelby stood at the window, the setting sun splashing stripes of orange across her face through the blind slats.
Sensations in his body began to register.
And boy, did that suck. Good ol’ pain—a familiar friend—came rushing to the surface, making him grimace.
Shelby’s face screwed up. “A report can’t be filed anonymously. Even if an agent were trying to protect someone, they couldn’t file one without going through proper channels. Procedures have to be followed. Reports have to be signed and dated.”
Colton tried to move his legs, found they were tree stumps. He lifted a hand to rub his face, except he only managed to lift it an inch before it fell back beside him.
Her brows crashed down as she listened. “But once a report is filed, it can’t be deleted from the system. That would take someone high up in the chain of command to do something like that and no one I know would do such a thing. That would be a federal crime.”
Another pause, the faint sound of the voice on the other end.
“Me?” Shelby’s back straightened. “Excuse me, but what exactly does this report say and how in the hell did you get your hands on it?”
Another try at movement and Colton managed to sneak his hand up. He pulled the oxygen tube out of his nose. “Get away from the…window,” he croaked.
Shelby whirled, the consternation on her face lifting slightly at the sight of him. “Look, I don’t know what you’re implying, but we need to continue this conversation later. Colton’s awake. I’ll call you back.”
She hung up, staring at him, and again he registered a war of emotions going on inside her.
“You hung up on Beatrice.” His mouth felt like it was filled with charcoal briquettes and he sounded like he’d smoked a dozen cigars in quick succession. “No one hangs up on her.”
“I just did. She’ll get over it.” She moved toward his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like hell. What happened?”
She sat on the edge and brushed his hair back. “When you hit the cabinet during the bombing, the handle left a nice little impression on your back. Apparently it knocked some of the shrapnel near your spine loose and did internal damage causing your abdomen to fill with blood. You’re lucky you were here at the hospital when you passed out. The emergency surgery saved your life.”
“Tell me Jax didn’t do it.”
“Jax?”
“Megadeth.”
“Ah. He sort of…supervised, I guess you could say. The surgery took hours and they’ve kept you sedated because I told them the minute you woke up, you’d hop out of bed and undo all the repair work they’d done.”
