Page 135 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
Into the silence I growl, “Checkmate, motherfucker.”
I lower my rifle and spit on the ground.
Then I turn and jog back the way I came, Killgaard forgotten as I rush back to the one thing in the world that matters more than anything else.
Tabby.
Forty
Connor
She’s in surgery for four hours. I’ve seen war, lost people I love, been through a lot of tough shit in my life, but those four hours are the longest and darkest I’ve ever spent.
SOAR picked us up right on schedule in the designated LZ. The Black Hawk has a capacity for eighteen fully loaded soldiers, and we were only six, plus one injured woman and one injured girl. Juanita was semiconscious when Murphy and Reid found her, dumped on the floor like trash in a storage room on the first level of the caves. The doctor at the hospital in Fairbanks says she’ll have a nasty scar on her back, but she’ll eventually be fine.
Physically, she’ll be fine. How she reacts mentally to her ordeal remains to be seen. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, her mother and all six siblings are being flown in, which hopefully will help begin the healing process. It’s always better to have your team by your side in times of trouble.
We’ve been debriefed by the CIA, which is exactly as bad as having all your teeth pulled by a medieval dentist. The four Marines who teamed up with us on the op—Murphy, Kasey, Reid, and Big Swingin’ Dick, a man of few words and one hell of a reputation—have gone back to Camp Pendleton, after receiving my thanks and an invitation to join Metrix once they leave the corps, should they be of a mind.
Now it’s only Ryan and me, pacing the halls of this cold, depressing, podunk hospital, doing everything I can not to do something I haven’t done in over twenty years since Mikey died.
Cry.
“Brother,” says Ryan, watching me from his plastic chair in the waiting room. His bulk makes it look like a piece of child’s furniture. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“Yep,” I say, and turn around and pace the other direction over the crappy, frayed brown carpet. The chairs are brown too. The walls are a lighter brown. Even the plants are brown. It’
s like this place is one giant turd.
“She’s a fighter. You know that.”
“Yep.”
“She was conscious during the flight to the hospital. That’s a good sign.”
Conscious, but not speaking. She just gripped my hand and stared up at me, her green eyes huge, her pulse faint.
Her blood leaking all over the goddamned place.
“Yep.”
Ryan sighs, realizing that no matter what he says his pep talk won’t make me feel peppy.
After another half an hour, a doctor walks into the waiting room. He’s a different doctor from the one who attended Juanita. This one, although younger, looks tired and more than a little cranky. Because Ryan and I are the only ones in the waiting room, his glower is directed at us.
“Mr. West?”
“Hughes,” I correct without thinking.
The doctor turns his glare to Ryan. “Are you Mr. West?”
Ryan looks startled. “Uh…”
“Who is the husband of Tabitha West?” snaps the doctor.
I step forward, my heart hammering. “Yes. Sorry. That’s me.”
The doctor sends me a sympathetic stare. “Your wife is out of surgery.”
