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Ice grinned up at her now, blinked away that looming afterlife, told his grinning parents they’d have to wait a long time to say “told you so” to his dead ass.
They’d have to wait forever.
Because his ass was staying right here.
Right here with her.
Forever here with her.
∞
EPILOGUE
THREE DAYS LATER.
NAVAL HOSPITAL.
BETHESDA, MARYLAND.
“Take a right past the ER and it’s the first room on your left. We had to move them.” The primly uniformed Navy nurse smiled reassuringly as panic streaked across Indy’s face. “Oh, no, nothing like that. There’ve been no setbacks after the surgeries. They just wanted more space for . . . well, you’ll see. Go right in, Ms. O’Donnell.”
Indy exhaled, returned the smile, then hurried past the Emergency Room, where she’d spent nine anxious hours the first night watching from a distance as nurses and doctors worked feverishly to first remove the bullet from Ice’s chest, then go to work on tracking down every bit of shrapnel from all three men’s bodies, racing against time to extract all foreign objects and closing up the wounds before life-threatening infection set in.
Indy herself had been treated for shock and minor burns and a few cuts and scrapes. Her ears were still ringing, but she’d gotten the all-clear after finally taking the brain MRI that Ice insisted on even as they worked to patch his broken, torn body back up.
Indy had stayed up for two days straight as the doctors monitored Ice and Benson and Kaiser for any signs of shock or internal infection. After getting the all-clear at the 48-hour mark, Indy had collapsed in an empty room in the sprawling Naval Hospital, the same place they’d taken JFK after Dallas.
She’d slept deep and hard, awakening refreshed but anxious to get to Ice. So when she hurried to his room and found it empty, she’d started to panic before the nurse told her they’d all been moved around the corner.
Now Indy turned the corner, pushed through the first door on her left, then stopped abruptly and gasped at the scene inside.
It was a damn circus in here.
The room was the size of a football field. They’d opened up some movable walls to create a large space big enough for three full-sized hospital beds and at least as many long tables, every spot of which was occupied by CIA and Darkwater men and women squinting at laptops or barking into cell phones or having mini-conferences about some part of whatever grand plan was unfolding.
Indy stood shellshocked for a long moment, taking in the sheer insanity of what appeared to be a fully-staffed CIA-Darkwater war-room.
At the center of which were Kaiser, Benson, and Ice.
Each of them reclining propped up in their hospital beds.
“Hey,” Indy said, hurrying over to Ice’s side, smiling as he pulled her in for a kiss. “How are you feeling?” She glanced at the dressing on his chest. It was new and significantly smaller and less bloody than the last one. “You’re lying on your back now. So all the cuts are healing? No leftover shrapnel?”
Ice swiped away her questions. She could tell he was still embarrassed for passing out in the street. She wanted to roll her eyes and tell him to get over his manly-man ego, but she decided to let her man hold on to his macho frame while he was still forced to use a bedpan.
“There you are,” came Benson’s voice from the bed behind her. “Indy, I want you to meet Nancy Sullivan.”
Indy turned to see a pretty fifty-something redhead with blue eyes the color of a summer sky. “Nice to meet you, Nancy. Are you . . . are you part of Darkwater?”
“Yes,” said Benson impishly.
“No,” said Nancy at exactly the same time, their voices drowning out each other. She sighed, shook her head, then rolled her eyes towards Benson while flashing an exasperated smile at Indy. “It’s complicated. I left Darkwater, but now I’m going to help out for a bit until John gets back on his feet.”
“It’s not that complicated at all,” said Benson. “You left and now you’re back. Simple as sunshine. Stop being such a grump, Nancy. You want some morphine? Hey, nurse, can we get this redhead jacked up on some morphine, please.”
Indy giggled, then glanced past Benson to where Kaiser was having a hushed conversation with Bill Morris, the CIA’s Deputy Director. She waited until they finished up, then made her way over there just as a sharp-eyed, spectacled woman with thick white hair and an infant in each arm arrived at Kaiser’s bedside.
“I’m Alice Kaiser,” said the sharp-eyed woman with the infants, a boy and a girl who appeared to be fraternal twins, cute as buttons and twice as perfect. Alice smiled down at her babies. “This is Adam with the big grin. And the shy one burrowing into my boob is Eve.”