Page 53

CHAPTER

FORTY-EIGHT

KARLIN

TWO WEEKS LATER

K arlin wrinkled her nose as the lingering fumes of harsh disinfectant filled her nostrils.

She hated that smell, and every hospital seemed to share it.

It always reminded her of the days and weeks after John’s overdose, when she woke up every day in a cold sweat, unsure if his brain would be able to recover from the damage he’d inflicted.

Ever since that day, she’d avoided hospitals entirely. Even when her brother had suffered other, more minor overdoses over the years, she’d never made it past the waiting room, where she could keep the exit firmly in sight.

Asher gave her hand a squeeze, and she looked up at him, offering a quick smile of thanks before she continued walking beside him.

She wasn’t over what had happened to her brother.

Not even telling Asher–she was getting used to calling him by his real name now–was enough to take away that trauma completely.

But it helped, and that was enough.

She was here now, refusing to let the memories of her past control her present, and that was something.

Or maybe it just helped that she’d endured enough new traumas to drive most of the old ones deep into the back of her mind.

“To the right, I think,” Asher muttered to himself, reading a sign on the wall at the end of the hallway. “This place is a total maze.”

“Too manly to ask for directions?” she teased, glad for the opportunity to think of something other than the person they were going to see.

“Obviously,” he said, giving her a wink. She couldn’t help but to flinch and glance around the hall as he leaned over and kissed her cheek. Though he was no longer undercover, and they had no reason to worry about who saw them together, it was a difficult habit to shake.

They continued on. Now that they were closer to the ICU, it became more obvious that they were, in fact, headed in the right direction.

But with every step, she felt her heart beginning to race a little faster.

“Sweetheart, your hands are sweating,” Asher said, pausing for a moment but not letting go. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. It’s just the smell, I guess,” she said, swallowing hard. “It brings back a lot of bad memories. I mean, on top of the current ones.”

It was true–it was the smell–but it was also the images that flashed in her mind every time she thought of the woman who lay in bed in the ICU.

The blood that had spread out across the floor of the compound.

The panicked yells of the police officers and paramedics.

The victorious cries of Dana Corbett, who was certain that Mother was about to bring them both to the place she called the empire of light.

Asher pulled her against his chest, stroking her hair.

“I just need to stop thinking about it,” she said, her voice muffled against his t-shirt.

Apparently, even when he wasn’t undercover, he still dressed like a slightly less grungy garage band drummer. She was surprisingly okay with it, even if she’d never be one of those girls who emulated her man’s style.

Not that he was her man.

Not officially, anyway.

That was a conversation that she’d successfully been putting off for weeks now.

“Avoiding your fears won’t solve anything,” he said gently, pulling back until he was looking down at her, his lips moving dangerously close to her own.

“But a kiss would?” she breathed.

“It’s possible. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to try anything.”

Before they could get any closer, however, someone called Asher’s name.

Karlin was sure her cheeks were flaming red, but Asher seemed unperturbed as he shook hands with a woman in a white lab coat. She did the same, feeling a twinge of sadness as she took in the doctor’s attire.

Would she ever get to dress that way again?

Certainly not at Senera Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Bajwa was currently out on bail while the police investigated the legitimate allegations she and Axel had made against him, but several of the company’s executives and members of upper management were still in custody.

It was going to be a long haul, but Karlin had already spoken to the prosecution team, and they had assured her that so long as she was willing to help them bring Senera to justice, she would not face any charges related to her own conduct.

Including in the now reopened case of Amira Gorsky’s suicide.

But those assurances did little to calm her fears.

It was still very possible that her career in medical research could be over for good.

“Dr. Erica Cliett,” the woman said, giving them both a tight smile. “Please, follow me.”

Karlin forced her body forward, not wanting to let the woman see how anxious she was. Dr. Cliett was talking, but she struggled to focus on the words.

The memories were suffocating her again, no matter how much she tried to hold them down.

She remembered the pain of performing CPR on John until it felt like she couldn’t carry on another second. She remembered all of those nights sleeping in a chair in the hospital because their parents had given up on him…and she remembered Cora.

When she’d taken that knife to herself, they had both reacted on autopilot.

Asher had forced Lily back against a wall so she couldn’t run, leaving Karlin to jump in and try to stop the bleeding. When the paramedics finally made it inside, they had taken over, leaving her standing there covered in blood until Asher could safely let Lily go.

It had taken a while.

They’d had to explain everything to the police, and even then, the officers had ended up calling the Forge Brothers Security police liaison in San Antonio, Allie Parker, to confirm Asher was in fact a legitimate private security operator.

And the whole time, Lily had been chanting something unintelligible, probably directed by the demon that she’d allowed to poison her mind.

“Ms. Trejo is stable now,” the doctor was saying, snapping Karlin back to reality, “but it’s going to have to be a quick visit. We have to run some labs on her in the next little bit, okay?”

Karlin nodded numbly, noticing the local police officer who had been posted outside of the door to Cora’s ICU room, standing guard.

“Thank you doctor, officer,” Asher said, nodding to them both in turn. “We won’t be long.”

Offering another quick smile, Dr. Cliett jabbed her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and strode off down the hall.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Karlin nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Ready or not, she was going into that room.

It was all Karlin could do to suppress a gasp when she entered the room and saw Cora stretched out on the bed.

She looked like a shadow of the woman she had been.

Her formerly shining brown waves looked dry and dull, and her tanned skin was ashen. Worst of all were her eyes, which were pressed firmly shut.

Her attempt at ritual suicide had almost been successful.

She’d managed to get the knife to strike her heart, but her aim had been off just enough to avoid immediate death. Still, she’d caused catastrophic blood loss and other internal damage, and her medical team had opted to place her in an induced coma in an attempt to promote healing.

They were hopeful that she would retain relatively normal brain function when she woke up, but Karlin knew better than anyone that these things were impossible to guarantee one way or another.

She drew in a deep breath, frozen in the doorway as Asher gave her hand a squeeze.

She’d thought she was prepared for how bad Cora’s condition was, but seeing it in person and hearing it secondhand were two very different things.

“If you need to go, I promise, it’s okay,” he said gently. “We can do this another time.”

“No. I want to stay with you,” she said, refusing to allow herself to hesitate. “But I still don’t really understand why you wanted us to come in the first place.”

The question had been simmering in her mind all of last night and this morning, ever since he’d called her from his hotel room in Amarillo and told her he’d finally been given the go-ahead by the hospital for a visit. She’d hoped he’d explain on his own, but her patience had finally worn out.

“I have a few reasons,” he said, tugging her forward as he walked closer to Cora’s bed, careful to avoid the various wires and IV lines that cluttered the space.

“One, I wanted to come and pray for her. The police can’t find any living relatives, and though she probably has friends, they struggled to find them all the way down in Los Angeles.

Paul told me he wanted to visit, but he had to get back home to Montana before they’d let him.

I’m sure Lily–I mean Dana–would have come, but… ”

He let the words trail away.

Of course, Dana Corbett was in jail, and probably would be for a very long time.

Karlin gathered as much courage as she could muster and reached out to grasp Cora’s hand.

It was cold, but she didn’t let go.

“I feel bad for her,” she said at last. “She was brought into so much darkness. I just hope that she’ll wake up with her mind intact, and if she does, that she’ll choose another path.”

Asher mumbled his agreement, pressing his hand gently against the small of her back. His touch always managed to send a shiver through her, even here.

“So, what’re your other reasons?” she asked.

“The truth,” he said simply. “About myself, I guess. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that my trauma from the war has affected me a lot more than I thought.

I don’t know what that means for my future yet, but I do know that I’m not going to roll over and let it control me.

I didn’t want to come here and face these memories today, either, but I knew it would be good for me. ”

“Well, you’re not having a panic attack now,” she said, offering him a small smile. “Small victories.”

“Exactly.”

A comfortable silence fell between them again as they looked over at Cora, listening to the beeping and pumping sounds of the various machines she was hooked up to.

What they had experienced was traumatic, and she was glad that Asher wasn’t going to try and laugh it off.

Not that she would let him.

This memory was one they shared, forever binding them. That scared her, but at least it was one dark thing she would never have to face alone.

Assuming Asher wanted to stay in her life, at least.

“You never told me reason number three,” Karlin said at last.

“I’m not getting anything past you, am I?”

“Never.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything else, and she wondered if he was going to keep his reasons to himself.

She gave Cora’s hand a final squeeze before walking over and adjusting a vase of fresh pink flowers that sat on her nightstand. She wondered who could have possibly sent them, but before she could give it any more thought, Asher cleared his throat.

“This might sound kind of silly,” he said, his tone guarded.

“Fortunately, that’s never stopped you from speaking before.”

He closed the distance between them in just a few steps, pressing his lips against hers before she could get away.

“We’re in a hospital! We’re in an ICU! ” she said as she pulled back. She had to at least try to keep him in line, even if the dumb grin on her face betrayed her.

“Sorry for the PDA, Cora,” Asher said, giving the woman’s shoulder a gentle pat. “But you did drug me, so I think you owe me one. Don’t tell Dr. Cliett, okay?”

Karlin rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, no changing the subject. What were you going to say?”

“Before you changed the subject by making fun of me?” he teased.

He had a point there.

“I suppose.”

But instead of continuing to tease her, Asher’s face was serious again.

“I wanted you to see a miracle, Karlin.”

She couldn’t hide the surprise on her face. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it.

“This? Cora’s in an ICU bed after stabbing herself in the chest. All because she thought some snake alien would take her to a new planet. Not really seeing the miracle. Just a whole lot of crazy.”

Asher’s eyes were tender as he gazed into her own.

“Exactly, and that’s the problem. You’re looking for these huge miracles that scream in your face, but you’re missing the ones that whisper.

So many things had to go right for Cora to be alive.

For all we know, had we been five minutes later, she and Lily could have completed their ritual killing properly. ”

She felt a flicker of guilt rising in her chest.

Part of her wanted to argue, but she could see his point. Asher seemed to find God everywhere while she relegated Him to the shadowy moments of life, to be turned to only in extreme desperation.

Maybe she was just blind, so used to seeing things with the eyes of a scientist that she forgot her own bias.

“This isn’t the first time this kind of miracle happened to you, either,” Asher said, raising an eyebrow. “And I’m not just talking about narrowly escaping that flood.”

She pulled away from him a little, crossing her arms over her chest as the realization slammed into her. She knew where this was going.

Why had it taken so long for her to understand?

“John. When John almost died,” she said at last, her voice quiet.

“Yup.”

“I hadn’t told him I was coming to see him that day. I didn’t even really plan it. It just kind of happened. But if I hadn’t been there…”

She didn’t want to say the words, but Asher finished the sentence for her.

“If you hadn’t been there, exactly when you were there, Rome would have died. God was always in control, down to the very last millisecond, timing every minute of that day so that your brother would not only survive, but get a true second chance, with his mind intact.”

The thought made her feel strangely sick, but there was no way she could deny it.

The mathematical odds of it all being a coincidence were staggeringly low.

No, they were impossibly low when adding all of the factors together. He shouldn’t have lived through being unconscious that long, let alone without brain damage.

It was a miracle.

A miracle she’d never once thanked God for.

“And do you know why He did it?” Asher prompted.

She shook her head, not bothering to wipe away the tears that had begun to slide down her cheeks.

“He did it for the same reason He performs any miracle: He did it so that you would see Him, and that you would turn to Him. He wanted you to live, too.”

Asher’s words were gentle, but inside, she felt like every part of her was breaking.

God loved her so much, and she hadn’t accepted His love.

She hadn’t even noticed it.

“I–I rejected the miracle,” she stammered, struggling to get the words out through her shame and guilt. “And today I rejected another one.”

She was crying freely now. Asher swept her into his arms, pulling her close against his chest, warming her straight through.

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not over until you’re dead in the ground, Karlin. You can turn to Him at this moment. You can start saying yes. Right here, and right now.”