Page 26

Twenty-Six

Jackson

My training dictates I keep my eyes fixed on my target through the scope, until I’m one-hundred-percent sure I’ve completed my objective and the threat is eliminated.

But I saw the man’s head explode as the impact of my high velocity round felled him like a tree, so I doubt he’ll be getting up ever again, and I didn’t see anyone else moving inside.

Screw training .

I scramble down from the branch I was perched on, nearly falling the twenty feet or so I’m up off the ground, but I make it down in one piece. I would’ve made an easy target, but since no one took potshots at me, I assume the threat was eliminated with Vallard.

Growling in frustration, I realize I’m going to have to strap on my limb if I want to get to Stephanie fast. I was so focused on Vallard, I lost track of where she was. I keep my eye on the trailer, hoping to catch a glimpse of her but instead I see Jonas barreling around the corner, a gun in his hand and yelling at Ma—who is hot on his tail—to stay the hell back.

Needless to say, she’s not listening. The moment she spots me she comes running for me, and I barely have the socket fitted over my sleeve when she almost tackles me.

“Oh my God, I was so scared. Are you okay? And Stephanie?”

Up ahead, Jonas is already ducking into the front door of the trailer, leading with his gun. His training shows too. I untangle myself from my mother’s arms and hurry after him.

“Stay back until we know it’s secure, Ma,” I call back over my shoulder.

When I step through the door, the first thing I see is Jonas, kicking away the gun lying inches from Vallard’s prone body. But my focus is to his right, where I saw Stephanie through my scope. She’s not sitting up now, but is slumped over, the upper half of her body draped over who I presume is Mitchel Laine.

Fear for what I might find does not stop me from rushing to her side and brushing away the hair covering her face. Her eyes are closed, but when I press my shaking fingers against her carotid artery, I find a pulse and a sob of relief escapes me. But there’s so much blood, it’s hard to know where it’s all coming from.

When I carefully roll her off the body and on her back, I sense more than see Jonas crouch down on the other side of Laine’s body, but I’m focused on Stephanie.

“What’ve you got?” he asks.

“Shoulder wound. Can’t find anything else, but she’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Out of my way,” Ma snaps, appearing out of nowhere. “Move,” she urges, unceremoniously shoving me aside as she crouches down beside Stephanie.

She immediately starts ripping at Stephanie’s shirt, exposing a nasty looking wound in her shoulder.

“Help me roll her,” she orders.

When we have her on her side, Ma quickly examines her back, before motioning for me to roll her back.

“No exit wound. The bullet’s still in there. We need to get her to the hospital ASAP.” She tugs at my shirt. “Take this off, I need it to apply pressure to the wound.”

“This one is alive too,” Jonas informs us. “Although barely, he’s got a fucking hole in his head the size of a golf ball.”

“It’s going to take too long to get an ambulance here,” I point out, as I pull my shirt off over my head. I’m not concerned about that piece of shit, he can croak, but I’m worried about Stephanie. “The volunteer ambulance service in Troy was shut down last year. We’re gonna have to drive them out.”

I hand my shirt to Ma as Jonas gets to his feet.

“I’ll go for the truck; we can fit both of them in the back. Call Ewing, get him to organize Life Flight into Kalispell. With the explosion in Libby, the hospital will already be overwhelmed. They fly Koalas and should be able to take two patients at once. Tell them to land at the Troy airfield, we’ll meet them there.”

“What explosion in Libby?” Ma asks, but her husband is already running out the door, and I’m busy trying to get the sheriff on the line.

Less than five minutes later, I’m in the back seat with Stephanie, and Jonas is loading Mitchel Laine into the cargo space with the help of the deputy who followed my stepfather’s Yukon here. The guy tried to make noise about us leaving the scene, but Jonas took care of that in a hurry. He’s now agreed to stay put and guard the crime scene until Junior Ewing—who is on his way—gets here.

Since one of the dead bodies is that of an FBI agent, I’m sure the feds will be crawling all over this place in no time. I have no doubt they’ll want to talk to me, since I’m the one who took that man down, but I don’t give a flying fuck, they’re going to have to wait until I can get Stephanie looked after.

Ma crawls in the back with Laine and Jonas gets behind the wheel. He doesn’t mess around; three minutes later we pull onto the small airfield.

I had my fingers resting on her pulse the entire time.

* * *

Stephanie

The first time I opened my eyes, there was a man in a helmet, hanging over me and the noise was overwhelming. I don’t remember anything after that.

This time when I open my eyes, I see the friendly smile of a woman in surgical scrubs.

“Hello there. You’re at Logan Medical in Kalispell. You may feel a little groggy, but that is normal since you just came out of surgery. There is a call button clipped to your gown if you need anything, and a doctor will be in shortly to talk to you.”

She’s gone so quickly; I doubt she heard my whispered reaction. “Surgery?”

I had surgery? How did I end up in Kalispell?

I try to lift my right hand to find this call button she mentioned, but it won’t move. Then I notice my heavily bandaged arm and shoulder. My head starts to pound when I try to remember what happened, so I close my eyes.

I must’ve dozed off again, because this time when I wake up, my entire right side is throbbing with excruciating pain. I quickly close my eyes as a moan escapes me, and I try to find the call button I remember the nurse telling me about.

“Here.” The button is pushed in my hand, as I blink open my eyes and find Jackson’s face hovering over mine. “Welcome back, Hotshot. I think it’s probably time for some pain meds.”

I try to nod but it shoots a sharp pain to my shoulder, which already feels like it’s on fire. My thumb finds the call button and I hold it down until a nurse rushes in a few moments later. She administers something through my IV, and it thankfully doesn’t take too long before the pain becomes more manageable.

“Is that much pain normal?”

She smiles at me. “With this type of surgery, I’m afraid so, but when the doctor gets here, she’ll probably put you on a pump. That way you don’t have to wait for us for your next dose, you can manage the timing yourself.”

The surgeon, a woman I’d guess to be in her mid-to-late fifties with gray hair curling out from under her surgical cap, smiles sweetly as she approaches my bed. She looks more like a cookie-baking grandma than she does someone who cuts open people for a living. As soon as the thought enters my brain, I’m embarrassed to realize I’m stereotyping and how shortsighted it is.

She sits down on the edge of my bed and introduces herself as Dr. Littleton, oblivious to the fact I just mentally placed her in a flour-dusted apron instead of the surgical scrubs she’s wearing.

“You were brought in late yesterday afternoon with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. You’d lost a great deal of blood and were in shock, which we dealt with first. As soon as we safely could, we took you up to surgery to find the bullet ended up lodged in your right scapula. Shoulder blade,” she clarifies.

I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact I apparently lost a substantial chunk of time somewhere, when her next words draw my focus back.

“We were able to recover the bullet, but it had done extensive damage. You had a break in your shoulder blade that required plates and screws to stabilize. There was also damage to your soft tissue, muscle and such, all of which will heal over time. But the most serious damage was done to your brachial plexus.” She uses her hand to illustrate as she explains. “It’s a collection of nerves that runs down from the neck and shoulders into the arms and hands, controlling movement and sensation. Sometimes nerves can regenerate but your case required surgical repair, which involved an entire team. Now, we were lucky we happened to have a neurosurgeon available to step in, because the sooner these repairs can be done, the better your chances of recovery. We were able to harvest a nerve from the back of your right leg and graft it into place in your shoulder. The harvested nerve was a sensory nerve, which means there will be a section of your skin on the back of your leg that no longer has sensation. However, in its new place, it should be able to return some, if not most, of the function of your right arm.”

“Wait,” I interrupt, my heart rate going a mile a minute as my ears start ringing. “Some function? I’m going to have permanent damage? When you say some function, what exactly does that mean?”

Jackson picks up my good hand in his and gives it a little squeeze. It’s a small gesture, but it helps me stay grounded. I immediately start breathing in through my nose, trying to regulate my breathing.

Dr. Littleton offers me a sympathetic smile and a gentle pat on my leg.

“Like I said, the injury was substantial, and even though we were able to get in quickly to do repairs, there is no way to tell to what extent the damage is lasting. But I have to be honest with you; complete, full function is not expected with this type of injury. Recovery will require patience and resolve on the part of the patient. It’ll be a long road of rehabilitation to gain small, incremental steps forward.”

She gets to her feet.

“Now, for at least the next couple of days you’ll be our guest, and I want you to focus on resting. I’ll be by regularly to check on you, and we should have a better idea of what we have to work with once the swelling goes down a little.”

With that she leaves, the nurse scrambling after her muttering something about pain medication. My eyes find Jackson, whose fingers I’ve been crushing with my left hand. Despite his encouraging smile for me, his eyes are solemn. He looks exhausted and concerned.

He knows—probably better than most—this is the end of my career.

What irony that it should come at the hands of a man whose arrest over a decade ago helped me launch it.

I’m not ready to contemplate the full implications, so I distract myself by asking Jackson, “Do you know how I got here?”

Still holding my hand, he pulls up a rolling stool, sits down, and starts talking. By the end of it I realize how incredibly lucky I’ve been.

For starters, if Jackson’s mother hadn’t insisted on coming, no one would’ve known where to look for me. I don’t even want to think what could’ve happened to her if she hadn’t gotten out of the car and managed to hide.

Next Laine, whose only reason for not killing me right away was to use me as bait for Vallard, and that bullet he intended to end me with never even got fired.

And then Ben…my God. So full of himself as he wasted time taunting me and boasting about his powers of deception. Long enough for Jackson to get there and get a bead on that son of a bitch before he was able to kill me.

I escaped a bullet in my head, not once, but twice. So, yeah, suddenly the damage to my shoulder feels lucky compared to the alternative.

When I’m moved from recovery to a regular hospital room a little later, I’m able to thank Alex and Jonas in person. They apparently drove Jackson straight to Kalispell yesterday afternoon and have been here, waiting with him, ever since.

Realizing that gives me a lump in my throat I have trouble swallowing down. Especially since, by Alex’s account, they weren’t the only ones in the waiting room.

“JD and Janey drove up last night when they heard,” she shares. “They stayed most of the night, waiting to find out if you came through surgery okay. Janey had a full schedule today but they’ll be back for a visit tonight.”

“Feds got here earlier too,” Jonas adds. “Your boss, Bellinger, and Wilcox. They’re itching to talk to you, but Jackson’s out there holding them off so we could have a quick visit first. I need to get Alex home.”

His wife clearly resents that comment as she grunts and plants an elbow in his gut.

“You were yawning pretty hard yourself, old man,” she grumbles.

“Well, it wasn’t me who thought it was a good idea to go chasing down a violent offender,” he mutters back.

The two of them are pretty cute; despite the bickering, their love for each other is written on their faces.

“Thank you.” I reach out my hand at Alex and she grabs it in hers. “If you hadn’t been there…”

She waves me off with her other hand. “We don’t do what-ifs. They’re a waste of time.”

“Still,” I insist. “I’m thankful. To both of you,” I add, including Jonas with a look.

“It’s what family does,” he returns, putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “But we should head out.”

“We’ll be back though,” Alex adds. “You make sure you get some rest.”

They haven’t been gone a minute when Jackson returns. He walks right up to the bed and leans over me, cupping my face in his hands.

“I hear you were holding off my boss out there.”

“Hmm,” he grumbles. “They’re chomping at the bit, but I told them I needed to make sure you were up for it.”

I don’t get a chance to answer when he kisses me, slow and sweet, before resting his forehead against mine.

“What was that for?” I whisper.

“That was my way of telling you I love you.”

He covers my mouth with his fingers before I can get a word out.

“I spent way too many hours yesterday evening and through the night imagining the worst possible outcomes, and the one thing foremost on my mind was I would never have had a chance to tell you that. Hard to believe, just a couple of years ago, I was ready to throw in the towel. That would’ve been a tragedy, because I’d never have known there was someone out there perfect for me. I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

I grab hold of his wrist.

“Jackson…”

“You’re it for me, Stephanie. You’re my person.”