Page 35 of Tango (Hunt Brothers Search & Rescue #4)

Tucker

T hey tell me I died.

More than once.

The doctor says he’s not even sure how I’m still alive. That, for all intents and purposes, I should be with the Lord right now.

It’s a miracle, they keep saying. But they don’t know the half of it.

I saw death. In those brief moments when my heart was not beating, I felt the warm embrace, the gentle peace that settled around me.

It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Even now, it feels like a dream rather than something I experienced while my heart was stopped.

Then I was ripped back into the now. Into pain and darkness.

But I will thank God for that every single day.

Because it means my time isn’t over yet.

Barely awake, I lie in a hospital bed with a cannula beneath my nose.

I’m exhausted and surrounded by the beeping sounds of a machine in the background and the oxygen being pumped into my nose, filling my lungs.

The door opens, and Lani walks in alongside my mother.

My mom covers her mouth on a sob then walks around to gently caress my forehead just like she used to do when I was a kid and sick.

“I thought I told you guys to stop getting shot,” Lani says, tears in her eyes.

“First time for me, remember?” I choke out. My throat is so dry, but it feels good to speak. “Alice?”

“She’s fine. In the waiting room. Doctor said you can only have two visitors at a time, and she told Mom and me to go first.” Lani reaches down and takes my hand.

Knowing Alice is okay and close by eases that gnawing fear I’ve had since waking up. “She’s okay,” I repeat, closing my eyes.

“I wouldn’t say okay,” Lani says.

“What do you mean?” I open my eyes, my heart rate increasing to the point that an alert sounds on the monitor. I know she’d been hurt when Darren hit her. Did he do more damage than I thought? Did Ramiro hurt her after I lost consciousness?

Lani releases my hand to turn the alarm off on the machine. “Calm down. You’re not out of the woods yet.” She takes a deep breath. “Physically, she’s fine. She’s a mess, worried about you.”

I recall how she’d clung to me as I slipped away. Her frantic cries. Her pleas with God to save me. Pain blooms in my chest. I raise an arm and gently rub my free hand against it.

“How are you feeling?” my mom asks.

“Tired. Kind of out of it.”

“That’ll happen when you come back from the dead,” Lani replies.

“I’m going to head back into the waiting room so I can send Dylan in.

He’s a mess too. He did chest compressions on you until the paramedics arrived.

Riley packed your wounds. The two of them are the only reason you were loaded into an ambulance instead of a coroner’s van. ”

My mom chokes on a sob, so I reach up and gently cover her hand with mine.

Riley would have handled that fine. He goes into work mode and blocks out everything else. But Dylan. What did that cost him? Those moments of uncertainty? Of pain?

My brother has already suffered so much, and I hate that he thought that—even for a moment—I was gone.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I’ll go too. That way Alice can come see you.” My mom leans down and kisses my forehead, lingering there for just a moment. “I love you so much, Tucker Hunt.”

“Love you too, Mom. Love you, Lani.”

She squeezes my hand again then heads over toward the door.

“Love you,” Lani says. “Glad you didn’t die.”

I smile as they leave the room. Once I’m alone, I close my eyes for a moment.

Everything is so hazy that I can barely keep my eyes open.

The room spins a bit, but it subsides the longer my eyes are closed.

As I drift, I think I hear the door open again, but I’m already too far under to open my eyes again.

By the time I surface again, I’m feeling a bit better. I open my eyes and note that it’s dark outside now. Dylan is sitting next to the bed with a book in his hand.

“I didn’t know you could read.”

His gaze lifts instantly, locking on me. “I like to look at the pictures,” he replies.

I grin. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Tuck. You had us all scared.”

“Me too. How are you?”

“I’m not the one who was target practice. Two bullet holes. Man, when you do something for the first time, you go all out.” His tone is sharp, strained.

“Dylan.”

He leans forward and sets the book down on the table. “I’m better now,” he says. “But I really thought you were gone. When I came in and saw her clinging to you, when you had no pulse—” Tears burn in his gaze. “I can’t outlive you, Tucker. We have a deal.”

I reach over and take his hand. “We go out together in a firestorm of bullets while we save the world. That’s the plan. I remember.”

He snorts and rubs tears from his eyes with his free hand. “Your girl is a tough one.”

My girl.

“She is.”

“She went completely feral on Ramiro. Riley had to drag her away from him.”

Pride warms my chest. “Really?”

He nods. “She stayed with you on the way here too. They had to nearly restrain her to keep her from following you into surgery. It wasn’t until I got here that she even let herself get checked out. Physically, she’s fine.”

I take a deep breath and smile, imagining Alice putting up a fight when they asked her to leave. I can picture her charging after Ramiro the same way she went after those bruisers in her parents’ house.

“You love her.”

His words are a punch to the gut. A reminder of the promise I made to myself all those years ago. Yet, here I am, breaking it because I fell head over heels in love with her. “Yeah.”

“So, you caught those pesky feelings after all.”

I laugh, then wince when pain shoots through my abdomen. “Yeah, I guess I did. Not sure anything will come of it though.”

“Why not?”

“I just— I don’t know that it’s the right time.”

Dylan covers my hand with his. “You’ve been taking care of me for a long time, brother. Longer than you needed to. But I can’t be the reason you refuse to be happy.”

“What do you mean?” Did Alice say something, did someone ? —

“I’ve known for a long time that you’ve been putting off letting yourself be happy because of me. But my demons are mine, Tuck. They’re not yours.”

“You’re my twin.”

“And you’ve been sacrificing for me long enough. Come on, Tuck, don’t let Alice get away because you’re afraid of what could happen if you let yourself embrace what you feel for her.”

A tear slips down my cheek as the weight of my brother’s pain lessens ever so slightly. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“You won’t. We live less than a mile apart, Tucker.”

I snort. “True.”

“Just do me a favor and stop suffering on my behalf. My own pain is hard enough to carry; I don’t want to shoulder yours too.”

I nod. “Okay.”

There’s a soft knock on the door right before it opens.

Alice steps in, her eyes wide, one bruised.

There’s a cut on her cheekbone and another splitting her lower lip.

Seeing her injuries brings a fresh wave of anger over me, but it’s nothing compared to the joy consuming me as I lay eyes on her again.

Our gazes hold with her standing by the door and me unsure what to say.

What do I say to her?

What if she decides she wants to stay in California?

“I’ll check in a bit later.” Dylan takes his book and stands, pausing right before Alice. He gently touches her shoulder and whispers something in her ear.

I’m so shocked at the sight of him touching her that I nearly miss her soft laugh. He never touches anyone. The darkness doesn’t return when he leans in, and the smile on his face doesn’t fade.

It only makes me love her even more that she puts him so at ease.

“Okay,” she replies.

Dylan flashes me another smile then heads out of the room.

“How are you feeling?” Alice asks, crossing over toward the chair Dylan just vacated.

“Like I can no longer brag about having never been shot,” I reply, hoping it’ll bring a smile to her face.

Instead, her expression falters, and tears break free.

“I’m sorry, Alice, poor joke.” I reach out for her, and she takes a seat on the edge of the hospital bed.

There’s barely a sliver of space available, but I wrap an arm around her to keep her from falling.

She lays her head against my chest, fitting so perfectly against me.

“I thought you were going to die, Tucker. You did die. You crashed in the ambulance on the way here. On the operating table. They didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“God wasn’t ready for me yet,” I say softly then kiss the top of her head. “How are you doing?” I tip her face up and gently brush my thumb over her split lip.

“I’m better now.”

“Ramiro?”

“In jail where he belongs,” she growls. “They have enough evidence on him, Wilbur Huck, Darren, Kara, and the rest of their security team to lock them up for a long, long time. It was on the news earlier. Web Safe is going to be lucky if they can keep their doors open after this. So I guess I’m out of a job. ”

I laugh. “I bet we can find you something else.”

“We?” she asks.

“What kind of guy would I be if I let you job hunt alone?”

She laughs then takes a deep breath. “Frank is in the waiting room. He hasn’t left since he arrived. He’s pretty broken up over what happened.”

My heart aches for Frank. For believing he’d lost his nephew to finding out that he was behind all of this—responsible for murder and trying to steal sensitive information, all for money.

“Did the hackers get anything?”

She shakes her head against my chest. “They didn’t get anything. Your brothers got there right in time.”

“They always do.”

“Hey, Tucker?” She raises her head, crystal gaze bright and shimmering with unshed tears.

“Yeah?”

She swallows hard, then opens her mouth before closing it again. “I’m just really glad you survived. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t.”

“Me too.”

I know it’s probably ridiculous, but there’s a part of me that was hoping she’d say those three words I am so desperate to hear. Three words that would change everything between us.