Justice (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 2) (16 page)

Throughout the night I heard the comings and goings in the motel. I worried about our safety, waking long enough to tighten my fingers on a gun butt and roll up to my elbow, but our room was passed by without so much as a misstep.

I drifted off finally, only rousing to slide against Tilly for more loving. Her hot body pressed against me, spooned perfectly with mine. I held her tits and scooped her back to me, waiting for her to lift her hips, her lips, her eyes.

“Tilly.” I licked the side of her neck, gathering her sweat and sweetness on the way.

She mumbled incoherently.

My hands roamed over her. When she hardly moved, I rolled her to her back and hung above her. Her face shone in the pale gloom of the night, pasty and white.

What in the?

I placed a hand on her forehead.
“Tilly, you’re burning up!”

Shot in the Dark

TILLY WASN’T HOT FROM the arid heat or from anything close to arousal. Her skin felt tight, stretched to the limits.

Infection? Illness? Could she have caught something?

“Wake up, Tilly!” Jumping off the bed, I searched through my pack.

I came up with my field kit packed by Bane a couple days ago. I had antibiotics, and an IV, gauze, needles, morphine pills . . .

Dumping the supplies on the floor near the bed, I shook Tilly after tearing the covers off her. I was too scared to take her temperature. She was so hot to the touch her skin burned my hand.

“WAKE UP!”

“Just wanna sleep,” she garbled.

“That ain’t gonna happen. Not on my watch.” I pulled her to sitting, resting her against me.

I listened to her respiration—thready and fast. I laid her down, checked her limbs for a rash, anything to shed light on this sudden fever.

“I’m okay. Leave me alone,” she slurred.

“I’m a trained medic. And even if I wasn’t I’d know you are not fucking well, Tilly.” I spanned her cheeks with my hands, scared out of my mind about how hot her skin was. “Keep your goddamn eyes open, woman!”

“Girl. Woman. What do you want?” she muttered.

“I want you to live!” A terrifying thought occurred to me. One I wanted to ignore but couldn’t.

Holy fuck
.

“Were you shot, Tilly?” I shook her again, her shoulders lax in my hands. “You stumbled out there, and I didn’t check and you never said anything.”

I turned her left and right before my chest hollowed out.

“Just a graze.” She halfheartedly batted my hands away. “Didn’t want to worry you. Didn’t feel any pain.”

“You were shot!” Frantically, I turned on the lamp and immediately wished I hadn’t.

“I cleaned it up.” Her sluggish speech jacked my concern higher.

“With what?” I raked my hands over my hair. “A dirty fucking rag? Fuck, Tilly. This isn’t good.”

The wound, a shallow groove on her upper back, was infected. Septic. And what I’d thought was sweat earlier was blood. A sticky mess of blood that stained her skin, the sheets . . . fuck me . . . the wall I’d screwed her against.

How could I have been so fucking blind?

I rallied into crisis mode with my heart lodged in my throat. I’d never been so shit-scared in my life.

Puss seeped from Tilly’s wound. The skin around it torn and red and ragged. I’d fucked her hard and rough with absolutely no concern for her welfare. Screwed her twice without even noticing she’d been hit.

I returned to the kit I’d tossed onto the floor. I ripped into it, bandages and gauze falling in white squares around me

When I raced to Tilly—my hands filled with alcohol soaked wipes—her head listed back. Intense heat beat off her like a wildfire captured beneath her skin.

Tilly had dropped into unconsciousness.

“Damn you, woman!” I worked over her.

Cleaning the festering wound as best I could, I couldn’t even stitch her up. That would force more toxins into her already poisoned bloodstream.

“You fucking wake up!” I hung an IV drip after sinking a needle into her vein.

I fed her antibiotics, all the while hoping she wasn’t allergic.

“You’re made of tougher grit than this. Wake up, Tilly girl, or I swear to
fuck
I’ll run straight into the next bullet headed my way because I will not live without you.” My forehead bent to hers, I hitched her lifeless body in my arms.

I had no choice but to get her to better care. Tilly needed more help than I could give.

I slung both guns at my hips, lifted her in my arms, and marched into the reception.

“Where you going?” The proprietress, who I’d thought was asleep slumped over on her stool, sprang straight up.

“She’s sick.”

“Need doctor? She American? Need friendly hospital?”

I nodded, holding Tilly in my arms, cradled like a baby while her feverish heat burned through my clothes.

Before I could say another word, Madam shuffled from behind the desk, cut off the lights, and opened the door to the street.

Darkness lit by one streetlight skidded across her determined features.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

“I drive.”

She shifted her weight from hip to hip, and stopped beside the hijacked car she must’ve seen me drive up in.

“Keys,” she commanded.

“No keys.”

“You steal.”

“Borrowed.”

She harrumphed, opening the door and making the seat springs sing when she sat behind the wheel. “Get in.”

I did so with Tilly laid across my lap, her breathing shallow as reeds in the wind.

“Do you have a license?” I asked.

“Do you have passport?” The woman slanted the rearview mirror in my direction from which a scrap of cloth bore the Houthi logo in red and green and white, reading
God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam
.

She ripped off the flag of fabric, opened the door, and threw it out. “
Bah!
”

She started the ignition before I could instruct her how to rub the two bare wires together.

Her foot went pedal to the metal as soon as she slammed us straight from neutral to third gear, popping the clutch.

“No Name Mister American
Habibi
. Shows money. Says tell no one. Has woman not wife he treats like wife and lets her get sick,” she grumbled, her knuckles curled over the steering wheel and her face bent toward the windshield. “Probably no good, but I like the Mrs. Not Wife so I drive to hospital.”

Meanwhile I hung onto every one of Tilly’s labored breaths. I held her close to me to keep her bones from jarring loose as our unlikely savior took corners on the wheel wells.

A deep rut in the road nearly knocked my teeth out of my head.

The mole on her face twitched. “Pothole.”

“I bet.”

At the hospital, she pulled up with the front half of the Datsun on the curb, the back end tipped crooked as a drunk soldier headed back to his bunk after one too many at the end of a Command-approved
happy hour
.

Madam trundled out with a mighty heave that shook the car again. “You safe here.”

“How can I repay you?” I stood in front of her, my eyes swerving to the entrance that beckoned.

I pulled Tilly closer to my body, dipping a hand in my pocket and coming up with currency.

The lady looked appalled.

“You don’t pay money!” She slapped my offering away. “You marry the lady. Come back. Honeymoon suite waiting . . . I take care of room and keep your things safe for you.”

After dipping my head in thanks to the most suspect ally I’d ever met, I long-legged it into the Saudi German hospital.

It only took a few forceful words and a flash of a fake ID for help to come running. I laid Tilly on a swiftly provided gurney. She was wheeled away, and when I tried to follow I was stopped short at a set of swinging doors.

I shouted after them about the bullet wound and the blood infection I suspected.

I banged on the door. “Did you hear me?”

During the hours that followed, I filled out paperwork as best I could. I didn’t know Tilly’s middle name or her birthdate. I didn’t know her blood type or if she had any allergies or if she’d undergone any recent surgeries. I didn’t know the date of her last menstrual cycle.

I didn’t even know her favorite color or her favorite flower or food.

I knew so little about her it was laughable. I was sitting in a goddamn godforsaken hospital in war-wrecked Sana’a with my heart breaking wide open.

The nurses took pity on the big blond man who paced up and down the waiting area for endless hours, offering cardboard cups of thick black coffee, a pillow if I wanted to rest, an old, battered American paperback novel to keep me occupied.

As if.

I just wanted a fucking update.

I needed to know Tilly was okay.

Eventually I plunked into a hard plastic chair, ignoring the other worried visitors and the sick people crowding the room.

I had little hope. The place looked as busy as Grand Central Station and more than a little chaotic, not the kind of hospital I’d ever entrust Tilly’s care to if I’d had the choice.

The seconds were hours. Minutes seemed like days.

The longer I sat the less I hoped, but surely they’d have told me if something was wrong.

Only one tiny flame of hope survived.
Love.
I held it in my heart while I held my head in my hands, fatigue and worry taking turns tightening the screws on me.

Finally,
fucking finally
, there was a soft touch on my shoulder, a murmured word.

A murmured word that flared me to life.

She’s okay.

You can see her now.

My feet moved so fast I didn’t bother to apologize to anyone I inadvertently knocked out of my single-minded path.

I needed Tilly.

She needed me.

Though the hospital was packed to the rafters, Tilly resided in a room by herself—the room was bleached clean white and so was her face. As pale as the thin sheets surrounding her.

She breathed into an oxygen mask.

IVs hung from a stand beside the bed.

Monitors blip-blipped.

My heart skip-skipped.

I listened to the doctor lady, her dark forehead puckered worriedly below her hijab, who spoke English with an accent I’d have found charming in any other scenario.

The infection is still rampant. We think she was brought in in time. She should be okay. She has not woken. Are you her husband?

Tears wavered in my eyes, eyes I trained on Tilly’s still form.

I rubbed my mouth, the back of my neck, my chest where my heart pounded.

“I’m the closest thing she’s got to a relative at the moment.” And how I wished I were her husband.

“You can stay.” The doctor kindly patted my arm.

For once I was thankful to be far away from American protocol where I’d have to provide evidence of my relationship to the patient to be afforded the right to visit.

As soon as the door swung shut, I hurried to the bedside.

I held Tilly’s hand, pulling it to my lips. “You gotta wake up, baby.”

My knuckles brushed across her skin, still too dry and heated.

I remembered her body curled around mine. Her vitality. The way she was so confident and somehow, sometimes, timid at the same time.

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Not while she remained unconscious.

I survived on coffee and watching her vitals roll across the monitor—steady, but with no outward improvement.

It was Walker who showed up the next day, true to what I’d said. He’d track us down no matter where and no matter what. I looked up, and he filled the door of Tilly’s hospital room, a frown on his face.

He hesitated for a second before stalking inside, Bane, Storm, and Lawless right behind him.

Twelve hours I’d sat in this room. Twenty-four hours I’d been out of contact.

“Tilly!” Lawless knocked me aside, taking his daughter’s hand between his.

Outlaw

WALKER GRABBED ME AROUND the neck for a hard hug. The other dudes came next. When we broke apart, I didn’t know what to do.

What to say.

Where to go.

Lawless scowled at me from the bedside as if I’d shot Tilly myself.

I turned my back on him. “How’d you find us?”

“Oh, you know.” Walker’s mahogany skin looked a little bleached under the bright fluorescents, and fatigue hung in shadows beneath his eyes. “Just took a couple joyrides around Sana’a until we decided to hit up all the hospitals. Hoped we wouldn’t find you here.”

“You know what happened with the embassy after we got out?”

“Uprising finally subdued—” Walker started.

“Our military bombed the shit out of it,” Storm added. “As soon as they got the all-clear.”

“Made a healthy dent in the Houthi forces,” Bane said.

“Just a patch job on the situation here. And guess who
really
has hard-on for Americans now?” Walker rolled his eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. Not anymore. As soon as Tilly’s well enough we’re outta here.” I glanced over at her.

“How is she?” Bane leaned against the wall, watching the patient and her father.

“Alive.”

“And you?” Storm asked, his black hair standing up at odd angles like he’d raked his hands through it a hundred-plus times.

“Just this side of death. As long as she makes it, I’ll be okay.”

At that precise moment, Lawless looked up, piercing me with his eyes.

Didn’t matter. Despite the glare he laid on me, I would not leave. He’d have to force me out.

He used a cane, his wound obvious as he left Tilly’s side and limped forward.

“What the hell did you do to my daughter?”

“Saved her.” I sliced another glance at her, pain coiling in the pit of my belly as she lay unmoving.

“Saved her? That’s what you call this? She’d have been better off without you!” Anger mottled his cheeks to bright red.

“Bullshit. I took care of her.”

“You got her shot after you seduced her, that’s what you did.” He gritted out the words that had already wormed their way into my mind.

I shook them off. He was scared. So was I.

“She came to me,
sir.
That night. Not the other way around.”

“You could’ve said no.” His head wheeled toward the bed where Tilly lay, thankfully unaware as we attacked one another. “You sullied her.”

“Sullied her? Seduced her? This is the twenty-first century, and she’s an adult. I didn’t do anything she didn’t want.”

“That’s your excuse for landing her in here? At death’s door? You had her, took her, knowing the attack could come at any goddamn time!”

My chest bulged with muscles, and I towered over him. I wanted to take that cane from his hands and knock him over the head with it.

“YES! That’s what happens when life and death are at stake, and I’ll tell you again, I tried to say no, but I don’t regret saying yes.

“I love her,” I stated more quietly.

One of his hands flapped up. “You love her? Goddamn fine way of showing it, son—”

“Do not call me son. Or sonny boy or any other insult. I was a marine, I’m a man, an operative,” I snarled.

He talked over me, “She was engaged to a good man. Did you know that?”

“A
good
man”—I gritted my teeth at the untruth of the words—“who demeaned her and made her feel small and worthless. Is that what you want for your daughter?”

“I want her to be happy.”

“
You
got a fucking funny way of showing it, Ambassador.”

His chin jutted out, stubborn and set. “I’ll take over from here.”

“Like hell you will.”

“I gave her to your care, and what did you do?”

I’d stood by her. I loved her.

But guilt tightened my throat. Tied me in knots.

“Nothing, sir.”

“That’s right. You got her shot. MY DAUGHTER!”

I grinded my teeth together, holding in the elemental emotions surging through me—
I
wanted to be the one to take care of Tilly. Always.

“I’ll stay until she wakes up.” My voice lowered to a raspy rumble.

“In the hall.” Lawless pointed a finger.

The tense standoff ended. I did an about-face and stalked outside. He was the only one with legal rights here despite how I felt about Tilly.

Bane, Storm, and Walker followed me out.

There were no jokes. No banter.

There was no refuge as I waited for Tilly to wake up and be whole again.

Dismissed by Lawless, I did what little I could. We couldn’t leave Yemen without him. He still needed our escort, and by extension, Tilly needed a guard on her door if not in her room.

I sent everyone to our new friend’s hotel for rest, telling them they’d be safe there. She’d said she’d take care of Tilly’s and my packs. I hoped she’d cleaned the
honeymoon suite
from the heady smell of our sex and the bloody aftermath of trying to take care of her bullet shot.

Lawless burst into the hospital after his first few hours away, absolutely fuming. “And you took her to that motel that’s nothing more than a pay-by-the-hour whorehouse!”

Hustling him out into the hallway, I had reached my limit. “That
woman
took us in, asked no questions, took care of us, and
by God
, she was the one who made sure Tilly got to the hospital in time! So you can take your self-righteous accusations and get fucked in the ass.”

I jabbed Lawless in the chest, stalked into Tilly’s room, and sat
my ass
right on the side of her bed, the ambassador be damned.

He
allowed
me thirty minutes of alone time with her before quietly coming inside.

I bet the man had never said sorry in his life. It was clear he wasn’t about to start then either.

I kissed Tilly on the mouth right in front of him and whispered how much I loved her before I rose and excused myself from the ornery bastard’s presence.

Let him chew on that.

The daily vigil continued. I sat by Tilly whenever Lawless took a break. I stood by her door when he stayed inside. Deep worry grooved permanent lines in my face.

Another day passed, making four in all. My pulse glugged slowly, and I was so tired I slumped in a chair in the corridor. I tormented myself hourly with shame and guilt. Because I’d known from the very start there was no future for Tilly and me, even without the gruff old buzzard standing in our way.

A nurse hurried past, slammed open the door to Tilly’s room, and hurried in.

My heart jumped into my throat, and I stood up.

Walker—who’d gone in for an update a few minutes earlier—poked his head outside. “She’s awake, my friend.”

I pushed him out of the way so I could get to her. “Tilly!”

Her eyes were open, shining, green and bright.

I kneeled beside her, grasping her hands. “Oh, Jesus.
Tilly
.”

I kissed her all over—her mouth, her fingers, her neck, her hair.

The tears I’d withheld manifested in my eyes, and I tried not to cry. Tried to be her man. Strong and capable.

When her fingers ruffled through my hair, I collapsed in a heap, no longer the strong marine, just a man in love who’d had the fright of his life, the fight of his life.

“You’re crying, Justice?”