The Treasure (21 page)

Snapping out of his trance, Brody looked down at the middle-aged woman with kind brown eyes. “What?”

Her expression was patient. “I have some papers for you to fill out. Do you have an insurance card?”

Insurance. Paperwork.
Was it really important right now? Amelia was dying and she wanted him to fill out paperwork? Why the hell should he? He was the reason she was here. Wasn’t that enough?

“No.” He left the hotel without grabbing his wallet. It was in his pack with the rest of his things. The pack he hid the gold in so he could protect Amelia.

Fury ripped through him. If his business partner wasn’t already been dead, he would have hunted him down and strangled him with his own bare hands. Amelia’s life hung in the balance because Jeremy couldn’t stay away from the tables.

Regret split through the fury. He never should have taken that treasure. He should have left it in Amelia’s bag. Found another way to keep her safe.

But it was too late for regrets. The damage was done.

“Well, we can deal with that later. For now, can you fill out these papers so we can get the patient registered?”

Registered. Right. The nurse had a job to do. It wasn’t her fault he had made a mess of things.

“There’s a bathroom to your right,” she said quietly.

Brody looked down at his blood-stained hands and clothes. Amelia’s blood. On his hands. His jaw tightened. He knew that night when Amelia walked into the bar his life was going to change.

Brody walked out of the bathroom minutes later, hands scrubbed clean, jaw set in a tense line. The nurse behind the desk smiled with understanding and handed him a clipboard full of papers.

“Any news?” he asked, barely resisting the urge to storm through the swinging doors and demand to see Amelia.

“I’m sorry, sir. The doctor will be out to talk with you as soon as he can.”

With a tight nod, he took a seat and set about filling out the paperwork. As he went along, he realized how much he didn’t know about Amelia. Like her middle name. Her age. Her birth date. Home address. How did he tell them Amelia was a strong, courageous woman who, despite what he had done to her, risked her life to save his? That she was the most beautiful, spirited, compassionate woman he had ever met.

There were no spaces to provide that information. It was irrelevant. To everyone but him. He was the one who cared, who wanted it noted. No one had ever gone out on a limb for him. No one had ever cared to. Everyone he knew had abandoned him. Except Amelia. She had climbed a mountain for him.

And he had gotten her shot.

Something wet fell onto the papers and he frowned, reached up to wipe his eyes, surprised to find tears.

Blinking rapidly, he focused on finishing the paperwork. And after that, he would call her sisters. And he would hope they, too, would someday forgive him.

“Mr. Kern, the police are here to talk to you.”

Brody lifted his head from where he sat in the empty cafeteria, nursing a cold cup of coffee. The woman speaking to him sent him a sympathetic look as she motioned for him to follow.

“No news?” he asked, rising to his feet.

“No, sorry. She’s still in surgery.”

It had been an hour already. How much longer was she going to be? He refused to think it was because there were complications.

Following the nurse into the hallway, he tried to ignore the ache in his chest. He expected the police would want to talk to him sooner or later. Jeremy’s murder would need to be explained. Right now, he didn’t want to think about it.

She led him to a room down the hall, away from the emergency room, and stood aside so he could go in. Two men sat in the conference room and Brody clenched his jaw. The room looked like somewhere a doctor would sit down with the family of the deceased to tell them the bad news. He was relieved there were two cops sitting there and not medical staff.

“Mr. Kern,” the larger of the two greeted in heavily accented English. “I’m Detective Ramiro and this is my partner, Detective Gomez. Have a seat.”

Brody sat in one of the chairs opposite them.

“How is Miss Sawyer?”

“No word yet.”

Detective Ramiro nodded his condolences. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

Brody waited.

“The body of your business partner was found in your hotel room. Care to explain that?”

Brody told them everything. About the treasure, the map, the loan sharks and the debts. Leaving nothing out.

Ramiro was nodding when he finished. “Yes, we know about the map. Everyone does. Never thought there was any truth to
Paraíso.
” He rose to his feet. “I’m familiar with Señor Juarez and his business. We’ll look into it. This just might give us cause to have him arrested. If we happen to find the gold, we will have it returned to Miss Sawyer.”

Brody shook the man’s hand, but he didn’t expect to ever see that gold again. If they did manage to get it from the loan shark, it would end up being used to benefit the department or finance the chief’s new car. Amelia would never see a penny of it.

Unless he did something about it.
Vigilante justice was highly frowned upon here, but he was good at being covert. He would get the gold back, if it were the last thing he did. That, at least, he could do for Amelia.

The two men left, leaving him alone in the cold room. The cold seeped into his bones. He launched out of his chair. It scraped across the tile floor, echoing off the walls. An uncomfortable loneliness leached into his soul. He had spent his entire life alone, and suddenly he couldn’t handle it.

Stalking from the room, he resisted slamming the door behind him. The nurse at the front desk looked up when he arrived. Her eyes widened and she put down her pen.

“I need to see Amelia.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kern, she’s still in surgery. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear something.”

Brody scowled, restless energy surging through him. The need to see Amelia was making him edgy.

“Why don’t you go home, change into fresh clothes, so that when Miss Sawyer wakes up she doesn’t see her blood all over you,” the nurse suggested quietly.

Brody looked down at his bloodstained clothes. The last thing he wanted to do was leave Amelia here alone.

“It’ll be all right,” the woman said consolingly. “We’ll take care of her until you return.”

“I won’t be long,” Brody said woodenly and walked out of the hospital. His long strides took him back to the hotel and to the room he had rented. Jeremy’s body had been removed, but the blood hadn’t been cleaned.

He stopped inside the door, staring at the stain on the floor. Where Amelia had laid. Her blood. Staining the hardwood. His clothes. His hands.

Tightening his jaw, he looked away and got to work. He took a minute to change out of his bloody clothes, tossing them in the trash, before gathering his and Amelia’s bags and leaving without a backward glance.

Back at the hospital, the nurse who suggested he go home and change approached him, her expression not promising good news.

“Mr. Kern,” she said, motioning him to follow her. “The doctor would like to see you.”

A pit formed in his stomach as he was led down the stark hall and into a private room. A recovery room, he realized, the scent of antiseptic filling his nose. A nurse in dark green scrubs stood at the head of a hospital bed, writing on a clipboard, while another checked the I.V. attached to the arm of the woman he loved.

Amelia laid there, her face pale, eyes closed. Her vibrant red hair flowed over her pillow like a halo, making her appear delicate and vulnerable. Not the woman he had grown to respect over the past few days.

His breath shuddered out as a tall, thin, gray-haired man approached. “Mr. Kern? I’m Doctor Ruiz. Miss Sawyer is in recovery right now. We’ll be taking her to ICU in a little while. Does she have any allergies that you know of?”

Panic clenched his gut. “I don’t know. Why?”

“We’re having trouble bringing her out of anesthesia. I’m going to keep her here for another half hour or so and then move her upstairs where she can be monitored around the clock. The bullet nicked a major artery near her heart, but I was able to get that repaired. It bounced off her collarbone before lodging in her shoulder muscle. I was able to remove the bullet, but she is going to have a couple scars and needs plenty of healing time. She is American; does she live in the States?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll clear her for travel, but she’s going to have to take it very easy. No lifting. Lots of bed rest. Bandages changed as needed. Medication for the pain. I suggest giving her two pain pills before flying. And if it’s possible, wait a few days. A week would be better, but I understand visas and such.”

Brody nodded, his eyes on Amelia. She looked so fragile lying there in her hospital gown, with tubes and wires morphing out of her slender body.

“There’s a waiting room upstairs if you’d like to wait there.”

Brody looked down to see the nurse who escorted him here, waiting for him. The doctor walked away to speak to one of the nurses in green scrubs.

“Mr. Kern?” she repeated patiently when he didn’t respond.

Snapping out of his trance, he tore his eyes off Amelia and followed her into the hall. She gave him directions to the ICU and nudged him toward the elevator. With a weight in his chest, he went upstairs to wait.

• • •

They brought Amelia up an hour later. Brody was forced to remain in the waiting room until they got her settled, which took almost as long. When the nurse finally allowed him to see her, he was ready to come out of his skin. He needed to see her, touch her. Feel the softness of her skin. Know that she was alive.

“Mr. Kern,” the young, dark-haired nurse said as she led him into the Intensive Care Unit. It was a small area, only six private beds surrounding a nurse’s station where another nurse sat at a computer. “My name is Dina. I will be Miss Sawyer’s nurse until tomorrow morning.”

Brody glanced at the clock on the wall, surprised to see it was six-thirty already. The night shift was on duty, reminding him the day was gone. That Amelia had been in surgery for hours since he brought her in.

“We haven’t been able to wake her up yet. Not to alarm you, this happens sometimes in traumatic situations like this. The prognosis looks good. The bullet was removed without incident and the bleeding stopped. That’s all good news. I’m going to continue to monitor her throughout the night so do not worry. I have a feeling Miss Sawyer is a fighter or she wouldn’t have made it this far.”

“You have no idea,” Brody murmured, standing in the doorway, eyes on Amelia’s motionless form.

He wasn’t aware of the tender smile the nurse gave him as he walked slowly into the room. Different colored numbers and lines filled a small monitor above the bed. A clear tube was nested beneath her nose to feed her oxygen, a handful of gray cords snuck out of her gown to the monitor that displayed her heart rate and blood pressure. An I.V. snaked out of her hand and a white bandage peeked out of the shoulder of her gown.

“Call me if you need anything,” Dina said softly before leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind her.

Walking to the bed, Brody stared down at the woman who had risked her life for him. Whose life had almost been taken because of him. Her hair was combed away from her pale face, her lashes resting on her cheeks.

More than anything, he wanted her to open her eyes and smile at him. It was the first thing he noticed about her when she walked into the bar that night. That, and how pretty she was. So innocent and sunny.

And now she lay in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound. When and if she woke up, would she want to see him?

Images of the hurt shining in her eyes when she thought he’d stolen the treasure filled his head. Tormented him. Almost as much as seeing her lying in this bed.

Unable to breathe, Brody pulled up a chair and sat next to her, gripping her limp hand in his.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, an ache spreading through his chest he never felt before.

Lowering his head, he rested his forehead on the bed next to her arm and let out an unsteady breath, guilt weighing heavy on his shoulders.

This woman deserved nothing of him, yet he stayed at her side, unable to leave her like he knew he should. His face would be the last one she needed to see when she opened her eyes.

And she would open her eyes. Amelia was a fighter. She had proven that the past few days. In her eyes, she lacked courage, but the woman he saw was strong and brave. A woman who could infuriate him to his very last nerve, and turn him on with a flash of a smile. A woman so passionate it made his heart ache just thinking about the time they had spent making love.

The type of woman he could love.

The type of woman he didn’t deserve.

With that pounding in his head, Brody closed his eyes and let his grief consume him. He had never shed a tear. Not for the parents he never knew or his crappy childhood. Not when his partner cleaned out his bank accounts and brought loan sharks to his door. Not when that partner was shot in cold blood. Not in the military when good men fell at the hands of the enemy. Not even when the man he called friend and co-pilot, who gave him an engraved flask on their first mission, was shot down behind enemy lines and Brody carried his dead body across enemy territory for miles into the safe zone.

But this woman, damn her sweet smile, reduced him to tears and there was nothing he could do to stop them. So he gave in to the weakness and didn’t even try.

• • •

“Mr. Kern, you haven’t left this room in sixteen hours. Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee and a bite to eat?”

Brody lifted his head to look at the day shift nurse. Compassion shone in her eyes as she checked the I.V.

“I need to change Miss Sawyer’s bandages. Go on, she’s in good hands.” Her gentle nudge got him out of the chair he hadn’t vacated since they brought Amelia in.

His body protested and he stretched the kinks out of his neck. He cast one last look at Amelia, who hadn’t moved all night.

With a brisk nod, he left the room, the ache in his chest still there. The pain of losing someone you loved, he realized as he walked out of the ICU and closed the door softly. He stood in the busy hallway, watching nurses mill around doing their duties, but not really seeing.