It was a good face. Blurry, but good. What she could see was older than she’d pictured, with deep lines of fatigue around his eyes.
He had tears in his eyes, and she knew that seeing her like that, broken and bleeding, hurt him badly.
“At least you got here,” she said. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, Max.”
He laughed at that, but then started to cry. As she watched, he composed himself, wiping his eyes and even managing to give her a smile. “I’m going to get you off the plane now.”
He was ready to pick her up in his arms, but she didn’t want him to remember her that way forever. First impressions were important, after all, and she was already at a serious disadvantage.
And dammit, she wanted to see something besides pity in his eyes.
“No,” she told him. “I want to walk.” And as she said it, she realized it was true. She did. She wanted to walk off that plane. “Will you help me walk out of here?”
“Yeah.” He nodded and helped her to her feet, the muscle jumping in his jaw as his repositioning the blanket around her forced him to get another glimpse of her battered body.
He stood on the side of her unbroken wrist, slipping her arm over his shoulders, his arm around her waist, supporting her.
And she walked. Out of the cockpit. Out of the plane. One step at a time.
The force of the explosion pushed them forward and up, and Teri wrestled with the controls.
And then they were home free.
Heading toward the U.S.S. Hale.
“What’s the status of the patient?” Teri asked.
No one answered her.
“Lopez?” She couldn’t keep her voice from sounding sharp.
“Make sure we have a medical team ready,” Lopez finally said. “The moment we touch down.”
“Teri,” Stan whispered.
“No,” she said, suddenly terribly afraid. “Don’t say it. Look, I’ve got my flack jacket on. There’s nothing you need to tell me now that you can’t tell me later.”
He said it anyway. “Love you.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Well, screw you, Senior Chief. If you love me, dammit, you stay alive!”
And then there it was. The U.S.S. Hale. Right where it was supposed to be.
She landed the helo and Stan was taken away, and then there was nothing left to do but pray.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty-three
Sam Starrett opened the door of his hotel room to see John Nilsson and WildCard Karmody standing there, looking like someone had died.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Don’t tell me the senior chief—”
“No,” WildCard interrupted. “Senior’s fine. Well, considering he took a round to the chest and spent three hours in surgery . . .”
“L.T. just got a call,” Nils told him. “The senior chief’s still in intensive care, but he’s looking strong.”
WildCard grinned. “If Teri Howe were holding my hand, I’d get well soon, too. Damn, this op has been like a fucking Love Boat episode.”
Nils gave WildCard a look that Sam didn’t like the looks of.
“So then what’s the bad news?” Sam said.
“Can we come in?” Nils asked, way too seriously.
“Is something wrong with Meg?” Sam asked about Nils’s wife as he let them into his room. “Some problem with the baby?”
Nils closed the door behind them. “No, Meg’s fine. In fact, I just called home and spoke to her. She’s great, the baby’s—everything’s great. Right on schedule. She had another ultrasound, and . . . But she told me that Mary Lou called, looking for you.”
Mary Lou Morrison? “She’s got to stop calling,” Sam said. “I haven’t seen her in months. In fact, I’m having dinner tonight with—”
“You better sit your ass down and cancel your dinner plans, Sammy boy,” WildCard said. “We’ve got some extremely intense news. Mary Lou’s preggo, my friend, and she says you’re the father—and that she’s already had the tests done that prove it.”
Sam didn’t sit down. “What?”
Nils looked at WildCard in disgust. “You sure broke it to him gently.” He sighed. “Sam, you really better sit down. Mary Lou’s got a friend who works in some medical lab. She had tests done. It wasn’t legal, she didn’t have your permission, but that doesn’t change the results. She used some old T-shirt that you got blood on when you cut yourself fixing her car and . . . Meg’s seen the results, man. Mary Lou’s pregnant, and the baby’s definitely yours.”
Sam sat down.
Gina awoke to find Trent Engelman sitting by the side of her hospital bed.
She’d been flown out of Kazbekistan, here to London, last night.
Her one eye was bandaged, and the other was swollen and her vision still blurred. She’d been stitched and X-rayed and examined, her broken wrist set. She’d had an IV started, and a doctor from the U.S. embassy who’d taken one look at her and had been quite liberal with the dosage of painkillers.
And she’d floated. Out of Kazbekistan, aboard some kind of special hospital plane. She’d floated through the night, but she could have sworn that it had been Max sitting by her bed, holding her hand.
Not Trent Engelman.
He stood up when he saw that she was awake.
Her mouth was fuzzy, and he helped her take a sip from a cup of water, his mouth tightening sympathetically as he put the straw to her swollen lips.
There were coffee cups all around the chair he’d been sitting in.
Imagine that—Trent Engelman sitting by her bed all night.
“Your parents are on their way,” he told her. “They should be here in a few hours.”
“Oh, God.” They were going to take one look at her and . . . Her mother would be so angry. Not at her. But she’d want to get a gun and kill Bob and Al all over again.
Her father would cry.
“You know, Gina, I, uh, just came by to thank you, you know, for saving my life,” Trent told her. “If you hadn’t stood up the way you did . . .” He cleared his throat. “I know you must think I’m a coward because I just sat there when they were, you know, and I heard you screaming, but . . . Shit, Gina, they had those guns. They killed the pilot.”
“Yeah,” she said sharply. “I know. I was there.”
He looked at the floor.
“I don’t think you’re a coward, Trent,” she told him, knowing that he’d come here not to comfort her, but to comfort himself. God, had she dreamed Max? Was he ever really here with her? “Would you mind going, because I kind of want to be alone right now?”
He inched toward the door. “I promised that guy I’d stay until your parents came.”
She looked at him. “What guy?”
“The guy that was sitting here when I got here this morning. He was holding your hand,” Trent said. “Some old guy. He left a note for you.”
Sure enough, there was a folded piece of paper on the rolling table right beside the bed.
“Gina.” It was from Max. He’d signed it at the bottom just Max. His handwriting was as clean and clear as his voice. Or maybe he’d just taken care when writing this note because he knew she’d have trouble reading with her eyes all messed up.
I can’t meet you for coffee. I know I promised I would, but . . . The counselors and therapists who are going to be working with you will tell you that you need to move ahead with your life, to let the traumatic events of the past few days fade away. Meeting me for coffee will only make it that much harder for you to forget and move on.
You are without a doubt one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life. Your inner strength awes and inspires me. I have no doubt that you will come through this.
I’m so sorry for not being there when you needed me the most.
“Trent,” Gina said. “When did you get here? When did Max leave?”
“Just a few minutes before you woke up.”
“Go out into the hall,” she said. “Run down to the lobby. See if he’s still here.”
Trent made that sound he made that was almost a laugh, but not quite. He made it whenever he was being put out. “Gina . . .”
“Please.”
Trent went.
He was gone for close to forever. Gina had nearly given up on both him and Max when he came back. “I didn’t see him,” he reported. “Who is this guy anyway?”
He was gone. Max was gone. Gina closed her good eye. Even with Trent standing right there, she’d never in her life felt more dreadfully alone.
“Thank you,” she said. “I need you to go now.”
She didn’t hear him leave, but she didn’t hear him breathing anymore either.
She kept her eyes closed, feeling sick to her stomach. Her parents were going to be here in a few hours. She had to figure out what she was going to tell them. It wasn’t that bad.
It was a lie, but she suspected it was a lie she was going to have to get used to telling. People were going to know. Back at school, wherever she went, everyone she met was going to have gotten the scoop. Have you heard about Gina Vitagliano? She was on that hijacked plane. She was beaten and gang raped. Poor thing.
Maybe if she just said it—it wasn’t that bad—first thing. She could make it her version of hello. “How are you? Yes, I know you’ve heard all about me. You don’t have to spend another minute thinking about it—it wasn’t that bad.”
God, she’d survived the hijacking. Now she had to survive being a survivor. It had almost been easier back when she was so certain she was going to die. Now she had to live as a victim, and she already hated that.
She heard a sound by the door. “Trent, I asked you to leave.”
“Yeah, he already did.”
Max.
Gina opened her good eye. And there he was. His suit was even more rumpled than it had been back when he’d come onto the plane. And he’d taken off his shirt and tie. God, she must’ve bled on him.
He was standing there in a T-shirt and a suit jacket.
“Going for the Miami Vice look today?” she asked him.
He laughed and came farther into the room. “Yeah, you know I normally have about seven assistants all ready to run and get me a clean shirt or even a fresh suit. But I seem to have lost them somewhere between here and Kazbekistan.”
“Please stay with me.” She couldn’t stop herself from saying it.
He sat down. Pulled the chair even closer to her side. Took her good hand in both of his.
“Yeah,” he said. “You know, I was out in the parking lot. And I’m standing there and I’m thinking, I don’t even have a car here. What the hell am I doing? And I realized that wasn’t the only mistake I’d made. I realized—it just kind of occurred to me—that right now was probably when you needed me the most.”
His eyes were brown. Dark, deep, warm brown.
And Gina knew as she looked at him, looked into his eyes, that with his help, she was going to survive.
Stan woke up.
He hated hospitals, but even he had to admit that he wasn’t ready yet to go home.
And as far as hospitals went, this one here in London was okay.
Especially since his room seemed to be equipped with the most beautiful, sexiest, sweetest woman he’d ever met, sitting in a chair by his bedside.
Teri was sleeping, and Stan just watched her, aware as hell that she was the one who had made this entire experience bearable.
She’d found him—somehow—a real blanket for his hospital bed. She’d brought in not just flowers but living plants. Books to read. A real lamp that wasn’t glaringly fluorescent. Frickin’ aromatherapy—that one had made him laugh, and Christ, that had hurt. A white-noise maker that shut out the sounds of the busy hospital and actually made it possible for him to sleep.
She’d set it to “mountain stream,” and it murmured soothingly even now.
She’d held his hand more hours than he could count. Run her fingers through his hair, giving him just a little bit of pleasure in a world that had become ruled by pain.
But every day hurt a little bit less, and it wasn’t going to be long before he could go home.
He wanted to go home.
And he wanted Teri to go home with him.
His father had come to see him. He’d been that badly injured; the old man had left Chicago and come all the way to London. And apparently the son of a bitch had spoken to Tom Paoletti—whose ass Stan was going to kick the moment he was able to lift his foot more than a few inches off the bed—who’d told him about Teri.
And his father had jumped the gun just a little by dipping into the Wolchonok family safe-deposit box and bringing along the beautiful diamond ring Aunt Anna had bequeathed to Stan upon her death.
“Thought you might want this,” Stan Senior had said when Teri was out of the room. “I like her.”
And that was it, thank God. His father had said nothing more, and Stan had locked the ring in his cabinet drawer and let the entire subject drop.