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Dawn’s tentative rays creep across the night’s sky, bringing with it uncertain hope for the coming day. Hope I’ve had a stranglehold on since watching Tácito work tirelessly to save Sloane’s life.
The night has taken a toll on Tácito as well. I don’t know how he was able to pull the miracle he did with just him and Cooper. I glance at my hands. I barely register the purple knuckles and ragged skin. I played a part in saving Sloane’s life, too. Although my fingers bear no evidence of where they’ve been, I still feel the weight of her blood coating the gloves I wore when Cooper told me to scrub in. Feel her blood vessels periodically erupt while I waited for Tácito or Cooper to suture the wounds closed.
My lack of medical knowledge terrified me, but the long shriek of the machine alerting us that her heart had stopped propelled me forward, topping every item on my list of things I feared the most. There aren’t many on that list, and there was no way I was going to make Sloane’s death a reality. I’m never going to lose another woman who means this much to me.
I can’t recall how many times Sloane pulled this shit on us last night into the early hours. One second the machine’s steady beeping allowed us to relax. In the next, it emitted a high-pitched screeching that hurtled us into panic mode, forcing nonstop adrenaline to keep us hyperaware for the next crisis.
Call me traumatized, because after last night, I still don’t believe we’re in the clear. Yes, with my intervention and Tácito’s miracle-working hands, Sloane didn’t die. But she pulled so many fast ones on us I can’t trust the quiet.
The stillness is a patient adversary willing to wait before hurtling me into despair, willing to surround and deafen me. But the silence can’t drown out the memories or the very real possibility that I almost lost Sloane. The noise inside my head is much louder, driving me from my chair in a burst of erratic energy.
While Tácito succumbs to a much-deserved rest, slumping in the chair to Sloane’s right, I pace.
I reminisce.
Ever since we were kids, Sloane has been the cause for more restless nights than the occasional celebratory gun shots, loud house parties, or violent fights in the neighborhood. As an adult, she’s graduated to a level of harmful that I can no longer stand by and watch from a distance.
Tácito rustles in his chair.
I touch his shoulder and wait for him to raise bleary eyes to me. “You need more sleep. I’ll be here when she wakes up.”
He shakes his head and scrubs his face. “You haven’t slept either. Besides, I have to be here. Otherwise…” Tortured lines crease his tanned face and I squeeze his shoulder.
“I’m here with you, man.” I resume my seat at the foot of her bed and rest my chin on my fingertips.
Time blends into nothingness as we wait. The only clue that we aren’t frozen is the sun’s slow, painful shifting. When Sloane utters a pain-filled moan, I nearly leap out of my seat and shout a prayer of thanks to the God I’d stopped believing in years ago. I stop short and collect myself.
Tácito, so unlike me, is up and eagerly awaiting the end of her fluttering lids. The second her dark brown irises focus on him, his shoulders collapse and he lays his head next to her pillow.
I’m sure he wants to talk to her, but he is so overcome with emotions that his shoulders shake uncontrollably.
Sloane taps him and he raises watery eyes to her. I’m not unaffected by their reunion. Hell, I want to join in. My chest tightens and my airway constricts.
“It feels like you played ‘Reconstructing Sloane’ with my organs,” she croaks while signing to Tácito.
She hasn’t glanced at me yet. She shouldn’t. Not when I want to spill every scathing word I tamed into submission when she dared to show up in her condition. Even as she lies on the bed, held together by stitches and bandages, she has the temerity to joke about her circumstances.
I take deep, steadying breaths, but nothing seems to help soothe the beast raging inside me. While I wrangle my fury, Tácito does what I cannot.
He checks her vitals, but there is nothing clinical in his touch. Tácito is the only man alive allowed such liberties. “No seas güey. You’ve gone too far this time.”
“I didn’t get hurt on purpose. Everything was going according to plan until they didn’t. I got the fuckers, though.” She hits a fist into her palm, winces and coughs.
Each new sign of her predicament only serves to piss me off.
She glances at the thunder taking over my features and redirects her gaze to Tácito. “I got here in the nick of time for you to save me.”
“In the nick of time!” Tácito signs with furious speed that mirrors the rage in his distorted voice. “You aren’t out of the woods yet. With all the holes I had to stitch up, you’ll be lucky not to get a clot or an infection.”
“So does that mean I’ll be laid up for a couple days? That’s really going to push back my next assignment.”
“Enough!” I shoot out of my seat, overcome by my urge to strangle her. “There is no next assignment. Your ass isn’t going anywhere until I say so. Don’t think your usual tricks will work. Your days of running heedlessly into danger are at an end.”
“But—”
My withering glare shuts down the excuse brimming on her lips. “If you need me to spell it out for you, principessa, you’re now my prisoner. If you don’t have the common sense God gave a goose for self-preservation, I’ll take up that mantle. And I don’t care how much you bitch about it.”
CHAPTER TWO
