Don't Let Go (18 page)

“I think I blacked out for a minute,” she replied.

But he sensed that she was lying. Why would she lie?

Something in Lucy’s pocket was gouging his thigh. He could only assume she’d found whatever she’d come for. Good for her.

Finally, silence settled in the dusty, foul-smelling air. Gus pushed to his feet, helping Lucy up. “Echo Platoon, rally up at the Hummer,” he commanded. “Let’s get out of here while we still can. Do you have your car key, by any chance?” he asked Lucy.

“Not anymore, but I keep a spare under the bumper.”

“Excellent,” Gus murmured, relieved not to have to carry the wounded all the way back to the LZ.

“I need Dramamine,” Jordan pleaded as she peered through watering eyes at the physician standing over her. She’d been whisked, half-conscious, from a helicopter, dreaming she was trapped in a wind tunnel. She could sense the exact moment she’d been wrenched from Solomon’s arms and conveyed on a stretcher into this cold, sterile chamber.
Where am I?
she’d asked, as a balding man in uniform examined her.

You’re aboard the USS
Theodore Roosevelt.
It’s an aircraft carrier.

Immediately, the queasiness she’d fought to keep at bay got the upper hand. She couldn’t exactly feel the pitch and roll of the vessel, only hear the throbbing of its engines, but just knowing she was on a ship at sea made her ill.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized now. “I can’t give you Dramamine.”

“Why not?” she cried, battling the urge to vomit.

He hesitated. “Because you’re pregnant,” he said, gently.

Jordan snatched her head up, then cringed at the pain it caused.
Pregnant!
“What? But that’s impossible.”

“The test is ninety-nine percent accurate,” he patiently replied.

A soft, fuzzy feeling tickled Jordan’s insides. How could she be pregnant? Well, duh, but . . . It had been impossible with Doug.

“Any guess as to how far along you are?” inquired the doctor.

“A couple of weeks at most,” she breathed, caught up in amazement. Oh, my God. She was pregnant with
Solomon’s
baby!

“And have you ever been pregnant before?”

The question doused her in cold reality, and fear followed on the heels of joy. “Once,” she admitted, closing her eyes. Nausea welled up immediately, and she spent the next few minutes emptying her stomach. “I miscarried,” she admitted, hoarsely, “at sixteen weeks.”

“We’re going to put you on an IV drip,” decided the doctor, nodding at his female assistant. “We don’t want you dehydrated.”

They moved out of her line of sight, opening drawers, wheeling an IV holder next to her cot.

As the needle slipped into the vein on the back of Jordan’s left hand, tears swarmed her closed eyes.
Why now?
she agonized.
How?

Memories of her lovemaking with Solomon drifted warmly through her mind. She’d never experienced passion so complete. Solomon was one of a kind. He’d blown into her life, caught her up in his energy, and swept her off to his kingdom,
Camelot,
where everything had intense and overwhelming quality to it.

What would his reaction be if she told him she was pregnant? She winced, wondering if he’d just assume that she had lied to him or that she’d intended to trap him into marriage. God forbid, though he had every right to be suspicious, given his history with Candace.

And yet the odds of carrying a baby to full term were slim, anyway. Chances were she’d lose their baby regardless of Solomon’s reaction.

Oh, how could fate do this to her now? And why, when it only meant more heartache, more despair?

“I want to see Miguel,” she begged, needing to be reassured that the child she had was in one piece and unharmed from their ordeal.

“In a moment,” the doctor promised. “Let’s get you comfortable first.”

She seized his sleeve as he reached across her. “I. Want. To. See. Miguel. Now,” she articulated fiercely. But then she promptly retched, thrusting him aside to lunge for the pan on the counter by her cot.

“Put the boy on the table,” ordered the female physician in the adjoining examination room.

Solomon, who cradled Miguel like a baby, didn’t move. “You can examine him in my arms,” he insisted. He’d sworn he wouldn’t relinquish the boy to anyone but Jordan. The gesture was symbolic of his repentance. He should never have separated the two in the first place.

The doctor opened her mouth to reprimand him, caught the dangerous gleam in his eyes, and thought better of it. “Fine,” she acceded, stepping close to flash a light into Miguel’s vacant eyes. “Hey, little guy,” she crooned, getting no response. “You doing okay?”

“He needs to see Jordan, ma’am,” Solomon growled. “The sooner the better.”

The officer frowned at him as she ran her fingers over Miguel’s skull and beneath the blanket he was wrapped in, checking his spine and legs. “She’s being evaluated at the moment, Senior Chief. I’m sure you’ll be able to visit her soon.”

“How soon? Until Miguel sees her and knows she’s okay, he’s not going to respond.” The same was true for him, only, thanks to his training, he was capable of walking and talking and looking like he wasn’t going irrevocably out of his mind.

The physician sighed and moved away. “The boy’s in shock,” she diagnosed. “You’re doing the right thing keeping his feet elevated, keeping him warm. I’m giving him a mild sedative.”

“No needles,” Solomon growled, pulling the boy protectively closer. “—ma’am,” he added at the officer’s exasperated glare. “Please, all he needs is Jordan.”

“I’ll check with Commander Sperry,” she snapped, stalking away.

As she disappeared into the adjoining room, Solomon detected the sound of Jordan retching. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
Please let her be okay.

Miguel stirred, and Solomon’s eyes snapped open. They exchanged a startled look. But then Miguel filled his lungs with air and shrieked in terror, nearly flipping out of Solomon’s arms.

Tightening his hold on the boy, Solomon thrust his way into the examination room and nodded. “
Mira,
” he said to Miguel. “Look. Here’s Jordan.”

Miguel stilled and stared. Solomon did likewise.

Jordan was curled into a fetal position, her cheek on the edge of the mattress, her lip bruised, her face green, her eyes bloodshot. She extended a trembling hand toward them. The other was connected to an IV tube.

“Senior Chief!” scolded the female officer. The balding doctor and his assistant also glared at him.

“What’s wrong with her?” Solomon demanded, even as he stepped forward, so that Jordan could put her hand on Miguel’s cheek and murmur reassurances. Miguel’s tense body immediately relaxed.

“She has a concussion,” answered the commander, “a bruised rib, and a twisted ankle. The concussion is making her queasy,” he added.

“And I’m seasick,” Jordan croaked, struggling to sit up, to take Miguel from him.

“Lie back down,” Solomon commanded with concern. “I’ll put him next to you.”

As he deposited Miguel on the bed, she drew the little boy against her, hushing him as he started to cry, this time with relief. Her own eyes flooded with tears that slid down her cheeks, unchecked.

Leaving Solomon helpless. He hooked a foot around a stool, dragged it closer, and sat down, making it clear to the others that he wasn’t leaving. “We’d like to be alone,” he said to them.

The commander glanced at Jordan first. “We’ll give you five minutes,” he agreed, waving the others out before him.

Solomon waited for the door to clang shut before he threw an arm around both Jordan and Miguel, holding them fiercely. “Jordan?” he queried. “What can I do, sweetheart?”

To his dismay, she simply shook her head, turned her face into her pillow, and silently wept.

What the hell? She was supposed to be happy. He’d done everything in his power to ensure that she was happy. He’d taken on the Elite Guard, for God’s sake, to rescue Miguel. What more could he do?

“I saved Miguel’s dossier,” he blurted, thinking maybe she was still worried about getting Miguel into the country. “It’s in your backpack, in Vinny’s locker.”

She sniffed and pulled her face out of the pillow. “He told me on the chopper what you did to get Miguel. Oh, Solomon. How am I ever going to thank you for that?”

Marry me.
He caught back his proposal in the nick of time. For a man who’d lost his faith in love before meeting Jordan, maybe he was moving a little too quickly.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he refuted, brushing back the hair that was stuck to her damp cheeks. He frowned at the cut on her lower lip and the bruise on her cheekbone. “What did those assholes do to you?” he wanted to know.

That made her face crumple and more tears brim.

“Oh, Jesus, Jordan.” The blood drained from his face as the worst possible scenario formed in his head.

“No.” She fluttered a hand and vehemently shook her head. “No, Solomon, they didn’t rape me.”

“You’re sure.” That would explain her emotion, her tears.

“Positive.”

He believed her. Still, recalling the danger she’d put herself in, he scolded her with belated rage, “God damn it, Jordan! You could have died by going back. Miguel could’ve died. You’re goddamn lucky this turned out as well as it did!”

“I’m sorry,” she cried, reaching for him, pressing her damp face into his shoulder. “I’m sorry I left you without telling you first. I hated not being honest with you—”

He hushed her, cutting her apology short, loving the feel of her head on his shoulder. “Stop. You don’t owe me an apology. I should have let Miguel come home with you last time, or at least found a way to bring him back earlier. It’s my fault.”

His apology made her cry harder.

She was exhausted and shell-shocked, Solomon decided, wanting desperately to cheer her. “Look, sweetheart,” he cajoled, speaking in a gentle voice that would have raised the eyebrows of teammates, “you’re scaring Miguel. He needs you to be strong for him. See?”

Miguel leaned against her, his dark eyes reflecting confusion as he looked back and forth between them. Jordan lifted her head with a sniff and a forced smile. “I’m okay, Miguelito.
Estoy bién
. I’m just so happy that you’re here with me, and that Solomon is here with us.” Her eyes immediately overflowed, belying her words, making Solomon extremely uneasy.

“We’ll talk more after you rest, Jordan,” he decided, unable to witness her distress any longer.

“Don’t leave!” she implored, clinging to his wrist. “I still can’t believe I’m alive, and you’re alive, and Miguel is safe with us. Please stay.”

“You’re exhausted,” he insisted, hoping rest would put a happier expression on her face. He couldn’t stand to see her like this. “And I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours,” he added, knowing she would put his needs above her own. A knock sounded at the door.

That was Solomon’s cue to leave. He stood up, leaned over, and kissed Jordan’s clammy cheek. “It’s going to be okay, love,” he whispered, amazed to hear that four-letter word slip off his tongue so easily. “Soon we’ll be back at home. Silas will be so happy to see you. Everything will be exactly the way it was before.”

She nodded, but for some reason, she was crying again, crying like her heart was breaking.

Chapter Eighteen

Jillian wiped the back of her hand across her moist forehead, then heaved the saddle off the horse’s back and turned toward the table with it. A rending sensation in her lower abdomen made her gasp and hesitate. Tenderness transformed into a sharp, unaccustomed pain, and she dropped the saddle, clutching her abdomen and doubling over as the pain became intense.

She waited for it to ease, panting with shallow breaths. She’d had two babies before. This pain was not familiar.

She shuffled slowly toward the office, thinking that perhaps she could just sit and rest and she’d be fine. Rafael had been right to caution her. She was working too hard, considering the baby was due in four weeks.

She never made it to the office. Rending agony brought her to her knees. She stared at the dust motes rising out of the straw to sparkle in the late-afternoon sunbeams. The pungent scent of hay and horse manure filled her nostrils as she dragged in a breath and called feebly for help. “Graham!”

Of course, he was probably on his computer, wearing headphones, and he couldn’t even hear her. “Agatha!”

Warm moisture crept down her thighs. Her water must have broken. Glancing down, she was horrified to see the crotch of her shorts turning scarlet. It was blood. She was bleeding.

Trained as an ER nurse, she guessed immediately what was wrong.
Abruptio placentae
. The placenta had detached itself from the wall of her uterus. As a result, her baby would be deprived of oxygen. She, herself, could bleed to death.

“Oh, no.” She had to get help—now. She tried to get up, but the pain was too intense, and movement brought blood gushing out of her. “Help!” she cried, dragging herself toward the barn’s open doors. “Graham! Agatha! Someone help me!”

She was about to pull herself twenty more feet into the office when Graham thumped out of the house. “Mom? Are you calling me?”

“Help me!” she cried, fighting to subdue the panic that coiled around her throat. “Hurry!”

In the next instant, his shadow fell over her. “Mom!” he cried, his voice breaking.

“Call 9-1-1 from the office phone. Hurry. I need an ambulance.”

“Oh, shit,” he breathed, his voice an octave higher. “There’s blood!”

Too much blood, thought Jillian, keeping that fear to herself. The baby was her biggest concern.

Twenty minutes later, Graham stood in the driveway clutching his little sister as they watched the ambulance tear away, red lights flashing. The sudden quiet was almost eerie. He could feel Agatha’s wet face through the fabric of his T-shirt. “Is Mama going to die?” she whispered.

The words sent a tremor of denial through him. “No!” God wouldn’t be that hateful. Or would He? Graham hadn’t exactly been a model son lately. He’d known his mom was working too hard, and he hadn’t lifted a finger to help, preferring to nurse his grief and sulk over his mother’s burgeoning romance with another man.

None of that seemed to matter now, not with his mother’s ashen face so fresh in his memory.

Maybe she would die. The paramedics had rushed her gurney into the ambulance, shouting, “She’s hemorrhaging. Call ahead for a blood infusion and an ultrasound!”

“What about my children?” Graham had heard her cry, as they went to close the doors.

“They can’t ride in the ambulance, ma’am. It’s against regs. Have their father bring them.”

“My father’s dead!” Graham had snarled up at them.

“I’m sorry, kid. Call a neighbor or something.”

“Call Rafael, Graham,” Jillian had suggested just before the doors clanged shut, leaving brother and sister by themselves.

They’d been alone before. But never like this.

Graham trembled. He would call Cameron’s mom. Maybe she could take them to the hospital.

“Come on inside, Agatha,” he murmured, keeping an arm around her as he urged her into their quiet home.

He left her on the couch to call Cameron’s, but no one answered the phone there. Aunt Jordan was in Venezuela. Who else could he call?

Hearing Agatha’s sniffles, he went to soothe her, to think. The same thing had happened the night their father had died. He remembered comforting Agatha, feeling dazed and confused, wondering how everything could have changed in an instant.

What if he never saw his mother alive again?

Fear propelled him off the couch and back into the kitchen. He dialed the number off the business card pegged to the cork board.

“Jillian,” answered the agent with warmth in his raspy voice.

Graham clasped the phone tighter. “No,” he said. “This is Graham. My mother said to call you.”

Hesitation. “What’s wrong, Graham?”

Graham was embarrassed to hear his voice break. “An ambulance came and took Mom away,” he choked out. “They said she was hem—hemorrhaging,” he added, recalling the word. “But they wouldn’t let us go with her.”

The agent whispered something that sounded like a foreign curseword. “I’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up.

Lucy prowled the aircraft carrier till she found a satellite connection in a small cubicle off the mess hall. She placed a call to Headquarters informing them of her whereabouts and braced herself for a verbal reprimand.

“We know,” said Gordon Banks, her immediate supervisor.

“You know?” Lucy repeated, surprised. “What, did you slip a microchip into me at some point?”

“No, no. The SEAL we sent in to retrieve you is one of ours.”

A finger of awareness raked Lucy’s spine. “Which one,” she asked, though intuition had already supplied an answer.

“Lieutenant Atwater.”

So, James Augustus Atwater wasn’t just a SEAL—a fact that was astonishing in itself. He’d also been trained by the CIA, just like her.

“We’re glad you’re okay, Lucy. We want to see you just as soon as you can come in,” Gordon instructed.

“Of course.” She would be debriefed, chastised for ignoring orders. Hopefully the information she’d downloaded in the warehouse—proof that the Shia Liberation Party had funneled weapons to the Populists—would do more than salvage her career. It might even see her promoted.

Solomon stirred and stretched and rammed his elbow into the steel wall that hemmed in one side of his bunk. He kicked off the standard-issue wool blanket and swung out of his bed, careful not to smack his head on the low overhead.

Jordan!
The fact that she was here, on this carrier, safe and sound in the company of Miguel, was so deeply satisfying that he’d shed tears of joy into his pillow when he’d collapsed into his bunk last night. Her emotional state, on the other hand, had prompted disturbing dreams.

He jammed his feet into the boots beside his bed and clomped into the bathroom that adjoined the chief’s berthing area, wanting to get to her as quickly as possible.

His bedraggled reflection prompted him to shave, shower, and brush his teeth. With a torn bit of toilet paper fluttering on the end of his chin, he grabbed a fresh jacket and hurried to sick bay.

The balding commander started guiltily as Solomon stepped through the portal. “Senior Chief,” he greeted him, with little enthusiasm.

“How’s she doing, sir?” Solomon asked, crossing to Jordan’s open door. He drew up short to find the room empty and clean, the bed remade. “Where is she?” he demanded, whirling. “Where’s Miguel?”

“The, uh, the embassy workers were all transported back to the States via chopper. Miss Bliss and the boy went with them.”

Solomon’s blood pressure soared. “And no one thought to inform me of this?” he growled, incredulous.

“She asked that you be left alone, to . . . to rest,” the doctor stammered.

“And what about the boy’s adoption papers?” he inquired, through his teeth.

“Your corpsman got them out of his locker for her.”

Solomon had to glance down at the man’s insignia to remind himself that Commander Sperry was a high-ranking officer. It wouldn’t behoove his career to rearrange his face. He turned and stalked out of the room, not bothering with a parting salute.

Special Agent Valentino’s Lexus had leather seats and an excellent sound system. Too bad the music coming out of it was stuff that only old people listened to. It gave Graham goose bumps. He drove really fast, though, ninety miles an hour, which would have been really cool under different circumstances.

Graham had told him exactly what had happened, what the paramedics had said about a blood infusion. The agent’s swarthy skin looked kind of yellow in the late-afternoon sunlight. Tiny beads of sweat shone on his temple by his hairline.

And Graham realized, with mixed guilt and fright, that the agent was just as scared as he and Agatha were.

“We’re here to see Jillian Sanders,” said Rafe to the hospital receptionist. “She was brought by ambulance half an hour ago.”

The woman conferred with her computer and informed them that Jillian was up in Labor and Delivery. She called upstairs. “I’m sending up Jillian Sanders’s family,” she relayed.

Rafe glanced at Graham, expecting the boy to correct the woman’s assumptions, but Graham kept his mouth shut.

No sooner did they step out of the elevator than they were greeted by a stocky, grim-faced nurse who bustled them into L&D. “You can come on back, Mr. Sanders. Your wife’s undergoing an emergency C-section, so the children will have to remain out here. We have a television and games for them.”

Again, Rafe met Graham’s gray eyes. “Is she going to be okay?” asked the teen, still holding his sister’s hand.

“Her condition is critical,” retorted the nurse, with the barest suggestion of empathy.

Graham grabbed Rafe’s sleeve. “Don’t let her die,” he commanded, his eyes bright with tears he held in check.

“No,” said Rafe, stricken by a terribly familiar sense of helplessness. He wanted to hug both children and offer reassurances, but the nurse was hustling him through a secure doorway and down a sterile hall.

“I want you to wash from your hands to your elbows,” she directed, admitting him into a cubicle with a sink, “and put on these scrubs. Then step through that door, there.”

His stomach was twisted into knots by the time he edged through the other door, wearing a blue cap and matching paper outfit, even booties. His gaze flew to the figure draped in cloth and lying under glaring lights. Jillian’s long blond hair had been stuffed under a cap like his, with one long tendril escaping.

Rafe approached her, averting his gaze from the great quantity of paper sheet around her lower half. He didn’t know what to expect or whether he was even welcome. She appeared to be sleeping. But when the doctor called out a greeting, “Mr. Sanders, come on in. Pull up a stool,” Jillian’s eyes snapped open and she turned her head, her startled look turning into a smile of wan relief.

“Rafael,” she breathed, lifting a hand to him.

He sank onto the stool, relieved that the partition blocked his view of the incision they were carving into her belly. But Jillian’s face, so devoid of color, struck fear deep into his heart. He kissed her knuckles, battling the sudden urge to weep.

“Did you bring the children?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised they let you—”

“Shhh,” he whispered, lowering his mouth to her ear. “They’ll make me leave. Unless that’s what you want.”

She shook her head, then closed her eyes, dragging in a deep breath. “It’s so hard to breathe.”

“Baby’s almost out,” announced the doctor, glancing up at the monitors. He sent a pointed look at the nurse. “Her BP’s low. We need to move faster.”

Despite his matter-of-fact tone, Rafe caught the message: Jillian’s blood pressure was dropping.

“Here we go. And it’s a baby girl,” announced the doctor. He pulled a pink, wet ball out of Jillian’s midsection and presented it briefly to Rafe and Jillian. The tiny wrinkled face inspired amazement.

“Did you see her?” Rafe exclaimed, as they whisked the baby aside to examine her.

“She’s not crying,” Jillian observed on a faint but worried note. “Why isn’t she crying?”

Not a soul answered. Rafe looked over at the crew working on the baby.

“Oh, God,” Jillian moaned. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. The machine monitoring her vitals gave a sudden, ominous chirp. “It’s my fault.”

The doctor glanced over at it, then went back to work. “We need to cauterize this. She’s bleeding too much.” He tried to be discreet in speaking to his assistant, but Rafe heard the words clearly. Chilled to the marrow, he looked at Jillian to see whether she’d also heard, but she appeared to have fainted.

“Jillian!” he cried, patting her cheek, lightly. Nothing. “She’s unconscious, Doctor,” he announced.

“That’s not unusual, Mr. Sanders. She’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor answered. His movements remained confidently urgent, his manner brusque.

The sights, the smells, ignited deeply buried images, sending a tremor through Rafe. Memories of a similar nightmare flashed through his mind. His wife had lain like this, blood draining steadily out of her, only she’d been shot in the gut by mobsters. His baby, Emanuel, was still in her arms, shot in the head. Tito and Serena lay on the couch, with Tito on top, their blood intermingling.

“Please!” he rasped, startling both himself and the doctor. “Don’t let her die!”

“Easy, Mr. Sanders,” soothed the doctor. “We’re gaining the upper hand.”

But Rafe hadn’t really been talking to him. Folding Jillian’s cold hand between his own, he bowed over the fragile bond between them and prayed as he’d never prayed before. He prayed to a God who he believed had stopped hearing his prayers long ago. He prayed until everything and everyone in the room faded away, until reality was just his fervent prayers of whispered desperation over their clasped hands.

It was the baby’s loud cry that brought Rafael’s head up. The sound of it, so hearty and healthy, gave him something he’d lost long ago—hope.

“How’s she doing?” he asked, taking comfort from Jillian’s steady breathing.

“The bleeding has slowed, Mr. Sanders,” the doctor replied. “Your wife’s going to be just fine.”

Rafe wilted with relief, tears spiking his lower lashes.
My wife,
he thought, amazed that the title felt so right, so natural. It was as if God had planned for this woman to be in his life all along.