Exposed (40 page)

A tremendous
slap
.

Maddie couldn’t move. Not a muscle. The world was black, and she was pinned by some enormous weight. The air had been knocked from her lungs, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to blink, tried to lift her head. She couldn’t make her lungs expand, and everything around her seemed to slide into darkness.

She felt the pull of Emma.

Mommy
.

Her little voice, clear as the sky. Her precious baby
smell
entered Maddie’s nose and lungs and filled her to bursting.

Mommy
.

Maddie’s heart lurched. She wanted to reach out and scoop her up and never let her go. But the world was black, and her arms were pinned, and she still couldn’t move.

Maddie
.

Someone was calling her.

Brian? Jolene?

Jolene. She’d run from the truck. She’d run away—

Maddie!

Brian yanked open the door and found her slumped over the deflated airbag.

“Oh, Jesus.” Blood was everywhere. “Maddie!”

He pulled her back, saw the gash in her forehead. Blood streamed down her face. Had she been shot? Blood was all over, but he couldn’t find the source of it. In some dim corner of his mind, he registered a
rhythmic thumping noise he remembered from combat.

“Maddie, come on, baby. Oh, God.”

He tipped her head back and searched for the entry wound. Her eyes fluttered open, and Brian’s legs went weak. He sank down and had to grab the door to stay on his feet.

She muttered something.

“I’m right here. Maddie, can you hear me?” He spied his phone on the floor and reached around her legs to grab it. Sam was gone, but he dialed 911.

“Jo . . .”

“Help’s on the way.”

She gripped his shirt. He looked down, stunned, at her white-knuckled fist.

“Jolene.”

The one word, perfectly clear. Her eyes were clear now, too, which was indescribably weird with all the blood streaming down her face.

“She ran from the truck. I saw her.” Maddie pulled herself forward, falling into him.

“We’ll find her. Maddie?”

But she was out of the pickup, staggering across the grass. Brian caught her around the waist.

“Whoa, Maddie—”

“She’s
hurt
. We have to
find
her.”

Her nails in his arm were like talons, and she kept moving forward, pulling him with her. She wiped her arm over her face and looked shocked when it came away smeared with blood. She wrestled out of her jacket and used it to wipe her face as she glanced around desperately.

The
whump-whump
noise grew louder, and Brian turned to see his backup finally making the scene. The chopper swooped low over the property and hovered above the campground, where just minutes ago, everything had gone down without them. Dust kicked up, stinging his eyes.

Maddie’s grip on his arm tightened. Then it disappeared, and she rushed forward toward a girl lying curled in a ditch.

It wasn’t over yet. They were back. Jolene blinked up at the light. She heard noise, shouting. An enormous man stepped in front of her, blocking out the sun, and she pulled herself into a ball.

Please, no more. Please, no
. She pulled her knees to her chest and tried to will herself away.

Jolene
.

She went still. Not her mother’s voice, but . . .

Jolene, can you hear me?

Not a man but a woman now. A
woman
. Hope stirred inside her. Something warm and soft settled over her like a blanket. Jolene started to cry.

It’s okay now. We’re here to take you home
.

Brian understood now why Maddie hated hospitals. The smells. The waiting. The bureaucracy. After three solid hours, he was ready to climb the walls.

“This is my fault.”

He glanced at Maddie in the chair beside him. She was pale and worried and had dots of iodine all over her forehead from where the nurses had cleaned her cuts. “It’s not,” he said firmly.

If anyone was at fault here, it was Cabrera, who’d ordered his agent to the scene. Within moments of setting foot on the property, Hicks had crossed paths with a guard and been sprayed with a machine gun. If not for his vest, he’d have been killed instantly. Instead, he lay bleeding in the dirt as Mladovic’s man rushed to sound the warning.

But Maddie thought everything was her fault, and she’d been a bundle of guilt and nerves for the past three hours.

The ER doors slid open, and Sam strode in. Brian and Maddie stood.

“Any word?” Sam asked.

Maddie shook her head. “Still waiting.”

“I got hold of Hicks’s fiancée,” Sam said. “She’s on her way over. And I just heard from LeBlanc,” Sam looked at Brian. “She helped execute a search warrant over at Bracewell’s. He had a Remington 700 and a box of .308 Winchester ammo in his closet. We sent it to Scott for testing since he did the original slug.”

Brian glanced at Maddie to see if she understood.

“You mean . . . ?”

Sam nodded. “The working theory is that he summoned you out to that accident scene and set himself up on the cliff to wait. Turns out one of his cousins owns a towing company. We think that’s where he drummed up the rig and the decoy car.”

Maddie looked away, and Brian could tell she still hadn’t quite gotten her head around it. She’d worked with the man for years. A betrayal like that had to burn.

“Where’s Bracewell now?” Sam asked.

“Third floor,” Brian said. “There’s a pair of agents stationed outside his room, in case he gets any ideas about hobbling out of here.” He gave Sam a long look. “And Mladovic is dead. He didn’t make it through surgery.”

Beside him, Maddie tensed. How did she feel about seeing him take another man’s life? He didn’t know, because for the past three hours, she’d hardly said anything.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

Brian gave a sharp nod. His conscience was clear. But he was still going to have to justify his actions to a review board.

The double doors swung open, and a doctor in blue
scrubs stepped out. Brian tried to read the verdict on the man’s face as he walked over.

“Is the agent’s family here yet?” he asked.

“They’re on their way.”

The doctor looked from Brian to Sam, then back to Brian, probably weighing how much to tell when they weren’t next-of-kin.

“When they get here,” the doctor said, “tell them he’s in recovery.”

Maddie slumped against him, and Brian put his arm around her.

“We put two pins in his leg and gave him four units of blood. His condition is stabilized. We should know more within the hour.”

He disappeared back through the doors. Brian turned to Sam and saw his own relief mirrored on his face.

Sam clamped a hand on his shoulder. “You need to get back, Beck. I’ll stay here and wait for the fiancée.”

Maddie looked alarmed. “You have to go in?”

“I need to debrief.”

“Didn’t you already do all that back at the deer lease? You were stuck there for an hour.”

“That’s just the beginning.”

A commotion across the waiting room caught Brian’s eye as Jolene’s grandparents entered the ER. They fell into a hug with Jolene’s mom, and even from across the room, Brian could see the tears of relief streaming down their faces. Jolene was in the back, being checked out by a doctor. She was going to need extensive surgery on her hand and probably years of counseling, but she was alive, which was
more than Brian or Sam had dared hope—more than anyone had dared hope.

Except Maddie.

Brian looked at her now, watching the reunion. She looked spent, both emotionally and physically.

“Let me run you home,” he said.

Sam shot him a look that told him he needed to get his ass back to the office for paperwork and interviews. But Brian ignored him. He took Maddie’s hand and led her through the sliding doors into the crisp winter air.

She stopped to blink up at the sun. “What time is it?”

“Three.”

“Seems later than that.”

He’d parked illegally and was glad to see he hadn’t been towed. He opened the passenger door, and she climbed in without a word.

He glanced at her as he slid behind the wheel. “I’m going to be at least a few hours. Maybe more.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked out the window as they left the hospital parking lot.

Brian trained his gaze on the road ahead. She’d been through a shock. They both had. Brian had ended a man’s life today. Just
boom
, gone.

But that wasn’t the moment that had made Brian’s heart stop. The sight of Mladovic aiming that gun and that window bursting—
that
image was going to have him waking up in a cold sweat for a long, long time.

He loved her.

It had hit him today like a sucker punch. He loved her, and he had no freaking idea how he was going to get her to love him back. But he had to do it.

He glanced over as she stared out the window with that faraway look on her face. It was a look he’d seen on the faces of soldiers after a firefight.

“Maddie?”

She looked at him.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” she said.

The rest of the trip was silent. Brian pulled into her driveway. He started to get out of the car, but she put her hand on his knee.

“It’s okay.”

He looked at her and felt his heart sinking. He couldn’t control her. He couldn’t
make
her want him. And knowing he couldn’t made him feel more powerless than anything in his life.

“You need to go.” She glanced at her curb, where for the first time in days, there wasn’t an FBI vehicle. She looked at him and cleared her throat. “When you’re finished with everything . . . will you come back?” The look in her eyes was tentative. She was uncomfortable even asking.

He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll come back,” he promised. “Soon as I can.”