I stop cradling my throbbing head in my hands when someone knocks on the bedroom door. After telling me he’ll see me around—that’s as formal as it gets for Rocco—he heads for the door to let our interrupter in. I’m not sure if he and Agent Machini have met before, but they don’t give off the vibe of strangers when they bypass each other in the doorway of my room.
“It’s time, Demi,” Agent Machini says after handing me a pair of shoes.
Despite the begs of my achy head, I slip my feet into a pair ballet flats before standing on a wobbly pair of knees.
After watching me sway like a leaf in a fall wind, Agent Machini asks, “Are you still dizzy?”
“Only a little,” I lie, confident most of my pain centers around my heart. “I’ll be okay.”I have no choice but to be.
She waits a beat before bobbing her head. “Okay. This way.”
After spinning on her heels, she guides my walk outside. To say I’m shocked she veers me through Roxanne’s grandparents’ ranch is an understatement. I assumed we were in a safe house. I had no clue I was hiding in plain sight.
With Dimitri’s head seemingly in lockdown mode, he only throws the quickest glance my way when I’m loaded into the back SUV in a fleet of five and driven away. I’m interested to learn what he thinks of Agent Machini’s plan, but I’m not in the right frame of mind to ask questions just yet. I only walked a few feet, yet I feel seconds from collapse. My nape is drenched with sweat, my stomach is swirling, and I have no doubt the thump of my skull is more a migraine than a standard headache.
Who knew heartache was so physically exhausting?
“Are you sure you’re okay, Demi?” Agent Machini asks from her station across from me a couple of miles later. For the past thirty minutes, she’s been fiddling with an iPad, proving there’s no rest for the wicked.
When I nod, she places down her device before balancing her backside on the edge of her seat. “I know this is hard, and you’re probably pissed as hell at me about the operation I ran last night, but it will get better.” She nudges her head to the report she’s in the process of filing. “There’s stuff in there that will see thisallcoming to an end very soon. The real people responsible will be brought to justice, and the innocent will be freed. I just need you to give me a little bit of time. Miracles don’t happen in a day.”
“Okay.”
I hate giving in. Even when we’re wrong, it’s rare for a Petretti to admit they are, but I’m just too tired to continue fighting. I am physically and mentally exhausted. I want to close my eyes, fall asleep, and forget this world exists, and I’m allowed to do that forty minutes later while thirty thousand feet in the air.
“Demi…” Agent Machini’s shouts from her seat across from mine before she unbuckles her seat belt and darts across the aisle of the private jet.
I’m shuddering out of control, choking on my tongue, and experiencing the most splintering headache I’ve ever experienced, yet I feel at peace like the best is still to come.
I finally feel free.
“Take this aircraft down!” Agent Machini screams toward the cockpit while removing me from my chair and laying me flat on the ground. The blinding light she flashes into my eyes doubles the pain in my head, so there’s no way I can follow her command for me to stick out my tongue. “Come on, Demi. Open your eyes for me and poke out your tongue. You’re stronger than this.”
I try to follow her command, mindful of the despair in her voice, but I’m in too much pain to do anything but shut down.
I want the pain to end.
It hurts too much.
Several extremely painful seconds later, Agent Machini mutters, “The patient’s Glasgow score is a five if that. I believe she’s suffering from an acute subdural hematoma.”
It dawns on me that she’s talking to someone outside of the plane when a mature male voice crackles into my ears a couple of seconds later. Everyone seated around us wouldn’t have been over the age of thirty-five. This man sounds in his sixties, if not a little older. “If that is the case, you’ll need to perform an emergency posterior fossa craniectomy.”
“No—”
“You can do this, Macy,” the stranger assures, his tone confident. “You’ve performed it before, and I will guide you like I did back then.”
“I was in a hospital then, and I had the right equipment. I-I can’t perform it here.”
“You can,” assures a third voice. This one sounds similar to the one who guided me out of the bushland last night, just primed with apprehension. “Tell me what you need and what needs to be done to save her. Without her, you may never find Kendall.”
Just before I surrender to the pain overwhelming every inch of me, Agent Machini replies, “Find me a corkscrew or a wine opener. Something that can burrow through bones.”
Her clipped request would scare me if my slip into the black void didn’t award me the image of my dad standing across from me with the biggest smile on his face. He holds Kaylee in one hand while stretching out the other in offering to me.
When I slip my hand into his, fully void of the pain that’s been crippling me the past twelve hours, he whispers, “Welcome home, baby. There’s nothing to be scared of here.”
28
