He saw her. He knew her. And he loved her anyway.
Something warm bloomed in her chest—warmth that had nothing to do with blood loss or shock or the beautiful sunny day. She’d spent her whole life believing she had to earn love. That she had to be perfect, be useful, be whoever someone needed her to be.
But here, bleeding out in a boat in the middle of Sydney Harbour, stripped of every mask she’d ever worn?—
“He will take great delight in you.”
The verse drifted through her fading consciousness like music.
“Rejoice over you with singing.”
Dakota’s face blurred above her. His voice was still there, still calling her name, still begging her to stay. But the darkness was soft now. Welcoming. Not frightening at all.
She’d asked to be saved.
And Someone had answered.
Jayden closed her eyes, Dakota’s hand warm against her cheek, his voice fading into something that sounded almost like a lullaby.
And let the darkness take her.
SIXTEEN
Please, God, let her live.
It was all he had in him. Those words and, of course, Tiffany’s—Jayden’s, whoever’s, he didn’t care—reaching out to him with . . . I love you.
Yeah, please, God, let her live!
Dakota’s clothes were still damp, salt water and harbor grime stiffening as they dried, a reminder of the moment he’d helped pull her from the water—limp, bleeding, not breathing until suddenly, gloriously, she was.
The corridor was too quiet. Too still. Every beep of a distant monitor was a countdown, every squeak of shoes on linoleum was news he wasn’t ready to hear, and Dakota had worn a path in the floor, waiting for someone to tell him whether the woman he loved was going to live.
Ham was on the phone with London, his voice low and furious. Dakota caught fragments between his own heartbeats: “Martin . . . escaped . . .” But he couldn’t focus on any of it. Not while Jayden was on an operating table somewhere behind those doors, a bullet wound in her abdomen and his last words to her still hanging in the static between them.
I love you too, Tiffany.
It had felt right, calling her that, at least in the moment.
Now, he just wanted Jayden, his Jayden, back.
He paced. Five steps to the window, where the Harbour Bridge was visible in the distance—a reminder of everything that had just happened. Five steps back to the plastic chairs bolted to the wall. Turn. Repeat.
The surgery had been going for two hours. Or three. He’d lost track somewhere between the ambulance and the waiting room, somewhere in the blur of fluorescent lights and antiseptic smell and the terrible, crushing weight of not knowing.
Ham ended his call with a sharp word and shoved the phone into his pocket. His face was tight with anger—the kind that came from being outplayed.
“He got away,” Ham said.
Dakota stopped pacing. “Who?”
“Alan Martin.” Ham leaned against the wall, exhaustion evident in every line of his body. “The boat was a decoy. He ditched it in the ocean, got away on a tender. By the time our people got there, he was gone. Had that exit route planned from the beginning.”
“I know we talked about him at the briefing, but who is this guy?”
Ham was quiet for a moment. Then he pushed off the wall and moved to stand beside Dakota at the window, looking out at the Sydney skyline.
“You remember the train heist? The one that kicked all this off?”
