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Adrenaline drained from his veins and brought down his heart rate as black webs spidered in his peripheral vision. Baker secured his hand around hers, and the constant readiness and vibrations running through him quieted for the first time in years. Because of her. “I’ve got you, too, partner.”
Bouncing bright lights registered from over Jocelyn’s shoulder. Flashlights? Baker couldn’t be sure as he tried to force his body to move, but none of his brain’s commands were being carried out. He’d given his fight-or-flight response permission to take a break, and now it would take a miracle to come back online. He gripped Jocelyn’s hand harder. Then again, he was starting to believe in miracles. “I want an entire tray of cookies after this.”
“Done.” Her smile weakened as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
Heavy footsteps pounded against the desert floor. Closing in fast. Baker rolled to one side, ready to protect the woman who’d nearly given her life for him. It took every ounce of strength he possessed to get to his feet. Then he raised his fists. He’d take on the entire cartel if it meant getting Jocelyn out of this alive. The bouncing flashlights merged into one. His brain was playing tricks on him, but he wasn’t going to back down.
“Chief, is that you?” Jones Driscoll slowed his approach, a flashlight in one hand and a weapon in the other. Utter disbelief contorted the man’s expression. Hell, Baker must’ve looked a lot worse than he’d thought.
The combat controller holstered his weapon and pressed his hand between Jocelyn’s shoulder blades. “She’s still breathing. Damn. You two sure know how to throw a party. What happened out here?”
“You mean apart from the fact a Sangre por Sangre bomber just destroyed an entire town in a landslide?” Baker stumbled back as the fight left him in a rush. His knees bit into the ground beside Jocelyn. “She saved my life.”
Chapter Nine
Today would be a cookie dough day.
Because the beeping was back. The sound she hated more than Maverick’s howls in the middle of the night. She was back in a hospital. Jocelyn lifted one hand, though something kept her from extending her fingers completely. She fought the grogginess of whatever pain medication the staff had put her on. Her breathing came easier when she couldn’t feel, but it wasn’t permanent. It couldn’t be.
A low growl vibrated through her leg. Then something familiar. A metallic ping of ID tags. She turned her hand upward, fisting a handful of fur. “Maverick.”
He was here. And pinning her to the bed with his massive weight. The German shepherd licked at her wrist before laying his head back down, and Jocelyn summoned the courage to force her eyes open. Only this time there were no bright fluorescent lights or bleached white tile to blind her.
She wasn’t in a hospital.
Instead, black flooring with matching black cabinets encircled the private room. Socorro’s medical wing. The overhead lights had been dimmed, and the beeping, she just realized, was definitely not as loud as it could’ve been.
“Thought you could use some time together after what happened.” Baker’s voice pulled her attention from her K-9 partner to the man at her left. Dark bruising rorschached beneath one eye and across his temple. There were other markers too—cuts and scrapes that evidenced what they’d been through. Though the splint around his wrist was the most telling of them all.
Jocelyn didn’t have the will or the energy to try to sit up. “How long have you been sitting there watching me sleep?”
“About six hours.” Baker got up from his chair positioned a couple feet from the side of the bed. “Dr. Piel—is that her name?—patched me up nicely, and hey, no waiting to get looked at. I think I might switch providers. Do you know if she takes my insurance?”
“I’m afraid she only sees private patients.” Her laugh lodged halfway up her throat, stuck in the dryness brought on by aerosolized dirt and debris and ash. But there wasn’t any pain—which, now that she thought about it, shouldn’t have been possible.
Not as long as she’d been given the right painkiller.
Jocelyn followed the IV line from the back of her hand to the clear baggy bulging with liquid above her. Morphine. Dr. Piel wouldn’t have known. Nobody in this building knew. She moved to disconnect the line from the catheter, but the moment she pulled it free, the pain would come back.
Maverick lifted his head, watching her every move. Not unlike Baker. He was intelligent, focused and observational. No one in their right mind would choose to go through unending waves of pain after what they’d been through rather than numb out with painkiller. Weaning herself off the meds now would only raise suspicion. And she couldn’t deal with that right now.
“You okay?” Concern etched deep into the corners of Baker’s mouth. “Do you need me to get the doctor?”
“I’m...fine.” She tried recalling the events leading up to her arrival back at headquarters, but there were too many missing fragments. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well, your warning worked.” He moved to the side of the bed, sliding one hand over her wrapped ankle. The thin gauze around the joint said she hadn’t broken it as she believed. More likely a hard sprain. “Socorro was able to evacuate nearly everyone who might be impacted by the landslide. Though that didn’t stop the canyon wall from caving in. You saved a lot of lives, Joce. Without you, Alpine Valley would be in rough shape. Well, roughershape.”
Joce. He hadn’t called her that before. It made her want to believe they were more than two people thrust together in the aftermath of a bombing, but her heart hurt at the idea. Of tying herself to someone else. Because when that tie broke—as they inevitably did—she would be right back in the dark hole she’d spent so long trying to climb out of. Just like she’d done after Miles’s death. Her stomach twisted into one overextended knot. “Were there any casualties?”
“Not a single one.” He shook his head, a hint of wonder in his voice. “You and your team, as much as I hate to admit it, really saved our bacon. Thank you, Jocelyn. For everything. If I hadn’t rushed to find Marc De Leon, maybe none of this would’ve happened, and I’m so sorry for that.”
“He killed your sister, didn’t he?” she asked.
“Yeah. He did.” Baker scrubbed a hand down his face, a habit he’d picked up on whenever he wanted to avoid a tough topic. It was a defense mechanism. Avoid the question to avoid the feelings that came with it, but it didn’t make the hard things go away. At least, not in her experience. “I thought we would find De Leon and get him to identify the Ghost, but the explosive he packed into my Kevlar vest turned out to be the same blueprint for those used to kill Jane Doe three months ago. I had him, Jocelyn. All this time. I just didn’t connect the dots.”
Jocelyn bit back the urge to remind him of her warning before they’d gone into that house. A Sangre por Sangre lieutenant’s compound had been attacked. The cartel would only take the event as an act of war. Sooner or later, they’d learn Alpine Valley’s chief of police and a Socorro operative had been there, and then... The crap would really hit the fan. It was only a matter of time. “But?”
“I was so sure of myself, going in there.” He shook his head again, much more aggressively as though to dislodge the theory altogether. “But something is off. The man we fought... He told me I didn’t have to watch my sister die right in front of me, that I was spared that horror as she burned. Made it seem like he’d gone through all that himself. That he’d lost someone, too.”
