With no way of knowing where al-Jihad had eyes and ears, they had to be careful not to make it obvious that the terrorist had a traitor among his small crew.
“Just hang on for a few hours, Chelsea,” Fax said quietly, his words echoing in the cave. “Help should be on its way soon.”
Then, knowing he’d done the best he could for her, he paused at the cave mouth and looked back at the six bloodied bodies, five of which weren’t going to wake up ever again.
“Collateral damage,” he murmured. Uncharacteristically, he found himself regretting that he couldn’t have saved the others, hadn’t even tried. And, as he walked into the sunlight, he found himself wishing that he believed he was going to live long enough to see pretty Chelsea Swan again, under better circumstances.
But as soon as he caught himself thinking along those lines, he squelched the emotions.
There was no room for softness around men like al-Jihad, and Fax had a job to do. That took priority, period.
Chapter Three
“She’s coming around.” Chelsea felt a couple of light taps on her face, and heard a babble of voices close by, but she couldn’t quite grasp what any of it meant.
Reality and recognition were distant strangers. Cocooned in a warm lassitude, she felt too lazy to move, too tired to care that moving was impossible.
“Are you sure none of this is her blood?” a second voice asked, this one female.
“Positive,” the first voice answered. “She doesn’t have a single laceration on her, just the bump on the back of her head.”
“Then where’d the blood come from?”
“From one of the others, looks like.” Another series of taps on her face. “Chelsea? Can you hear me?”
She moaned and swatted at the hand that was gently slapping her. At least she tried to swat. She failed, though, because her arms didn’t move.
“Here she comes,” the first voice said, sounding pleased. “Okay, kiddo. I need you to open your eyes now. Can you do that for me?”
Chelsea did as she was told, squinting into the fading light of dusk, which showed that she was inside a cave of sorts. The details were lost to the shadows and the glare of handheld lights, but she was aware of numerous people inside the small space, most of them cops.
A paramedic was crouched over her. Behind a plastic face shield, his brown eyes were dark with concern. It wasn’t the concern that confused her though; it was her sudden, utter conviction that his eyes were the wrong color. They weren’t supposed to be brown; they were supposed to be…
Blue, she remembered. Ice-cold blue.
The memory of the man’s eyes unlocked a flood of other recollections. She gasped as the memories swamped her, slapping her with terror and confusion, and the unbelievable realization that Jonah Fairfax, double murderer, had done exactly as he’d promised. He’d saved her.
But as the pieces lined up in her brain—sort of—they didn’t click. He’d said the drug would take twelve hours to wear off, and she’d been abducted near lunchtime, yet she could see dusk outside.
“What day is it?” she asked, her voice cracking from disuse and whatever drug he’d stuck in her system.
The paramedic said, “Tuesday. Why?”
Which meant she’d only been out for a few hours. “How did you find me?”
“Anonymous tip,” he said, looking past her to confer with someone outside her line of vision.
Her brain jammed on the information, which didn’t make sense. Fairfax had said something about the escapees being well away by the time she came around, but she’d only been out for a few hours. Had he changed his mind and made the call himself? Had—
The spiraling questions bounced off each other inside her throbbing skull and logjammed, and a sudden shiver wracked her body. “I’m f-freezing,” she managed between chattering teeth.
“We’re working on that,” the paramedic replied. “We’ll have you out of here in a jiff.”
It wasn’t until he and his partner lifted her that she realized she was on a stretcher, swathed in blankets and strapped down, which explained the feeling of immobility.
She was aware of commotion around her as she was carried out of the cave and back along the wooded trail. She caught glimpses of concerned faces, many of them belonging to cops she saw in the ME’s office on a regular basis. She wanted to stop and talk to them, wanted to tell them what had happened to her, but her lips didn’t work right and the light was all funny, going from the blue of dusk to a strange grayish-brown and back again.
When they reached the ambulance, Sara was there waiting, tears coursing down her cheeks when she saw Chelsea. Her lips moved; the words didn’t make any sense but Chelsea knew her friend well enough to guess Sara was apologizing for leaving her out on the loading dock.
It wasn’t your fault, Chelsea tried to say. Don’t blame yourself. I’ll be okay—Fairfax saved me. But the words didn’t come out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but let the world slip away as the paramedics loaded her into the waiting ambulance.
Everything faded to the gray-brown of unconsciousness.
She surfaced a few times after that—once as she was being wheeled through the hospital corridors, the fluorescent lights flashing brightly overhead, and once again during some sort of exam, when she heard doctors’ and nurses’ voices saying things like, “That doesn’t make any sense” and “Check it again.”
She didn’t come around fully until early the next morning. She knew it was morning because of the way the light of dawn bled pale lavender through the slatted blinds that covered the room’s single window, and the way her body was suddenly clamoring for breakfast and coffee, not necessarily in that order.
A quick look around confirmed that she was, indeed, in the hospital, and added the information that homicide detective Tucker McDermott was fast asleep in the chair beside her bed.
The realization warmed her with the knowledge that her friends had closed ranks around her already.
She knew Tucker through the ME’s office, and more importantly through his wife, Alyssa, who was a good friend. Alyssa, a forensics specialist within the BCCPD, was quick-tempered and always on the go. In contrast, Tucker was a rock, steady and dependable. He might’ve had a flighty playboy’s reputation a few years back, but marriage had settled him to the point that he’d become the go-to guy in their circle, the one who was always level in a crisis, always ready to listen or offer a shoulder to lean on.
He made her wimpy side feel safe.
She must’ve moved or made some sound indicating that she’d awakened, because he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
“I’m—” She paused, confused. “That’s weird. I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. I feel really good.” Energy coursed through her alongside the gnawing hunger, but there were none of the lingering aches she would’ve expected from her ordeal. Lifting a hand, which didn’t bear an IV or any monitoring lines, she probed the back of her head and found a bruised lump, but little residual pain. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel the brain fuzz of prescription-strength painkillers. “What did the doctors give me?”
Tucker shook his head. “Nothing. By the time you arrived, your core temp was coming back up and your vitals were stabilizing. They decided to let you sleep it off and see how you felt when you woke up.”
“I’m