And yet with all the tools at their disposal, Kade remained in critical condition.
“We’re not equipped to deal with this,” John, one of the medics, admitted to the small group that had gathered in the corridor.
Before anyone could answer, the group got a little bigger as Reese and Sloan burst through the metal doors at the end of the hall.
“How’s Randy?” Reese demanded.
“The bullet grazed his arm,” John reported. “We cleaned him up, slapped a bandage on it, and sent him home. Ethan’s mother will look after him tonight. But he’ll be fine.”
“And Kade?” she said flatly.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said the other medic, a stocky man named Frank. “The bullet’s still in his gut, and there’s no way of getting it out without causing more damage.”
Lennox peered through the open doorway of the room beside them, where Kade was lying on a long metal table. His eyes were closed, his chest covered in blood, but at least that chest was still rising and falling. He was still breathing.
“He’s gonna need surgery,” John told his leader. “Or at the very least, a blood transfusion.”
“Then give him a blood transfusion,” Reese snapped.
“We can’t,” Frank said grimly.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because our universal donor is dead.” Pain flickered in the medic’s eyes. “Arch is—was—the only one whose blood type we knew for sure. He was type O. We don’t know Kade’s, and we can’t risk giving him incompatible blood.”
The reminder that Arch was dead split Lennox’s chest in two. Arch was dead. Jesus. His concern for Kade had overshadowed that bleak truth, but now it was all his brain was capable of registering. Arch. Dead. And Jamie was the one who had to tell Bethany.
Bethany, who was seven months pregnant.
Lennox suddenly felt sick.
“Hudson is a universal donor.” Pike spoke up in a gravelly voice, causing everyone to look over in surprise.
“Shit, you’re right.” Rylan focused on Reese. “She gave us a whole lesson on blood typing a while back. And she was trained in the city hospital.” He paused. “She might be able to help him.”
“She’s five hours away,” Lennox pointed out. “We can reach them on the sat phone, but even if they left right this second, it’ll still take a while for her to get here.” The eddy of queasiness in his gut churned harder. “We don’t know if he has that long.”
Reese glanced at the doorway, at Kade, then turned to Pike. “Take the chopper.”
He looked startled. “You sure?”
Lennox was equally surprised. It was no secret that Reese had a military-grade chopper stashed on a helipad they’d built out on the farm, but she rarely allowed her people to use it. The cost of fuel was too damn high; even a short flight could cripple the town of its fuel supplies.
“I promised Connor that his men would be safe here,” she muttered. “And I owe it to Kade to give him the best possible treatment.” She cleared her throat, then scowled at Pike. “Why are you still here? Go to the farm and get on that chopper. Bring Connor’s woman here.”
Pike took a step forward, but Reese stopped him. “Just her, Pike. Any extra weight will eat up more fuel. Connor will have to stay at the camp.”
Lennox wasn’t holding his breath about that happening, but Pike nodded and stalked off.
Reese wasn’t done giving orders. “You’re on cleanup,” she told Sloan. “We need to take care of the bodies before rigor mortis sets in. The scene needs to look right.”
Rylan frowned. “What scene?”
She gave an impatient shake of her head. “Don’t worry about it. Sloan will take care of it.”
“I’m going with him,” Rylan said before shifting his gaze to Lennox. “You’ll stay with Kade?”
“I won’t leave his side,” he promised.
With a look of gratitude, Rylan clapped his hand over Lennox’s arm, then glanced at Sloan. “Let’s go.”
The two men disappeared down the hall, and then both medics ducked into Kade’s room, leaving Lennox alone with Reese.
“What kind of retaliation can we expect?” he asked quietly. “Dominik and Ferris will know something’s up when Charlie and his crew don’t report back to headquarters.”
“They’ll report back.”
Her mysterious response made him frown. “What the hell does that mean?”
“For fuck’s sake, why do I need to explain myself to everyone? I know what I’m doing.” Reese jammed her finger in the center of his chest. “Save your questions for later, Lennox. Right now your job is to keep Kade alive. Connor will have my head if his man doesn’t survive.” She spun on her heel and marched toward the door, her red hair swinging like a pendulum with each brisk step.
Lennox took a breath and went to check on Kade. John had just replaced the bandage, but already it was more pink than white. Kade was still bleeding, not as much as before, but still fucking bleeding, damn it.
Christ. Tonight had been a bloodbath.
Lennox rubbed his eyes, then raked his hands through his hair as he collapsed on the chair next to Kade. Arch was dead. Kade was hurt. And yet Lennox couldn’t help thanking whatever higher power had spared everyone else. Jamie. Sara. Randy, whom Lennox had tackled to the ground when the guns went off. The boy had still gotten shot, but luckily it was just a flesh wound.
A wheezy noise captured his attention. It was Kade’s breathing. Shit. If Kade’s respiratory system was starting to shut down, that definitely wasn’t a good sign.
Lennox had never felt more powerless in his life as he sat at the man’s side. He couldn’t do a damn thing to help Kade.
He wasn’t sure anybody could.
* * *
Bethany didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t pound her fists against the wall and shout at the heavens for taking Arch from her.
All she did was sink down on the couch, press both hands to her belly, and close her eyes.
Jamie had been sitting with the woman for more than an hour, and she’d reached a point where she truly had no idea what to do.
Arch is dead.
Those were the only words she’d been able to choke out before Bethany fell into her trance. The longer Bethany stayed silent, the more worried Jamie got, but what was she supposed to do? What was the proper etiquette you were supposed to follow after you had just told a close friend that her man was dead? Should she hug her? Rub her back? Make her something to eat?
Jamie had already voiced each one of those suggestions. Bethany hadn’t responded. Hell, she didn’t even seem to register Jamie’s presence.
“Bethy,” she whispered. “Please. Talk to me. I need to know you’re here with me.”
The woman’s eyes didn’t open, but for the first time since Jamie had entered the bedroom Bethany had shared with Arch, her friend finally spoke.
“Go help Kade.” It was a dismissal. Brief. Hoarse.
The agony stabbing Jamie’s heart only intensified. “No. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I’m not alone.” Bethany was rubbing her stomach almost hypnotically. “I’m with my baby.”
Tears stung Jamie’s eyes, then spilled over and streamed down her cheeks. But Bethany wasn’t looking at her. Bethany wasn’t even in the room. She was somewhere else, somewhere that Jamie couldn’t access.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“You have to. They might need you in the infirmary.” Bethany finally slitted her eyes open, and the overpowering grief Jamie saw in them ripped her insides to shreds.
“You need me.”
“I’ll be all right.” Bethany’s eyelids closed again.
No, she wouldn’t be all right. How could she be? She’d lost the man she loved, the f
ather of her baby. One of the best men Jamie had ever known. Her heart ached at the thought of never seeing Arch again. Never hearing his gruff voice. Never feeling those big bear paws he called hands gripping her waist when he hugged her.
But it was obvious there was nothing she could do for Bethany right now. The woman had completely shut down.
“I’ll come back to check on you in a bit,” she said softly.
That didn’t garner a response from Bethany.
Jamie’s knees wobbled as she stood up. She hesitated, then leaned down and kissed the woman’s forehead. Bethany’s skin was ice-cold beneath Jamie’s lips. Her eyes remained closed.
God, Jamie truly had no idea how Bethany was ever going to come back from this.
It was pitch-black out when Jamie exited the storefront where Bethany and Arch lived. With the torches extinguished and the moon nowhere in sight, it was too dark to see even two feet in front of her, so she clicked on her flashlight and carefully made her way to the building that housed the infirmary. It was alarmingly quiet inside, but as she neared the end of the hall, she heard a murmur of voices. When she turned the corner, she found Lennox sitting on the floor, leaning his head against the cinder block wall.
“How is he?” Jamie asked urgently.
Her heart jumped when he didn’t answer.
She poked her head into the doorway two feet from where he sat, and was overcome with relief when she spotted one of the medics changing Kade’s bandage. He was alive, then. They wouldn’t bother changing the dressings of a dead man.
Lennox didn’t stand up, so she slid down beside him. After a beat, he wrapped his arm around her.
“Where is everyone?” Jamie tucked her head against his shoulder.
“Pike went to get Hudson,” Lennox mumbled. “Reese gave him the chopper. It’ll take him less than an hour to fly to camp.” He checked the watch strapped to his wrist. “They should be back soon. It’s been nearly two hours since he left.”
“And the others?”
“Sloan and Rylan are taking care of the bodies. Randy and Sara are at home.” Lennox’s arm tightened around her. “How’s Bethany?”
Jamie exhaled slowly. “Not good.”
He didn’t ask for more details. In fact, he didn’t say another word. He went silent and stared straight ahead, and each minute that ticked by heightened Jamie’s concern. He was shutting down on her the way Bethany had done. Maybe he was in shock?
But no, she knew Lennox. He possessed the kind of steely strength other men only dreamed of. He didn’t go into shock. He didn’t withdraw after something dangerous had gone down. Just a few months ago their home had been ambushed. They’d watched one of their friends die—Nell, one of the most beautiful, vibrant women Jamie had ever known. Lennox hadn’t shut down then, so she couldn’t understand why he was shutting down now.
His head suddenly snapped toward her, and the clarity swimming in his gray eyes startled her.
“It’s not safe here,” he said roughly.
Her brow furrowed. “Len—”
“It’s not safe here,” he repeated, and then he turned his head and went back to staring at the wall.
23
Lennox jolted to attention when he heard the slamming of doors above them, followed by hurried footsteps that vibrated in the ceiling. Thank fuck. Hopefully that meant Pike was back.
He and Jamie had been sitting in silence for the past ten minutes. Kade was still alive, but not doing well judging by the increasingly agitated murmurs floating out of his room. John and Frank couldn’t do more than try to control the bleeding and keep him conscious.
Loud thumps sounded from the stairwell. The metal doors burst open and Xander appeared. “Where is he?” the bearded outlaw demanded.
Lennox and Jamie quickly hopped to their feet. There was a blur of blond hair at the door. Hudson flew through it, racing after Xander. Lennox waited for Connor to appear, but the doorway remained empty.
“Where’s Con?” he asked with a frown.
Hudson answered while giving Jamie a quick hug. “Back at camp. Someone needed to stay with Piper and Layla.”
Lennox had been certain Connor wouldn’t let Hudson out of his sight, but apparently the man trusted Xander with her care.
The four of them entered Kade’s room, and Xander’s face paled the moment he saw his friend. He wasted no time touching the man’s ashen cheeks. “Kade. You with us?”
A pair of dark eyes slit open. “Xan?” the patient said weakly.
“I’m right here, man. So’s Hudson.” Xander looked sharply at the medics. “Pike said you need blood?”
John nodded, then glanced at Hudson. “You sure you’re a universal donor?”
“A hundred percent.” She was already rolling up the sleeves of her oversize flannel shirt, which must have belonged to Connor, because it hung all the way to her jean-clad knees. “You have the right equipment to do this?”
“Yeah. Take a seat.”
The medics pushed Lennox and the others out of the way as Hudson settled in the chair next to Kade. They were relegated to the wall, and Lennox’s throat tightened when he saw Hudson reach for Kade’s hand. She squeezed it, her gray eyes focusing on the wounded man’s face.
“You’re going to be okay,” she murmured.
Frank was bustling over Kade, shifting the man’s arm so he could insert a small needle into the artery at Kade’s wrist. A long tube was connected to the needle, and John quickly snapped a second needle to the other end and flicked the inside of Hudson’s elbow with his free hand. Once he found the vein, the needle slid in, and within seconds, Hudson’s blood began flowing through the tube, trickling slowly toward Kade’s wrist.
“How do you know how much to give him?” Jamie asked tentatively.
“We don’t,” Hudson answered in a soft voice, her gaze still glued to Kade. “We just have to wait and see if there’s any improvement.”
“Xan . . .” Kade’s pained plea was barely above a whisper. “You still here?”
Xander sank to his knees so that his face was close to Kade’s. “Still here, man. I’m not going anywhere.”
Kade let out a breath that sounded distressingly wheezy. “You still have the letter I gave you?”
Lennox saw Xander’s broad shoulders tense, but the man’s tone was gentle as he said, “Yeah.”
“You’ll . . . give it to him if anything happens to me?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Xander said firmly. “You’re going to be fine.”
Lennox didn’t share the other man’s conviction. Kade looked like he was knocking on death’s door. There was no color in his face. Maybe because it had all gathered at his side, which was red and swollen. And his breathing was weak and raspy.
“This isn’t going as fast as I’d like,” Frank said, frowning as he studied the sluggish flow of blood traveling through the tube.
“It’ll pick up,” Hudson assured him, but she sounded worried too.
Time passed. Lennox wasn’t sure how much, because his mind was elsewhere. No longer in the room with Kade, but back in the town square. He heard the crack of gunfire. He saw the bullets. He felt the fear. The sheer, absolute terror that had consumed him when he was crouching behind cover, not knowing where Jamie was, not knowing if she was dead or alive.
They needed to get out of Foxworth. There would be retaliation coming their way. There had to be. The GC didn’t take kindly to dead Enforcers in the free land, no matter how Reese ended up staging the scene.
“Enough.”
The harsh command jerked Lennox from his internal panic. Pike was looming in the doorway, his impossibly dark eyes narrowed at the center of the room.
“She’s given him too much,” he told the medics. “You need to stop.”
“I’m okay,” Hudson tried to protest, and Lennox was su
ddenly horrified when he noticed her face.
She was whiter than snow. Her eyes were glazed. And either he was imagining it, or she was swaying in her chair, about to keel over even though she was seated.
“It’s been two hours,” Pike snapped, charging toward her. “Time to stop.”
Two hours? Jesus. Lennox had no idea it’d been that long.
“He’s right, doll.” Xander spoke up in a tired voice. “Con will kill us if we bring his woman back to him in a coffin.”
Hudson continued to object, but the men—and the medics—weren’t hearing it. The needle was efficiently removed from her arm. Pike helped her to her feet. She swayed so wildly that Pike cursed and lifted her up into his arms, but her arms were too weak to wrap around him. They dangled at her sides as he carried her out the door.
“I’ll take her upstairs, make sure she gets some rest,” he barked over his shoulder.
Once they were gone, Xander took the chair Hudson had been sitting on, his gaze sweeping over Kade’s face. “It looks like he’s got some color in his cheeks, no?”
No, it didn’t. If anything, Kade’s skin was gray now. But Lennox didn’t have the heart to say it, so he nodded and said, “He’s looking better.”
He felt Jamie’s hand slipping into his own. Her fingers were freezing. “Now what?” she whispered, her worried eyes focused on Kade.
Lennox swallowed. “We wait.”
* * *
Jamie woke up with a start, confused to find that they were out in the hall again. She was curled up on the floor beside Lennox with her head in his lap, but she didn’t remember getting there, or falling asleep. She blinked a couple of times. Spotted Pike and Xander, who’d dragged chairs out into the corridor and were sitting in absolute silence, staring at Kade’s door. She shifted her gaze and found Rylan leaning against the wall a few feet away.
She wasn’t sure what time it was, but she remembered being awake when Rylan and Sloan had returned from their mysterious errand about an hour ago. She’d been too exhausted to focus on the details, but from the low murmur of their conversation, she had gleaned that they’d driven a hundred miles east, where they’d created a visual narrative with the dead bodies from the town square, setting it up to look as if the unit had been attacked by bandits. Then they’d used the radio in the truck to contact Enforcer headquarters and make a desperate plea for backup. But it would be too late. When reinforcements arrived, they would discover that their fellow soldiers had already lost the battle.