I realized then that this man was holding my hand. I squeezed and repeated my request. “Dutch?”
No one said anything and with great effort I opened my eyes. Two men in orange jumpsuits hovered over me and were sticking me with IVs. Behind them sat Maks, his expression gravely concerned in his very pale face, which was also coated in sweat. He looked barely able to sit up.
Silently I pleaded with him to tell me what had happened to Dutch. “They’re searching for him,” he said.
A ragged sob erupted from deep inside of me, sending a fresh wave of pain from the top of my head down to my toes, and blissfully, it was enough to send me back into the stupor of unconsciousness.
The next time I remember waking up, I was lying in a hospital bed feeling much less pain and slightly detached. The room was dim, but I could make out someone sitting in the shadows. “Dutch?”
The figure stood and stepped forward, sending my hopeful heart plummeting. It was Frost. “Hey, Cooper,” he said with a smile that still looked sad. “How you feeling?”
Again my eyes welled with tears. I was so afraid for Dutch that I didn’t even care what shape I was in. “Did you find him?” I gasped. “Did you find Dutch?”
Frost’s eyes became pinched and he seemed to be gathering his words carefully before telling me.
“Just say it,” I said, openly sobbing now, because his expression told me everything. “Just tell me what you found.”
He looked at me with such sympathy then and I could feel my heart shattering into a million pieces.
The door opened before he could confess the truth, and a doctor entered. “He’s out of surgery,” he told Frost.
“He made it?” my handler replied, his look astonished.
The doctor nodded. “As I told you when he was brought in, I gave him only a twenty percent chance of making it through the surgery, but he’s definitely a fighter and he pulled through.”
“So, he’ll be okay?” Frost pressed.
The doctor inhaled deeply, and I could tell he was dog-tired. “His lung was collapsed and he suffered a laceration of the liver and spleen, but we’ve stopped the bleeding and we’ve stabilized him for now. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial, and I’ve upgraded his chances to about sixty percent. As long as he doesn’t develop a blood clot or infection, I think Agent Rivers will pull through.”
Frost eyed me again; this time there was no sympathy there. Just hope.
“As for the other patient,” the doctor continued.
“Grinkov,” Frost said, turning back to the doctor. “Did he survive?”
I remembered Maks’s pale face before I’d been pushed out of the plane and how terrible he’d looked on the helicopter that had gotten me here. “The damage from the second dose of toxins was minimal given how much of the antidote he had in his system,” the doctor said. “He’s sustained some kidney damage, but we think he’ll be able to make a full recovery.”
“Can I go see him?” I asked weakly.
Frost turned to me in surprise. “Grinkov?”
I shook my head. “Dutch.”
The doctor smiled kindly and came over to check the chart hanging on the end of my bed. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady,” he said. “You’ve sustained a dislocated shoulder, broken femur, sprained wrist, fractured pelvis, and a pretty severe concussion. I don’t want you even thinking about moving out of that bed for at least a week.”
Again my eyes misted over. “But he needs me,” I whispered. “We’re getting married, Doctor,” I added, as if that would make a difference and sway his decision.
The doctor laid a gentle hand on my forehead. “He needs you to get better, Ms. Cooper. And while you’re getting better, we’ll take good care of your fiance so that he can make it to that wedding, okay?”
Reluctantly I nodded, closed my eyes, and found myself falling asleep once again.
I’m not sure how long I slept, but it must have been a good while, because when I woke, the room was dim again, but not by quite as much, which let me know it was probably sometime late in the day.
Opening my eyes, I saw Frost once more sitting in the chair in my room, this time reading the paper.
“It was Mandy,” I said to him.
He jerked a little in surprise and considered me over the top of his paper before setting it down and pulling the chair up close to my bed. “I know,” he said.
“You do?”
He smiled. “You told me all about it this morning. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
His eyebrows rose. “Must have been the drugs.”
“What’d I tell you?”
Frost sighed. “Well, for starters you demanded hazard pay. And then you insisted we send someone to retrieve your engagement ring.”
I would have laughed if I’d been able to. “I’m glad I got to the most important parts first.”
Frost nodded, and sat back, but not before reaching into his shirt pocket to pull out something small and green. “It only took our guy an hour to find it after we and the CSIS raided Boklovich’s estate. The cadaver dog led us right to the grave where you told us to look.”
I sucked in a breath and felt my lower lip tremble. Frost handed me my engagement ring. I slipped it on and looked at it for a long time, which was how long it took me to be able to speak without crying again. “Did you find Intuit?”
Frost nodded.
“It was sticking out of the pocket of your fatigue jacket.”
I smiled. “Mission accomplished,” I whispered before I remembered the software Dutch had been carrying. “And the disk?” I asked Frost.
“On Agent Rivers when he was brought in.”
I closed my eyes and thanked God that it had all worked out okay. “So, it’s over?”
Frost shrugged. “Mostly,” he said. “We’re still interested in having a nice long talk with Grinkov, but he’s refusing to talk to us until he gets to see you.”
It was my turn to look surprised. “Why’s he want to see me?”
The corners of Frost’s mouth quirked up a bit. “I think because he likes you, Cooper.”
I frowned. “I’m engaged,” I said, holding up my left hand so he could see for himself.
Frost nodded with a sly grin. “He knows, and he likes you in spite of that.”
“Let me guess: You want me to talk to him so that he’ll get all chatty with you CIA boys, right?”
“We’d really appreciate it.”
I tapped my finger on the metal frame of the bed. “Okay,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“On two conditions.”
“Oh, of course there have to be conditions,” Frost mocked. “Okay, Cooper, lay ’em on me. What’re your demands?”
“You arrange for me to see Dutch—today—and you boys pay for our wedding.”
Frost rubbed at the scruff on his chin. He looked like he hadn’t had a shower in a day or two. “Rivers is in ICU and you’re not supposed to move,” he began.
“Figure it out,” I told him. I wasn’t playin’ around here. I needed to see my fiancé. Period.
Frost shrugged. “Okay,” he conceded. “How about this? We arrange for you to be wheeled into ICU and hang out with Rivers for a while, and we pay for your honeymoon.”
“Cheap bastard,” I told him, but I was actually grinning.
“Blame it on budget cuts,” he told me.
“Fine,” I agreed. “But I wanna go somewhere nice, Frost. Not some Motel Six in Peoria or anything, got it?”
Frost’s eyes suddenly went someplace far away. “I’ll send you where I went on my honeymoon,” he told me.
“Where?”
But he wouldn’t tell me. “It’ll be a surprise, Cooper. But don’t worry, I think you two will really like it.”
A few hours later, when I was rested again, Grinkov came into my room. “Hello, Abigail,” he said, coming over to me and sweeping up my hand to kiss it gently on the knuckles.
“How are you?” I asked.
/>
“I’m well,” he said, his other hand moving to stroke the side of my head. “And you?”
“I’ll heal.”
Grinkov moved to the chair Frost had previously been holding vigil in. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get the harness hooked,” he said, his face fully displaying his guilt. “I didn’t see William come for you until it was too late. His weight added to your rate of descent. It took me several thousand feet to make up the difference, and if you hadn’t gone spread eagle like that after getting him off you, I don’t think I would have made it to you in time. I’m sorry you had to fall so long and so far before I could manage to reach you.”
I eyed him with incredulity. “Are you kidding me, Maks? You saved my life! And by my count, that was at least the third, possibly the fourth time you’d done that.”
Maks shrugged that off. “You’re a very special woman,” he said simply. “I couldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. “And thank you also for saving Dutch.”
Maks nodded. “Do you really love him?” he asked abruptly.
I looked him dead in the eyes. “With my whole heart.”
Maks turned away. “You were only pretending to be attracted to me, then?”
I swallowed hard and considered lying, but then, what good would that do? “No, Maks,” I said. “I really was attracted to you. And when I found out you weren’t a terrible person, but someone conflicted with both good and bad elements, well, I was even more attracted. But I’m deeply in love my fiancé, and that will never change.”
Maks continued to study the wall on the opposite side of the room. “The CIA would like to recruit me,” he said.
“I’m sure they would.”
“Do you think I should say yes?”
I considered his question for a bit before answering. “I think that the CSIS has enjoyed ruining your reputation with the bigwigs in Toronto in order to suit their own purposes, and maybe you’ve had enough of that. Maybe it’s time you had someone else help you make a more reputable name for yourself. Of course, it’d be a tricky road with the CIA. They may like you to remain a bad guy, Maks. You should listen to the part of you that wants to be seen as a good man, a positive role model for your sons even, and decide if partnering up with them is the right way to go about doing that.”
“You could mean either I should or I shouldn’t with that answer,” he said slyly.
I nodded. “I could.”
Maks got up then and came over to stand close to me. “It was a pleasure knowing you, Abigail Carter.”
I didn’t bother to correct him. And I also didn’t bother to push him away when he bent to kiss me on the lips. . . . I knew where my heart belonged.
The next morning I was gently transferred to a gurney and wheeled down to ICU. I’d been told that Dutch was just coming off his intubation tube, and when I got to his room, there were many nurses hovering around his bed, hooking up IV bags to both his left and right arms. None of them were happy to see me, and I had the feeling that the strings Frost had pulled to arrange this little meeting had been full of knots and tangles.
Still, after they’d tended to him, my gurney was pushed over to his side and I reached out to hold his hand. It was warm and just feeling the heat from it filled me with a happiness and relief I can’t fully describe. He was still unconscious, but breathing on his own and so far showing remarkable improvement. If all went well, one of the nurses told me, he’d be out of ICU in another few days.
I was allowed only fifteen minutes with him before I’d have to leave, so I made the most of it. Holding tightly to his hand, I told him how much I loved him, how proud I was of him, and how brave I thought he was. And then I looked inside myself and knew that I couldn’t deny this man anything—especially not something as insignificant as a wedding date. Looking back on my reasoning for postponing it, I realized I’d tried to make the choice all about what I wanted rather than what would be good for us.
Clanging around in my thoughts as I looked at his broken and bruised body was what the doctor had said: that Dutch had only a sixty percent chance of making it. That was better than average, yes, but it still struck a deep chord of fear in my heart.
“Dutch,” I said close to his ear, “I’ll make you a deal. You agree to make a full recovery and I’ll marry you whenever you want. You pick the wedding date, honey, and I promise you I’ll show up and say I do. No more arguments about my needing time to make it perfect. It’ll be perfect just because you and I are there. If that’s tomorrow, next week, or the first of November, cowboy, I will be there with bells on.”
I looked down at his hand in mine and waited for a sign. I wanted him to wiggle his fingers or squeeze my hand—you know, like they show in the movies. Something to let me know that he’d heard me. But nothing happened. His hand just lay there limp and lifeless in my grasp, and I couldn’t help the terrible feeling that crept over me. It’s hard to explain, but an awful foreboding snaked its way down my spine, and fear wrapped itself tightly around my heart.
“Time to go,” a nurse whispered too soon.
I kissed Dutch’s fingers and gently laid his hand back. I was too choked up to say or do much else.
Late the next morning, when my own pain was still fairly intense and my worry over Dutch wouldn’t abate, I was having a really low moment when a nurse came in. I thought it was the shift change until she told me that she was actually a nurse from the ICU. My heart began to pound hard in my chest. “What’s happened?” I asked her desperately.
“It’s your fiancé,” she said.
My hand flew to my mouth. “No!” I said. “Please . . . God . . . no!”
She looked puzzled, and then she seemed to realize what I must be thinking. “He’s fine,” she assured me, moving quickly to my bed to hold out a folded piece of paper to me. “He woke up a little bit ago, and he asked me to give you a note.”
I was too stunned to speak. My mind had gone so completely to that worst-case scenario that it took me a minute to recover from it, and in that moment the nurse smiled, tucked the note into my hand, and left me alone again.
When I could think, I unfolded the slip of paper. It was only six words long, but they were the sweetest six words I could ever remember reading. The note read:
Edgar,
You. Me. November. Game on!
Victoria Laurie, Vision Impossible
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