Rory (In the Company of Snipers Book 6) Read online

  A gentle smile tweaked Nima’s mouth. “I am come.”

  Whatever that meant. The darned little girl or old woman or whoever she was—winked. And in Ember’s delirium, because she had to be really sick to be seeing what she thought she was seeing, she lifted off the ground. Rory didn’t seem to notice. He kept telling Nima stories, and Nima kept watching Ember while the wind blew around her and through her. A flighty, floaty feeling enveloped Ember. She was blowing away.

  Caught on the breeze, her arms and legs separated from her body in a bizarre cartoon-like scene of discombobulated body parts. Colors turned to a thousand shades of gray before they burst into bright lights that flashed and zigged and zagged. And she didn’t care anymore because the pain dissipated. And pain-free was a very good thing.

  But Rory was still there. Somewhere. She could smell the body wash on his flannel shirt, and one thing was for sure. He was her companion agent. He’d never let her go, if only because Alex would kill him if he did.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?” An annoying voice shattered the rambling sensation in her mind. “Can you hear me?”

  Go. Away. She turned her face into a pillow, nuzzling after the smell of a certain guy in a certain cotton shirt. Voices talked around her in steady professional tones. She drifted back to—

  “Ma’am. I need you to wake up. Can you do that for me?” That damned voice again. Strong hands gave her shoulders a gentle but firm squeeze.

  “Mmm, sure,” she mumbled. Where am I?

  “There you go. Can you hear me?” That annoying voice belonged to a white-masked face with bushy gray eyebrows leaning too close to her nose for comfort. His breath smelled like tuna fish. And then she knew why the bright lights.

  “Do you know where you are?” Bushy Brows asked.

  “Umm.” She squinted into his annoying face. “Hospital?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re at Saint John’s Hospital in Chicago. Do you know how you got here?”

  She shook her head, trying to recall anything after she’d fallen asleep in Rory’s arms. “Umm, what?”

  “Just think for a few minutes. You were pretty out of it when you first got here. Take your time.”

  Someone wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her left bicep. Ember faded between the glare of hospital lights and the enticement of heavy slumber, beyond the point of exhaustion. Only the continual squeeze of the cuff kept her half awake.

  “Mrs. Swift. You’re cleaned up and bandaged. We’ve given you a strong antibiotic drip. We need to move you into another room now.”

  What? Wait. Mrs. who?

  It was a short ride. Gentle hands transferred her to another bed and she was extremely tired, but she knew enough to ask the most important question. “Where is he?”

  A nurse leaned in close. Bushy Brows was apparently busy bugging someone else. “What did you say, Mrs. Swift? Do you need something?”

  Yeah. To get the hell out of here. She wanted to sit up, to get her bearings, but weakness weighed her down. “Where is he?”

  “Where is who?”

  “Him. The guy who brought me in here. Where—”

  “A transient found you by the railroad tracks. He took off the minute he dropped you off at the ER door. Now get some rest.” The efficient nurse set the IV line, dimmed the lights and left.

  Reality stabbed hard and sharp. Where were Rory and Nima? What had he done? Had the assassins attacked again? Ember choked. She should’ve expected nothing less, but still. Wow. He’d really done it. Rory had sacrificed her to save Nima.

  Pulling herself into a sitting position, she dangled both legs over the edge of the bed until her head cleared. Her injured leg had been bandaged in sterile cotton and tape. It felt light years better. For the most part she was simply dizzy and a little disoriented. Nothing a junior agent couldn’t deal with all by herself.

  Stripped the IV line out of her wrist, she shuffled like an old woman to the closet in her hospital room. Her clothes might be dirty, but they meant freedom. Good enough.

  The in-suite bathroom beckoned. She hesitated. A shower would feel good, but her thigh was wrapped in pristine white gauze and tape, a definite deal breaker for a woman who could barely stand on her feet.

  Think about it later. Get out of here. Find a way to contact Alex, and hang out until he sends someone from The TEAM.

  But where were her shoes? She sank against the bed, too tired to think. A woman on the run couldn’t get far in bare feet. Her resolve faded at that seemingly insurmountable roadblock.

  The door cracked open slowly. A man’s hand, sheathed in the sleeve of a black trench coat, clenched the wooden doorjamb, and—

  They’re here! I’ve been found! The assassins are here!

  Ember dropped to the floor, looking for cover. The metal tray banged to the floor with her. The water bottle spilled. But hospital beds were not made to hide under. There was no escape this time.

  Twelve

  “That will be seventy-seven dollars and forty-two cents.”

  Rory rifled through the few bills left in his wallet and handed over four twenties. The clerk promptly made change and bagged his purchase of women’s wear. Within minutes, he and his pudgy accomplice were back on the street. He scooped Nima into his arms to make better time. She tended to want to people-watch, and they just did not have the time.

  Everything was more difficult with no wheels or usable credit cards. And the shortage of cash wasn’t his only problem. To stay undercover and protect Ember’s identity, he’d traded clothes with an old man bumming the rail yard after the train stopped. That made his transient story plausible when he showed up in the emergency room with a ragged woman in urgent need of medical treatment. He’d all but run out the door after making sure Ember was in good hands. He had to. He couldn’t risk the authorities taking Nima.

  Now, he was ready to assume the identity of Mr. Swift, a concerned husband and father searching for his ex-Navy wife with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a thin cover story at best. He planned not to have to use it.

  He’d bought decent clothes for himself and Nima, her sweet face obscured behind children’s sunglasses and a low-brimmed winter hat. With the final purchase for Ember, he was ready. He still hadn’t called Alex. Too risky. The people behind Nima’s father’s assassination were savvy enough to be tracking incoming calls to The TEAM.

  “Mama Ember?” Nima asked for the umpteenth time, her eyes wide with her two-word question. She’d loudly resisted leaving Ember behind at the hospital. Like a child with separation anxiety, she’d pitched a normal four-year-old temper tantrum.

  It surprised him to see that different side of the normally sedate, otherworldly child. She hadn’t reacted that strongly after her father was killed.

  “Yes, Nima. We are going to see Mama Ember right now.” Crossing the busy intersection, he scanned the twelve-story brick building, pointing to the seventh floor of the east wing. “Mama Ember is all the way up there. See?”

  “Yep,” Nima answered instantly. Rory smiled. For all of her otherworldly traits, she was still a little girl at heart. Yep had become her one-word-fits-all.

  They crossed the street and entered the hospital through the front doors. Without stopping at the information desk, he and Nima boarded the elevator and proceeded to the seventh floor. He turned left when they exited the elevator and walked confidently to Ember’s room.

  A Chinese man in a black suit passed him in the hall. Tall. Pencil thin mustache and goatee. He glanced at Rory and Nima as they passed. Rory nodded in silent acknowledgement, taking in the hooded eyes and masked expression of the man. Fear hurried his feet. The stranger fit an assassin’s profile to a T.

  “Almost there, Nima.”

  She didn’t answer, too preoccupied with the man who’d passed them in the hall, craning her neck to see him better. Rory glanced over his shoulder while he opened Ember’s room. The strange man stood at the elevator doors, still watching. Rory didn’t have time to challenge him. The sight ins
ide Ember’s room tore his heart out.

  He dropped to his knees with Nima. “What happened? Who did this to you?” He cradled her on his lap, searching frantically for gunshot holes he couldn’t seem to find. It hit him hard. The man in the hall had eyes as cold as ice. An assassin’s eyes. “Where’d he shoot you?”

  She stared at him, blood on the front of her hospital gown and her wringing hands. “I thought... I mean.... Wow. You came back.”

  “I thought you’d be safe here.” Anguish choked him. His hands moved surely and quickly over her abdomen and breasts, searching for the wound to apply pressure. It had to be here somewhere.

  “Stop, Rory. I thought you were them.”

  “Them? Who?” He couldn’t connect the dots that quickly. “Wait here with Nima. I’ll go get help.”

  “No.” Ember stilled his hands against her cheek. “Just cut my finger when I tried to hide under the bed because… because I thought you were them. I panicked. I thought....”

  “You what?” Logic penetrated his panic. It made sense. She hadn’t been shot. She was bleeding from a cut finger. That’s all. Relief stormed over him. He grabbed both his girls and buried his face in their hair. But time was at a premium.

  “We’ve got to move,” he whispered urgently.

  She nestled into his neck. “Give me a minute.”

  “When you’re safe.” He scooped both his girls off the floor and onto their feet. “We’re moving.”

  “I can’t find my shoes,” she complained.

  “I’ll buy new ones. Here. Put these on.” He tossed her the hospital footies from the counter. Fortunately there was a wheelchair outside her room. With Ember safely tucked beneath a hospital blanket and Nima holding tightly to her hand, he strolled past the nurses’ station flashing a grin. It usually worked. “Just taking my wife out for a little air. We’ll be right back.”

  The pretty nurse on the phone smiled, smitten with what she probably thought was a husband’s attention to his poor, injured wife.

  His plan fell apart at the elevator.

  “You have something I need,” the Chinese man said hoarsely, his eyes pinned to Nima.

  “Get out of my way,” Rory ordered, every muscle tensed. He could fire the SIG hidden beneath his coat before the man drew his weapon, if he had one—until Nima dropped Ember’s hand and walked right up to the stranger, raising her hands to be picked up.

  “Nima! Get back here!” Rory ordered. “Now!”

  “Nima!” Ember cried. “Don’t!”

  The stranger sank to the floor and bowed. He was sobbing.

  “ʼKay,” she whispered, grabbing the stranger’s elbow to pull him up. He resisted, sobbing into the linoleum. She pulled harder. At last he lifted his head, tears streaming over his cheeks. She plopped her little self onto his lap. He had no choice but to hold her.

  “Gyalwa Rinpoche,” he whispered reverently, holding her like a piece of delicate china.

  “I knew it was you. The minute I saw you, I knew who you were. I’ve been waiting. We all have. I knew you would come.”

  Taking his face between her palms, she whispered with that other voice again. “Remember not what you could not do, but what you did do. You did not leave.”

  Rory clutched his chest. Her words stabbed his heart with actual pain this time. In a crushing wave, the self-doubt and self-loathing he always carried dropped him to his knees, jerking him back to that pivotal moment in the hospital. That point in time—that day—that first ragged gasp in the delivery room. Only it wasn’t Tyler’s. It was his. His baby was born blue and underweight. Not breathing. Not fighting to live.

  The whole world changed in that second. Only Dr. Brown’s kind hand in the middle of his back turned the tragedy around. Only four blessed words: He’s going to live.

  But there were other regrets. The stupidity of marrying a drug addict in the first place. His lost career with the Corps. The knowledge that he’d never be one of the sharpshooters Alex sent to far-off lands on dangerous operations. Compound those failures with the twenty-four-seven challenge of caring for a sickly newborn, and for months, life held very little hope or relief.

  It was during one of those bleak nights when the miracle happened in the middle of a preemie diaper change. Tyler stopped crying. The tiny little guy latched onto his father’s pinkie finger, and Rory could’ve sworn he smiled. It might have been gas. Heck, it might have been his imagination, but it was enough. Father and son had turned a corner.

  You did not leave.

  Standing, Rory composed himself. False pride evaporated. He was already on the most perfect mission of his life—to raise his son. He took in a lungful and finally let go. The Corps would go on without him. So would The TEAM. He let her go, too.

  You had your chance, Ellie Dennison. I’ve taken back my name. Now I take back my heart. You have no hold on me. Tyler, either. You made your choice. Live with it.

  Like a brother, Rory offered his hand to the distraught man on the floor. Embarrassed, his story choked out. “I was just with my wife when she died of cancer. I blamed myself. But this precious child has healed my heart. I understand now. My wife is free, as am I.” He bowed reverently to Nima. “You are the one. You have finally come.”

  “Yep,” she said quietly, returning to Ember’s side.

  “Come with me,” the man said as he held the elevator door open, still not able to keep his eyes off Nima while Rory wheeled Ember and Nima onboard. “You are strangers to this town.”

  “No. We’re not,” Rory lied, pressing the ground floor button, still keeping his eyes on the stranger.

  “Forgive me, but yes, you are. Please let me introduce myself. I am Dr. Choden. I will make a way for you.” He spoke matter-of-factly as he pressed the button to the basement parking-garage and pulled a roll of one hundred dollar bills from his jacket pocket. “I offer you this. I don’t know your circumstances, but you have a greater need than I. It shows in your eyes.”

  “No, sir, we couldn’t—”

  He shoved the cash into Rory’s chest. “Please, yes. Wealth hinders my enlightenment. You need it. I do not. Take it.” Then he made it worse by stuffing a key fob into Rory’s trench coat pocket. “The tank is full. It is yours. Keep her safe.” He nodded at Nima. “She is the salvation of many. Maybe even the world.”

  The elevator doors opened. Rory called to the retreating figure. “But wait. You called her something. What did it mean?”

  Dr. Choden turned back, his face no longer showing his previous sadness. “I called her Gyalwa Rinpoche. It means Precious Victor.” Without another word, he walked away.

  “Wow. Do you do anything the simple way?” Ember asked softly.

  He hit the parking level button again. “I guess not.”

  The shiny black Cadillac parked in stall number eight, reserved for Physicians Only, purred like the precision automobile it was. Before long, Rory and Ember were on the outskirts of Chicago at a strip mall. He made a fast purchase at a kid’s store to buy a booster seat for Nima, then onto a nearby computer store for two more burn phones and the laptop Ember requested.

  Soon, they were registered under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Chance at a high-priced hotel chain. The new clothes he’d purchased hung in their closet, while a hot bath ran in the tub. After Rory bathed Nima and dressed her in new pajamas, it was Ember’s turn.

  He swept her off the bed and placed her on a shower stool in the middle of the lavish tub, clothes and all, her feet dangling outside the tub, her bandaged leg protected in a layer of plastic. Handing her the handheld shower attachment, he showed her how it worked. He placed the shampoo and body wash within reach.

  She eyed him coyly. “Are you trying to tell me something, Dennison?”

  “Yes. You stink, Agent Davis.” He pulled the wastebasket over to the tub. “Peel your clothes off and drop them into this can. I’ll dump everything when we leave town. Your new pajamas are on the counter along with some other things you might need. Tomorrow’
s clothes are hanging in the closet. Do you need help?” He paused at the door.

  “No. I’ll be fine. It’s just that I thought for a minute you, umm, you....” Those pretty greens drifted down to her feet.

  “You thought I’d left you behind, didn’t you?” He came back to the side of the tub. “Look at me, Ember.”

  She did as he asked. Looking down on her hopeful face, feelings he hadn’t allowed in years flashed hot and ready. Every urge in his male heart said, ‘Kiss her.’ But two agents on a mission must never get romantically involved. They had to stay focused on the little girl snuggled under the covers in the other room. Besides, one kiss on Ember’s sweet lips would lead to another. And another.

  Standing over her in the tub with his hand against the tiled wall, he leaned in close enough to whisper, “You should know by now that I never leave a man or woman behind. Enjoy your shower.”

  Thirteen

  You’re driving me crazy, Dennison. You get close enough to kiss me, but then you leave?

  Ember sat on the shower stool while the tub filled, feeling ten kinds of sorry for herself and confused as hell. She’d survive, but she couldn’t take much more of this one step closer, two steps back dance routine with Rory. Touching but never really making contact. Lean in. Lean out. Hold me in your arms and listen to me cry and then you leave? You’re nothing but a tease.

  Nima’s earlier message to her didn’t help. What do I want?

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Ember muttered to herself. “Him? Yes. No. Maybe. Does he want me? I think so. Maybe not. ARGH!”

  Determined to get her head back in the game, she showered and washed her hair, being careful not to get her bandage wet. The handheld attachment made everything easier, but it looked brand new. Had he bought it just for her? He’d do something like that, but he was just an agent in charge. Wasn’t he?

  Sliding carefully out of the tub, she dried off with the luxurious hotel towel, one she couldn’t see through like the towels in the Over the Rainbow Inn. Tucking it under her arms, she wrapped herself in plush Egyptian cotton. It took a little bit longer than usual to get her hair dried, but she managed. Using the small cosmetic bag Rory had left by the sink, she brushed her teeth, used every bit of the tiny bottle of minty mouthwash, and shaved what she could reach. Finished, she gave herself an appraising look in the mirror.