“I actually agree with you not telling Jaime about Taylor,” Anya confessed. “I didn’t tell her about the gun.” She rolled her eyes when Max threw his arms up in the air as though he’d won the first-place trophy in this argument. “Don’t get cocky. The only reason I didn’t tell her is because we need irrefutable proof of the shooter’s identity before putting her through that pain again. If it turns out to be a ghost gun that our suspects got off the street…”
“Either way, we gotta tell her, Doc. But I’d prefer to do it when she’s better.”
The elevator door opened, and Anya smiled cordially at the people who stepped out before she entered. “Oh?You’regoing to tell her? Like you told her you were on administrative leave? Or that the feds were working the case now? Or that I was working the case with Kate?”
Max stabbed the button for the parking garage. “I assume we’re leaving?”
“And deflecting it seems, yes.” Anya decided to let Max off the hook. Obviously, seeing Jaime in such bad shape shook him enough to keep him from telling her anything he deemed too stressful. Could she really blame him? Hadn’t she essentially done the same thing? Yeah, she had told Jaimesomethings. But hadn’t she admitted to withholding certain information for the sake of Jaime’s health? Besides, they didn’t have time to argue about this anymore. Anya needed to bring Max up to speed on what was happening with the case. She dug her car keys out of her pocket and handed them to Max.
Max frowned as he stared down at the key. “What’s this?”
“The key to my car. You’re going to drive me home.” Anya guided Max’s hand, pressing the unlock button on the key fob. Anya’s Lexus chirped, and the lights flashed as the locks disengaged a few feet from where they stood. “On the way, I’mgoing to tell you who the killers are and how we’re going to catch their asses.”
“Fuck yeah!” Max opened the passenger door for Anya. He was halfway to the driver’s side when he stopped abruptly. “Killers? As in plural?!”
The room feltlike it had deflated the second Anya left. Jaime stared at the closed door, blinking through the raw blur in her eyes, her chest aching in places the morphine couldn’t touch. The soft hum and steady beep of the machines beside her bed should have been comforting—it meant she was alive and healing—but right now, it just underscored how fucking useless she felt.
She was Jaime Baros. The one who kicked doors in and made monsters confess with nothing but a glare and a record of being right. And now she was stuck in a fucking bed, stitched together with titanium staples and sheer willpower, while the woman she loved was heading straight into the fire.
With her ex.
Fucking perfect.
Jaime tilted her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes, her bottom lip quivering with the image of Anya disappearing behind that door.I will be back. We’ll get our time, played on a loop, both a promise and a threat depending on how the next few hours went.
Zoe busied herself around the room, fluffing a pillow orpretendingto check Jaime’s chart. She was probably just following protocol to keep Jaime distracted.Good luck with that, Jaime thought. There wasn’t a distraction big enough to drown out the coil of dread tightening in her gut.
“So,” Zoe said, in that bright, practiced nurse voice Jaime usually hated. “Want me to turn the TV on or something?”
“No,” Jaime muttered as she barely opened her eyes. “Unless you’ve got a live feed on rogue former agents doing vigilante shit with their federal exes.”
Zoe paused. “Yeah…no. But I’ll keep checking channel four.”
Jaime cracked a smile, but it hurt.Everythinghurt.
She’d known Anya was brave—reckless sometimes, infuriatingly stubborn most of the time—but knowing it and seeing her walk out that door with a plan she wouldn’t explain, facing down a killer with nothing but her instincts and maybe Max at her side… that was something else.
And still, Jaime had let her go.
She could have fought harder. She could have tried to rip the IV from her arm and drag herself after Anya like some half-dead lunatic. But Anya had asked for trust. Real trust. And Jaime—broken, stitched-up, and love-struck—had given it.
God, she hoped it wasn’t the last mistake she ever made.
She shifted slightly, ignoring Zoe’s soft “Careful,” as she reached for her phone on the side table. Her hand trembled, but it wasn’t from pain. It was from frustration, fear…and the need to feel like she had some kind of control.
Her fingers hovered over Max’s name in her contacts. She didn’t call. Just stared at it.
If she called him and they were mid-op, she’d fuck everything up. If she called and they didn’t answer, she’d panic. If she called and heard something in his voice—guilt, panic, or worse…silence—that would be far more terrible thananythingher mind was conjuring up now. And right now? Her mind was conjuring up some pretty vivid shit.
A knock came at the door.
Jaime’s head snapped up. Zoe’s did, too. The nurse opened it cautiously, but it wasn’t Anya. Just a tray of Jello cups that Jaime couldn’t stomach the thought of right now.
Zoe took the tray. “Thanks. We’re good in here.”
The girl, now trayless, nodded and disappeared like she’d been chased.
Jaime let her head fall back against the pillow with a sigh. “I’m going to lose my fucking mind in here.”
