Chapter Forty-Five Seraphina
Chapter Forty-Five
Seraphina
I wasn’t an adrenaline junky, so watching the man I had not an insta-lust situation but a souls-finding-one-another kind of connection with fight in real time was doing a number on me. And, ohhh, you better believe I was awake now. The fog of sleep had been lifted like a curtain.
I was fully aware I was a nervous mess, but I couldn’t zip up my feelings and hide them behind numbness or detachment anymore. The emotional cat was out of the bag for good. No more Anna Cruz and playing pretend.
Sitting on the couch in the office next to Reed, who was a hundred times calmer than I was, I banded an arm across my stomach to try to quell the nauseated feeling.
It was too bad we didn’t have a better picture to watch. Or maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. If I saw too much, I might really lose it.
I’d already become a disaster after we lost radio communication with the guys two minutes ago. Beth must have used her jammer-thing after they’d breached her place, cutting off the signal and our contact with them.
Now all we had to go on was the thermal-image satellite view, which had me feeling a bit like a radiologist studying an X-ray or MRI. I did math, not science.
I had to keep telling myself if I could survive working for Ezra as long as I did, I could get through the next ten or so minutes of high-octane intensity while my guy—and he was absolutely my guy—stormed a house with Ezra and Beth inside.
“Is that normal?” My legs were crossed with a pillow on my lap, and I rocked myself too much and fell forward.
Reed swiftly caught my arm, saving me from face-planting with his laptop.
“It’s normal,” he said in a steady voice, accompanied by what felt like some serious side-eye. I looked over my shoulder to discover it was just worry. “You good?” he asked.
“I know, I know. This ‘me’ doesn’t jibe with the ‘me’ who worked for Ezra or went into that fight club,” I said, translating his raised eyebrows and narrowed eyes.
“That’s because there’s someone on the other side of the screen you care about.
You were only worried about your own life before.
It’s a whole other level when the stakes are raised with someone you love.
” He reset his eyes on the screen and let me go.
“ Annnd I think Alex just used me as a mouthpiece. Must be some illusionist trick he pulled off while he’s under anesthesia.
He’s the advice giver on our team, not me. ”
If he could make a joke at a time like this, then maybe I didn’t need to panic, especially since I didn’t take Reed for the type. “Let me guess: Alex doesn’t take his own advice?” At least he’d distracted me from having a heart attack.
“Was it having a she-devil as an ex that gave you that impression?” Another joke, wow. Well, not really, I supposed, because his name for her was spot on, one of the many I’d already called her.
Before I could answer, a flash of something on the screen caught my eye, and I leaned forward, which prompted Reed to seize hold of my arm again. “Was that ...? Is he ...?” Time to melt down and lose it. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Reed punched at the keys with his free hand, shifting the view around like we had access to a GoPro camera instead of a satellite in outer space. “Yeah, Ryder took a round to the chest.”
My legs dropped, feet hitting the floor. Time to stand. To sound the alarm.
“He’s fine.” He zoomed in as much as he could without making everything totally blurry. “Chest plate caught the round. He’s shaking it off. He’ll have a bruise that he’ll act like doesn’t hurt, but that’s it.”
At the sight of Ryder standing, readying his rifle, I fell back onto the couch. After this mission and phase two against the Moraleses, I’d be done watching Ryder in action ever again. I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t that cool.
“He’s heading inside now. We’re going to lose sight of him,” he warned.
I picked up the pillow that’d fallen after my abrupt departure from the couch and rested it on my lap to hold.
“Try and relax.”
I glared at him, offering him the mother of all eye rolls. “That’s like asking someone with anxiety have they ever tried not being anxious.”
“Well, hell, when you put it like that ...” A hint of a drawl came out that time.
“Distract me instead?” At the memory of how he’d distracted me on the plane ride, I felt the need to clarify. “Not about volcanoes and warriors losing their loved ones, either.” God no, anything but that kind of story. “I need a happy ending.”
He switched the settings on our view so we weren’t so zeroed in and expanded the picture, then sat back on the couch and looked over at me. He opened his mouth, then closed it as his phone rang, and his brows immediately tightened.
“What’s wrong?” Cue worry again.
“Hopefully it’s just an update on Alex’s surgery,” he said before answering, and I had to assume it was the GRS operator Ryder had sent with Alex.
“Speakerphone,” I ordered, and he did as I asked and held the phone out between us.
“There was a complication,” the operator said, which was the opposite of what we needed to hear.
“Something to do with scar tissue he had from old wounds, and I—I don’t know.
Something ruptured. He lost a lot of blood, and he was coding.
Had no pulse for a bit.” Before I broke down and lost it, he added, “They revived him, but they don’t know if he was without oxygen for too long.
We won’t know how he is until he’s awake . .. well, if he wakes up.”
If . . . ? No, no, no.
Reed dropped the phone, and it fell onto the table by the laptop as he stood and turned.
I barely noticed the fact Ryder was back outside and was dragging someone with him, and that someone ... Was that Ezra?
Not even a minute later, the Black Hawk appeared, and bullets hit the house, then tore up the ground, paving the path for their escape.
I lost sight of Ryder. Lost sight of everyone on-screen from the dust and smoke.
“You there?” a voice called out from the phone, and I shifted the pillow aside in a daze to grab it.
“Yeah, we’re here,” I whispered as Reed slowly faced me, his eyes glossy. “Call us back when you have good news, okay?” I swallowed, pain punching me in the gut. “Only good news, got it?”
Ryder tossed his helmet the second he saw me outside the villa, and I met him halfway and jumped up into his arms, hooking my legs around him. I squeezed him tight. Crying in relief that he was okay, but also on the verge of sobbing at the fact I had to tell him his best friend may not be.
“Told you I’d be good,” he said in my ear, stroking my back.
He’d been shot in the chest, so he was probably achy, and I shouldn’t press up against him like this. I unhooked my ankles and slid along his tall, masculine frame to find the ground.
“Everything go as planned?” I swiped at the tears I’d soon have to explain.
He removed and tossed his gloves to hold my face with his bare hands. “We have Ezra and Beth, yeah. Managed to keep them alive. No one on our side died.”
“That’s great,” I sputtered.
It was still dark out, but there were enough lights outside he’d be able to read my face and my worry.
“Tell me those are tears of relief.” He frowned, then lifted his head and pointed his focus elsewhere.
He kept hold of my cheeks, so I couldn’t follow his gaze, but I had a feeling Reed was out there.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a grave voice, and it felt like my soul whooshed free from my body at his question.
That empty-vessel feeling after my family died ...
No, I couldn’t let him experience that about his best friend.
“It’s Alex ...” I cried, and he let go of me, stumbling backward.
Eyes narrowed on me, he begged, “Tell me.”
“He met God on the surgeon’s table for a minute,” Reed said in a low, somber voice, coming up next to us, sensing I couldn’t speak. “He came back to us, but we don’t know if he’s, well ... back back.”
Or if he’ll wake up.
Ryder held the sides of his head—and there they were: tears he had no problem shedding for Alex, unlike his undeserving father.
I reached for his arm, but then he set his sights on a new target. I turned to see who was there. Beth. Enemy number one right now.
“I may have never killed a woman before,” he rasped, blinking back more tears before looking at me after ángel joined the three of us, “but God help me, there’s a first time for everything.”
“What’s going on?” ángel removed his rifle that was slung across his chest as Reed filled him in.
ángel set a hand on Ryder’s shoulder and leaned in, saying something into his ear, then quietly went inside the house.
“What was that about?” I reached for Ryder’s hand, stepping directly in front of him.
A gruff breath fell between us as he shared, “He told me not to kill her. He said it’d be bad for my soul to have her blood on my hands.” He looked at me, shaking his head. “But he’s more than happy to spill hers for us.”