Chapter Thirty-Five
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A n indistinct voice became audible somewhere in the background. Muted, as if he were underwater.
“Can you hear me?” It was closer now. Clearer.
He struggled to home in on it. Somehow identify where it was coming from.
“Mr. Angelopoulos.”
Nico dragged his leaden eyelids open. Squinted against the line of bright lights that hit his retinas.
“Can you hear me?”
He blinked, struggling to focus on the blurry face hovering above him. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. His chest was on fire. Every breath hurt. “Yes.” It came out barely a whisper.
“You’re in the hospital.”
His surroundings slowly registered. More pain bloomed in his upper back and shoulder, yet he remained strangely detached from it, as if it was happening somewhere in the background. A middle-aged woman was standing over him, wearing scrubs.
“You just came out of surgery. You’re in the recovery room. I’m just going to check your temperature. Are you warm enough?”
He nodded. Or tried to as she slid a thermometer into his ear.
“How’s your pain level?”
“Okay,” he croaked. At least he was still alive.
“Do you remember what happened?” She withdrew the thermometer to check it. The reading must have been normal because she didn’t say anything about it as she made a note in his chart.
The boat. Barros. Leandro and Hawk coming at them. The bullet.
Searing pain. The icy shock of the water.
“Who...who pulled me out?” he managed. His throat was dry and sore. He guessed either from nearly drowning or the intubation during surgery.
A shadow fell over him.
He turned his head on the pillow, blinked up at Barros.
“Hey, man. Good to see you. Glad you’re gonna be okay.”
“Hey. What...happened?” The last thing he could remember was sucking in that last mouthful of water on his way down. The certainty that he was seconds from dying.
“I grabbed you right after you went under. Then the Coast Guard pulled us out.”
It was still so hard to believe it was real. That he was still here. But fear gathered in his gut. “So what happens now?” He wasn’t cuffed to a railing. Maybe that was a good sign.
“It depends.”
“Did they get Hawk and Leandro?”
“Not Leandro. But Hawk’s dead.”
He’d shot him. He wasn’t sorry. But he was deeply sorry that he was facing life in prison for all the lives he’d taken. “Liana. My wife.”
“What about her?”
“Promised her.” He was so damned weak.
“Promised her what?”
Nico held back the rest of it. But he needed help. Needed Barros to understand. “Have to get her help.”
Barros was watching him closely. Nico looked past him, fixed his gaze on a cabinet on the wall marked with a red cross. He stared at it pointedly for a second before looking back at Barros. Barros followed his line of sight.
“Gotta get her help there,” Nico repeated.
Barros turned back to him, frowning. “Yeah, we’ll help her.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the door and nodded at someone.
The doors opened, and an instant later, the most beautiful sight in the world appeared. A nurse pushing Liana toward him in her chair. Her eyes red from crying, but a smile wobbling on her lips.
He reached a hand out for her. She grabbed it, squeezed it between her own. “Li...,” he whispered, his throat closing up. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t want to tell her all the terrible things he’d done, or for her to know she was married to a contract killer.
“Baby,” she whispered, leaning over to cradle his face in her hands and kiss him.
Tears burned the backs of his eyes. He buried his hand in the nape of her neck, holding on tight.
“I’ll let you two have some privacy,” Barros said.
Nico looked up at him. How much did she know? Had they told her anything?
Barros darted him a warning frown and shook his head slightly. “She knows you were on a job when you were shot and wound up in the water.”
“I’m so glad you’re still here,” Liana choked out.
Nico expelled a painful breath and pulled her closer, cradling her head on his chest. “Thank you,” he said.
Barros nodded. “Take care of yourself, man.” He stuck out a hand.
“I will.” Nico caught it, squeezed. “You too.”
Barros released his hand and walked away, leaving them alone in the private room. Nico closed his eyes and kissed the top of Liana’s head. He’d just been given another unexpected reprieve. He still had time.
He had to figure out a way out of this. And he had to do it fast.
****
T J eased the recovery room door shut and turned toward the elevators at the end of the hall, only to come to an abrupt halt.
His handler Diana was leaning against the wall between him and the elevator, arms folded across the blazer of her navy pantsuit. “Well? How was the romantic reunion?”
“So far, so good.” It wasn’t often he got to witness nice things on the job. Or for him to be kept in any kind of loop by Diana and the rest of the agency. But given Nico’s involvement, his history with the agency, and the complicated shitshow they now all faced, Diana had fast tracked a deep dive into him.
Everything she’d found over the past several hours, including intel from Nico’s waterlogged phone, had revealed his probable motivation for becoming Leandro’s enforcer.
His wife Liana had a terminal illness. Western medicine’s limitations, or maybe shitty insurance coverage, had made Nico desperate enough to resort to taking on contract killing to make enough money fast enough to pay for private treatment. They hadn’t found any specifics on his targets or evidence of accepting large payments. He would have discarded any burner phones he’d used for those kinds of communications, and probably an offshore account somewhere.
Personally, TJ hoped they never found any of the evidence.
He’d managed to convince the agency to get Liana and bring her here to see her husband. He couldn’t imagine being in Nico’s position. If it had been Bristol, TJ would do everything in his power to save her too.
The op to meet with Jon had been blown to hell—along with Jon on that dock—but the memory stick he’d retrieved had somehow stayed in his pocket throughout his unplanned, prolonged swim in the ocean. Leandro had valuable intel on the inner workings of the lynch pin of the Pacific Northwest operation of the cartel that they couldn’t get from anyone else. The agency’s techs were trying to retrieve the information on it now.
Hopefully the thing was waterproof.
His hands and feet were still freezing, even though they’d pumped him full of warmed fluids on the emergency helo flight here and he’d changed into dry clothes. “Any word on Leandro?”
“Yeah.” Her pale brown eyes glittered with annoyance. “Another flight crew spotted him and his passenger climbing into the hatch of a small sub about six miles off the southern Oregon coast.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Oh, I wish I was, believe me.”
He shook his head, anger punching through him. They needed to find that asshole and drag him into a hole so they could extract every single thing he knew about the cartel and its PNW operations.
“We’ve got everyone in the region and then some hunting him right now. We’ll get him.” She shook her shoulder-length brown hair back. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What are you gonna do from here?”
“Haven’t had time to think about it.” That was a lie. He’d been thinking of almost nothing else in every free moment since he’d been pulled from the water.
“You’re a shit liar.”
His lips twitched. “No, I’m not.” Lying was part of the deal with going undercover. “But since you want me to be real... I’m done with undercover.”
This whole thing had changed him forever. He couldn’t go back to who he’d been or to the life he’d been living before it. Because it hadn’t been a life at all. Or living. Bristol had forced him to see that clearly.
She was a ray of light in the darkness. He couldn’t lose her now. Whatever sacrifices he had to make from here on out, he would fight for her.
“Agreed. And I figured as much anyway.” Diana cocked her head. “No other thoughts? Ideas?”
“Not yet.” He was acutely conscious of the minutes ticking past, the rising frustration at being kept here. He needed to see Bristol. Given that they’d told her practically nothing, she probably thought he was dead. He couldn’t do that to her. And, yeah, it confirmed he was a selfish asshole, but he needed to see her for personal reasons that were entirely unprofessional.
“Fair enough.” She pushed away from the wall and straightened. “You’re restless as hell. You got somewhere you need to be?”
“No.”
A grin quirked her lips. “Like I said. Shit liar.” She shook her head, something almost like fondness glinting in her eyes. “Take the rest of the night off. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. Hopefully by then I’ll have an update on Leandro’s location. Now, get outta here and go see her before you burst.”
He grinned back, not surprised that she’d already figured it out on her own. Nothing got past her. “Yes, ma’am.”