Chapter 36
Dear God, this book is boring.
Jessa laid The Manor open, facedown on her lap, and looked at Jax. He was sleeping as he had been for the last several hours since his surgery. He'd lost a lot of blood, but they'd managed to save his injured kidney.
He was going to be okay.
When Cowboy came and got her from the safe room, she instantly knew something was wrong. Jax should've been there. He wouldn't have sent anyone in his stead unless he wasn't able to come himself.
“Let me in, Jessa.”
“Where’s Jax?”
“He can’t come down here right now, sweetie. Open the door.”
She unlatched the lock and pulled open the heavy metal door. One look at Cowboy’s face, and she’d started to scream. "No! This isn't happening again. This is not happening again!”
He had grabbed her upper arms. "Listen to me, Jessa. He's hurt. Shot. The ambulance is on its way, but you’re a nurse. He needs your help."
She ran behind Cowboy up the stairs, the acrid smell of gunpowder polluting the air. "What happened to the other guy?"
“One tango down. That's the good news. But another one got away somewhere on the mountain.”
They rounded the corner to the bedroom, and Jessa was struck by how much had changed since the last time she walked down this hallway.
He's going to be okay.
But even as she told herself that, she was back in her little yellow house and her happy little life as a wife and soon-to-be mother, her mouth open wide in horror as Jax told her Ralph had been killed.
Her tongue had tasted like metal and blood rushed in her ears.
The two moments melded together in her mind.
They entered the bedroom, Jax on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
Too much blood for anyone to survive.
She moved to kneel beside him, and Cowboy held out his hand to stop her. "Watch yourself, there's glass." He grabbed a pillow off the bed and handed it to her. She put it on the ground and kneeled on it.
Jax’s face was so pale, so unlike his normal complexion. She put her hand on his neck and felt for a pulse. Forty.
His pulse was fucking forty.
The sound of a siren in the distance made the moment more surreal, as if the ambulance would never actually get here but would always be too far away.
Too late to save Ralph. Too late to save Jax.
She took his arm and pulled him onto his side, lifting his shirt in the back. Blood oozed from his wound.
"I need a clean towel or shirt, something."
Cowboy handed her a towel, which she pressed to Jax’s back. "Press this here, firmly. Keep the blood from coming out," she said. She stood on shaking legs and ran to get a blanket to cover him with.
Jax was on the floor bleeding to death. Jax was standing in front of her, telling her Ralph was dead. If Jax was dead, then she was dead. The baby…
An alarm went off on the monitor next to the bed, snapping her attention back to the present. What the hell was the matter with her? Was that a panic attack?
She reached for Jax’s hand and stared at his too-still face while a nurse came in and replaced his IV. His color was better, but that wasn't saying much.
"Matteo and Trevor were here earlier," she said, letting her fingers trace the lines on Jax’s knuckles.
"You were still in surgery. Trevor and Olivia are engaged. Did you know that already? She seems nice. I never thought I'd see him so taken with a woman. Figures she’s a movie star.” She let go of his hand and stood up.
“That lawyer from Boston stopped by while they were here.
Fred Bach. He said he needed to speak to you and would be back in an hour or so to see if you were awake. "
Her eyes fell on the metal railing along the side of the bed, and she wished she could lie down beside him. She longed to put her arms around his body, to wrap him up with healing energy and be as close to him as she possibly could. But it wasn't just the hospital rules that kept her from doing so.
If he awoke, would he be happy she was here? Had she read too much into the few things he said at the end of their night together?
My life will be better.
Did he mean that? And was he happy only about the baby, or about her as well?
“I hope you meant me, too,” she whispered.
But did she?
Did she really?
Already she’d almost lost him. She knew she couldn’t handle being half of a HERO Force couple again, always wondering if he was okay, always praying for his safe return, being gone more than he was ever with her.
She needed stability, normalcy, both for herself and the baby.
No matter what happens, this child will always have a HERO Force member for a father.
She wouldn’t be able to protect her baby from that fate.
Her hand went to her abdomen, lightly stroking her growing belly.
Cowboy’s words ran through her mind. Your kid couldn’t do better.
But what good was the world’s greatest father if he was never around, or managed to get himself killed protecting other people?
She sighed and sat back in her chair. She picked the book up off the table, forcing herself to read. She couldn’t even finish one page.
“I hate this book. The story is stupid, and I can't figure out why anybody would pay money for this thing. I mean, who wants to read a book about an old rich family with no problems, anyway?" She moved to fold the book back over and, in the process, fanned the pages ever so slightly.
A picture appeared, a tiny and perfectly detailed little painting she recognized immediately.
It was the mansion overlooking the ocean she had seen in the conference room of the lawyer’s office in Boston.
Her mind whirled, working to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, knowing the answer was just a single turn of a piece away.
This book was intrinsically tied to the law firm.
She turned the volume around in her hands, seeing it in a new light. “This isn’t a stupid book with no plot. It’s a history of the Bach family.”
As in Layton, Felder, Bach & Moore.
"Oh my God," she whispered, now frantically flipping through pages, knowing exactly what she was looking for — an obscure reference to the newborn child of the family housekeeper, Senora Cortez. She found it on page eighty-nine.
“The babe wasn’t as round as Cortez’s other children but paler in flesh and longer in limb. Reggie Moore noted no difference and went on to law school in the spring.”
She closed the book and squeezed it against her chest. "I know who's trying to kill me."
Her eyes flew to the clock on the wall. The lawyer would be back any minute. Taking one last look at Jax, she prayed he would stay asleep and quickly ran from the room.