Chapter 33 Thomas
Thomas
Warmth.
That was the first thing I registered.
Heat pressed against my skin, thawing the frozen places inside me.
I was lying on something soft.
A bed? How had I found a bed?
Blankets lay piled on top of me, heavy and suffocating.
I tried to move, but my body refused.
“Easy,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. It was male, older, and had a funny accent. Was I back in Boston? How had I gotten to Boston?
“You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” the voice said. “Don’t rush it.”
I opened my eyes.
There were candles everywhere.
And a low ceiling.
A man leaned over me. He had gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. I spotted a medical bag open on the table beside him.
“Who—”
“Thomas, do you know who I am? Do you remember me?” The man was doing something to my shoulder. I glanced down and watched him adjusting a bandage. There was fresh gauze, clean and white.
“You’re a doctor?” I couldn’t remember his name.
The man’s smile felt as warm as the blankets. “That’s right. I am Dr. Müller.”
Müller? Why did that sound so familiar?
“Your wound reopened, and you lost a fair amount of blood, but I found nothing critical. Hypothermia was a greater concern, but I believe you are past any real danger. I believe your shoulder is now clean and will heal well, but we should pay close attention and change your bandage frequently. For now, you need rest above all else.”
I tried to remember.
There was bridge. And headlights.
After that, I remembered nothing.
“How did I get here? Where are we?”
The doctor smiled again. “You are in my home, my farmhouse. Herr Bisch brought you. You were barely conscious. How you made it to him in your condition is a wonder.” The doctor finished with the bandage and sat back.
I tried to sit up, but the room spun.
“Easy.” The doctor’s firm hand pressed me back down. “You need rest. Your body has been through—”
“Where is he?”
The doctor studied me for a moment. Whatever he saw in my face made him sigh.
“In the kitchen with the others.” He stood and gathered his instruments. “I will send him in, but only if you promise to stay in bed. Doctor’s orders.”
“I will.” I nodded. “Please, I need to see him.”
He gave me one last appraising look, then stepped out.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together the fragments of the night. Nothing made sense. Everything was fuzzy and dark and—
The river. The cold. The men with flashlights.
It came back in flashes, disconnected, like a film with missing reels.
I remembered the bridge. Then I remembered headlights.
Then I remembered being certain I was about to die.
I didn’t remember being saved.
The door opened.
Will filled the doorway.
I didn’t know anything else, but I knew Will.
My heart knew him even when my head couldn’t recall my own name.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
He was pale with dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were rumpled like he’d been wearing them for days. He looked wrecked. He looked like he’d been crying.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Thomas.”
His voice broke on my name.
Then he was across the room and dropping to his knees beside the bed. His hands flew to my face, then my chest, then my arms. He touched me everywhere, as if he needed to confirm that I was real.
“You’re alive,” he said through tears that now streaked his face. “Oh God, Thomas.”
“I’m alive.”
He pressed his forehead against my chest and made a sound I knew I’d never heard from him before—a raw, broken thing that wasn’t quite a sob but came from the same place.
I lifted my hand.
It took more effort than it should have, but I found his hair and curled my fingers into it.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“You almost died.” His voice was still shattered and desperate. “The doctor said . . . if the water had been any colder—”
“But it wasn’t.” My hand drifted to his cheek, cupping, urging his gaze upward. “Look at me.”
His eyes were red and wet and full of something that looked like terror and relief and love all tangled together.
“I came back,” I said. “I promised you I would, and I did.”
“You almost didn’t.”
“Almost doesn’t count.”
He groaned—a wet, fractured sound. “That’s not how it works.”
“It’s how it works for us.”
He stared at me for the longest moment.
Then he leaned forward and kissed me with the tenderness of a snowflake landing on a flower. It was the kind of kiss that said nothing—and everything.
When he pulled back, his hand found my face, mirroring my own gesture.
“I love you, Thomas,” he said quietly. “I don’t say it enough. I should say it more. I will say it more. I love you so damn much. When I thought I’d lost you—”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“I know, I know. But . . . for those hours . . . I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything. I kept thinking about all the things I should have said, all the moments I’d wasted being careful or professional or—” He stopped. Took a breath. “I don’t want to waste any more moments.”
I covered his hand with mine.
“Then don’t.”
Will wiped his tears and climbed onto the bed beside me. We lay there together in the candlelight. He told me what had happened while I was gone, about the mobile team’s operations, the evidence they’d gathered, and the hours of silence when they didn’t know if I was alive or dead.
“The Baroness kept everyone focused,” he said. “She kept us working on the photographs and organizing the evidence, but I could see it on her face. She didn’t think you were coming back.”
“Did you?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I had to,” he said finally. “If I let myself believe you weren’t, I . . . I couldn’t have kept going.” His fingers trailed absently across my bare chest, tracing the outline of my bandage without actually touching it. “And you were so pale and so cold and limp and lifeless—”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“I know. You were unconscious. You kept mumbling about photographs, about keeping the film dry.” A shaky laugh. “Even half dead, you were thinking about the mission.”
“The mission matters.”
“You matter more.” He said it fiercely, a declaration. “You matter more to me than any mission or any country or—” He stopped himself. “I know that’s not how we’re supposed to think. I know the job comes first. I can’t . . . I just—”
“Will.”
He looked at me.
“I know,” I said. “Baby, I know.”
Something shifted in his face.
The tension that had been holding him together like tattered thread ripped apart, and I watched him crumble. It wasn’t so much a falling apart, but a letting go.
All the fear and grief he’d been carrying for hours poured out of him in a rush of tears he no longer tried to hide.
I held him while he cried.
It was all I could do.
My body was too weak for anything else, my mind still foggy and slow, but I could hold him. I could be here. I could be alive beside him.
Eventually, his tears faded.
Will wiped his face with the edge of the top sheet, embarrassed, but I pulled him back before he could retreat.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t apologize. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine.”
“I’m supposed to be the steady one.”
“Says who?”
He laughed weakly. “I don’t know. Me, I guess.”
“Well, you’re wrong.” I pulled his head down and kissed his forehead. “You’re allowed to fall apart, especially over me.”
“Especially over you,” he repeated. “Is that an order?”
“If it needs to be.”
He settled back down into the crook of my good arm, and we lay there a while longer, the candles burning low and the sky outside the window shifting from black to gray. I could hear voices from the kitchen—the Baroness, the American team, Bisch. The world going on without us.
“I should go out there,” Will said eventually.
“I know.”
Neither of us moved.
“Five more minutes,” he said.
“Five more minutes,” I agreed.
It was closer to fifteen before we finally emerged.
Despite the doctor’s orders, I refused to be left behind. My memories had come back in fits and bursts, and I wanted to contribute to whatever came next.
Will helped me up, steadied me when my legs threatened to buckle. I didn’t want to admit it, but the doctor had been right—my body had been through hell, and it wasn’t going to let me forget it.
Still, I could walk—or lean against Will as he dragged me. We’d make it work.
The kitchen was full. The Baroness sat in her usual seat at the table, photographs spread before her. The CIA team clustered across from her. Bisch wasn’t there.
Everyone looked up when we entered.
“Condor.” The woman nodded at me. “What the hell are you doing out of bed?”
“It’s good to see you, too, Jane Doe.”
My sarcastic reference to her unwillingness to give us even a code name drew grins from her entire team.
“Your photographs,” the Baroness said, glancing over her shoulder at me and ignoring our banter. “They were preserved. There were seventy-two exposures from the warehouse. By some work of the gods, you kept the film dry.”
“Thank God,” I said as Will lowered me into the chair on the Baroness’s right. He stepped into the living room and dragged a plush rocker into the kitchen, then transferred me to the far more comfortable seat before taking the hard one by the Baroness.
“We managed to document three sites. Hardstrasse, the communications hub, and the western facility.”
“Where are they?” I asked the Baroness. “I’d like to see—”
“Bisch is delivering them as we speak. I only pray we are not too late for the morning’s run.”
The rest of us stood in the candlelit kitchen. We were exhausted—and I was battered—but we were all alive. Given how many we’d already lost, that was a significant win in itself.
The sky outside was beginning to lighten, the first hints of dawn creeping over the horizon.
“What now?” Marcus asked.
“Now we wait,” the Baroness said. “The paper prints in three hours. By six, the story should hit every newsstand in Bern. We have also leaked everything to the French, American, and Spanish press. If my guess is correct, the story will spread across the globe like wildfire.”
“And the Council?” Will asked.
“The Council convenes at ten.”
Someone found more blankets. The Baroness made coffee. She trusted no one else with the task.
I sat at the table, wrapped in wool, with Will pressed against my side. He hadn’t let go of me since we’d left the bedroom, showering me with small touches and constant contact, reassuring himself I was real.
Twice, he’d tried to convince me to lie down.
Twice, I’d refused.
There was no way I was going to miss whatever happened next.
The sky turned gray, then pink, then gold.
The candles guttered and died.
It was first light.
“Hey you,” I said quietly.
“Hey.”
“I believe I owe you something.”
Will scrunched his brow, then his eyes popped wide, and he laughed—a real laugh this time, tired but genuine. “Rain check. You can barely stand, and I don’t want a half-baked payment on what you owe me.”
“Half-baked? I’m so going to make you eat those words.”
“I’d rather eat something else.”
This time, it was the CIA woman—who’d been listening from the kitchen—who hooted so loud I worried Stalin might’ve heard her from the Kremlin.
Somewhere in Bern, printing presses were running.
A story was about to break.
And the fate of Europe—of the world—would shift forever.