Chapter 18 #2
Which was no help whatsoever. Fucking hell!
“Rebel, baby, it’s me. The first time we met, you fell over the blanket at my feet.
You kneed me in the balls and then elbowed me in the eye.
And you want to know what? I married you anyway.
I married you, because the second I saw you sitting on top of me, I knew you were mine.
I have not doubted that act for a single moment.
Not even as you climb away from me now.”
Becks slowed, her head tipped like she was trying to decipher if his voice was coming from above her or below her.
Then she turned on the branch, and Ghost’s heart left his body as she lost her balance and fell backwards.
She screamed in terror, her arms flailing but unable to regain her balance.
He lunged forward, flattening himself on his branch.
Her arm, wet and slippery with blood and rain, slid through his grip, until his hand tightened and held on her wrist.
Becks kept falling, gravity pulling her further down. Ghost’s shoulder screamed, but he did not let go. His body scraped along the rough, jagged bark as his grip on the tree and sheer determination not to drop her stopped her fall.
He heard scrambling on the ground as Becks dangled dangerously below him.
She looked up at him, frantic and scared—and he saw it then.
Her right pupil was blown. That fucking bastard!
No wonder she hadn’t been thinking straight.
Ghost wanted to rage and cry, not knowing what this meant for Becks—but it only tightened his hold on her.
He didn’t care what challenges this presented their future.
They would face it together.
“Drop her!” he heard from below. “We got her, Ghost! Drop her!”
It went against every instinct he had, but Ghost released his hold and watched his wife fall to the ground, trusting his club to catch her.
Given where they were and how long it would take medical assistance to reach them, Ghost called in a favor from a local SARS team and got an air ambulance up to the campground.
Thankfully, the team arrived quickly. All former military, they didn’t blink an eye at the one dead body, the two prisoners on their knees with their hands bound behind their back, or the amount of motorcycles strewn about the place.
Their sole attention was on Becks. When Ghost informed them that he was riding with them, even if it meant one of their team was left behind, the captain asked, “Who is she to you?”
Ghost looked him dead in the eye and said, “She’s my everything.”
That seemed good enough for him. Thankfully, there was room in the medevac for two cots as well as the four-man team, so Ghost was able to climb in without a fuss.
Like Bear, their main concern was Becks’ obvious signs of concussion and possible brain trauma.
Time was of the essence, and they were back up in the air within minutes of landing.
In the medevac, one of the medics turned to Ghost and shouted, “You look like shit.” The badge on his vest said his name was Crow.
Frankly, Ghost felt like shit, but he wanted all their attention on Becks. She hadn’t passed out, but she didn’t seem fully there either. “She could be pregnant,” he informed Crow in place of a response.
The man’s eyes jumped back and forth between Becks and Ghost, like he was debating on arguing.
He smartly turned his attention back to Becks and helped his partner stabilize her.
It sounded like they were speaking in code as they worked on her, and Ghost was growing increasingly frustrated that he hadn’t dragged Bear with him so he could translate medical-ese for him.
“Is she going to be okay?” he finally demanded. He was shocked to feel Becks’ fingers tighten around his when he spoke.
Crow turned back to him just as the helicopter banked, and they all braced themselves for the turn.
“Her airway is clear and she’s breathing steady.
We’re concerned about her high blood pressure.
” They’d already hooked her up to an IV and had a mask over her face.
Her neck was in a C-collar and they were working on bandaging up all her wounds on her feet, hands, and arms. They’d also tipped her upright on the bed rather than having her lay flat.
“The fact that she’s conscious is both good and bad, because stress can also increase the pressure. ”
“She was hallucinating in the woods, we think,” he reminded him. Bear had already told the team that when they’d arrived, giving a much more accurate assessment of her injuries than Ghost could.
Once again, Becks squeezed his fingers, but when he looked down at her, she was staring blindly off to the other side.
“We’re three minutes out from a hospital with one of the best neurosurgeons on the east coast,” Crow’s partner said loudly to him. “If anyone can help her, it’ll be them.”
Ghost squeezed Becks’ hand, offering her all the strength he had left in him to help her.
Leaning over, he kissed her temple as gently as he could.
In the woods, once he’d gotten down from the tree, he’d wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her within an inch of her life.
But she’d been too hurt, and he refused to add to her injuries just to appease his need to feel her in his arms again.
Her hair was damp from the rain, but he didn’t care. For the remaining three minutes of the helicopter ride, Ghost kept his face pressed into the pillow next to her head and simply breathed her in.
An entire medical team of doctors and nurses was waiting on the roof when they landed. Becks was taken off the helo on the stretcher, and quickly rolled inside. One of the SARs team put a hand on Ghost’s shoulder when he tried to rush after them.
“They’re not going to allow you in,” the man told Ghost gently.
His jacket read Badger. Ghost looked to the other two, noting the captain was Ape and the other medic who had ridden in the back of the helo with Ghost, Becks, and Crow was Dingo.
“She’s in the best hands she could be, and now comes the hard part where you wait, where you torture yourself with the unknown. ”
“Why don’t we take you down and you can clean up?” Crow suggested, indicating Ghost’s hands. “That way you’ll be ready to see her as soon as she’s able.”
He looked down, feeling disgusted when he saw how dirty his hands were.
He’d touched Becks with them. Bloody, filthy, and rough.
His eyes landed on her wedding ring that was still on his pinky finger.
She deserved so much better, hands that were clean and soft.
But he didn’t give a fuck what she deserved.
He’d killed her attempted rapist and he would kill her kidnappers too. She was stuck with him.
It also occurred to him that there was evidence on him. He had no idea how much of the blood coating his body belonged to the man he’d killed, Becks, or was his own. He supposed cleaning up wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Tessa was going to kill him when she saw the state of his bandages anyway. Ironically, he wasn’t supposed to get them wet.
His entire body felt too heavy as he journeyed with the SARS team down the stairs. They must be familiar with the hospital, because they led him straight to the employee locker room and pointed out the showers to him.
Ghost didn’t know how long he stayed under the hot, steaming water before it all hit him, and he fell hard on his knees.
It was too much. The explosion, Ranger and Becks’ kidnapping, the hunt for them, Frankie’s and Monica’s deaths, finding Ranger and learning he’d been kept high for four days straight, riding to Tennessee, finding Becks with a man undoing his pants over her…
He didn’t know where Ritchie and Cameron were, but he knew the club would take care of them until he was ready to deal with them.
Money. All this was about fucking money.
A long con that would have paid off big if Ritchie had married Becks and if Cameron had gotten Ranger to fall for her too.
Greed. It was so predictably the cause, but who could have seen all this coming.
So much was still unknown, including discovering who had built the bomb.
Ghost hunched over his knees, one hand braced on the tiled floor and the other wrapped around his middle.
He didn’t care who saw or what they thought of him.
Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the hot water that cascaded over him and taking the evidence of this past week down the drain with it.
If only it could take his pain, take away the knowledge that he’d failed to protect his wife.
He hadn’t wanted her money, even before he knew how much she’d truly had to her name.
But someone else had. Someone else had nearly killed her for it.
Never again.
He didn’t care what it took or how long it took.
When Becks was healed, she was getting trained.
Victim or survivor, she would never again be at the mercy of another.
He would teach her to fight, teach her to predict her surroundings, and know how to defend those around her.
He’d always planned on teaching her some things, but now some wasn’t enough.
He’d get her the sexiest pair of women’s military boots on the market and then teach her everything he knew.
For the first time in a week, Ghost felt like he was able to breathe. He took a gasping breath in, a hum running through his veins and into his soul. He had a plan.
Ghost stood, and reached for the taps to turn off the water. Steam billowed around him like smoke. Dripping, he emerged naked into the locker room to find a stack of towels and a pair of scrubs waiting for him.
He reached for them, and swayed. “Oh, fuck,” spilled from his lips before his eyes rolled back in his head, and Ghost collapsed on the locker room floor.
Becks blinked her eyes open, and frowned at what she saw. “Ma?”