Chapter 37 Sydney
Sydney
Gabriel surfaces several times as the day melts into night. It takes longer for him to come out of it than Dr. Stevens initially expected, which rules out Rohypnol, even before the labs come back. Still, he improves as the hours wear on.
His parents and siblings finally leave to get some rest when he becomes coherent enough to tell them to go home. I wait for him to demand the same of me, but he holds on to my hand without another word.
When he closes his eyes and drifts back to sleep, I fold my left arm on the side of his bed and rest my head on the crook of my elbow. I can’t reach his chest without stretching awkwardly. Instead, my hand falls on his abdomen and remains there.
The scent of sterilized bedding, the shadowy room, and the feel of him beneath my hand spark a memory, and I straighten to stare down at his sleeping face in the dim hospital room.
He was a thorn in my side for the first year and a half after I took the job working for his father, but that night took the prize.
I was pacing in Gabriel’s darkened penthouse in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows when I heard the lock engage and his front door open.
He murmured something to someone in the corridor, then, dressed all in black, he entered and limped past me, headed for the hallway to his bedroom.
“Where were you?” I demanded.
He jerked to face me, a hand pressed to his ribs and his face pale and drawn. “Walsh. What are you doing in here?” Even his voice sounded like shit.
“I have security clearance.”
“For meetings and picking up Rufus, not for you to hide in my dark living room and pounce on me in the middle of the night,” he said.
I scowled, heat surging up my neck and into my face. When I worked long hours at the lab, he stopped by my apartment and brought my cat up here so Rufus wasn’t lonely. “Stop making me sound like some kind of unhinged stalker.”
He turned and leaned against a table in the shadowy hallway. “It’s four in the morning. If you want a fight, I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”
“I received the notice from Arden that your mission was successful over five hours ago.”
“And?”
“And you always text me when you get home after a mission. You can’t set a precedent like that, then expect me not to wonder what’s going on when you don’t.”
He dragged in a breath through his teeth, then pulled his phone from his pocket and typed something on it.
A text alert flashed on my screen.
HIS ROYAL PAIN IN MY ASS: Home safe. I know how much you worry. Good night, my precious ray of sunshine
It was an exact quote of the sarcastic text he’d sent after his last mission two months earlier. “Oh, very funny.”
He let his phone clatter to the table, his head hanging low as he spoke, his words ragged. “Tell the guard at the door I said to give you an escort down to your apartment.”
I put my phone away and stepped closer, trying to make out his features in the darkness. Sudden terror caused my heart to jackrabbit against my rib cage. Old pennies. I smelled them along with antiseptic.
“Look at me,” I said hoarsely.
He lifted his chin but kept his eyes closed.
I snapped on the table lamp beside him, and froze.
Not bleeding anymore. Not bleeding. But at some point he had been because the hair on the right side of his head was gummed up with the thick rust of it.
His right eye was swollen nearly shut, and he hadn’t let go of his ribs once.
I grabbed his head and pulled him down so I could search for the wound that had bled so freely.
“Holy hell, Walsh.” He leaned away from me and raised a hand to ward me off. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t know, but I had to see him. I yanked his black button-down from his waistband and practically ripped the buttons from their plackets in my quest to get to his skin. “How badly are you hurt? Did you go to the hospital? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Ouch. Shit. I’m a little banged up, but I’ll heal. I was at a private medical clinic. I didn’t text because I didn’t think you’d care one way or the other.”
I dragged his hand away from his ribs and peeled his shirt back. The sight of his scars, old, but vicious, made my vision swim.
Gabriel McRae was an over-privileged, spoiled player who’d never worked for anything or suffered a day in his life. That’s what I’d said about him. It’s what I’d believed.
But he’d suffered beyond anything I could have imagined.
I blinked hard to clear the tears from my vision.
A lurid blue and purple bruise in the shape of a large boot print covered his side.
I reached out tentative fingers, then drew away before making contact.
As gently as I could, I pulled his shirt off his shoulders.
The right one looked nearly as bad as his ribs.
My hands fluttered over him as I inspected, no time to devote to the reveal of a dense swathe of tattoos on his chest when I was busy looking for damage.
“When I fantasized about you taking my clothes off, I imagined a lot less pain,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Shut up.” I pressed my forehead lightly to the center of his chest. “You’re hurt. They hurt you.”
His hands came up tentatively to rest on my waist. It was the first time I’d ever allowed anything like it from him, and the first time he’d tried.
“You should see the other guy. Or, maybe you shouldn’t,” he said.
“I hope the person who did this to you didn’t get back up.”
“Give me some credit,” he rasped. “You think one guy could get the jump on me? There were five of them.”
“You should stop going with the team. You don’t have to be part of these missions.”
Silence, broken only by the almost imperceptible whisper of a furnace kicking on in the background, held us in thrall.
“You saw my scars,” he said finally. “I do have to. Fourteen more women and children are safe in a shelter as we speak. You don’t think their lives were worth a boot to the ribs?”
My tears spilled over. I’d once accused him of using his father’s cause to prop up his own ego. I’d pictured him tagging along, useless and in the way, while the ex-special forces team members took all the risks and allowed the youngest McRae son to cosplay a hero.
I straightened and propped myself under his less damaged shoulder.
“Sydney?”
“I’ll help you get cleaned up and into bed,” I said.
He leaned on me as we walked. “Careful. I’ll start to think you like me.”
I gave a brief jerk of my head and cleared the tears from my throat before I could speak. “I don’t hate you, McRae.”
He leaned harder against me, and maybe he lost his balance . . . or maybe he pressed his lips to my temple. “I don’t hate you either, Walsh.”
In his hospital bed, here and now, Gabriel shifts restlessly in his sleep, then turns on his side to face the door.
I struggle to process what I thought was true with what is. Gabriel isn’t a government agent. He’s Bruce Wayne in a flak jacket and helmet instead of a pair of bat ears. And I’m the trusty sidekick in the research and development lab trying to figure out ways to keep them all safe.
I remember my job. The lab. The projects. The science. The missions.
Knowing what I was working on at the time of my abduction only confuses me more.
The project wasn’t something Markov could use against the McRae family.
If he’d had me successfully complete the research and development—and that is a huge if because there’s no guarantee I’ll ever make a biocompatible polymer-based sealant perform the way I want it to—he’d have become a wealthy man.
But that would have taken time and had nothing to do with revenge.
What kind of bargaining chip was a project that was essentially innocuous if he didn’t use it for financial gain? How are my co-workers complicit?
And why did I change my clothing before I came home that night and waltzed past our home security cameras like there was nothing wrong? Why did I wear my lucky hat to vandalize my own lab?
Without warning, Gabriel jolts upright and scrambles to his feet, nearly knocking the rolling table beside him over. “Where’s my phone? Dammit, Sydney, don’t do this,” he says.
He lowers himself back to the bed and drops his head into his hands, the picture of desolation. I lay my palm on his back and pass his phone around his arm.
He spins around, stares for long moments, then pulls me against him, his hand cupping my head and pressing his face into my neck. “I thought you left me.”
“I didn’t.”
He lifts his head and searches my eyes. “Why am I in a hospital with the hangover from hell?”