Chapter 19
ALEX
Alex's eyes fluttered open for a brief second before he squeezed them shut, a sharp stab of pain piercing his temples. Bright lights overhead seemed to sear directly into his brain, and a dull ache settled in his bones. Where was he?
The steady beeping nearby pulled him to reality—the hospital. The memories rushed back, but they were fragments, blurred at the edges. The plane. Ava. The jungle.
Panic welled up as he forced his eyes open again, searching the room. He had to find her. The last thing he remembered was sending her coordinates, helping her and Kyle through the jungle. But after that? He didn’t know if she made it. Had he passed out? Or worse—had something gone wrong?
“Ava,” he croaked, his voice barely above a whisper. Where was she?
He recalled coming here since with the deadly flu spreading through the small town of Hemlock Falls and threatening to wipe it off the map before Ava had climbed aboard a plane bound for South America.
His heart skipped a beat before it ramped up, pounding harder against his ribs as the heart monitor matched its frantic pace. Ava.
He recalled the chaotic moments as her plane went down, searching his memory for some resolution to that nightmare.
Why was his memory so fuzzy?
She’d been alive, right? His forced his thoughts to slow before he reassured himself that they had spoken. She’d been alive and insistent on finding the cure despite the crash.
He’d sent the coordinates to her phone, then prepared to help her infiltrate the facility, hacking into the security system.
It had taken Ava and Kyle a while to navigate through the thick jungle surrounding the pharmaceutical facility. Had they made it?
He didn’t remember. Why didn’t he remember?
Panic gripped him, and his stomach tightened into a knot. He tried to find a memory of opening doors for Ava or the triumphant moment where they got their hands on the cure, but he couldn’t remember anything like that.
Maybe he’d fallen asleep, dozed off while they were walking, and they hadn’t reached it yet.
He risked opening his eyes to slits, allowing them to adjust to the light before he finally opened them a little wider.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Kyle answered with a grin.
“Doc?” He groaned, wondering if he was dreaming or maybe hallucinating from the fever. How was Kyle here? And more importantly where was Ava?
“Yep. It’s me. Your savior.” The man glanced at the monitors before he flicked his eyebrows up. “Looking good, Mav.”
“What? How are you here? Where’s—” His words stopped as a sinking feeling filled him. Ava had been sick. When he’d talked to her last while they were walking to the facility, she’d said she had the flu.
What had happened to her? Was she still sick? Was she worse?
“Ava,” he said, his broken voice barely above a whisper. “Where is Ava?”
“Hey, he’s awake,” Sebastian said as he entered the room. “You look a lot better. We really thought we were going to lose you.”
“You weren’t in great shape, Mav, that’s for sure,” Kyle echoed. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come out of that coma, but you’re looking good now. Look at these vitals. Fever’s down, heart rate is normal, breathing normal, how are you feeling?”
“Coma?” Alex’s heart skipped a beat. “I was in a coma?”
“You were, yep,” Kyle answered with a nod.
Alex’s lower lip started to quiver. “Well, then how did you and Ava get into that facility? Where is Ava?”
Kyle glanced at Sebastian who stood at the foot of the bed.
The muscled man shrugged. “You had already hacked into the security system, so I just helped clear the halls and let them into the biohazard lab.”
Alex’s lips parted, his brain racing. “Okay, so, you got the cure? Where is Ava? Why will no one tell me where she is?”
His stomach turned over as worry shot through him. Had she not made it through the jungle? Had she fallen victim to the deadly flu.
“I’m right here, Ace,” Ava’s voice said as she slid her phone into her pocket and strode into the room.
With her rosy cheeks and sparkling green eyes, she looked like a normal version of Ava, not one who had just had the flu.
“There she is,” Kyle said with a grin as he wrapped an arm around her.
She reached for Alex’s hand, squeezing it. “You’re looking better.”
He struggled to sit up, still a little weak from fighting the infection. “Avs, what happened?”
“We found the cure. And we saved a bunch of people’s lives,” she said with a smile.
“Ava found the cure…by deciding to jab a needle into her arm right then and there,” Kyle said, his voice catching as he recalled the moment.
He shook his head. “She didn’t hesitate, just said it was our only option.
I thought she was going to die right there in front of me.
She collapsed almost immediately, and for a moment…
” He swallowed hard, his eyes flickering to Ava. “I thought I’d lost her.”
Ava gave a small shrug, her lips curving in a faint smile. “But I didn’t die. And it worked. We identified the cure, and I started feeling better before we even made it out of the facility.”
Kyle let out a shaky breath. “Still, please don’t ever do something like that again. It was reckless, even if it saved lives.”
“Sorry, Doc. Desperate times and all of that.”
“You…stabbed yourself with a needle full of…something?” Alex asked, his eyebrows furrowing.
“I was in pretty bad shape, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it much further. I figured it couldn’t hurt, and maybe we’d be lucky enough to identify the cure,” she answered with a shrug.
Kyle winced. “Yeah, well, we were, except I wasn’t lucky enough to escape carrying you to the evac location.”
“Sorry,” she said. “But you would have been doing that either way, Doc. I wasn’t going to be able to walk, cure or not.”
Alex shifted on the uncomfortable mattress again. “So…I’m cured, too?”
Ava nodded. “We got a few vials of the stuff and Doc had it analyzed as soon as we got back here. I was already feeling better. We isolated what made it work and produced as much of it as we could. Of course, those first few doses we had went to Doc, Shadow, and you.”
She smiled at him as she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb.
“Ava…” His voice broke, tears prickling in his eyes as he reached for her. She leaned closer, her lips pressing gently against his cheek, her hand brushing away a tear that had escaped down his face.
“I’m here, Ace. I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice trembling for just a second. “And now you are, too.”
“And so are a large percentage of people who would have otherwise died from this,” Sebastian said.
Alex tried to process everything, his mind still hazy from the coma. “Then…”
“We did it,” Ava said as she perched on the edge of the bed next to him.
He offered her a tentative smile as he wrapped an arm around her, shifting over to give her room as he pulled her closer. They’d rode out the worst of it, it seemed. Both he and Ava had survived the deadly flu, likely because of Ava’s bravery to use herself as a test subject for the cure.
He snuggled next to her, everything still surreal.
“Well,” Kyle said, “I have a few other patients to check on, but I’ll be back for a celebratory jello cup later on.”
“Sounds good, Doc,” Ava said with a pat on his arm. “See you soon.”
The man offered her a grin as he backed from the room.
Sebastian followed him. “I have a few calls to make.”
As they found themselves alone, Ava let her head fall onto Alex’s shoulder. “It’s really good to see those blue eyes of yours again, Ace.”
“I feel the same way about your green ones, Sparky. When I woke up and you weren’t here…”
“When I got here, and you were in a coma…I mean, I knew you were in a coma from the time we were in South America, but…seeing you that sick was so much worse than I ever imagined.”
He twisted toward her, pressing his lips against her forehead. “Knowing you were sick and trudging through the jungle almost killed me.”
She threaded her fingers through his. “I did it because I had to save you, Alex. I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”
He pressed his cheek against her head. “I wish I could have been there with you. That must have been so awful, Avs. And please tell me you got checked out thoroughly after that plane crash.”
“I’m fine, Alex,” she assured him.
He pulled back, craning his neck to glance down at her. “Okay, that didn’t answer my question at all. In fact, that sidestepped my question which tells me you didn’t, in fact, get checked out after the plane crash.”
“I did. I’m fine,” she said. “Not even a sprain. Both Doc and I are fine.”
“While I am somewhat concerned about Doc, he wasn’t at the forefront of my thoughts in this instance.”
“Well, he should be. He did a great job getting this cure mass produced along with some of Sebastian’s contacts.” Ava shifted, pressing against his chest.
“Well, I’m super happy for Doc, but I’m ecstatic that you are okay. When that plane went down…Ava, my heart just…plummeted right with it. I can’t lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either, Alex, and that’s exactly how I felt when you came down with this flu. I just…watched you sleep while we were at the motel and counted every breath.”
“I’m not leaving you, babe. You can’t get rid of me,” he promised.
“Yeah, well, The Board kind of wants to rip us apart,” she answered, offering him a knowing glance.
“But we won’t let them.” He curled his fingers into fists as he pulled her closer. They had to do something to stop The Board.
The pressure mounting from the constant threats couldn’t continue. And he wouldn’t let them take Ava away from him.
He loved her too much to allow anything to rip her from his arms.
His mind searched for options, but the flu felt like it had set them back tremendously. They’d been sidetracked by another Board-created crisis and unable to go after the people they should be going after to dismantle this organization.
He tried to take solace in the fact that he and Ava had weathered another storm together, but his growing unease gnawed at him.
As he started to settle a little, Kyle strode back into the room, four cups juggled in his arms. “Who’s up for jello?”
“Me,” Ava said with a grin as she sat up and reached for a red cup.
“What happened to Shadow?” Kyle asked, passing a blue cup to Alex along with a plastic spoon.
“Phone calls,” she answered as she lifted her cup toward Alex. “To surviving another Board crisis.”
Alex smacked his plastic cup against hers. “And to finding something to take these people down now that we’ve successfully defeated the flu.”
“That’s a great plan,” Sebastian said, striding back into the room, his expression grim as he shoved his phone into his pocket.
“But unfortunately, we’re not in the clear yet.
There’s a little something else that’s come up that needs our immediate attention before we can think about taking down The Board. ”
Alex's heart sank, a knot of fear forming in his chest. He had barely survived the flu, and now there was something else? He exchanged a glance with Ava, her eyes narrowing as she read the look on Sebastian's face.