Free Fall

A smile of relief spread across her mother’s face. “Good morning, kiddo. How do you feel?”

“Mom?” she croaked, then coughed.

Her mother passed her water to sip through a bendy straw just like when Stella had the chicken pox at five years old.

How could she have forgotten that?

Annie set the cup on the bedside table. “I’ll call for the nurse.”

“No, please.” Stella gripped her wrist. “Wait. Tell me what happened first.”

“You’re in a hospital. You were shot twice. One bullet grazed your temple. The other hit a major artery in your thigh.” She squeezed her hand. “But you’re going to be fine. Jose treated you on the scene while you waited for the ambulance. The doctor said Jose saved your life.”

Her voice trailed off and she pressed a palm to her chest. Annie blinked back tears that spoke louder than words of how close she’d come to dying. She owed Jose so much. “And the list, the names?”

“Agent Brown was the leak. It appears he was turned traitor when he built up gambling debts. An enemy exploited that weakness. I’m not privy to all the details, but I’m guessing they may offer him his life in exchange for all his contacts. Regardless, the leak has been plugged.”

Annie clicked through the high notes like the seasoned professional she was and Stella felt an uncanny sense of looking in the mirror. How humbling to think she was so much like this woman whose choices frustrated the hell out of her.

She would get the rest of the details later, once she could link up with her contacts at Interpol. She intended to press hard for the right to sift through every piece of data the analytical Mr. Brown recorded, check and recheck each piece of paper he touched. If he’d falsified so much as an order for candy bars, she would find it.

And she couldn’t help but wonder if she might have been more effective from the start if she’d stuck to what she did best.

Analyzing data.

“Uhm, Stella?” her mother asked, uncertainty looking so alien on her confident mom. “You need to know I’m coming back to the States.”

Pain meds dripping through the IV tube fuzzed regular details like the sun shining through the window and the bedpan on the rolling table.

Sifting through her mother’s words made her head throb. She pressed her fingers against her temple—and winced as she touched the bandage. She’d come that close to dying from a bullet to the brain.

Stella thumbed the remote and raised the head of the bed, wincing at the stab of pain as her leg moved all of a couple of millimeters. “What about your whole witness protection program?”

“A lot of years have passed since I was in the loop.” She smoothed back her silver-streaked hair. “I haven’t been an active agent in so long anything I know is outdated. Maybe I’ve been hiding out here in Africa, afraid to face you and your brothers. Afraid to face myself.”

“Wow, I don’t know what to say.” She reached for the cup and sipped more water to clear her throat and her thoughts.

“I don’t intend to camp in your front yard, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That isn’t what I said.” The thought of spending more time with her mother was scary, yes, but also… amazing.

“Sorry to be defensive.” She rubbed her bare ring finger where she’d once worn a plain gold wedding band. “I haven’t put together my whole plan, but knowing that you almost died out there and I could have missed the opportunity to see you again? I just want the chance to get to know you and your brothers again.”

“I can understand that.” She felt the same way. Second chances were rare in life. “If you need help, just let me know.”

“I’m a teacher. I can support myself, and sadly, there’s no shortage of orphan schools in the United States as well. I’ve been thinking about that a lot as your agency friends work on placing Ajaya somewhere in the States.”

“What about your, uh, boyfriend?” She hadn’t missed how Mr. Al-Shennawi never left her mother’s side—except for now.

Annie smiled, as if reading her thoughts. “He’s just outside the door. We’ve talked about taking teaching jobs at the same school, maybe lead a beautifully boring life together.”

Stella reached a hand out to her mom, knowing all too well how much courage it took to hope for a happy ending. “I hope your dreams play out for you, Mom, I really do.”

Her mother looked at her extended arm, an olive branch, and her eyes filled with tears. Annie squeezed her daughter’s hand. A sense of peace filled Stella, a lot more soothing than any painkiller dripping from that bag on the IV pole. She and her mother still had plenty to talk through and fences to mend, but they’d made a good start.

“Hey, Mom? Could you do me a favor?”

“Anything. Just ask.”

“Could you find Jose? I really need to talk to him.”

Reaching out to her mother had been a good first step in putting her life back together. But nothing would be okay again until she made things right with Jose. The love she’d seen in his eyes when he’d treated her back at the festival gave her hope. She just prayed she hadn’t been hallucinating from blood loss.

Because the pain in her brutalized leg was nothing compared to the agony she would feel if she lost Jose for good.

***

Jose stared into the steaming cup of coffee his buddy Bubbles kept refilling. The big lug sat beside him on the cracked leather sofa, offering silent support.

The night had been the longest of his life. Hands down. Once he’d stabilized Stella at the scene, he’d been left with no choice but to turn her over to paramedics. Fang had held him back as he’d tried to force his way into the ambulance. Only Mr. Smith’s promise to keep him in the loop had managed to calm him down enough to keep him from getting arrested.

The bastard Brown had survived and was under guard on a different floor of the hospital. Jose had ditched his bloodied ABU jacket, but refused to leave the hospital. He waited, in his camo pants, boots, and T-shirt. The doctor sounded knowledgeable, but trusting Stella’s care to someone he didn’t know in a third world country hospital was tough, to say the least.

Normally he would have flipped his sobriety coin. God knows the painful crawl of hours waiting for word on Stella had been beyond stressful. He glanced at Bubbles. “Thanks for hanging out here with me.”

“No problem. It’s what we do for each other.”

The words resonated, reminding him of how he’d said the same thing to his teammates in the past. They all said it. His team had been like a family to him, helping him keep his head above water, just as he liked to think he helped them.

How much better would it be in a rock solid family? With Stella? Because he knew now. He was in for the long haul. He was a marathon man, after all.

Soft footsteps whispered down the hall, coming closer, around the corner. Stella’s mother walked into the waiting room.

Jose stood, fast, sloshing hot coffee onto his finger. “Stella?”

Exhaustion stamped its mark on her face, her clothes wrinkled from sleeping in a chair. She looked like… a worried mother. “She’s awake and asking to see you. The doctor’s checking her over now.”

Thank God.

The knowledge that she was out of the woods damn near took his knees out. Annie must have known because she reached for him, giving his arm a simple squeeze.

Then it hit him. If he married Stella, he got a family along with her. And what do you know? The thought didn’t scare him. It felt… kind of right.

“Thank you.” He offered her his coffee. “I haven’t even touched this yet.”

“Thanks.” She smiled her gratitude.

Her eyes shifted from him to across the hall where her Egyptian friend stood at the nurse’s station. She patted Jose’s hand, leaving him to go to Stella.

Ten steps past the nurse’s station and a rolling cart with lunch trays, he reached Stella’s door as the doctor walked out.

“She is a lucky woman,” the doctor said in broken English before moving on to the next patient.

Right now, he felt like the lucky one.

Jose pushed open her door and God, she was beautiful. But so damn pale her freckles stood out all the more. At least the heart monitor beeped a steady reassurance, even if the bandages on her head and her leg struck a fresh bolt of fear through him.

“Stella, what the hell were you doing out there?” Shit, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

But she didn’t bristle. She simply rolled her eyes at him, understanding too well, probably more than he deserved. He charged across the room and kissed her forehead, taking in the warmth of her. Alive. Thank God, alive.

Her fingers stroked the back of his neck. “I was doing my job. Which included saving your ass.”

“You’re a code breaker. A data techie. That’s your job.” He angled back, looking into her glittering green eyes that reminded him of the dewy morning grass of home. “Leave that shoot-out stuff for us security dudes.”

“But I knew something was off when Brown told everyone to go west and he went the other way.” She frowned at the memory, her well-ordered brain always ready to catch a piece of a puzzle that didn’t fit. That was one of many reasons she was so damn good at her job.

“You found the mole and kept sensitive information safe. I would wholeheartedly approve if you hadn’t gotten shot in the process.” The kick to his gut was so damn sharp it was like seeing it happen all over again. “You took doing your job to a whole new level.”

Her hand slid around to caress his unshaven cheek. “My job is to love you, Jose James. That’s the only thing I care about. But you know I’ve spoken before about focusing my work life on code breaking, the desk type, out of the field.”

She was making this too easy for him, which also made it tougher because he wanted to earn her, to be worthy of this amazing woman who’d given him her entire heart.

“Loving you is the scariest damn thing I’ve ever done, Stella.” He kissed her forehead again, then her freckled nose, her mouth, quickly, carefully. “And I do, I love you… so much.”

That point had been hammered home to him in the month he’d spent without her. He’d known then that he wasn’t ready to let her go. But this last week together had been the pressure cooker that stripped everything else away—all his dumb defenses and all his half-baked notions about what he wanted for his future. The only thing that was left was his love for Stella and faith in her. Hell, if this smart, kick-ass woman saw him as a stand-up guy who could take on a family, then by God he could.

“I’m glad to hear it.” She stroked her thumb over his mouth. “I wondered if I was hallucinating when I heard you say that last night.”

No more wasting time. No more running. He was ready to take on the future, with Stella. “Let’s get married.”

She looked at her IV bag quickly, then back at him. “Did I hear you say what I think or are the pain meds messing with my head?”

“Stella, I mean every word. I want us to get married and if you’re not ready to talk about that now, I’ll wait until you’re feeling better. Hell, I’ll wait however long it takes because I’m not giving up on us again.”

“What about your concerns? You have some very real worries and while I believe in you, I don’t take those lightly.” Wary hope flickered through her eyes and he hated that she had to wonder or doubt him.

He lowered the bed rail and sat beside her, cautiously so as not to jostle her. He checked the half-empty bag of fluid and the machine blipping her vitals. Satisfied she was okay, he settled beside her. “I want to be with you. Period. I’m f**king miserable without you.”