MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel (23 page)

Jiminez also had an idea of what Jacko’s childhood must have been like. Hell on earth. Sara was already a good-time girl when he met her while undercover in Cross. She thought he was in the cartel. She’d
liked
the idea that he was a drug dealer. It got her off. They’d had a one-night stand and Jimenez hadn’t given her another thought, but he’d left a child behind in the care of a junkie.

He’d been DEA all his life. He knew what junkies were like.

Jacko’d risen above that, made a real success of his life. Jimenez had felt an instant bond with the man—and God, his woman was pregnant. A grandchild. A fucking grandchild. This time he wouldn’t mess it up. This time he’d be there for the kid the way he hadn’t been for Jacko.

He had his back to a fence, weapon up, looking at his cell. Jacko’s IT person, called Felicity, had sent him the infrared image of the street. Either she was hooked up to satellites—which was impressive—or had sent drones—which was even more impressive.

Four vehicles on the street, three empty, engines cold.

One right around the corner, a van, with a man at the wheel, the engine pale yellow. Once warm, now cooling.

The back of the van was empty. They were planning on either kidnapping or killing Jacko.

He smiled grimly to himself.
Good luck with that, you fucker,
he thought. Carlos had no idea who or what Jacko was. All Carlos knew was that hurting him would hurt Jimenez.

You’re done hurting me and mine.

Jimenez rounded the corner fast, weapon up.

Be armed, be armed
, he chanted to himself as he made his way quietly to the driver’s side of the vehicle. If Carlos was armed, he could end this quickly. A shot to the head, and it was self-defense. No one was going to look too closely. Everyone knew that Carlos had made Dante’s life hell for decades. And it was always good to have one more scumbag in the ground.

The idiot was looking at something—a small screen. The glow lit his face from below, making him look like the monster he was.

Draw on me, motherfucker
, he thought as he tapped on the window.

The temptation to just shoot him right now was so strong sweat formed on Dante’s forehead. This man and his father had ruined his life, had been the cause of endless suffering, had wrecked the lives of two generations of kids. The father was dead and this man had no right to be among the living.

Just shoot him. Get it over with
.

But Dante had taken an oath and believed in the justice system. Sort of. Of course Villalongo would lawyer up, just like his dad had done, and would spend a long time out of prison waiting for trial, but right now he’d made an attempt on the life of a federal agent and a former Navy SEAL and a young woman. He wasn’t going to get out of this.

Dante didn’t want him hauled before a court, subjected to a long, drawn-out trial then put in jail. Dante wanted him dead.

Villalongo looked up, startled out of his contemplation of the screen. Thinking he was watching the takedown of someone important to Dante.

No, sir, Dante thought. Not this time.

Please try to kill me
. He sent up that little prayer. He’d never asked for anything before. Give him this. Let Villalongo make an attempt on his life and spare the state the expense of a trial and free Dante from a decades-old fight. Let Villalongo be stupid just one last time. Please.

And…yes!

Villalongo’s eyes widened, his hand reached for the Sig Sauer on the passenger seat, he brought it around two-handed, started pressing the trigger…

And Dante shot him in the forehead, splattering his brains all over the inside of the van.

He lowered his weapon slowly, peering through the shattered glass at a dead Carlos Villalongo.

He felt nothing. Not sadness and not joy.

All he felt was a burning desire to get back to his son, his son’s pretty lady and their child. His grandchild.

In the death and misery of the Villalongo saga, there was also new life and a new beginning.

He ran back to the house, in through the front door and stopped, almost skidding. The house was still dark. He would have expected Jacko and his lady to be picking up the pieces, maybe find her crying over the shattered china. But there was silence.

Dante flipped on the lights and at the same time, he heard a cry. A woman’s cry. Was Jacko wounded? God…dead?

His heart pounding in his chest, he shot to the gun vault. The door was open and he could see a living Jacko bending over a living Lauren and he stopped, relieved.

Until he saw the blood.

Dante swallowed. “She shot?”

Jacko was kneeling next to her, Lauren clinging to him. There was blood on her nightgown under the vest.

“You can take that vest off, if she’s uncomfortable.”

Jacko shot him a sharp look. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I just killed Carlos. It’s over.” He took a step toward them. “Where’s she shot, how can I help?”

Jacko was moving fast toward the front door with Lauren in his arms. He dug in a ceramic bowl near the front door, tossed a set of keys to Dante. Dante caught the set one-handed.

“We’re going to the hospital. You’re driving, I’ll navigate. Let’s go.”

Dante followed him out, pressing the fob that opened the doors to Jacko’s SUV. While Jacko got in the back with Lauren, carefully setting her on the seat, Dante got behind the wheel. He checked the rearview mirror and as soon as Jacko settled Lauren in and closed the door, he took off fast.

“At the third intersection, turn left. Then it’s a straight ride to the hospital, go around to the A & E side.”

“Got it.” Dante met Lauren’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m so sorry you got shot, honey,” he said gently. “We’ll get you patched up.”

“Not shot,” Jacko said grimly. “She’s losing the baby.”

Dante’s heart gave a huge thump in his chest and he floored the accelerator. “No,” he said. “I won’t let her lose that baby. That’s my grandchild.”

Eight months later

Lauren stopped in her slow shuffle down the hospital corridor, holding on to Jacko’s shoulder. So far she’d been amazingly brave. And calm.

Jacko himself was jumping out of his skin. He’d done a lot of reading about childbirth, though most of what he read terrified him. So many fucking things could go so terribly wrong. It was amazing, the list of things that could go wrong. As a matter of fact, it seemed like a miracle to him that most people managed to get born just fine.

The night Dante came into their lives, Lauren had almost lost the baby. He still got the shivers when he thought of those couple of hours while the doctors fought for their baby, and in the end won.

They told him that Lauren had to take it easy. Oh yeah. He made sure of that, to the point she complained that she wasn’t allowed to do anything. Well, maybe he’d been a bit heavy-handed, but here she was, giving birth.

“They’re coming five minutes apart,” Lauren gasped and Jacko wanted to kick himself in the ass. That was his job—to time the contractions. She was getting ready to push a human being through a small orifice and his only job was to glance at his watch when she had a contraction. How hard could that be for a SEAL?

Hard, apparently, because he kept forgetting.

Contractions every five minutes. That was good, right? Or not. The fuck he knew. Every single thing he’d read about childbirth had completely flown from his mind.

Lauren glanced up at his face and smiled at him and patted his shoulder.

Jesus, she was calming
him
down!

She started up again, that slow shuffle. They’d been going up and down the corridor for hours, it felt like.

“So,” she said. “Where’s Grandpa?”

“Outside,” Jacko answered. “He said he needed some fresh air.”

She huffed out a breath and shook her head. “Needed a cigar, more like it,” she said.

“Yeah, that too. But he said he’d be back soon.”

“They won’t let him in the delivery room.”

“No, he knows that. He’ll be outside waiting with everyone else.”

They were all there, outside. Waiting. ASI had a skeleton staff as everyone who could be spared was here, waiting for the baby to be born.

“She’s going to have a big family, but I’m really glad she’s going to have a grandfather.”

“Yeah,” Jacko said hoarsely. He cleared his voice. Dante was going to make a fantastic grandfather. He’d retired from the DEA and moved to Portland, where he became everyone’s favorite geezer. Well, not a geezer, not really. Guy still had juice in him. He’d done a couple of contract jobs for ASI where an investigator was needed, and had excelled. Midnight and the Senior had offered him full-time employment but he’d refused. He wanted to be a full-time grandpa. He said he’d missed out on Jacko and wanted to make up for it with his granddaughter.

Dante Jimenez was a permanent part of their lives. Jacko still found it hard to think of him as a father, but it was easy to think of him as a really, really good friend who just happened to look exactly like him.

Lauren stopped and hunched over, eyes closed.

“Four minutes,” she said. “I think we should be going back. I think we’re getting close.”

Getting close.
Oh God. All of a sudden he wanted to stop the clock, tell Lauren…what? Stop labor? He wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t sure at all that he was going to be a good daddy. He told Lauren that once, and she’d just laughed. Said he was born to be a dad.

Where did she get
that
from? How could she tell?

Jacko kept pace with Lauren and she walked slowly, slowly down the corridor to the delivery room. He would have given anything to just pick her up and carry her there, but she didn’t want that. She wanted to get there by herself.

Finally, after about eight billion years and several stops while she had contractions, they got to the delivery room.

Lauren stopped on the threshold, looked at the nurse and whispered, “A minute apart.”

Two nurses came over and, in their brisk, efficient manner, took Lauren from him, put her on a cot with those awful stirrup things and fit her feet to the stirrups.

He heard Lauren moan and if he didn’t have a shaved head, every hair on his head would have stood up.

Then things got a little hazy. There was pain and there was blood and it all drove him a little crazy. Through it all, Lauren was incredibly brave and calm, holding on to his hand so hard it almost hurt.

He’d
trained
for this. A thousand lessons with other pregnant women and their partners, practicing timed breathing and backrubs. He completely forgot everything he’d learned, forgot how to coach her breathing and couldn’t do anything but cling to her hand and sweat.

Then things got really bad, and there was a
lot
of blood. He’d been in the field, he’d been shot himself, but this was much, much worse. The nurses grew very quiet, working efficiently, doing things he didn’t understand, and then the doctor came and sat on a stool between Lauren’s raised legs and spoke in a low, calm voice, and then there was even more blood…

Jacko’s knees grew weak.

No one bothered to tell him what the fuck was going on. They spoke in quiet monosyllables, words that made no sense to him. Jacko was at the head of the bed and couldn’t see what was going on but nearly freaked when the doctor took a fucking scalpel and made an incision.

Jacko was about ready to attack the doctor when there was a flurry of movement at the foot of the bed and—

A cry. A baby’s cry. Lauren, who was covered in sweat, gave a weak laugh.

“What’s her Apgar score?” she asked in an exhausted voice.

The doctor pulled down his mask and smiled. “A hundred,” he said, and Lauren laughed again. That was one thing Jacko knew. The Apgar score was the indicator of the health of a newborn baby, a score that went from one to ten. Ten being perfect.

Suddenly one of the nurses thrust a blanket-covered thing in his arms. Startled, Jacko let go of Lauren and looked down.

She was small and warm. Tiny, perfect features. A fuzz of dark hair, smooth, soft olive skin.

She opened her eyes and he nearly gasped. They were silver-blue and they were looking right at him. All the books said babies couldn’t focus. They started seeing things at four months, but Jacko knew that little Alice, named for the grandmother she’d never know, was looking at
him
.

And then she smiled. To his dying day, he’d swear she smiled at him in the first minutes of her life.

Jacko’s heart moved from his chest to hers and for the second time in his life, he fell in love.

The End

I hope you enjoyed this book. If you did, I'd appreciate a review on the Amazon page and/or on Goodreads. If you liked this book, you might also enjoy:

THE MIDNIGHT TRILOGY

1. Midnight Man

Nook
|
iTunes
|
Kobo
|
All Romance eBooks

2. Midnight Run

Nook
|
iTunes
|
Kobo
|
All Romance eBooks

3. Midnight Angel