THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) (42 page)

Weaving unsteadily on his feet, he started to collapse.

“No!”
Lena
screamed.

But then, in a move as fluid as it was unexpected, he knocked the pistol from Ibrahim’s grasp as he spun around and came up behind his captor, twisting his arm behind his back and pressing a gun that had come out of nowhere to his head. “Everyone down on the ground!” she overheard him shout. As Hasan and Shahid swung around with their own pistols, Muhammed, who had fallen to a crouch, shot Shahid in the shoulder and Hasan in the thigh, and both men dropped their weapons in shocked agony.

The
whop-whop-whop
of approaching helicopters grew louder, drowning out
Jackson
’s words as Corey and Muhammed fell prostrate to the ground, prompting those still standing to do the same. They all ignored Ibrahim who vociferated loudly and gesticulated at the ATV drivers, no doubted ordering them to come to his defense.

In the next instant the very ground seemed to shake as two ominous silhouettes swooped down from the clouds overhead. Instead of obliging Ibrahim, the ATV’s scattered, and the helicopters banked sharply, in hot pursuit. The sound of gunfire abruptly abated.

“Finally,” Special Agent
Douglas
muttered, smiling grimly at Ibrahim’s obvious dismay. “It’ll be over soon,” he predicted.

Lena took her eyes off
Jackson
just long enough to assess that the SWAT team on the ground was coming out of hiding with their weapons trained on the parolees. From what she could tell, it was already over. With only one thought in mind, she shoved her way out of
Douglas
’s vehicle.

“Hey, come back here!” the negotiator shouted.

By then
Lena
was halfway across the parking lot, just behind Ike Calhoun and the dozen black figures now wrestling Ibrahim to the ground, pouncing on the parolees, and snatching up their weapons.

“
Jackson
!” In her haste to get to him,
Lena
hurtled the crouching figures in her way.

By the time she elbowed her way to the center of the crowd, Calhoun was kneeing Ibrahim in the spine and muttering dark promises into his ear as he cuffed him.
Jackson
clutched the railing, which appeared to be the only object keeping him upright. Throwing steadying arms around him,
Lena
gazed up into his beautifully familiar face.

“I’ve got you,” she vowed. “Hang in there, baby.”

His pain-glazed eyes abruptly cleared as he stared down at her, clearly horrified. “What the hell are you doing here?”   

But the danger was clearly diminishing. The only things exploding now were the ATV’s, which were falling prey, one by one, to the gunners on the helicopters. Ibrahim’s army was fragmenting and disbanding. She could hear one of the semis parked on the highway starting to pull away. They wouldn’t get far with the second wave of National Guardsmen bearing down on the scene
.

“I need a paramedic here!” she shouted. Spying a line of ambulances hovering at the periphery of the campus, she waved her arms frantically to get their attention.

At last, they deemed it safe enough to enter the ravaged parking lot, so they could tend the wounded.

“You, bring a stretcher!”
Lena
ordered the first paramedic to open his door
.

“I’m all right, Lena,”
Jackson
assured her, but he leaned on her heavily, and his speech was slurred.

“Like hell you’re all right,” Calhoun growled, standing up to join
Lena
in barking at the first responders. “Treat this man for a gunshot wound, pronto.”

Responding to the authority in Calhoun’s voice, the paramedic and his assistant hurried over with a gurney.

Groaning in a way that tore at Lena’s heartstrings,
Jackson
lay down at their urging. Blood glistened wetly on his thigh. When he closed his eyes, his face was etched in agony.
Lena
caught it in her hands and leaned over him. “Don’t you go and die on me, Jackson,” she warned in a voice that quavered uncontrollably. “Now that you made me fall in love with you, you had better pull through, you hear me?”

A smile chased the suffering from his face and made his dimple flicker. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart,” he assured her, with an undercurrent that warmed her heart. He even managed to slit his eyes. “And for the record, I’m in love with you too.”

With a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob,
Lena
pressed her lips to his cold ones. By degrees, she became aware of the T.V. crews converging on the scene. Concerned that they would immortalize him as the agent who’d gone undercover to deter the fanatical leader, she sought to wheel him away.

Only, it became evident that the media was focused for the moment on Attorney General Wilkes, who’d emerged from his palace on wheels to take in the battle’s aftermath. With a dazed look on his face, he climbed the steps of the mosque and stood amidst the rubble like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Behind him, the cuffed, cursing imam was being read his Miranda rights
.

“Sir, can you give us a comment?” pressed a bold member of the press, pushing to the forefront of the chaotic scene.

Lena
glanced at Wilkes to see what he could possibly say in his own defense. In her opinion, it would have saved both lives and valuable property if he had just used force to arrest Ibrahim like Ike Calhoun had suggested.
Jackson
might not have been injured in the fall out.

“Well, you know, we’re all shaken by what’s transpired here in the last twelve hours,” the AG stammered, for once at a loss for words.

Jackson
squeezed her hand, recapturing her attention. “Look, it’s Toby,” he whispered.

Following the direction of his gaze,
Lena
saw Toby mount the steps while sticking a fake moustache to his upper lip. Sending her and Jackson a wink, he tugged the brim of his black cap over his eyes, sidled closer to the AG and started unbuttoning his flack jacket.
He wouldn’t
,
Lena
thought, as Wilkes launched reluctantly into a press conference.

Toby still wore the same T-shirt she had noticed him wearing the previous evening. As the AG defended his reasons for not storming the mosque at the outset, he positioned himself on the man’s left side so that the arrow on his T-shirt under
I’M WITH STUPID
pointed directly at the supreme head of the Department of Justice. By all appearances, Toby was listening attentively.

Lena
shook her head and marveled at his gall. Every news station in the country was airing the AG’s comments live. Toby was just asking to get sacked.

Quickly, before the press realized the hero of the hour was lying immediately behind them on a stretcher, Lena gestured to the paramedic to evacuate
Jackson
from the scene. The love of her life deserved to be honored as a hero, but reprisal by the crazy imam’s followers was definitely something he could live without.

**

Resisting the tug of drug-induced lethargy,
Jackson
forced his sticky eyelids open, only to flinch at the bright sunlight shining through the window.

Disoriented, he took a moment to gather his bearings. He found himself propped up in a hospital bed, an IV in his left arm and a blanket up to his chest. He couldn’t feel even a pinch of pain. The lime-green walls were enhanced by an enormous bouquet of wild flowers set in a vase on the bureau to his left. Yet the most uplifting vision of all was that of
Lena
curled up in the recliner under a small hospital blanket, fast asleep.

With his heart stuck in his throat,
Jackson
feasted his eyes on her. For several hours there, back in the mosque, he’d honestly thought he’d never live to see
Lena
again, or Naomi, for that matter. What Colleen had warned him about—his penchant for putting service to country over his obligation to those he loved—had finally bitten him in the ass, literally. It had seemed like fate. If he’d died, his punishment would have been never getting to tell
Lena
that he loved her.

To think that she’d been right outside, on the scene, the entire time. He shuddered to imagine it. Nor would he have believed, in his urgency to tell her what she meant to him, that she would blurt out the words first.
Now that you made me fall in love with you, you had better pull through, you hear me?

The echo of her belligerent confession made him smile. It was just like
Lena
to beat him to the finish line. He was going to have to get used to being on the losing end, he supposed.

Regarding her dark curls and the childlike way that she clutched the blanket to her chest, he could have cared less. He had learned that her tough, competitive spirit disguised a heart as vulnerable and breakable as glass. And that truth made him love her all the more.

If he could spend the rest of his life on the receiving end of her sassy tongue and her passionate devotion, he’d be the luckiest man in the world—a man who’d learned the hard way what counted most in his life.

Sucking in a deep breath, he realized he’d forgotten to breathe. At the sound of his gasp, she lurched awake, threw off the blanket, and rocketed out of the chair like a cat off a hot, tin roof. “
Jackson
! What’s wrong. Are you hurting?”

He realized he had tears in his eyes. “No.”

She clearly didn’t believe him. “I’ll go get the nurse.”

“Whoa, slow down.” He caught her wrist and tugged her back. “I’m fine, sweetheart.” He twined his fingers through hers, keeping her locked by his side. “Don’t go anywhere. I was enjoying looking at you.”

The blush that streaked across her cheekbones warmed the cockles of his heart.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him with a worried, searching look.

“Excellent. I must be on some good pain meds.” He dared a peek under the blanket and groaned. It wasn’t so much the sight of his bandaged hip as the catheter tube coming out from under his hospital gown that dismayed him.

“They had to dig the bullet out.” She grimaced to convey her empathy. “You were lucky that it didn’t hit any major arteries, but it damaged some ligaments. You’ll need some time to heal.”

“I feel as good as new,” he assured her. “How about you?” His gaze slid to the wrinkled, formfitting blouse she wore. For a woman who’d been up all night witnessing terrorism at its finest and standing by her man while he underwent emergency surgery, she looked pretty damn sexy.

“Great,” she assured him, but her smile struck him as forced.

“I think we both could both use a vacation,” he declared, suddenly inspired. He could see it now: 
Lena
in a floral bikini walking through a warm rush of turquoise water. His body tingled in anticipation, making him feel good enough to jump up and run a mile
.

Lena
’s sherry colored eyes filled with unmistakable longing. “That sounds so good,” she agreed. “To where?”

“
Grand Cayman
Island
,” he answered with confidence. “That’s where I grew up. I’d like to take you there.”

To his surprise, she seemed at a loss for words.

She was just opening her mouth to supply an answer when a young voice squealed in the hallway and the door flew open. Naomi rushed into the room with wide, worried eyes, followed by a harried-looking Silvia and then Toby, who’d swapped out yesterday’s T-shirt for a new one.