LINKED (The Bening Files Book 1) Read online

  Don’t. Panic. Deep. Breaths.

  Her heart kicked up anyway. Through blurry vision, she could make out someone standing near what appeared to be a doorway. She smashed her hand into the glass. Pain radiated up her arm, causing a dull throb to spread throughout her body.

  No response. Not even a slight turn of the head. She tried again, this time using her fist. Nothing happened. The person didn’t turn toward her. The backs of her eyes stung. She took a deep breath and scanned the blue and white room until her gaze landed on him.

  Jordan sat inches from her “bubble.” His eyes were closed, head tilted at an odd angle, mouth open, and a blanket draped across him. The need to touch him became an almost powerful obsession. As if he knew she was staring at him, his eyes opened and he blinked a few times before reaching for something black and speaking into it. The blanket fell to the floor.

  “Slick.” He said something to the person standing in the doorway, then leaned forward and pressed a hand to the glass. “Take some deep breaths. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  On her side of the glass, she fit her hand against his, imaging she could feel the calloused hand on hers. Skin she thought she might never touch again. “Jordan.” Her voice came out in a choked whisper. “Get me out of here.”

  Three loud clicks sounded and then a loud whoosh of air floated around her as the bed she lay on started moving out of the glass tube. A woman in purple scrubs with curly red hair stood overhead. Jordan appeared to her right.

  His hair stuck up in a million different directions, his face covered in a couple days worth of stubble. He knelt beside her, something glittering along the edge of his eyes. “Hey. It’s good to see those baby blues.”

  “I’m Alice.” Purple scrub lady said. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “McKenna.”

  “Who is he?” She pointed to Jordan.

  “Jordan.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. The strong smell of antiseptic hit her then. At the same moment, she realized she couldn’t fully extend her right arm and there was a burning sensation in her left. “Am I in a hospital?”

  “Yes.” Alice glanced at Jordan. “I’ll let the doctor know she’s awake. He’ll probably want to run some tests.”

  “What day,” she cleared her throat, “what day is it?”

  “Monday.” His warm fingers found hers and squeezed. “It’s been almost seventy-two hours since, you went missing.”

  “You hate hospitals.” It came out on a garbled yawn she couldn’t suppress. She wound her fingers tighter around Jordan’s.

  A small smile lit the corners of his face, but it didn’t erase the lines of stress around his eyes. Something was wrong. The nursed fiddled with some tubing in her arm and on her face and repositioned something on her finger. The anxiety she’d awoke with started to slip away.

  Her eyes refused to stay open. “You look upset, Jordan.” The phrase was clear in her head, but didn’t sound normal to her ears. What was wrong with her brain?

  A rustle of the linens around her head came and then something touched her cheek. The organ in her chest tried to beat its way out of her ribcage. Her eyes snapped open. Nothing out of the ordinary confronted her.

  “It’s just me.” Jordan rose the arm he’d placed above her head. He wiggled his fingers in front of her face, then replaced the appendage to its resting spot. The tips of his fingers smoothed across her cheek again, caressing her.

  Lulling her heart back to a normal tune.

  There was something important she needed to ask, but the words eluded her, the thought lodged somewhere in another life. The nurse removed her from the glass tube completely. She could feel herself moving, but Jordan’s fingers stayed curled around hers. Another voice, deep and accented, entered and conversation buzzed around her head.

  Just a short nap.

  ###

  Dr. Steinbaum tucked his penlight back into his white lab coat.

  “Pupillary reflexes are good. Her SAT’s have been stable at one liter of oh-two. Blood gases came back good. I don’t see any evidence of tissue damage, which surprised me in a case like this. I’d normally do a CAT scan to make sure we aren’t seeing any resulting heart issues.”

  What the doctor wouldn’t say, was clear to Jordan. The risks of a CAT scan were too high to a fetus that had already been bombarded with a harsh drug and carbon monoxide poisoning.

  A baby. Their baby. He couldn’t even think about it.

  Jordan watched the short, gray-haired doctor as he tested other reflexes, took her apical pulse. They’d transferred McKenna to a room in the ICU and a bed much larger than the one in the hyperbaric chamber. Air puffed from her nose and fogged up the nasal cannula with each breath.

  In the twenty minutes it had taken the doctor to arrive, she hadn’t opened her eyes again. She had mumbled incoherent words when the nurses drew her blood. And every time he tried to adjust his hand, she flinched. So, he’d stopped trying. One of the nurses had taken pity on him and brought a chair closer.

  Not that it would have made a difference. He didn’t plan to leave her side.

  The doctor straightened. “Due to the history of trauma to her right elbow, she’ll have to wear that cast for at least three weeks. Then, if the orthopedic surgeon feels it’s healing properly, she can wear a flexible brace. Moving around isn’t going to be fun for the next few days, maybe longer. She bruised both her ribs and collarbone on the right side. The nurses can go over specific instructions on what to expect.”

  “Thanks.”

  He took a pen from his lab coat pocket and scribbled some notes on the clipboard in his hand. “You need to prepare yourselves, though. Early pregnancy can be quite volatile by itself and can terminate for no good reason. Couple that with the high dose of Ketamine we found in her system and the length of time she was exposed to higher than normal levels of C02, well, I just think you both should prepare for that possibility.” He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “There’s also the option of early termination. In a situation such as this, it wouldn’t be unheard of. Your wife has suffered—”

  “No.” The rough sound of his voice startled both him and the doctor.

  The other man blinked in rapid succession. “Perhaps, you should discuss this with her when you’re both in a better frame of mind. When you’ve had time to better assess the situation.”

  “No.” He couldn’t think of anything better to say, all the words stuck in his throat like a hastily eaten meatball. If his mother had weighed her options in medical knowledge and personal reasons alone, he wouldn’t be here.

  Sometimes you didn’t get the things you wanted, when you wanted.

  Right now, McKenna was his main focus.

  Not Ciamitaro, who still hadn’t been located, or pregnancies that neither of them had prepared for. Nor questions he would have to sit through. Questions she would have to answer about her captivity and escape. The injuries she would deal with, physically and mentally.

  So, ‘no’ was the best and only course of action for him. Any more words than that might rip the rest of his battered heart to nothingness. He was the reason she had that cast around her arm, the bruises on her face and fingernails that would take forever to grow back to a painless state.

  No, he would not rest. No, he didn’t plan on going home. No, he wasn’t hungry.

  The doctor nodded as if he understood his stoic vocabulary. “We’ll run a few more blood tests and then move her out of the ICU if all goes well.” Then he handed him a slip of paper. “This woman is a great OB/GYN.”

  With his free hand, Jordan took the information, but didn’t bother looking at it. The doctor tucked his pen in his pocket and walked from the room, shutting the curtain that separated them from the glass door beyond.

  The last three days caught up to Jordan in one giant rush. The push of tears had him jamming his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. Not one drop of liquid c
ame. It was all stuck in his throat, an anxious, angry ball of self-recrimination.

  His fault.

  He took in a breath. At least the SOB hadn’t violated her. Nothing would have stopped him from hunting Ciamitaro down, then. Not even the way McKenna held his hand as if he were the last lifeline she had.

  The only thing stable inside of mass chaos.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  McKenna had been watching Jordan, through half-opened eyelids, for the better part of fifteen minutes.

  Daytime soaps played in the background, on the TV mounted on the wall. They’d moved her out of the ICU late last night, her surroundings much the same. Sterile white walls, a private bathroom, one sleeper loveseat and a chair. A small rolling chair sat under the sink near the entry, which the doctor never stayed long enough to use.

  Every muscle and bone in her body hurt, which had only intensified when both her mom and dad had shown up with life-threatening hugs. Jordan sat through the whole thing with an unreadable expression on his face, as if he had the entire weight of Charlotte on his shoulders.

  When he wasn’t pacing the floor in front of her bed, he could barely sit still in the chair next to it. He stood near the window, now, looking out, as if there were something engrossing beyond the glass.

  Seeing him so withdrawn tore at something inside of her. She needed him joking with her and acting normal, so she could feel normal.

  “There any way to spring me out of here today?”

  Jordan looked over then, the fatigue and stress of the last seventy-two hours evident on the lines on his face, the pallor of his complexion and the circles under his eyes. Even his clothing looked wrinkled, dirty, and ready for an immediate hibernation.

  She licked her prickly lips. No amount of chapstick could soften them and she’d used plenty in the last twenty-four hours. “I feel fine. There’s no reason for them to keep me.”

  He reached the side of her bed, with a cautiousness that one would use approaching a deadly snake. “That’s why they call it observation.”

  “You can watch me at home.”

  “No, you’re staying.” He gripped one of her side rails.

  McKenna tried a smile, the corner of her lip cracking in the process. “This from the man who hasn’t sat still in the last five minutes.”

  “Sorry, doctor’s orders.”

  “You look like crap, Jordan.” The words came out harsher than she’d intended.

  He rubbed the stubble on his face, which was turning into long, blond scruff.

  “Have you eaten anything recently?”

  “Not hungry.”

  “When is the last time you slept?”

  “I dozed off when you were in the hyperbaric chamber.”

  “So, you’ve had fifteen minutes of sleep in the last three days and water and crackers the nurses brought in?” It wasn’t good enough.

  He didn’t try to deny it.

  She rolled to her left side and scooted to the edge of her bed, away from him, and held up the covers. “Get over here.”

  He didn’t move, indecision sliding over his features. “I’ll pull up a chair.”

  “Don’t make me knock you over the head with my cast, Jordan. Sleep here.” She patted the bed. “Or go home.”

  He hesitated. Would he leave? The possibility made her heart hurt more than she would have admitted a week ago. He couldn’t go. He had to stay.

  “You’re already in pain. I don’t want to cause you more.”

  “I’m fine.”

  His lips compressed into a thin line. Then he removed his shoes. “I don’t want to hear that you’re ‘fine.’” His voice came out soft. “You’re not fine, so don’t pretend.”

  A lump formed in her throat making it difficult to do anything other than nod. She blinked against the pressure building behind her eyes. FBI agents did not cry. They didn’t make blubbering messes of themselves in front of men they’d once known as boys.

  He removed his button down shirt, folded it and set it on the chair. The t-shirt below it, hadn’t fared much better, a mess of wrinkles creasing the bottom. Jordan took his time sliding next to her, on his side, facing her.

  Neither of them said anything for a minute, the silence comforting. His warmth radiated around her like finding a fire in the hearth after coming in from a subzero day. She shifted a little closer and laid her head on his outstretched arm, their knees easily intertwining. After pulling the covers around her, he draped his free arm over her, his hand resting at the small of her back.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “I'm not going to break.”

  “I meant, am I hurting you?”

  Oh. “No.”

  He hadn’t told her anything beyond the fact that Kara hadn’t made it and Shawn was safe. Her rescue and everything between was still a fuzzy gray area he hadn’t dared broach with her. He listened with an expressionless face while she told Robinson about her time in captivity, forcing herself to give as many details as she could remember as if she hadn’t actually been there.

  It had been that or moving beyond the cold sweat that had settled deep into her bones, to something she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to shake.

  Kara was dead. And maybe, if McKenna had tried a little harder to decipher the truth, worked to open that door harder, she wouldn’t be.

  Half of her wanted to know every single detail. The other half, the half that fought the tightening of her chest and constricted breathing, wanted to stay right here. She cleared her throat. “It’s going to be okay.” If he believed it, then maybe she could, too.

  “I think that’s my line.” His lips moved against her forehead. He rubbed her back in soothing circles.

  “They want us to make some decisions about the pregnancy.”

  He didn’t move. She wasn’t sure why she brought it up. She hadn’t given herself much time to digest the news. A pregnancy was, a pregnancy, but a baby…

  If they didn’t call it that, it almost didn’t feel real. Almost.

  “We don’t have to talk about this now, McKenna.”

  “No time like the present.”

  The slight chuckle she hoped for didn’t come. Instead, he sighed. “I can’t do it.”

  Her heart skidded to a stop and filled with the weight of several, heavy cinderblocks. “Can’t do what?”

  “I, uh, I know you didn’t plan this and neither did I.” His hand stopped moving. “I know you have an opinion and it’s your body and all that, but don’t, just don’t.”

  He didn’t open his eyes when she pulled back to look at him.

  “If you’re not—we’re not ready, we can give him or her up for adoption. I know that would still restrict you at work, but in the long run, it will be better.”

  “No. It wouldn’t.” The words sprang from her lips before she could decipher their exact meaning.

  He opened his eyes then, his expression etched with anxiety and exhaustion.

  “How much research have you been doing while I’ve been sleeping?”

  “Like the doctor told us, the birth defects could be debilitating. The fetus might not even make it to full term.”

  “Or it could be fine.”

  “What if it isn’t?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His eyes held a world of passion, hurt and need that she’d never taken into account before. This man had been her best friend since she was old enough to talk and walk. The person who routinely saved her from her own messes, rescuing her even when she didn’t think she wanted or needed that end.

  The man who stayed awake, didn’t shower and went hungry for over three days because he couldn’t do anything but worry about her.

  This same man wanted her to save their baby, if not for themselves, someone else.

  Her tiny, robot heart expanded, until it hurt.

  “I’m....” Not terrified, that was too close to the truth. “Nervous.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “We’re not giving...him or her up.�
�� She could never live with herself knowing her child was out in the world without her. “We can figure everything else out later.”

  “No grand eighteen step plan for this?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  A small smile lit the corners of his mouth. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.” His hand curled around hers as he pulled it toward his heart. The steady rhythm lulled her bruised mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Hospital food, any food, at seven a.m. made McKenna cringe.

  What she wanted was coffee. What they brought her was decaf, bland oatmeal, three peach slices, a hard-boiled egg and milk. Five minutes ago, she gave up trying to force anything down her throat and slipped from the bed. Sometime during the night, Jordan had moved to the chair, where he was still sprawled in sleep.

  She slipped one arm into the blue fuzzy robe her mom had brought yesterday and let the other side, with the IV, hang off her shoulder. Then she wheeled her IV pump to the bathroom. The muscles in her legs groaned with each movement, as if she spent too much time in one position during the night.

  As quiet as possible, she shut the door, the click still loud in the space around her. The face staring at her in the mirror didn’t look like her own. A huge bruise marred the middle of her forehead, its twin across her left cheek. The yellowish-purple faded near her temple and eye.

  A few butterfly bandages covered a gash above her eyebrow, the edges stained with a minimal amount of dried blood. Her hair was a tangled knot at the back of her head. The stark, white cast on her right elbow, the IV in her left arm and the white checkered hospital gown made her look like a science experiment gone wrong.

  The tiny bathroom held the basic amenities, the shower, sink and toilet all crammed into the smallest space possible, leaving little room for maneuvering. Room for one person and an IV pole. Barely. A pink hospital issue basin sat atop the toilet tank with travel-sized toiletries. Yesterday, she’d been so happy to see a toothbrush, she’d almost cried. Today, everything was too small, as if she wore a t-shirt that didn’t fit quite right with shorts that didn’t cover even one butt cheek.