Chapter 23
It seemed like every time I woke up now, my head was pounding and felt like it weighed a ton. My eyes were a little easier to open this time, though.
When I did, at first all I could see was a bright light over me but then it started to dull and I could see more clearly. And when I looked over to the side, I saw my dad asleep in a chair beside me.
“Daddy?” I said. When I spoke, the muscles in my stomach contracted and pain shot through me.
His eyes snapped open when I spoke. “Reece? Oh, sweetie, are you okay?” he asked, grabbing my hand.
“Yeah, just sore,” I said.
He lifted his other hand and gently touched the side of my face where Mitch had punched me twice.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he said, looking regretful.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “Mitch is just a crazy lunatic who kidnapped me.”
“But still,” he said, shaking his head.
“Where’s Mom? Are Greer, Kole, Mia, and Jake here, too?” I asked.
He nodded. “They’re down in the cafeteria eating dinner,” he said.
I looked at him in confusion. “Dinner?” I asked. “What happened after…?”
“They had to fly both you and Kane in from that house that Mitch had you in. When you got here, they brought you both into emergency surgery, which yours took about six hours,” he said. “You’ve been out for almost three days because they kept you sedated.”
“That last sentence,” I said. My heart started to pound and you could see and hear it on the monitor. “You kept saying ‘you’. You didn’t say ‘us’. What’s happened with Kane? Is he okay?”
Dad started to smile. “He’s absolutely fine,” he said. “The only thing that had to do with him was repair some of the muscle damage in his shoulder where the bullet went through. He’s already been discharged and is downstairs with your mom and the others. So are Pax and Jeremy.”
I started shaking my head. “I can’t believe all of this happened,” I said. “The three of them lied to me! Kane’s a FBI agent. How could he not have told me?”
“He couldn’t,” he said. “Not until now because the case is closed. They’re going to explain everything to you.”
“And Pax!” I said. “How in the world did I not see that?”
Dad laughed again and leaned up to kiss my forehead. “They’re going to explain everything to you,” he said. “Let me call your mom and tell her you’re up.”
I watched as he walked out of my hospital room and into the hallway. After pushing the covers off of me, I lifted the side of my hospital gown to see a huge piece of gauze covering the right side of my stomach. I lifted it gently from the corner to see a three inch long row of staples. Just seeing it made my head spin. Ew.
“You probably shouldn’t be doing that. You have to keep it covered,” someone said from the doorway.
My eyes immediately filled with tears as I looked up at Kane. He was dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt with a sling on his left arm.
“Kane,” I said, tears spilling over.
He walked quickly toward me and I put my hands on his face when he leaned down so I could kiss him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, leaning away from me but kept his good hand on my cheek. “I’m so sorry that you got into all of this. I was trying to protect you so this wouldn’t happen. It was my fault that you…”
“Kane,” I said, interrupting him.
He looked at me with wide eyes.
I smiled at him. “Shut up,” I said, pulling him back to me and wrapping my arms around his neck.
He took a deep breath and kissed the side of my head. “But it’s my fault,” he said.
“Nothing’s your fault,” I said. “Now, please stop with this.”
Kane pulled back and looked me straight in the eyes. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you about why I was really back. I couldn’t tell you about Pax and Jeremy. I couldn’t tell you about anything.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t care anymore. You would think that I’d be pissed that you lied to me but I’m totally not. I promise.”
He grimaced and didn’t say anything.
“So,” I said when he didn’t speak. “How did you get into the FBI?”
He laughed. “I was sort of…recruited…two years ago,” he said.
“And I’m guessing you didn’t major in History Education in college.”
He shook his head. “No, actually computer engineering,” he said. “And I graduated a year and a half early.” He sighed, shaking his head. “You remember when Pax said that she was the one who got caught hacking into LAPD database? Yeah, well, that was actually me.”
I started laughing, which made my stomach hurt like a mother. “You’ve got to be joking,” I said.
He grimaced but then the look on my face caused him to smile. “I just wanted to see if I could do it!” he said, defending himself. “But the next day I had the FBI on my ass and they brought me in. They gave me only two choices: join or go to prison. Well, you know what I chose. Apparently they’d been looking for someone with my kind of skills to join. And they found me.”
He went on to tell me about his first assignment, which happened to be with Pax and Jeremy. They were to infiltrate a drug ring and took it down in an amazing twelve days. They were the best team at the FBI LA branch after that and had solved a lot of cases in the time that they were there.
When they’d gotten the assignment to come back here and try to catch Mitch, Kane and Jeremy were the first to come. It wasn’t until a few weeks and the threats against me that their boss sent Pax to watch over me.
“So what’s happened with Mitch?” I asked. “Is he in jail?”
Kane looked away from me and toward the window. “No, he’s not in jail.”
“Then where is he? Does the FBI have him or…”
Kane looked back at me and took my hand. “He’s dead, Reece,” he said.
“Dead?” I squeaked.
He nodded. “After he shot you, he apparently opened fire on Pax and Jeremy. That’s when the backup came. He ran from them but they took him down not a minute after,” he said.
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes.
“Reece,” he said, squeezing my hand. “What are you thinking?”
I started to shake my head. “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I…”
He let go of my hand to reach up and cup my cheek. “Reece, he almost killed you,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t like it when I life is taken but this time it was necessary. He could have done a lot more damage.”
“I know. It’s just…”
I closed my eyes. I wasn’t crying. It was just that someone had died.
“Reece, everything’s going to be okay,” he said, leaning toward me.
I looked up and he was right there. The man I loved. The man that would do anything for me…including taking a bullet.
“I love you, Kane,” I said.
He smiled, tucking a curl behind my ear. “I love you, too,” he said.
“Well, Agent Jackson, can you stop flirting with our victim long enough so we can get her statement?” a woman’s voice said from the doorway.
I looked over Kane’s shoulder to see a blond woman in a suit standing with two men behind her wearing FBI jackets.
“Sorry, Boss,” Kane said, standing up and stepping to the side. He looked back at me. “This is my boss, Meredith Hopkins. But we just call her Boss.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. My mind went back to when I overheard Kane on the phone and calling someone ‘Boss’. So this was her.
“You can call me Agent Hopkins.” She and the two men walked toward me and stopped at the foot of my hospital bed. “I know you just woke up not too long ago but we’re going to need your statement so we can officially close this case,” Agent Hopkins said. “Can we ask you about what happened?”
I nodded as I watched Kane walk toward the door.
“We’ll just be a little while,” she said, watching me as I watched him leave. “I’ll let him know when he can come back in.”
I nodded again.
I took way longer than a little while, let me tell you that. It felt like hours had passed when Agent Hopkins and the two men finally said that they had gotten enough information. In reality, though, it was only about thirty minutes.
“It was nice to finally meet you,” she said.
When they left, my room was immediately flooded with people. My parents, Kole, Mia, and Greer were the first ones I saw. Then Kane came in with Pax and Jeremy. Jake and another dark-headed little boy came running in after them, making engine noises as they played with little toy cars.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom cried as she rushed toward the side of my bed. “Are you okay? Do you need me to call the nurses or…?”
“Mom,” I said, laughing. “I’m fine. Promise.”
She looked at me as tears welled up in her eyes. “I know. It’s just you’re my little girl and when we heard what happened…”
“I’m okay,” I said, hugging her. “Stop worrying.”
“I’m a mother. I have to worry,” she said.
When she pulled back, I looked at everyone’s smiling faces.
“Hi,” I said, smiling back.
They all started laughing. I laughed too until I looked at Pax.
“So,” I said to her.
“Hey,” she said, laughing nervously.
“I’m guessing you’re not really Kane’s cousin from LA,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, but I am from LA,” she said.
“Then who are you really?” I asked.
She sighed. “My name is Pax but my last is Grayson. My maiden name is Abel. I’m twenty-five, even though I don’t look it. I got married when I was twenty and got pregnant on the honeymoon with that little guy over there,” she said, pointing to the little boy playing with Jake. “His name is Dylan. I’ve been an agent for three years now and my husband has been for four.”
“Hold on,” I said, my eyes widening. “Grayson? As in…”
I looked at Jeremy, who laughed and put an arm around her.
“You’re married?” I asked them in awe.
“Yeah,” he said. “Though she treats me horribly!”
Pax laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Oh, you love it. You know you do.”
Kane snorted from beside them and walked toward me. “And Pax thought we were bad,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, shut it, Jackson,” she said.
I put my hands to my head.
“What’s wrong?” I heard Mom ask as she put a hand to my shoulder. “Does your head hurt?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at everyone’s now worried faces. “That’s because basically everything has changed. It’s like I can’t keep anything normal anymore.”
Greer snorted. “Since when have you been normal?” he asked.
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Shut up, dork,” I said.
I looked over at Jake and Dylan – it was still weird to think of Pax being a mother and married to Jeremy – and smiled.
“Hey, Jake,” I said. He looked up from his toy car and over at me. “I don’t get a hug, bud?”
“Yeah!” he said, grinning, but then he ran over to grab something off the windowsill where there were a few ‘get well’ balloons and a bouquet of flower.
When he jumped up onto my bed, he crawled into my lap, careful of my stomach, and thrusted a piece of paper in my face.
“My friend Gabby made this for you at school when I told her you weren’t feeling good,” he said.
I took the paper from his hand and looked down at it. Drawn in crayon were ‘Git Beter’ and a drawing of a girl holding a flower. The name Gabby was written on the corner of the paper.
“So who’s Gabby?” I asked Jake, smiling.
He looked down as his cheeks turned pink. “She’s my friend from school,” he said. “She’s nice.”
“Don’t you mean your girlfriend, Jake?” Kole asked, smiling.
“No, she’s not!” Jake yelled at him.
Everyone laughed as Jake looked back at me and leaned his face toward mine.
“Yeah, she is actually,” he whispered to me. “Don’t tell Mommy or Daddy, though!”
I laughed and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “I won’t,” I said.
Everyone started talking about other things but I didn’t listen. I was just looking over at Kane, who was looking at me like always. He smiled when we locked eyes.
“Love you,” he mouthed to me.
“Love you, too,” I mouthed back.
***2 more chapters! *tear* This story will probably be done by the end of the weekend!
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