Chapter 34
The first thing Payton noticed as she awoke were the sounds of voices and an insistent beeping in the background. She tried to open her eyes to see who was speaking, but her eyes felt nailed shut. Her mouth was drier than the Sahara Desert. Her mind was fully awake, but her body felt weighted down. Lethargic. Stupid drugs. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know where she was. Payton had been in this situation enough times. She hated hospitals.
The uncomfortable beds. The heavy mind-numbing drugs. The stupid suffocating tube in her nose. The smell of antiseptic.
The last thing she remembered was Alex fighting Diesel. She had tried sitting up to aid him, then everything went black.
Payton was having trouble breathing with these tubes in her nose. She reached up to pull the oxygen tube out, but a hand stopped her. “Oh no, you don’t.”
That voice got her eyes to spring open like a jack in the box. She must be on some good drugs to be hallucinating. But the hand holding hers felt real and warm. The face staring back at her was familiar if not covered in bruises. It didn’t make any sense. “Da—” she tried to say, but the words died in her mouth and turned into a coughing fit.
“Here.” A glass of water was thrust in her face.
Payton reached up and immediately regretted it when she pulled on her right arm. Oh yeah, she’d been shot. Funny how she could forget that for a moment. Using her left hand, she held the glass and stared into her father’s familiar eyes. Afraid to look away as if he might disappear.
She meant to only take a sip, but once the cool refreshing liquid hit her throat, she started gulping it down.
“That’s enough, baby girl.” Nick took the glass away from her. “The last thing you need is a stomachache.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, not upset the water was gone. Her attention was more on the fact her father was alive. Payton had hoped even after finding the warehouse empty, but even she had begun to doubt.
“Well, when one drinks too fast—”
“Not that,” she snapped; her dad could be so condescending when he wanted to be. “How are you here? I can’t be dead, otherwise that would suck to be stuck in a hospital in the afterlife. Which means you and I are very much alive.” As much as she was overjoyed her father was alive, she was more confused than anything.
Her father looked away, ashamed. She’d never seen him look like that before. It was odd. He’d always held his head high. Confident. “I’m so sorry, Payton. I never meant for any of this to happen. You were never supposed to get involved.”
“What did you expect when your car was driven off the road and you were kidnapped—me to sit at home and knit a sweater?”
“Colin and Alex were supposed to keep you out of trouble while I did some snooping and came back with Intel.”
Like a light bulb going off over her head, everything suddenly made sense. “You weren’t really kidnapped, were you?”
“I was and I wasn’t. I was on a mission. I knew Simon was after me. And like the old saying goes: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“So you allowed yourself to be captured.”
“What better way to learn their plans?” He shrugged.
It made sense, but still. “I wish you had told someone. I was so scared for you.” She’d never worried about her father like she had over the past few days. When she was younger and he used to go on deployments, she never worried about him. She’d always known he’d come back. The past few days though, she had feared the worst.
“The less the people who knew, the better. I didn’t know who was friendly and who was enemy. Alex and Colin were the only ones I trusted. And you,” he quickly amended when she scowled at him. “I told Colin as soon as I escaped. We set up the trap at the office. I never accounted that things would go so far.” He looked off at nothing before shaking his head.
“Will you finally tell us what’s on the drive?”
Payton had almost forgotten there were others in the room; once she saw her father, she’d forgotten everything else. Now, as she gazed at Alex standing over her father’s shoulder, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. Colin was in the background talking to medical personnel.
Alex had changed shirts since she’d last seen him. He wore a plain navy blue shirt that hugged his well-defined torso. The man did not believe in loose-fitting clothes, and she wasn’t complaining one bit. She knew what every single one of those muscles felt like. Had touched them. Tasted them.
“Do we need to give you two a minute?” her father asked.
Payton averted her eyes, hoping against hope her father didn’t notice the pinkening of her cheeks. “No, so the drive…” she asked, changing the subject. She needed to stay focused. Now that her dad was safe and home, she and Alex were over. He’d go back to Texas and his life there. And she…would go back to hers.
Funny, it didn’t feel as exciting as it had a few days ago. Don’t get her wrong, she loved her job and her life here. But she was starting to realize there was more to life than just the next case. Being with Alex had changed her point of view. She liked sharing a space with a man that wasn’t her father.
If she were honest with herself, this whole experience had changed her. Finally having the man she loved and knowing what it felt like to fall asleep in his arms and wake in them, she didn’t want to lose that. The only question was what to do about it.
It wasn’t like she and Alex had talked about something permanent. There was chemistry between them, but that wasn’t enough to build a relationship. There were also their careers. Both were demanding. She could cut back on some hours, but Alex couldn’t. He could be sent on a mission at any time. Be gone for months. Then what would she do? Should she even say something, or let the man she loved walk away? How do you get a taste of heaven only to walk away from it?