The four of them stood.
“We need to get rolling.” Jimmy reached down, helped Zach to his feet.
“Where are we going?” Zach looked around at the landscape. It didn’t look like Afghanistan now that he thought about it.
Mike shook his head. “Oh, no. You’re not coming with us.”
Brian pointed. “You need to head that way.”
But Zach didn’t want to say good-bye so soon. “Can’t you stay for a while?”
Chris shook his head. “It’s time to move on.”
They exchanged man-hugs, the back-slapping ritual making Zach smile, a bittersweet ache in his chest. It had been so long. Why couldn’t they stay?
“Take it easy, McBride,” Jimmy said, reaching out for a final handshake.
“See you around, frogman.” Chris gave him a mock salute.
“We’ll never forget you, bro.” Mike slugged him lightly in the shoulder.
Brian met his gaze. “You were the best of us.” Then he, too, turned and walked away.
Zach watched them go, sadness seeping through him like a chill as they disappeared in the distance.
Then he turned and looked in the direction they’d pointed. He started walking, but the path was obscured to the point where he could barely make out the trail, the landscape shifting in front of him. Then there was a voice—a woman’s voice. She was calling him, guiding him.
“Zach, stay with me. Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes and found Natalie looking down at him, tears in her beautiful eyes, anguish on her sweet face. “Natalie? Are you . . . okay?”
Through her tears, she smiled. “I will be now.”
CHAPTER 33
NATALIE STAYED WITH Zach and Julian while they were transported by helicopter to University Hospital, Marc and the others remaining behind to finish the job and answer questions from federal investigators. Zach was admitted into intensive care for tests and monitoring, while Julian was rushed into surgery, where a team of doctors hoped to remove the bullet from his shoulder and reattach his severed thumb.
Despite her objections, Natalie found herself shooed into the waiting area. It was only then that the horror of the past two hours hit her, leaving her weak and shaking. She struggled not to cry, getting herself a cup of coffee, hoping it would ward off the chill that had taken hold inside her. People stared at her damp clothes, bare feet, and wet, tangled hair, but she didn’t care. Let them try to hang on to a slippery roof twenty-four stories in the air during a thunderstorm while evil men tortured the man they loved, and see what they looked like afterward.
“Natalie?”
Natalie turned toward the sound of her own name. “Tessa!”
The two women hugged.
“You’re ice-cold. Your clothes and hair are damp. Bless your heart!” Tessa drew back, slipped her sweater off her shoulders. “Wear my cardigan.”
Natalie slipped into the warm blue cashmere, touched that Tessa would consider her comfort when she must be terribly worried about Julian and desperate to know how he’d been hurt. “Thanks.”
They found a quiet corner and Natalie told her what had happened—or what she knew of it, which wasn’t all that much. She stopped when she got to the part about dead bodies and blood. “I’m not sure I should be telling you any of this, with the baby.”
Tessa put on a brave smile. “The little guy is fine, and Julian will be, too. Chief Irving says Julian stopped to help a pregnant woman with a flat tire, and she shot him.”
Natalie hadn’t heard that. “I wondered what had happened.”
It would take some kind of deception to get the best of a man like Julian.
Tessa’s smile crumpled. “What sickens me is knowing that he was thinking ofmewhen he stopped to help her. He’s a good man with a soft heart, especially when it comes to women. And it almost got him killed.”