Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 558(@250wpm)___ 465(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 558(@250wpm)___ 465(@300wpm)
But when she saw her bio dad, she knew something was off. She was sick or drugged, as though her subconscious sought a safe place to heal.
What had happened? She knew it wasn’t a normal “wake up in her bed and smell the coffee Kala made before her morning run” kind of day. She wasn’t in the little house she and her sisters and Lou rented in a Dallas suburb, the one they’d been so proud to decorate, though they’d fought over whether or not knives were good home décor.
She went still because the last thing she remembered was Chet. Chet had shown up and Zach was…no…Zach wasn’t dead. Something else had happened.
Why was she so warm?
Tentatively, she opened her eyes and realized she wasn’t alone.
Dare was asleep, his body curled around hers, head cradled against her neck. He held on to her like she might drift away if he didn’t.
“Tash?” a soft voice said.
Her sister. Kala scrambled out of the chair she’d been sleeping in.
“Kenz, Tash is awake.” Kala leaned down, her voice still low as she put a hand on her twin’s shoulder.
Kenzie was asleep on the floor, a jacket rolled up as a pillow beneath her head.
Kenz sat up, wiping a hand across her eyes. “What?”
“Call Mom and Dad,” Kala said. “They’re at the hotel with Trav and Seth. I’ll go wake up Lou and the guys.”
“Wait.” Her sisters were moving too fast, and they were still too loud because Dare shifted slightly against her, his arm tightening around her waist. “What happened? Where am I?”
Kala stared down at her. “You took a bullet for Dare, dummy. One that probably wouldn’t have slammed into his chest the way it did yours.”
“Hush.” Kenzie got to her feet. “She was trying to save him.”
“That’s my point,” her grumpiest sister argued. “He could have taken that bullet way better than she could. He would have had a gut shot. I dress it in the field, we call a real ambulance instead of having to stuff you in a chopper.”
Yup. This was reality. Not a dream. In her dreams her sisters weren’t so obnoxious. “So I had surgery?”
It was weird because she actually felt pretty good. If she’d had surgery a couple of hours ago, shouldn’t she ache?
“You’ve been in a coma for almost a week,” Kenzie stated, tears in her eyes.
A week? Well that would explain why she didn’t feel like she’d just had surgery.
“You nearly died because you bled so much. It caused your brain to be deprived of oxygen. That’s what put you in the coma,” Kala explained. “Dad’s friend, Rebecca, had the doctors here give you an experimental drug a couple of hours ago. He thought you would wake up sometime in the next twenty-four hours, so Kenz and I snuck in when we realized Dare was asleep. You’re only supposed to have one visitor overnight, but we wanted to be close.”
“He wouldn’t leave you for more than a couple of minutes,” Kenzie said.
“That’s why he smells so bad,” Kala added with a nod.
“Is Zach okay?” Memories of the day were coming back. “Did he make it through surgery?”
“Yes, he’s a tough one,” Kenzie replied. “They wanted him to stay at the hospital in Sydney, but he insisted on transferring here. It gave us a place to stash the guys. I think this hospital will be happy when we leave.”
“Tell me what happened to Chet, and did we get the intel we needed?” She wanted all the bad stuff out of the way. Zach was alive. Dare was here with her. She wanted an update, and then she could focus on him. The fact that he was here, holding her like he would never let go, gave her hope.
“Lou got all the dirty stuff on Oakley, though Mom killed him, so it’s not like his ass is in jail,” Kala explained. “Chet is back in Virginia being held in a CIA interrogation facility. We got everything we needed on him, and I’ve already been cleared for killing Mike. TJ would be here but he’s on assignment again, and I can’t figure out where he is or if he even knows what happened.”
That was intelligence work. “Did we get the intel Oakley promised? He said it had information on the Canadian.”
Kenzie’s head shook. “I think the plan got screwed up in the chaos, and Tris, Lou, and I have gone through Oakley’s cell and the laptop we found. We have nothing. He was serious about hiding the intel. But I have to believe that info was about Huisman.”
“She believes Ben. Surprise, surprise,” Kala groused.
Dare started to stir.
She didn’t want their first moments to be surrounded by her sisters arguing. The rest of their lives would likely be just that.
“Go call Mom and Dad. Give us a minute,” she said.