Jameson (In the Company of Snipers #22) - Irish Winters Page 0,94

Her fingers smoothing over his forehead and cheeks. Just Maddie’s. She was going to be okay.

With a sigh, he let go.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Maddie kept one hand intertwined with Jameson’s. They’d been taken to a local Boston emergency room, and were waiting to leave. The bullet hole had gone clean through his side, only causing minimal damage to a single rib. After the very kind ER physician administered a local anesthetic, the nurse had irrigated the wound, and the doctor then stitched and bandaged. The nurse had already removed Jameson’s IV. He had ten days’ worth of antibiotics and pain pills sitting on the nightstand pending his release. Alex and his father were arguing two cubicles away. They hadn’t stopped since they’d arrived.

Eric and Harley were still back at Conley Terminal, giving statements to local authorities and doing whatever real TEAM agents did after catastrophes and murders. A Boston police officer had just left Jameson’s bedside after he’d gotten Maddie’s and Jameson’s statements. Mostly Jameson’s. He was the hero of the hour, the blind agent of one of America’s best covert security companies, and the man who’d ended Lucy Delaney’s short reign of terror.

Maddie had been asked to leave Jameson’s cubicle while he’d talked with the officer. She’d taken a seat in the ER lobby, tapping her nervous fingertips on her knees, waiting to get the ‘all clear’ to join him again. That was when she’d discovered the other side of Jameson Tenney. The Technicolor version. His story had been on every screen in the lobby, and all had been turned up to hear the latest.

The press loved him, hence their back-to-back coverage of the explosion at Conley Terminal on Boston Harbor, the bloody events earlier in the evening at the farmhouse in Virginia, his tours of duty, and well, pretty much his entire life story.

Maddie hadn’t realized she’d been in the company of a true war hero. But because of all the media coverage, she now knew precisely how he’d lost his sight. Yes, there had been a roadside bomb. What he hadn’t mentioned was that injury had occurred after he and his buddy rescued two little boys.

She’d leaned into the story then, her elbow on her knee, her chin cupped in the heel of her hand. It turned out, those boys were unwanted cast-offs, because both had down syndrome. They never knew they’d been pawns of ISIL that day, released into the desert, the sole intent for them to distract the SEAL team. To lure soft-hearted American warriors into the open.

Somehow, the news outlet had pictures of the boys. Both brown-skinned, dark-eyed, adorable urchins who’d since been adopted. But the boys hadn’t known they’d been chased by two SEALs hellbent on saving their little asses that day. The rescue had gone down quickly. Jameson and his buddy had saved those boys. All four were back undercover before the donkey had decided he wanted to be saved, too. That was when grubby, sad, little Eeyore had turned back around and headed for the SEALs. He was nearly to the wall they’d taken cover behind, when his hooves triggered a deadly daisy-chain of expertly hidden improvised explosive devices.

The boys were safe by then, both in the care of an Air Force PJ, whoever that was. But two SEALs died that day. One went home blind. That special operator was newly promoted USN Chief Petty Officer Jameson Tenney, whom the press declared was one-of-a-kind, an exceptional sailor. The deployment into Iraq that had cost Jameson his sight, went down mere weeks after he’d gotten ‘frocked,’ whatever that meant. The reporter on screen said he’d accomplished in five years what it took most sailors to accomplish in ten or more.

Maddie didn’t understand what E-5 exams, meritorious promotions, or EP waivers were. She only knew the humble man who’d run straight into trouble to rescue her today, had done it before. That he seemed to have no qualms about risking his life to save others. Yet he’d never once mentioned that trait or drawn attention to himself. And he had a lot to brag about.

Talk about a hero.

It was close to twenty-four-hours since she and Jameson had made love at the safe house. The night before that, she’d rescued Mr. Vlad, then survived a gunfight with Pops Delaney’s guys, when she’d gone back inside the farmhouse intent on rescuing Jameson. Turned out, he’d rescued her in more ways than he could ever know. She was light years beyond simple exhaustion, but what a couple of