Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,94

warrior ethics, his second amendment rights, and ultimately, the woman he’d taken a bullet for.

But the legend Persia loved best was how Alex had rescued a complete stranger, a battered woman, in the middle of the great Pacific Northwest. How he’d sheltered Kelsey and protected her from that day forward. How that hard-assed jarhead had become Kelsey’s most faithful servant and her best friend. Persia still couldn’t comprehend how those two had ever made a child, but Lexie was proof that they had, wasn’t she? And because there had once been hope for Alex, there could be hope for Walker Judge.

“Call it my sixth sense,” Persia pleaded. “Hell, call it women’s intuition, I don’t care. But I do know Hotrod, and I believe him. He didn’t do what the Navy accused him of, and it’s up to you and me to prove it.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Walker smiled as he lay there with his sweaty cheek planted against the hardwood floor. He’d never felt so bad, nor so good, at the same time before. Persia believed in him enough to fight for him. How rare was that? Only Team 18 had ever fought for him as hard as she was fighting her companion agent now. Which seemed surreal, a mere woman who only weighed a hundred ten—if that—ready to take on the world for a man she—liked? Had she said love? His head was buzzing and he couldn’t recall. She’d said a lot of nice things to him and about him. But he was pretty sure she hadn’t said that word. Not love.

But you love her…

Yeah, well…

He squeezed his eyes tight against his insistent conscience. Or whatever that nagging voice in his head was. Love her? Hell, he didn’t even know her. Not yet. But he wanted to. An ordinary date would be nice. Maybe two or three… Then maybe love might enter the picture.

She was at his side again, pulling him into her arms. Tipping his head to her chest. Breathing her sweet spirit over his forehead and into his face. “You should see the bruises on his back. This man’s been beaten. He’s injured and sick,” she told her friend Izza in no uncertain terms. “Tell Koning to come in, then help me get Hotrod into bed. First bedroom on the right.”

Walker stared up at her. “Hey, hey, hey,” he huffed like an idiot. He had so much more to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Even if they did, he wasn’t sure they’d come out right.

Izza grunted. “Next to yours? Are you kidding me?!”

“Will you knock it off and help?” Persia’s exclamation thundered through every cell of Walker’s weary body. Felt warm and pleasant. But at the same time, it felt like a shockwave of what he’d always thought the word of God would’ve felt like. If God had ever spoken to him.

“I’m… good,” he tried to tell her, but it came out unintelligible, sounded more like a horse talking. A hoarse horse. Ha! Now he knew he was delirious, and none of this was real. Too bad. But a beautiful, graceful, smart woman like Persia would never believe someone like him. Would she?

Then they were lifting him, and he was surprised how strong these two women were. Walker lost track of time and space, simple things like that. The bed beneath him was too soft and too warm. Too small for his long legs. Someone turned the sun off, and he was lost in a night with no stars. Cool, gentle hands moved over his body. His face. Someone pressed the sweetest kiss to his cheek. Then quiet, blessed darkness.

“So someone beat the shit out of him,” Izza groused. “So what? That doesn’t make him innocent.”

By then, Persia had doctored Hotrod as much as she could. She’d changed the butterfly strips over his battered eye and left him in his room with the lights out, a cold compress under his neck, and a bottled water on his nightstand. He’d been talking out of his head, not making sense, and she regretted making love to an injured man. That hadn’t been smart, and yet she couldn’t have stopped herself, hadn’t tried. He’d needed the reconnection and the intimacy. So had she.

Hans Koning sat by himself at the front room table, thumbing through his cell phone like a high school teenager after spring break on the beach with a new batch of porn. Izza had set him up with a bowl of soup, several slices of bread, and a bottled water,