considering she was shot down. I hope they catch who did it.”
“She’s an amazing woman,” Charlie said. “When can I see her?”
“They’ll be taking her to a room on the fourth floor.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Just make sure it’s a private room large enough for a place for me, because I’m not leaving her alone. Someone tried to kill her, and it’s not the first time. When they find out she’s not dead, they will try again.”
The surgeon frowned. “We can move her to a private hospital for recovery if it will make it easier to keep her under guard.”
“How long do you think she’ll be hospitalized?” Charlie asked.
“It’s hard to say right now, but I’d guess at least three days minimum.”
“Then leave her here. Just make sure your staff knows. And I’ll be contacting Houston PD about it. They may or may not choose to get involved, but I’m with her all the way.”
“As long as there’s no danger to other patients, it’s your call, but if that changes, we’ll be moving her,” he said.
Charlie understood their situation, but his focus was on Wyrick, and as soon as the surgeon was gone, he picked up his things and headed for the elevator.
* * *
Wyrick came to in a room full of people talking and machines beeping and sounds of moaning.
And like before, someone was calling her name—this time, a woman.
“Jade! Jade! You’re out of surgery and in recovery. My name is Susie. Can you open your eyes for me? Wake up, Jade. Wake up, honey.”
Wyrick tried to answer, but it came out as a moan.
“Good girl,” Susie said. “Open your eyes now. You can do it.”
And so she did, catching a fleeting glimpse into a world of lights, and the scents of antiseptic scrub and ammonia, orchestrated by a dozen different beeps in different stages and rhythms. She knew this kind of place... She’d been in one before, when they took off both her breasts. But why was—?
Oh shit. The crash.
Wyrick sighed. “Charlie...”
Susie patted her arm. “Is Charlie your guy? Does he know you’re here?”
She sighed.
“Knows...”
“Do you remember what happened?” Susie asked.
Wyrick’s lips were dry, and when she started to lick them, she realized her lower lip was swollen.
“Hurts,” she said.
“Your lips?” Susie asked.
Wyrick blinked. “Yes.”
“I can fix that,” Susie said, and swabbed them with something slick and cool.
Wyrick closed her eyes. The urge to slide away was real, but Susie wouldn’t let her, and a short while later, they were rolling her out of recovery and taking her down back hallways to an elevator. Everyone she saw was a stranger. She couldn’t relax for fear Cyrus’s people would find her and finish the job.
Then the orderlies were pushing her bed into a doorway and into a room. When they began moving her from the gurney to a bed, and there was a nurse standing nearby holding her IV, and a shadow suddenly moving on the wall, she panicked.
“No! Don’t—”
All of a sudden, Charlie was standing at the foot of her bed. Her Charlie—dark hair with the tiniest wisps of gray at the temples. The biggest shoulders, the kind that hold the weight of the world. The man with the broken heart was here for her.
“I’m here. You’re safe,” he said.
And just like that, her panic was gone.
“You found me,” she said.
“Barely, and when you get better, you’re putting one of those damn tracking apps on my phone so I can keep track of you, savvy?”
“Savvy,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes.
* * *
And for the next three days, Wyrick’s sleep was haunted by scenes from her past that came and went with the pain and the meds that dulled it. She didn’t know she talked in her sleep, but now Charlie did, and with every nightmare he witnessed, leaving him to read between the lines—the shock of her existence rolled through him.
What they’d done to her as a child, leaving her care to people who were little more than scientists keeping records of her progress, ignoring the childhood she should have been living in an effort to study and utilize every second of her mind and skills, was a crime and a tragedy.
* * *
As for Wyrick, each dream was a reality until she woke up in a panic. And each time she awoke, she had to readjust the reality of where she was, to where she’d been. Then Charlie would be right beside her bed, shaking her awake, or just holding her hand and telling her she was