Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,52

fitfully next to Eleanor’s bed the last few days but he gave up and sat watching her now. The rest of his team had gone back to their new base in Killeen a couple of days after Eleanor checked into the DC hospital after her emergency surgery in Turkey.

He’d begged a week off from his commanding officer and was planning to put in for more. Her stepfather and his wife were staying at a nearby hotel and coming to see her every day, but Heath wanted to be there for her when she went home.

For now, she spent most days sleeping and was still heavily medicated for the pain. There were tubes and wires all over her. The bullet to her abdomen had punctured her stomach so she was on huge doses of intravenous antibiotics to prevent sepsis.

The other bullet had damaged her hip bone. It wasn’t shattered, but it was bad enough that she’d be getting a brand-new hip in a few days when her body was ready for another surgery.

Heath felt his phone buzz in his pocket and lifted it out to check the screen.

Jangles. The guys had been calling to check on her every day.

Heath stood and went out the door, standing just outside of it so he’d hear her if she called out to him. Her stepdad and his wife were out getting lunch and taking a turn showering and changing clothes so he didn’t want her to wake up alone and be frightened.

“Hey Jangles,” he said when he’d connected the call.

“How’s she doing, Woof?”

It was the standard question the guys asked.

Heath scrubbed a hand over the new growth of hair on his chin and cheek. He needed to shower and shave something awful. “She’s resting. Seems to be having fewer nightmares but I can tell she’s in a lot of pain. She’s trying to hide it but it’s bad.”

Jangles cursed, echoing Heath’s feelings.

“Anything they can do for that?”

“Besides the morphine? Not much. Once she gets the hip replaced, she’ll be able to start walking and they think that will actually help with the pain some. I’m not sure how that works, but that’s what they tell me. She’s going to have a lot of PT though. It’s not going to be a short road.”

He still needed to figure out how he was going to be there for it all. He had forty days ordinary leave he hadn’t used yet and he’d banked another one hundred days special leave he could use. He hated to leave his team for that long, but Nori needed him. And he had to admit to himself, he was in love with her. He needed to be there for her. He needed to help her through this, even if that meant leaving his team temporarily.

“How are you doing?” Jangles asked.

Heath sighed, rubbing his eyebrow with his thumb, wishing he could rub away the headache that had been dogging him for hours.

“I fucked up, Jangles,” he said, hearing the emotion thicken his voice. He wasn’t the kind of guy to spill about his feelings easily, but he needed to get this out there. It had been eating him up for days as he watched Eleanor pay for the aftermath of his screw up.

“How do you figure that?” There was protective indignation in his friend’s voice.

“She shouldn’t have been in there. You know it and I know it. I let my feelings for her get in the way of my judgment. I fucked up.”

“Her boss okayed her going in. What were you going to do? You didn’t have a choice. None of us did.”

“Bullshit. We were on the ground here. We could have overruled her boss. Should have. But I knew how important her career was to her so I sent her in there knowing it was a bad move.”

Jangles wasn’t having it. “Oh hell no, man, you don’t get to put this on you. We all could have said no. None of us did.”

Heath felt his temper rise with his voice. “Were you standing outside that room when she was grabbed? Did you fail to hear a fucking thing when they were pulling her down into that hole? Was it you that didn’t get to her in time when she was shot?”

“Woof, you got to her. You got her out of there and she’s okay now. She’s going to get through this and so are you.”

Heath didn’t answer. He shut his eyes tight and prayed again that she’d make it. He loved