As Mills sprang at him, Malichai leapt into the air and kicked the man hard with his good leg, putting every bit of strength he had behind it. The man’s face imploded inward, disappearing into a mask of blood. At the same time, the door to the left flew open and Amaryllis was there, moving so fast she was a mere blur. She went for Major Salsberry, who had pulled out a weapon and was aiming it at Malichai’s head.
The two women went down just inches from where Mills thrashed on the floor, blood pouring from his nose, mouth and eyes. Callendine backed up, his weapon in his hand, but he couldn’t take the shot, as Malichai landed awkwardly on the one leg he’d kicked with, smashing into him, knocking him off-balance. When his bad leg touched down, pain spread through him like a burning torch, robbing him of breath. Of momentum. Of even his vision. Blackness swirled around him until everything went dim and he had to fight to stay conscious and in the present.
Amaryllis rolled away from the major and brought Callendine crashing to the cement floor with a scissor takedown, threading her legs through his and rolling again. Outside the storage unit, the sound of gunfire erupted. Callendine scrambled toward the door, yelling to the major. She crawled over Mills, putting his body between hers and Amaryllis.
Callendine aimed at Malichai and squeezed the trigger just as Mills reared up, throwing blind punches. He connected with Malichai just by chance. The blow glanced off his jaw and Malichai pitched sideways. The bullet from Callendine’s gun took Mills through the throat.
Major Salsberry caught at Callendine, jerking him out of the unit and into the parking lot where both the SUV that Mills had used to bring Malichai and the van were waiting. She threw herself into the driver’s seat of the SUV.
“Stay down,” she hissed at Callendine as he joined her, his weapon out, ready to help his team as they fought off Malichai’s people.
Callendine ignored her, watching as one of the unknown soldiers came flying off the roof of the storage unit, wrapping his legs around one of Callendine’s men’s neck, clearly breaking it, and then leaping off to rush at the next one. Callendine had the superior force by the numbers, but they were going to go down. The men they were fighting were too fast, too accurate and they disappeared like ghosts. He roared the signal to retreat. That was all the time he had before the major had their vehicle racing away.
Amaryllis knelt beside Malichai, running her hands over his leg. “I should have killed that bitch,” she whispered. “Who did this?”
Malichai closed his eyes, trying to absorb the pain into his body. He could hear the fight dying down outside as fast as it had begun. They had Mills’s body, but little else to figure out what the hell was going on. Nothing made sense. Absolutely nothing. He gestured toward Mills. “He has the boots on. He kicks like a mule.”
“Honey. This is bad.” There were tears in her voice.
He opened his eyes to look at her. She was beautiful. So damn beautiful. “Thanks for following, baby,” he said. He was exhausted, so tired he could barely move. “You saved my life.” He laid his head back, uncaring if blood from Mills’s body was spreading across the concrete floor. He couldn’t move. Every breath seemed forced through his lungs. Raw. Burning.
“I don’t like the way this feels, Malichai, but there’s too much negative energy swirling around this place. I need to get you out of here, even if we just make it to the parking lot.”
He wanted to try for her, but it seemed an impossible task. His leg. He wasn’t certain he could feel it anymore, and did he really care?
“Malichai.” She said his name sharply. “Look at me. I’m going to have to try to repair that tear. You’re bleeding internally and I’m not losing you. Where is Rubin? He has to be close. I can keep you safe until he gets here.”
His lashes fluttered and her face swam into his line of vision. “Sorry, baby.” He thought he said the words. He tried to lift his hand to her face, to brush away her tears, but his arm weighed a ton.
“Malichai.”
He recognized Ezekiel’s voice. It was different. Filled with concern. With emotion. Then it was all Ezekiel. Ezekiel at his worst, his big brother, I’ll-beat-you-within-an-inch-of-your-life-if-you-don’t-obey-me voice. “Don’t you fucking die on me.”
Mordichai slid his arm around him, holding him. Rubin crowded close. But it was Amaryllis he focused on. Her face swam in and out of his consciousness. She knelt over him, her face a mask of absolute concentration.
“Rubin, I think he’s bleeding internally,” she said.
“I need his leg bare. Hurry. Please, hurry.”
The urgency in Rubin’s voice must have triggered awareness in his brothers because no one asked him questions. No one voiced concerns over his intentions or suggested calling an ambulance. Trap produced a large knife, and without a word, simply sliced the denim up Malichai’s leg, leaving it exposed. He knew they’d shredded the material because his leg felt cold, but he couldn’t see it. All he could see was Amaryllis’s face and that mask of absolute concentration as she stood beside Rubin, both bent over his leg.
Rubin was quiet and unruffled, like a calm, deep pool of blue icy water moving through him, settling in one spot, staying there and working unemotionally. He worked with complete confidence and at times even directed Amaryllis to something on the bone that only the two of them could see. Even while he directed her, he never stopped what he was doing.
Amaryllis was just the opposite of Rubin. He could feel emotion, even passion, in her every touch. Her hands slid over his thigh. Back and forth. Her breath hitched. He felt heat. Intense heat, so intense it felt as if a laser was focused deep inside his leg. It went from uncomfortable to a burning pain that refused to go away. He tried to move, hoping the laser would at least move spots, but it seemed to move with him.
Amaryllis’s breath hissed out and her long lashes lifted. She seemed to glare at Ezekiel and Trap for a moment, and then once more she was wholly focused on him. He felt his brother grip his upper thigh between his large hands. Trap did the same with his calf, holding him immobile.
The laser stayed on that brutal spot for what seemed forever and then moved slightly and began the same concentrated, intense heat that had his heart pounding and his head swimming. He leaned back against Mordichai, wishing he could see him, but his vision had gone dark. Black almost. He closed his eyes and let them take over.
“Shit. Shit. Damn it, Zeke. He’s slipping away,” Mordichai said, panic in his voice.
“He lost too much blood. We have to get him blood,” Rubin said, as calm as ever. “I’ve got the artery holding, but, Zeke, you’ll need to text the SEAL you know and have them get to us like yesterday with the supplies we need.”
“I’ve already done it,” Ezekiel replied, his voice grim. “They’re on their way. We’re lucky they were here in San Diego. Their home is in Montana.”
Amaryllis could tell her energy was fading. The repairs to Malichai’s bone were much more difficult and involved than the last time. She had managed to stop the worst of the spreading of fracturing but there was far more than last time. She couldn’t imagine how Rubin must feel, with the tears that were threatening to take Malichai’s life his responsibility.
She could barely kneel upright. Rubin still had to keep Malichai alive, while she could rest, which wasn’t fair. Her job had been horrendous, but his had been so much more complex and life-threatening. He was working to keep Malichai’s heart, lungs and kidneys going, pushing the blood through his body even when there wasn’t enough pressure to do so.
“I can help with that,” she whispered to Rubin.
“I’ll need you later,” he said softly. “Just get as much rest as possible.”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at any of them. She couldn’t just sit there waiting. Watching. Hoping. She had to do something. She knelt up beside him and once again felt for his bone. The strange thing about his bone was the de
nsity of it. She had very dense bones. The density allowed her to swim so much faster beneath the water, and she imagined that was the reason Malichai could as well, but was it the reason for the weird fragmenting along those wounds? They should be long healed by now, yet the small hairline cracks continued to reoccur with any kind of stress. It made no sense. Just like this attack on Malichai made no sense.
She wiped at the tears running down her face, embarrassed to be crying in front of the men. She kept her eyes closed, let them only see internally, the opaque veil that allowed her to see into Malichai’s injury. She took her time, meticulously repairing the smaller cracks now, making certain each jagged fissure was closed and knitted together.
Thoughts tumbled around her head, making her feel a little crazy. Had she hesitated before exposing herself to the enemy? She didn’t know the answer to that, only that she had to save him. That Malichai had somehow become her world and she didn’t want to live without him. There was no going back to an existence of no hope of a future. Malichai was her future.
She kept repairing the bone even when the SEALs showed up, two men with grim faces, scarred and yet beautiful at the same time. They registered somewhere in her mind even though she later didn’t remember even looking at them. She was aware of them working on Malichai, setting up an IV and pushing fluids and blood into him.
Both Rubin and Amaryllis shared the exact moment when the turnaround came, when his body realized it was alive and needed to function on its own without Rubin keeping his heart and lungs working, without Rubin pushing blood through his body to his brain and vital organs. They looked at each other, sharing that triumph. She could see utter exhaustion etched into the lines of Rubin’s face. He always looked so young. Right at that moment, not so much. He looked pale and drained, but he knew, as she did, that he had saved Malichai’s life.
“Thank you,” she said softly, for only him to hear. “You’re a miracle.” The others thought they knew he was; she actually knew. What he did . . . was impossible.
He gave her a faint smile and slumped down for a brief moment. She turned back to continue her work on Malichai’s bone because she couldn’t make herself quit. She couldn’t. She blamed herself. She should have been working on his leg every single night. Not lying in her bed fantasizing about him. Dreaming of having a life with him.
“You have to stop now,” Ezekiel’s voice whispered in her ear.
He sounded so much like Malichai she felt tears burn in her eyes again. She shook her head and laid her hands over the top section of his fragmented bone. She wanted his body to be strong. No way would that bone hold up. She knew that. The bone still had numbers of tiny little fractures, tiny, barely there cracks that would get wider over time.
“Amaryllis, you have to listen to me. You aren’t going to do Malichai any good if you hurt yourself. We’ll get him back to the bed-and-breakfast, you can rest and then start again fresh.”
She could barely hear the words. Ezekiel sounded far away. She felt his arms around her and then he was lifting her, carrying her away from Malichai. She struggled, terrified of being too far away, afraid she’d lose him if she wasn’t there to see inside him, to see that every organ was working properly.
“We’ve got him. Rubin’s with him too. You know Rubin isn’t going to let go of him. You just rest. We’ll get you back to his room and you can work on him again when you’re rested,” Ezekiel assured. “In the meantime, we’ll look after all three of you until you’re on your feet again.”
He put her in the seat of a dark-colored car, snapping a seat belt in place, and then went around to the driver’s side. “I suppose Malichai didn’t have the chance to tell you we have a little bit of intel. Whoever these people are, they hired a hit man to kill you, Marie and Jacy and then set fire to the bed-and-breakfast.”
She forced her eyes open to stare into his. Malichai had told her that and she’d left them unprotected in order to follow after him and the man who had taken him. She rubbed her throbbing temples. She’d honestly forgotten that very important piece of information. What was wrong with her? “I need to get back there. Marie and Jacy are completely unprotected.”
“There’s a specific time period before they make their move,” Ezekiel assured. “Doing all that was actually to create a diversion from the real attack, which would be at a different location. We’re going to set Rubin up as a hit man, although with what just occurred today, I doubt this crew will oblige us and remain at the magic shop.”
“I doubt that as well. Who are they? What do they want?” On some level she knew he was engaging her in conversation in order to keep her from falling apart because she wasn’t with Malichai.
“We think they’re planning to bomb the San Diego Convention Center during the Ideas for Peace conference,” Ezekiel said.
Amaryllis’s entire body went still as it really sank in. “Thousands of innocent people could be in those buildings,” she whispered. “Why?”
“We don’t know the answer and we could be completely wrong. Other than what Anna and Burnell overheard or thought they overheard, we don’t have any proof of anything going on. Callendine probably has some kind of government immunity. They’ll pull him back and we’ll never know why he was here. He’s an American, on American soil. He’s sworn to protect these people. It doesn’t make sense that he would be the one leading a group of soldiers to bring down buildings on innocent people.”
It didn’t make sense to Amaryllis either. She knew with absolute certainty that Whitney wasn’t in any way behind it. He was many things, most not good, but he was definitely a patriot and he would want Callendine stopped.
She swiveled in her seat. Behind them was a large gray van driven by one of the SEALs. “They’re GhostWalkers, aren’t they? Like you.”
“And like you. You’re a GhostWalker as well, Amaryllis.”
She shrugged. “I’m the misfit, not the GhostWalker.”
“Do you have any idea how rare a psychic healer actually is? I’ve only ever witnessed a couple of real psychic healers. Joe said you’re very powerful.”
“If I was that powerful, his bone would be healed.”
“Joe worked on him as well,” Ezekiel reminded her. “And so did Rubin. Rubin is as good as it gets. Better than any human surgeon. If it’s impossible, he can do it.”
She hugged herself, pressing her arms close to keep from shivering. She was freezing, as if every bit of heat and body temperature control had gone completely out the window. She hated the feeling of complete weakness that had descended over her. She could barely sit upright in the warm, padded seat. She threw a quick glance at Malichai’s brother.
“He wants to marry me.” She held up her hand with the ring weighing her finger down.
Ezekiel sent her a faint smile. “I’m well aware. He’s very happy he found you.”
She moistened her very dry lips. Everything felt dry. Her skin. Her hair. Her mouth. “He wants to take me back to Louisiana and have us live there near all of you.”
He sent her a sharp glance. “Do you want to live there? We’re setting up our homes there, close to one another where in an emergency we can gather into one of the fortresses we’ve created for our families to be safe. It’s a good solution.” He gestured toward all the cars on the road. “A place like this would be extremely difficult to protect.”
“I’ve made a few friends here,” she conceded. “Marie and Jacy are like family, but I would go wherever Malichai wanted to live. I’m not tied into anything. When you’re running from Whitney, you don’t dare make too many plans of settling down. If you stay too long in one place, he’ll find you. If you move too often, you can attract attention. I was anonymous here. I used Marie’s address and I made up a name for documents. I needed money to get a really good forgery, and have been saving toward that end.”
“I love my brother,” Ezekiel said. “And I want him happy. He
seems to have found that with you. I don’t know you, Amaryllis, but he seems to think you’re very lethal, that you haven’t showed him everything you can do. If you are what he suspects, you’ll be an even bigger asset to us. On the other hand, if all you do is make my brother happy, you’re more than welcome into our family, and we’ll protect you from Whitney. We have the means to do that. Not to mention, the more of us there are, the less he’ll be able to come at us.”
She’d been expecting a warning. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d threatened her. The last thing she’d expected was a welcome. “Thank you.” What else was there to say? She knew she was always expecting rejection. Marie and Jacy had made her feel welcome, and she’d believed it completely after being with them for a good six months. Malichai had given her that same nonjudgmental acceptance. Now, Ezekiel had as well. She felt as if she’d found people with whom she actually fit. She belonged.
“I’m going to need your help with Marie, Amaryllis,” Ezekiel went on as he turned toward the parking lot where guests of the bed-and-breakfast had parking spaces reserved.
“Oh my gosh, I forgot my car,” she suddenly realized. “I just left it there. And there’s a dead body in the storage unit. The cops will be swarming there.”
“First, it’s a military matter,” Ezekiel said. “National security. Second, Trap’s bringing your car back for you. And you wore gloves when you picked the lock. Trap had your back.”
A little skitter of awareness went down her spine. She had no idea anyone was watching out for her and it felt good to hear. “Why do you need help with Marie?”
“I want to be up-front with her. Tell her what is happening and what we think is going to happen. We need some of our people there at the bed-and-breakfast. I’ve got a plan, but I want to remove Jacy. I don’t want a child at risk. If Marie chooses to leave with her and go to Louisiana where they’ll both be safe, I’m good with that. Of course the running of the place will fall on you.”