Maya Banks - The Darkest Hour

ETHAN quickly poured a cup of coffee and offered it to Sam and then poured another for himself. He was impatient to hear what if anything Sam had learned from Sean, but he was also in a hurry to get back down to Rachel.

“Let’s head back down the hall. You can fill me in on the way,” Ethan said.

Sam nodded. “Then you need to get some sleep, Ethan. You’re not going to be worth a damn to Rachel in your current condition. Garrett and I can take turns staying with Rachel while you catch a few winks.”

Ethan made a rude noise of disagreement and sucked down a mouthful of the hot coffee.

They stepped out of the small family room where refreshments were stored and headed down the long hallway toward Rachel’s room.

They’d only taken a few steps when a shrill scream split the air. Ethan dropped his coffee and broke into a run.

The guard posted outside Rachel’s door leapt to his feet just as a man dressed in hospital scrubs bolted from Rachel’s room and ran straight into the policeman.

They both went down and rolled. The assailant landed a punch and scrambled up just as Ethan hit him hard, sending them both to the floor.

“I got this,” Sam said harshly as he pried Ethan away. “You see to Rachel.”

Only the fear of what had happened to her kept Ethan from killing the man right there in the hallway. He backed away and ran into the room.

Her bed was empty, and he glanced wildly from side to side until he located her on the floor, huddled in a corner holding her casted arm to her chest.

Her hair was tangled, her eyes wild with a heavy glaze of fear. He wasn’t sure she had any idea where she was.

“Rachel,” he said softly.

He knelt on the floor beside her and carefully gathered her in his arms. She let out a shudder and started trembling violently.

“Baby, are you okay? Did he hurt you? I need you to tell me what happened.”

He never got an answer. The door flew open and a flood of medical personnel rushed into the room.

She went rigid in his arms, and as soon as the nurses got close, she all but crawled behind him.

He held up a hand to ward them all off and shot them his most menacing glare.

“No one touches her until you’ve been cleared,” he snarled.

Sam strode into the door, his gaze going to the floor where Ethan sat with Rachel.

“He’s in custody. Sean’s on his way. Is Rachel okay?”

“Clear the room,” Ethan ordered. “No one comes near her until we know what the hell is going on here.”

“Sir, we need to examine her. We need to reattach her IV,” one of the nurses protested.

Ethan opened his mouth, but Sam stepped between him and the nurse and put a hand up.

“One of your nurses just tried to kill Rachel. No one is going to touch her until they’ve cleared security. Our security.”

The nurse blanched and backed away.

“The IV,” Rachel said in a faint voice.

Ethan looked down and touched her cheek. “What about it, baby?”

“The syringe. It’s still sticking in the port. He tried to inject something into the line.”

Sam stalked over to the line dangling from the pole and picked up the tubing. A syringe dangled from the port, the needle inserted, the plunger still all the way back.

He and Ethan exchanged horrified glances. Whatever was in that needle had come awfully damn close to being in Rachel’s vein.

“You got a glove?” Sam demanded.

The nurse who’d confronted Ethan gestured toward a box on the wall. Sam yanked one down and then gestured for the nurses to leave. As they headed toward the door, the police officer who’d been on guard duty came in.

“Hospital security is crawling all over the hallway. I told them to stay out, but they aren’t happy. Sean’s got an ETA of five minutes.”

Sam nodded. “Keep them out until he gets here. He can deal with them.”

Sam slipped on the glove and carefully withdrew the needle from the port.

“Somehow I don’t think I want to stick myself with this,” he murmured.

Rachel shuddered against Ethan’s chest, and her fingers curled tightly into his shirt.

“I don’t want to stay here.”

“I know, baby. I’ll take you home.”

He waited for her to refuse, to tell him she wanted someone else to take her away, but she remained quiet and still against him.

He looked up at Sam, who still stood staring at the syringe.

“I’m going to take her to Mom and Dad’s. I’ll have Mom call Doc Campbell to see if he can come over to see about Rachel. I don’t want her here until we know who the hell we can trust.”

“I’ll stay here until Sean shows. He’ll want to come out later to get the story from Rachel. I’ll turn this over to him so they can have the lab run it. The assholes are piling up around here.”

“Castle,” Rachel murmured. “It’s Castle.”

Ethan looked down in confusion. “What’s that, baby?”

“Senator Castle,” she said in a clearer voice. She pushed away from Ethan and stared at him with wide, scared eyes. “He’ll never let me live knowing what I know.”

SHE couldn’t get the scene out of her head. It played over and over, the conversation as clear as it had been the day she heard it.

She was confused. She was scared out of her mind. But she was sure of one thing. The conversation she’d overheard a year ago was the reason for all the hell she’d endured since.

Her head ached. Her arm hurt so bad she wanted to die. Sean and several other police officers had descended on the hospital while Ethan and Sam had immediately taken her to their mother’s house.

As a result, Marlene’s living room had been turned into an outpost of medical and police personnel.

Another pulse of nauseating pain rolled through her body, but she was deathly afraid to take anything after what happened in the hospital. Her fear was probably irrational, but too bad. She wasn’t exactly in the most rational state of mind.

“Rachel, you need to let me give you something to make you more comfortable,” the older doctor said kindly.

She blinked to bring him back into focus. The pain was making her shocky, and she’d already zoned out more times than she could count during the doctor’s visit.

He had a nice face. Older, lined with age. He was probably someone she’d seen countless times, as he was a Kelly family friend.

But nice didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to kill her.

He sat on the couch next to her, perched on the edge as he examined her cast, took her pulse, looked over the cuts and bruises that had already been tended to in the hospital. He’d bandaged the small wound from the ripped-out catheter, and now he was offering her innocuous white pills. White pills that could be anything.

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t be called paranoid if there were actually people after her, right? And now she knew why. She was at risk. Her family was at risk.

She sought out Ethan, her anxiety rising when she saw him standing just a few feet away. In the midst of hell, she remembered the gut-wrenching discovery of the divorce papers: Ethan’s anger, his accusations, and the knowledge that her marriage was over.

What was he thinking? There was so much unresolved between them, but somehow it didn’t seem so important now. Did he love her? Did he really want things to be different between them?

She wished she had the answers, but she was too exhausted to pick apart her feelings and her emotions. Way too tired to try to guess what Ethan might be feeling.

She looked up and caught his gaze. His eyes were a raw storm. She flinched at the pain she saw there. Unable to maintain the contact, she ducked her head and looked away again. It was a rejection. She knew it, and she hated that she couldn’t do more than just sit there so helplessly. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that she didn’t completely crack open for all to see.

“Rachel?”

The doctor’s voice shook her from her thoughts, and she turned back to see him holding out those innocent little pills in his palm.

Panic leapt into her throat.

Garrett was there in an instant. Ethan started forward but then hesitated.

“Let me have them, Doc,” Garrett said. “I’ll make sure she takes them in a little while.”

She looked gratefully at him. He understood.

The doctor reluctantly stood and held out the pills to Garrett.

“If you need me for anything, just have Marlene call. I’ll come right over no matter what time.”

Ethan shook his hand as he started out. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

The buzz of activity overwhelmed her. Everywhere she looked, people stood. No one paid her any attention except Ethan and Garrett. They were all busy processing information.

She leaned back against the cushions and propped her cast on her chest. She’d never felt so tired in her life. So completely and utterly beat down. Only fear kept her from succumbing to the deep need for sleep.

“Can you talk to us now?” Garrett asked.

Behind him, Sean and Sam both closed in. Sean motioned for the other officers to stand back. Sam stood off to the side, and for the first time, she made an overt invitation to him. She looked up and then held out her hand.

His eyes widened slightly in surprise, and then he came forward and sat beside her on the couch. Ethan eased down on her other side.

Sam reached for her fingers and squeezed. “You know we’re not going to let anything happen to you, right?”

It seemed like an absurd statement in light of all that had happened to her, but she still took comfort in the quietly spoken vow. And she believed him. Believed them all. Now that they knew—or they would know—the threat, they would do whatever was necessary to protect her.

“Can you tell us what happened, Rachel?” Sean asked.

She slipped her hand from Sam’s, raised it to her temple and massaged deeply as she sorted through the barrage of information pouring through her mind.

“I recognized him,” she said simply. “When he came into my hospital room. I saw him a year ago in South America. He was talking to Senator Castle and two other men.”

None of them looked surprised by her statement. Maybe they’d already figured out a connection between her supposed death and the most recent events.

“Do you remember what they were talking about?” Garrett asked.

She nodded. “Drugs. Senator Castle outlined a trade-off of sorts. The drug cartel would ‘give’ him a few victories. He’d take his ‘tough on drugs’ campaign to the heart of Colombia, score a few huge victories in preparation for his bid for the presidency. In return, he’d open up the drug lanes into the U.S. The cartel also sold out a few of their competitors. It was a win-win situation. Castle looked good and the cartel got unfettered inroads into America and a monopoly on the drug trade.”

“And you overheard all this,” Sean said.

“Yes. I had left the tent where we were administering shots to the children, to get one of the little girls who had wandered off. Castle and the other men were behind the child’s family’s hut. I recognized him. I remember being so shocked to see him there. He had been a supporter of the organization I traveled over with, and now I knew why. It was a perfect cover for him.

“I ducked behind one of the water cisterns when I figured out what they were talking about, but it was too late. The man who came into my hospital room saw me before I could slip away. Castle told the cartel to get rid of me. Make it look like a tragic accident.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ethan muttered.

“But they didn’t kill you,” Garrett said. “Do you know why?”

She swallowed and let her gaze skitter away as painful memories of her captivity flooded her mind.

“I was their insurance policy. The cartel’s. They staged my death to satisfy Castle, but they kept me alive so that if Castle ever reneged on their bargain, they could pull me out and say, Hey, remember her? Look what we’ve got. It was the ultimate blackmail plot.”

“Holy fuck,” Garrett breathed. “Pretty damn good plan.”

The corner of her mouth lifted into a half smile. “They didn’t count on KGI.”

Ethan tucked his hand behind her neck and gently squeezed her nape. She started and turned her head to stare at him. He held her gaze, and this time she didn’t look away. There was so much she wanted to ask, so much she needed to know, but now wasn’t the time. She wasn’t entirely sure there would ever be a time. The idea that her marriage might well and truly be over hurt more than the broken arm, and medication couldn’t fix that kind of pain.