The name Lena catches me off guard. But surely it can’t be my Lena. Not that she’s mine at all since she ran out on me. I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind. Three years later, and I still have no clue why she left.
“Shit, there are two women?” Judge says, looking at me and Cole with concern. Our intel only said there was one.
“No. Mia’s her little girl, she’s two,” the man says.
“Shit,” Cole curses, voicing our collective thoughts.
Now that a child is involved, things have just gotten a lot more serious.
“If we go now, we might be able to catch up to them,” I say, looking to Cole for his decision.
“Doc, you stay and help. Let’s move out!” Cole says, jumping back on his bike.
We split up, hoping to find it quicker that way, and we tear out of the alley in the direction the car went. My group heads south, in the direction of the Iron Vultures clubhouse, and luck is on our side as we soon catch up with the car. We hang back, keeping our distance, not wanting to alert them to our presence. We need to play this carefully.
Thanks to another stroke of luck, or perhaps stupidity on their part, the driver turns off the main highway and heads toward a deserted area filled with old warehouses. Maybe they hope to lose us, or they think it’s only me and Cole they need to fight. They don’t know we’ve got backup coming. Whatever the driver’s reasoning for coming here, I don’t waste the opportunity. I pull out my gun and fire at the tires. The shots hit true, and although they continue to drive for a little longer, they’re soon forced to stop. Three men jump out and return fire, forcing us to retreat and find cover.
A shootout ensues, and it seems as if we might not get close enough to rescue the woman and child. I’m worried about the shots that hit the car, too, as a stray bullet shatters the back glass. I hear a woman scream and pray it doesn’t mean she’s been hit. The wails of a small, terrified child pierce the air. We don’t want to inadvertently injure the very people we’re trying to rescue. Just when it seems like all is lost and we might need to fall back, reinforcements arrive. One of the men goes down, another makes a run for it, fleeing into the distance, leaving only one kidnapper. When he runs out of bullets, he holds his hands up in surrender.
“Give us the woman and her child, and you get to live,” Cole calls out, his voice strong and commanding.
Slowly, being sure to keep his hands visible, the man moves to open the back door of the car. I see blonde hair, a woman huddled over a child in the footwell, doing her best to protect them from the hail of gunfire. The man barks at them to get out.
As she steps out of the car, I see her face for the first time. A face that’s been etched into my brain, that I haven’t stopped thinking about for three years.
Lena.
Anger, hurt, and betrayal rush through me as I’m reminded again of how she left without a word. But I also feel the old feelings I had for her bubbling to the surface; I have to resist the urge to run to her and hold her in my arms. I turn my focus to the man who is slowly retreating, making sure he doesn’t try to pull anything stupid. As soon as he’s out of sight, my gaze is pulled back to Lena. She’s even more beautiful than I remember.
No. I won’t let myself think like that. Not again.
Cole motions for me to join him as we walk over to her. “It’s okay, we’re here to protect you,” Cole says to Lena in a calm, soothing voice, like she’s a frightened fawn that could bolt at any second.
I remove my helmet, and Lena audibly gasps at the sight of me. “Rex!”
Cole looks surprised, but then he realizes what this means and who she is, nodding at me to take the lead.
“You’re coming with us,” I say gruffly.
Lena clings to her little girl like a life raft, holding her close to her chest. The child can’t be much more than two, whichwould mean Lena got pregnant more or less immediately after leaving me. I’m filled with a jealous rage at the thought of Lena sleeping with another man. I thought we had something good going on, but it was clear that to her I was just a stop gap until she moved on. Even after all this time, I can’t stand the idea that she could throw away what we had so easily and move on to someone else so fast.
“No. My friend is hurt, we have to go back for him,” she says.
Cole calmly explains that Doc is with him and he’s on the way to the ER, she sags with relief. “You can go visit him once it’s safe to. Right now we need to go. Zeke will send more men, we don’t have much time.”
Lena looks from Cole to me, as if debating whether or not to refuse. She seems to realize that she’s got no choice, though, since she sighs and nods. She allows Cole to lead her to the car that’s arrived and assures him that neither she nor Mia is harmed. Cole is usually cold and commanding, but around Lena and the child, he’s gentle, unthreatening, and I see Lena start to relax a little. I can barely bring myself to look at her, but at the same time, I can’t seem to stop.
I can’t quite believe she’s here. Lena was in and out of my life so quickly that I almost thought it was a dream. But here she is. Looking at me in a wounded way as if I were the one who hurt her.
I force myself to look at the child in her arms, living proof of how little our relationship meant to Lena. How quickly she moved on. The child looks up at me with curious amber eyes, and my heart skips a beat.
Could it be possible?
The timings work. But Lena told me she was on the pill.
No. It can’t be. Can it? Could the little girl in Lena’s arms be mine?
Was that why she ran? Do I have a child that I was unaware of? Would Lena hide that from me? Surely, she wouldn’t be that cruel as to keep me in the dark.
