Thirty seconds.
Would there be an afterlife? He’d always believed and he still did. He and Sami would get another chance together, and she’d meet his family. Yeah.
Twenty seconds.
She hit one more key.
The clock halted at eighteen seconds.
He stiffened. His head cocked, and his heart stopped. “Sami?”
She coughed and hesitantly lifted her fingers from the keyboard. “Um.”
“Sami?” he asked again, his voice turning rough.
She turned. “I did it. We stopped the bomb.” She lunged out of her chair and jumped.
He caught her, his mouth on hers as she wrapped her legs around his waist. She tasted of woman and something sweet—all Sami. He kissed her, going deep, putting every feeling he’d ever have into the kiss. Finally, he leaned back. “I knew you could do it.”
Jax poked his head around the corner. “Jesus. Did you have to make it so close?”
Tace stilled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Raze leaned around him. “We’re a team. But still. Eighteen seconds? God, Sami. You gave me a heart attack.”
Sami smiled, her lips trembling and tears filling her eyes. “You guys stayed.”
“Yeah. We believe in you.” Jax breathed out heavily. “All right. Everyone get back to work. We have people to interview, and we’re all staying the night here. Then we’ll come up with a plan for the next step.” He glanced at them. “One more minute of kissing, I guess. Then back to work.” The door shut behind him.
Tace grinned. “I guess we have a minute.”
“We have more than that.” She leaned in and settled her sweet mouth on his.
His legs trembled. Shit. His vision went dark. This time when he fell, he made sure to go backward so he wouldn’t squish her.
The last sound he heard was her screaming his name.
He came to with Jax, Raze, and Sami all staring at him and Sami patting his face. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded groggy.
Raze shook his head. “You’re definitely not fine. I wonder if the enzyme has gone bad?”
“I don’t know,” Sami said, her voice thick with tears. “I’ll get into the computer and figure it out. I promise.”
Tace nodded as Jax hauled him to his feet. Yeah, a part of him had thought he’d been cured, but apparently it wasn’t going to happen. He was gonna see those Texas ancestors of his sooner than he’d thought.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I knew Tace Justice would break my heart, but not byleaving. I didn’t see this coming.
—Sami Steel
Sami had worked on the medical computers all day, trying to decipher the technical jargon and find out why Tace had passed out again. Finally, both Tace and Jax had shooed her from the room to work on the other computers, saying they could read through the data but not hack into the remaining cryptic files up in the command center.
Later in the evening, Sami glanced into the examination room in the infirmary where they’d had to move Penelope as she fought the fever. The young woman thrashed uncontrollably on the bed, and Marcus hadn’t allowed anybody close enough to secure her. He’d shackled her to the bed himself with restraints already in place for the newly infected.
He leaned against the wall, his chest still bare save for multiple bandages and bruises. A gun was tucked into his waistband, and a knife showed in his back pocket. His gaze remained on Sami as a clear warning not to enter the room. Man, he looked just like his brother.
Sami cleared her throat. “Penelope started working here just a week before we escaped.”
