“Doc?” she asked.
“Gimme just… one… sec… there it is,” I said as I pulled out a folded up piece of paper. “Here. Ranger gave me this to give you to.”
She furrowed her brow. “Marla’s Ranger?”
I chuckled. “Do you know any other Ranger?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” she said as she unraveled the piece of paper. But then, she gasped, and her gaze whipped back up to mine. “Oh my God.”
I reached out and laid my hand on her knee. “I’m a man of my word, Elizabeth.”
Her eyes darted back to the piece of paper before coming back up to my face. “You guys reached out to my superior officer.”
I nodded. “Didn’t take Ranger very long to track down who it was. Cap and King handled the initial conversation from there.”
Her eyes dropped back to the piece of paper as they darted over the words. “Wait a second. They’re…?”
“Wanting to help, yes.”
Those eyes came back to my face. “They’ve offered their help.”
“To us, yes.”
“This,” her eyes were back to the paper, “this says I won’t be in trouble.”
“Mhm.”
She held up the paper at me, like I couldn’t see it. “You guys… really talked to them?”
I squeezed her knee softly. “Of course, we did. I wasn’t just going to let you worry about something like that and me not do anything about it. We just had to time it right, that’s all. Your safety is paramount, above all else.”
Her brow furrowed like she couldn’t process what I said. Her gaze moved from the email to me, to the email, and back to me again.
“Are there any others?” she asked.
I chuckled as I pulled her legs into my lap. “There were plenty of emails exchanged, yes. But I figured this was the one that would settle your mind. So I had Ranger print it off for you. Your superior officer knows what’s going on now, my Liz. You’ll be welcomed back just like you were on any other mission whenever you’re physically capable of being back.”
“And in the meantime,” she said as she looked back down at the piece of paper, “if we need anything, I guess you and my superior officer are buddies now. Or something like that.”
I grinned. “Or something like that.”
I had to look away from him then. Not because I was angry or embarrassed, but because the feeling that rushed through me was too big and I didn’t know what to do with it. The whole time I was in that hot tub spiraling, and in that shower falling apart, and in every quiet moment where the fear of losing my career crept back in, I told myself that I was handling it alone. That there was nothing to be done. That I’d have to face it when the time came and just hope for the best. I pressed my lips together and stared at the folded piece of paper in my hands. He just went and did it. Quietly, without making a show of it, without even telling me it was in the works. He just handled it because I needed it handled. I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Doc.” “No thanks needed, My Liz.” I nodded a few times, more to myself than to him, and blinked at the ceiling until I was sure I wasn’t going to cry on him again. I’d already used up my quota for the week on that front.
She stared at the piece of paper for a little while longer before folding it back up. When she finally looked back at me, something in my chest pulled taut. There was a brightness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen since before everything went sideways, and it made me want to give her every good thing I could think of, one right after another, just to keep seeing it. But I watched her notice my face. She always did that. Catalogued. Filed things away. Her eyes moved over me the way mine moved over her whenever I was checking her bruises, and she went a little still. “Doc,” she said softly. “What happened out there? What did you guys get into?”
“What?”she asked, her head snapping back to face me.
I sighed heavily, the boulders finally rolling off my shoulders. “The ring knows we’re onto them. It’s what we found tonightwhile we did what we were doing. They’re getting rid of their merchandise, Elizabeth. To cover their tracks.”
Her jaw hit the floor before she reached out for me. I accepted her arms graciously, collapsing into her as my ear found her heart beating once more.
I was so thankful that she was alive.
“You know that’s not your fault, right?” she asked as she stroked her fingers through my hair.
The words just sort of… fell out of my mouth. “We came across a room where there was at least ten different women. All dead. Dead long enough for their eyes to be clouded over. It wasn’t recent. I couldn’t—there wasn’t any—none of them had pulses, or were warm, or?—”
I felt her arms tighten around me, and the dam opened.
