“Finding me.”
Jagger reached down intertwined his fingers loosely with those on her free hand. “How did you know it was us?”
“Who else would it be?” She smiled softly. “I knew you’d come for me. I just wasn’t sure if would be soon enough.”
“It almost wasn’t.” His deep voice thickened before he hurriedly cleared it. “Doc said if we’d been a few minutes later?—”
“Hey.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t do that.” Her hair swished against the stark white pillowcase beneath her head. “This wasn’t your fault. If anything, it’s mine.”
Jagger’s dark brows fell into an even deeper V. “The hell it is.”
“I should have listened to Ryker,” she admitted. “He told me to wake you up so you could go with me to question Lopez. But you looked so peaceful.”
Like a sleeping god who’d been made just for her.
“You damn well should have woken me up.” He nodded even as his expression softened. “But nothing about what happened is your fault. This was Miller. Plain and fucking simple.”
“So you know, then.” Natalia searched his eyes. “You know Julian was?—”
“Still alive?” Jagger nodded again. “We questioned Lopez, and I showed him a pic we found in Sinclair’s apartment.”
“Julian told me Keith was dead.”
“He is. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me about the picture.”
Jagger gave her a shortened version of the events that led them to finding her in that field. When he was finished, she was even more shocked than before at how lucky she’d been.
“If you hadn’t shown Lopez that picture, I’d be dea?—”
“Don’t.” A deep, almost angry growl escaped before Jagger’s mouth found hers once more. “I can’t begin to tell you the hell I lived through not knowing if we’d find you in time.” His lips feathered against hers as he spoke. “And then, when we found you lying there, shot all to hell…” Jagger pulled back so they could see each other’s eyes. “I don’t ever want to feel like that again, darlin’. I don’t think I’d survive it.”
The pain in his gaze tore at her heart in a way nothing else ever had.
“I love you,” Natalia whispered the words she feared would never come. “I’m so sorry I didn’t say it sooner. It was all I could think of when I thought I was going to die. I was so afraid that you’d never know how much you mean to me, and I?—”
“Natalia,” he breathed her full name. “Ah, baby. I love you, too.”
Another kiss stole her breath and momentarily erased her pain. When it ended, he brought his dark stare back to hers.
“I have to know. How did you manage to kill Julian with cuffs on?”
Over the next few minutes, she shared the bullet points of the incredible story.
How she overpowered Julian’s muscle man only to be shot, tased, and drugged by Julian. The struggle between them when she’d headbutted him in an attempt to get away. The shot to the leg.
And then she told him about Sanchez.
“Never thought I’d say it, but I owe that man one helluva lot.”
“Arlo Sanchez is a criminal who all but promised to kill me the next time he saw me before he left me to die.”
“Fair.” Jagger shrugged. “But he could have easily killed you, and he didn’t. For that, I will forever be grateful.”
A stretch of silence filled the overly white room before she spoke again.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.” Natalia sighed. “I can’t go back to Homeland. That’s the one thing I’m certain of.”
