“We don’t want you tiring yourself out,” the nurse said cheerily. “But I’ll let your family in briefly.”
To his relief, only Cait and her brother appeared. Colin eased the door shut, cutting off most sound from the hall and giving them some privacy. Cait came straight to the bed and latched on to Noah’s hand again, as if resuming a painfully severed connection.
Yes, he thought, that’s what it felt like. He never wanted to let her go again.
He looked past her to Colin. “What happened?”
McAllister gave a succinct summation. A pair of sheriff’s deputies had reached the scene first, just in time to see Cait kick the weapon out of Ronald Floyd’s hand. They had ordered him to put his hands up, and he’d thrown himself at the gun instead. When he’d brought it around toward them, they had both fired. Colin had arrived only moments later.
“I already had an aide car en route, which was a good thing. You bled like the Red Sea.”
Maybe that was why he felt so tired.
“It’s not a joke!” Cait snapped.
Her brother looked at her in surprise. “Didn’t say it was.”
Noah managed to smile at her. “Had a lot of blood in me.”
Her lips wobbled, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Hey,” he said huskily. “Alive.”
“Yes.” Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “I was so scared.”
“Me, too.”
“Why did you come back?” she asked. “I mean, how did you know I’d been kidnapped?”
“Was an idiot. Didn’t like you feeling bad.” His eyelids were beginning to feel heavy again. Words weren’t coming readily. “Not your fault. None of it.”
She bent over the blasted rail and laid her cheek against his. He felt the dampness of her tears and turned his head, trying to find her mouth. She did the same, and they kissed, a quick, fumbling excuse for a kiss, but she was there, alive, holding his hand.
When she straightened, he asked, “You know what they did to me?” With the hand that had an IV in it, he gestured toward his torso.
Colin was the one to step forward and explain. His spleen was history, Noah learned. Otherwise, there’d been a nick here, a tear there. The surgery had dragged on because he’d continued to bleed even after they thought they’d gotten everything. They’d finally located the mystery bleed, put in a few more stitches. And, oh, yeah, removed a bullet.
“Bet it matches the one that killed Hegland,” Noah mumbled, and Colin did chuckle, if very, very drily.
“That’s a sucker bet.”
He was smiling, too, drinking in the sight of Cait’s puffy, splotchy, tear-streaked face, so damn beautiful, when he fell asleep.
* * *
CAIT REFUSED TO leave. It took a while to persuade Colin that he and Nell really could go home and leave her at the hospital. She pointed out that Noah would not be enthusiastic about having all three of them standing around like a flock of vultures staring at him.
That made Colin laugh and hug her. “Okay. You’re right. But you know he’d be happier if you came with us and got a good night’s sleep instead of trying to catch a few z’s in a not very comfortable chair.”
Her chest constricted. “I’m having trouble believing… I thought he was dead.”
Nell smiled at Cait. “You know I was shot, right?”
Cait nodded.
“Colin didn’t leave the hospital for at least two days.” She tilted her head against his shoulder in a brief, loving contact. “So don’t let him tell you he doesn’t understand.”
After another of his deep, slow chuckles, he hugged Cait. “All right. You win. I’ll be back in the morning.”
She pulled the chair as close to the bed as she could get it and kept her hand over Noah’s even when it was slack in sleep. Every time she dozed, she was jolted awake by a rush of adrenaline. The flash she saw was the blood and Noah toppling, the fury and fear on his face fading into stunned acceptance.
She had believed on such a visceral level that he was dead, she was having trouble convincing herself he wasn’t.
A couple of times, he came awake hurting. A nurse slipped in quietly, took his temperature, reminded him how to administer his own pain relief and slipped out, leaving them alone.