This would end soon.
I would end soon.
Lance
He was on the freeway, driving when they got it.
He’d been driving everywhere. To every location they could think of. He was driving because he couldn’t sit in that fucking office idle.
Keltan called him. Told him what they needed. What he needed.
They got the intel on where she was.
Wire got it.
No fucking clue how. Fucker probably hacked into a satellite for all he knew. Lance didn’t care how they got the intel, just that they had it.
The second he heard the location, his blood froze. Snow covered him. It coursed through his blood. For a moment, he wasn’t on the freeway in the sunshine, he was driving mountain roads on Christmas Eve, seeing flashing lights and a crushed vehicle.
“Lance?” Keltan’s voice on the other end of the phone snapped him back.
His fists tightened around the steering wheel and he forced his focus here, in the present, where Elena needed him.
“I’m closest,” he clipped.
He wasn’t, but putting his foot flat on the gas, he would be.
Then he hung up the phone.
His mind didn’t go anywhere on the drive. Not one single place. Not the past, not the future, the one where he didn’t get there in time, nothing. Just on driving as fast as he could.
That’s where his mind was, nowhere, when he pulled into the parking lot, where he kept the lights on to illuminate the figure at the end of the dock. He reached to his glove compartment, snatching the high-powered flashlight he always kept there. His other hand held his gun. He was still thinking of nothing while he ran down that dock, plugged two rounds into each leg of the man watching the water. He was screaming, the man, until Lance lifted him by the shoulder and cold-cocked him with the butt of his gun.
He wasn’t going to waste time securing him, knowing Heath was seconds behind him, he’d gotten a text to say as much.
So he was still thinking of nothing right up until he shone the torch around the dock looking for her, and right until the light illuminated the water, and showed a couple of bubbles. He didn’t hesitate then. He dove into the water.
He couldn’t see shit, but he saw enough. He saw her.
She wasn’t moving.
She didn’t move when he got to her. Not when he clutched her body to his and swam to the surface.
Not when Heath, standing on the edge of the wharf, hauled her out of his arms and started CPR on her.
She was still unmoving, apart from the limp jerk to her body from Heath’s compressions, when he got up on the dock.
Heath let him take over. Because he had to take over. Because she had to breathe. She had to.
His lips fastened over hers.
They were cold.
Her chest wasn’t moving.
“Breathe, baby,” he pleaded with her pale, still face.
Footsteps thundered down the dock.
Someone cursed.
Another person, Duke, sank to his knees beside him.
He didn’t take notice.
He kept with compressions. He kept breathing for Elena. She couldn’t do it right now. But that’s okay, he’d do it for her, just until she could do it on her own.
And she would do it on her own.
“Anyone can breathe through any kind of pain. That’s why I told myself. Breathing isn’t hard. It’s just sometimes you have to remind yourself that. As long as you remember, breathing is easy.”
“Breathing is easy, baby, remember?” he told her, hands on her chest. “Remember, cupcake? You just have to remind yourself to breathe,” he whispered, right before he fastened his lips over hers.
Then he kept going.
For how long, he didn’t know.
“Lance.” Heath’s voice was tight. Knowing. Hand on his shoulder was firm as if he was preparing to pull him away. Restrain him. “She’s…”
“Get your hand off me,” he snarled, not stopping and not moving his eyes from Elena’s face. “She’s going to breathe. She’s just forgotten that it’s easy.”
The hand left his shoulder.
He kept going.
He kept breathing life into Elena.
Until she did it for herself.
Until she remembered.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Elena
I didn’t come awake slowly, there was no smooth, easy transition from unconsciousness, or death—I was sure I’d been pretty close to it—to wakefulness.
No, I came awake just like those people in movies who jerk up in their bed with a gasp. Except I couldn’t sit up. I tried, my entire body was being held down by cement blocks.
My eyes shot open, not seeing anything covering my body but a thin, hospital issue blanket.
I choked on the air I was gulping hungrily, desperately, in my dream, my nightmare, my death—whatever it had been that came before this—had stolen a lot of air from my lungs. All I could remember was needing to breathe, to inhale and exhale against the pain, but not being able to.
I didn’t care about the choking, the fact I may or may not be coming back from the dead, or that I couldn’t move my body. There was one thought, one terrifying thought that bounced around my head and clutched my thundering heart.