Blindly, he handed her the shears and looked up at Troy. “You’re safe now, Troy. We’ve got you.” He reached for the seatbelt, but the heat of the metal burned his hand.
He placed his hands on Troy’s shoulders, bracing him as Mallory cut through the harness. Blood covered his hands and trickled down his arms. There was no way Troy was going to live. But he’d be damned if he’d let him die in this fire.
“Hurry up!”
“I’m almost done,” Mallory muttered as she cut through the belt.
Suddenly Troy was free and falling down. Reid and Mallory grabbed him as he fell. “There’s so much blood—” Reid said as he wrapped his arms around Troy’s body.
“Don’t think about it. Just think about getting him out. I’ll push open the window, and you pull with everything you've got. Okay?” Mallory had seen terrorist attacks, but she had been able to separate herself from them. Not this time. Not when she knew it was Troy and Reid in the path of danger.
“You’ll burn yourself,” Reid told her as he adjusted his grip on Troy. He fought the urge to leave Troy and get Mallory to safety.
“It’s okay, I can take it. Whatever happens, just get him out. I wouldn’t be able to carry him. It has to be you.”
Mallory slid from the cockpit before Reid could argue. Blood covered her face, arms, and upper body from working to free Troy. She brushed past Reid and wedged herself between the cockpit and the loose windshield. She felt the hot metal from the plane burning into her stomach and the hot metal from the windshield against her lower back and thighs.
Taking a deep breath, she focused on Troy and pushed with her back against the windshield. The pain on her stomach lessened as she separated the window from the plane. “Go!” The hot metal singed the material on her dress. She felt as if she were being pinned against hot irons. She watched Reid as he pulled Troy from the cockpit. He wedged himself past her, and then Troy’s body was hefted from the cockpit. Mallory cried out in pain as the burning intensified.
“Clear!” She heard Reid a second before he was there pulling her to safety.
She fell into his arms as tears burst forward. “You’re alive . . . I was so scared I had lost you . . . I . . .” Reid pressed his lips to hers, cutting off anything else she was going to say.
Reid grabbed the back of her head and brought their lips together in a frantic kiss. He had to be sure she was really here. He couldn’t believe she’d dived head first into danger. He wanted to wring her neck, but he kissed her instead. He was supposed to be dead. If she hadn’t hurt him so much and made him leave Stromia early, he would be dead right now.
He put all of the fear, the guilt, and the hurt into the kiss. It lasted less than three seconds, but he felt her desperation for him, felt her love just as he had when he had kissed her for the first time all those years ago. But now wasn’t the time. It never would be. He was glad she was alive, but he’d never let Mallory hurt him again.
They pulled apart at the same time. Mallory crawled over to Troy and ripped open the rest of his shirt. There was a bad burn mark where the metal of his seatbelt had been and where his clothes had been burned off of his lower legs. Lacerations covered the left side of his face—some down to the bone. A piece of metal was embedded in his thigh.
“He’s not going to make it, Reid. We can’t wait for an ambulance. He’s losing too much blood. And I think his lung is punctured. He’s having trouble breathing,” Mallory said as she put her ear to his chest. Reid knew it too. Troy looked a hair’s breadth from death.
The first rescue crew arrived with fire extinguishers and first aid kits. Reid grabbed the kit and ripped open the gauze. He wrapped it around Troy’s leg, but the blood quickly soaked through it.
“Come on. We have to get him into the back of the truck.”
Reid nodded and helped Mallory lift him. An employee opened the back door for them and helped get Troy’s broken body into the backseat.
“I’ll drive,” Mallory said as she tossed him a sweatshirt from the front seat. “Use this to see if you can stop some of the bleeding. Don’t worry about hurting him; just press as hard as you can. Sit on him if you have to.”
“Drive fast,” he yelled as she stepped on the gas.
“Hang on.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mallory cut through the fields and tore through the resort’s manicured lawn. Dirt flew as guests and hotel employees jumped out of the way screaming. Mallory made the turn onto the main road on two tires.
“Sorry about your lawn,” Mallory said as she floored the truck.
“I don’t give a shit about my lawn. Drive faster. I can’t slow the bleeding,” Reid yelled from the backseat. Mallory took a glance in the rearview mirror and saw Reid kneeling on the floorboard as he pinned Troy to the seat.
Her heart beat loudly as she fought the panic. She took a deep breath to steady herself and focused on the road. She pushed all the questions from the front of her mind and kept her eyes on the road.
Pulling the car into the opposite lane, Mallory flew past an eighteen-wheeler. At the last minute she swerved back into her lane, narrowly missing a sports car. The drivers caught each other’s eyes and the sports car slammed on its brakes and U-turned.
“Elle is right behind us. I think she almost lost Shirley out the window when she spun the car around,” Mallory told them as she watched the white head of Elle’s office manager of an undeterminable old age pull back inside the car.
“Damn, they would think I was on the plane. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming home early except Troy.”
“So, that’s how you’re alive. Reid, I was so afraid . . .” She felt her voice break and her vision went blurry. Going 110 miles per hour on a small country road, she couldn’t afford to cry right now. She blinked the tears away and kept her mouth shut. Soon the sports car was right on her tail as she got off the country road and onto the interstate.
“I think we have a lot to talk about, Mallory. But now’s not the time.”
Reid pressed his ear to Troy’s chest and frowned. He couldn’t hear anything. “I’m losing him!”
He was flung onto Troy as Mallory exited the interstate and turned toward the hospital. Reid pinched Troy’s nose, pressed his mouth to his, and blew. He felt Troy’s chest rise and continued with CPR. The truck bounced and Reid lost his grip. He became airborne and landed half on Troy. Frantically scrambling to continue CPR, he barely noticed they were driving on a sidewalk.
There were the sounds of the truck plowing through something and the horn blasting. “Stopping,” Mallory shouted a second before she slammed on the brakes.
Reid wrapped Troy in a bear hug and flexed with all he had to keep Troy from flying forward. The doors to the back were flung open and doctors rushed forward.
“Plane accident. He was stuck in the cockpit. Burns to his legs, collapsed lung . . .” Reid heard Mallory calling to the doctors as he helped get Troy out of the back and onto a stretcher.
“Troy,” Elle cried as she and his sisters piled out of her tiny sports car with Shirley, who was moving surprisingly fast for someone so old.
“Reid, are you hurt?” Bree screamed as she ran for him.
“It’s not me. I wasn’t on the plane. I flew home early. I don’t know if he’s going to make it.” Reid opened his arms and his sisters flew into them. Elle, Bree, and Allegra clung to him as tears mixed with the relief of knowing their brother was safe.
“You had us worried, boy. You should have told us you came home early. Do you know how hard it was to call your mother with the news of the plane crash?” Tears rolled down Shirley’s wrinkled face. He’d never seen her look so old.
“Mom,” Allegra gasped as she pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll let her know. Finn said he’d go pick her up. She was too upset to drive.”
Allegra took a couple steps away to make the call. Elle looked up at him, tears filling her green eyes that looked a lot like his. “How bad is it?”
“Bad. We don’t know what happened. I was at the hotel and heard the explosion. Mallory actually got to the plane first. Rode a horse bareback to get there. When I arrived, she was halfway in the cockpit trying to free Troy. We worked together to get him out, but he stopped breathing on the way here. I did CPR, but . . .” Reid looked around at the suddenly quiet entrance to the emergency room. He noticed the shrubs that had been plowed down by the truck and the tire tracks across the front of the hospital. “Where’s Mallory?”
“She went inside with the doctors and Troy,” Shirley told him. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up before your mother gets here.”
Reid looked down at himself for the first time. Blood was everywhere. His mother would pass out. “Let’s see if we can get an update and maybe a nurse can get me some scrubs.”
They walked into the lobby, and the nurse flagged him down. “They took your friend into surgery. A doctor will be out as soon as he knows anything. Miss Westin ordered us to look you over too. Please come with me.”
Reid and his sisters followed the nurse back to the ER. Shirley waited in the lobby for Margaret to arrive with Finn and would reassure his mother he was safe. He looked for Mallory, but didn’t see her. He needed to know what was going on. Why was she at his hotel and why was she in a disguise? And more importantly, they needed to talk about their kiss.
“Where’s Mallory Westin?” Elle asked the nurse. “She’s my best friend, and I want to make sure she’s not injured.”
“She’s with a doctor. There were some burns that needed to be treated. I’ll come and get you once she’s able to have company.”
“I’ll tell you, it was the shock of my life seeing her tearing down the road in a company truck. What was she doing at the hotel?” Elle asked Reid.
“I don’t know. I want to ask her the same question. Nurse, would you mind if I had a pair of scrubs to change into?” Reid asked. He didn’t want to talk to Elle about Mallory right now. There were too many emotions roaring through him, and he didn’t think he would be able to keep up the façade of cold indifference toward Mallory if Elle kept talking. He was already worried she’d been burned.
Seeing Mallory in pain ripped him to shreds. He’d thrown up after he saw her beaten by the man stalking his youngest sister a few months before. The sound of her scream when she held the hot windshield open for him to drag Troy out still echoed in his mind.
“Ladies, you can wait in the hall while your brother gets cleaned up,” the nurse instructed as he retreated to the privacy afforded by a drawn curtain. He took a deep breath and undressed before washing Troy’s blood off in the sink.
Mallory didn’t pay attention to the doctor examining her. She was lying in bed in nothing but her bra and panties. She had a burn on her palm, one on her shoulder, and he was examining the ones caused by the windshield now. Her hand was covered in a cooling gel and wrapped in a sterile glove. They weren’t bad burns, but they were definitely painful. However, that was not what she was thinking about.
The images of the plane wreckage kept flashing through her mind. The dynamics of the fire troubled her. The plane was arriving from Stromia, and the gas tank should have been low. Sure, it would explode on impact. However, if the plane went down because of an empty gas tank or a mechanical issue, the fire wouldn’t have been as intense as it was. She’d been with the military enough to see what happened when a plane was blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile.
Mallory worried her lip as more medicine was put on her burns. It made sense. She had seen the plane coming in for a landing, and it had seemed fine. Surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs as she knew them, could be portable and hoisted onto the shoulder. She would never admit she knew firsthand it wasn’t hard to fire one. It only weighed around thirty-eight pounds. You fire one of those as the plane comes in for a landing and what she saw today would be the result. There was only one way to be sure, though.
“Are you done yet?” she asked the doctor.
“Almost. I’ll give you some pain medicine to help with the burns,” the doctor said as he wrapped some gauze around her stomach and back.
“I don’t want any. I need to get going,” Mallory said as she reached for her dress.
“Miss Westin, you need the antibiotics and the fluids. While these are only second-degree burns, they need to be treated.”
“Fine, but I need some privacy to make a phone call. It’s important.” Mallory had dropped her purse in the suite when she had seen the explosion.
The doctor looked at the stubborn set to her mouth and gave a quick nod. “If you promise to come right back to bed and finish all your treatment, you can use the phone in my office.”
“Done. Let’s go.”
Reid sat still as his hand was bandaged. It was the only injury he had sustained. There was a red mark on his hip, but it wasn’t any worse than a minor kitchen burn. His sisters were all gathered around him, making him even more agitated than before. He couldn’t listen to them. His mind was focused solely on Mallory.
“I’ll be right back,” Reid said suddenly. His sisters all stared at him.
“Back? Where do you think you’re going?” Bree asked.
“It’s not important. I’ll be right back. If Mom gets here, tell her I’m fine. Give me five minutes. I just need some time.” Reid pleaded with Elle with his eyes. She always was tuned in to him, and he hoped she would get the hint.
With a smile she let him go. “He’s been through a lot, and I’m sure we’re making it worse with all our chatter,” he heard her tell their sisters.
He approached the first nurse he saw. “Mallory Westin?”
“Over there, but she just left with the doctor.”
“Left for where?”
“To his office. She had a phone call to make. There’s her doctor now; you can ask him. Offices are at the end of the hall.” The nurse walked off to check on the other patients, and Reid decided to bypass the doctor and head straight for Mallory.
He walked down the sterile halls to the row of wooden doors with glass windows. The offices were a wreck of paper, dirty clothes, and couches with pillows for the doctors to catch a quick nap. He found Mallory in the third office.
“I need you,” Mallory said into the phone.
Reid felt a stab to his heart. So he had just been imagining her feelings. How stupid he was.
“I’m telling you, it’s too much of a coincidence. I think it was a SAM. Probably shoulder-launched from a couple of miles away. It’s a small plane, and the damage was so severe.”
Reid stopped walking away and came closer to the cracked door.
Mallory let out a long breath. She was in a hospital gown, and he got a good look at her rear end in the sexiest panties he’d ever seen. But then his gaze dropped to the bandages around her thighs. She was hurt. He forced himself not to push into the room and comfort her. He had to find out what she was talking about because right now it sounded like she was talking about a missile, and that didn’t make sense.
“They could have killed him. If he had been on that plane, Ahmed, I don’t think I could handle it. You know how much I love him. Find out who did this, and I swear they won’t take another breath.”
Reid blinked in complete shock. Mallory’s voice wasn’t her own. She was hard, vengeful, and she was protecting him. She loved
him
? She was worried about
him
?
Mallory tried to control her emotions, but she was having a very difficult time. The more she analyzed the plane accident, the more she knew it wasn’t an accident at all. Someone had tried to kill the man she loved.
“I’ll do what I can. You need to keep your emotions in check. Keep your cover,” Ahmed mentored.
“Screw my cover. I will find them and take them out, slowly. Trying to kill me is one thing, but no one touches Reid,” Mallory said through clenched teeth.
“Do you think it could be your father or Ambrose?”
“I don’t know. It has to do with our time in Stromia. It has to.”
“Have you talked to Bowie?”
“No. Bowie’s the only other person besides you who knows about Reid, and that makes him a suspect. I don’t know why he would do this, but I won’t discount it either. You’re the only one I can trust. Just look into it and call me on the phone you gave me. I’m getting out of the hospital soon and will manage to talk myself onto the scene. I’ll send you pictures. If there’s shrapnel piercing the fuselage from the outside, then I have my answer. I just need a quick look to confirm it wasn’t an accident.”
“I’ll put Nabi on it. He’ll ferret any information out. If this has to do with the assassination, then you better be careful. Your cover may already be blown.”
“I know. But I’m more concerned with Reid at the moment.”
“Keep me updated. I’ll drive down if you need me. Right now, Nabi and I will work the back channels to see what we can find out. Stay safe.”
“Thanks, Ahmed.”
Mallory hung up the phone and let out a deep breath. Her mind was going a mile a minute, working on scenarios and running through suspects. She turned around to finish her treatment and stopped dead. “Reid,” she whispered.
He was standing with his arms folded across his chest, and by the way he was staring at her, she knew he’d heard enough of the phone call that she wouldn’t be able to lie her way out of it. Finally he shook his head as if coming out of a trance.
“I think it’s time we talked. Now.”