Mission: Impossible to Deny (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 7), Jacki Delecki [polar express read aloud .TXT] 📗

get her brain to fire. There was a connectivity lapse like slow Wi-Fi. White drapes, antiseptic smell, beeping sounds, the shuffle of feet, and shouts of voices. She was still in the emergency room.

A memory flashed of a fist meeting her face before she woke up in an ambulance. He’d used his car to jerk her neck like a rubber band, then she’d slammed her head into the airbag and then into the headrest. As if that wasn’t enough, the asswipe had knocked her out after t-boning her. Staggering out of the SUV, she’d been unable to react fast enough to defend herself before she hit the cement.

 “You’re awake?” A deep bass voice startled her. She lurched toward the sound, causing blinding agony. She was definitely off her game if she hadn’t noticed the enormous man sitting next to her bed. Her head hurt like a son of a gun.

“I’m Nick Jenkins.”

“Reeves?” Her voice cracked with the emotion clogging her throat. All the terror of the minutes watching Reeves have seizures came back in awful precision. “Is he … ”

She didn’t want to imagine the world without Reeves. Her world without him. He couldn’t be dead. She would feel it, wouldn’t she?

“Kidnapped.”

Darcy shot upright, ignoring the twirling room, the atomic pain in her head, and the acute throbbing in her arm. She gazed down at the splint keeping her left arm pinned against her chest. Memories of the ER flashed through her mind. Thank God it was her left shoulder that had been dislocated, not affecting her shooting arm.

“Get me out of here. Now!” she shouted and immediately regretted her rash behavior since the loud decibels pierced like a laser knife to her brain.

“Reeves was poisoned?” She knew the answer and already was rebuking herself. She had allowed her feelings for him to block her judgment. She should have spotted the entire setup as it was going down.

“We’re assuming he was poisoned with cocaine—the same found in Thompson’s body. Which would account for the seizures.”

 She was slow on the uptake from the pain and whatever they gave her to fix her shoulder. She needed caffeine, then she’d be firing on all cylinders. The ambulance wasn’t real, but his seizures were.

She covered her mouth and breathed through her nose to fight the nausea creeping up her throat.

“I let them abduct him. I considered riding with him in the ambulance, but the space was small, and I didn’t want to inhibit their ability to take care of him. I never for one second questioned their legitimacy. A random student called 911. Nothing raised any flags.”

If anything happened to Reeves, she would never recover. “They were completely professional. They gave him oxygen and hooked him up to monitors.” The terrible event replayed in her mind.

“They were real EMTs. We found them gagged and tied up with the ambulance in the Hewlett Packard garage.”

She shoved the blanket down, causing excruciating agony to detonate in her arm. She tugged at the hospital gown that was hitched up to her thighs. She had allowed Reeves to be kidnapped when he couldn’t defend himself.

“Did you pick up Wainwright? The poison has to have been in the scotch. I didn’t have any, but Reeves had a huge amount. Wainwright filled his glass, the bastard.”

“Wainwright also got sick. His assistant found him vomiting and shaky.”

“Someone got into Wainwright’s office and poisoned the scotch?” She rubbed her temples, trying to stop the aching pain that was reverberating like a jackhammer to focus on the problem.

 “Only your team and mine knew about our meeting with Wainwright. We have to stop the local police from touching the evidence. This is a federal case now. I have jurisdiction, and we need to get that scotch out of police custody.”

“Hey, hold up. You aren’t discharged yet.”

“Then get me discharged.” She had to find Reeves before they tortured him and then shot him point-blank.

“You have a concussion and a dislocated shoulder and possibly a broken nose. Your boss, the director, has already made it clear that this is a CIA operation with Jenkins Security.”

“Get this fucking rail down.” Her hands shook as she tried to release the stupid-ass railing. She had cleaned up her swearing when she joined the CIA, but today she didn’t give a flying fuck. Being raised with a pack of wolves and then in the Army had taught her very colorful and clear ways to communicate.

He pushed it easily, lowering the rail. “It might be better if you rested.”

“And would you rest if Emily was missing?” She stopped before she started to roll her eyes, knowing it would hurt like a mother.

“How do you know about Emily?” He glowered over her, all big and burly, his dark eyes piercing hers. And she wasn’t in the least impressed.

“CIA. I know everything about Jenkins Security.” She didn’t admit that she had listened to Reeves’s and his conversation. She also had delved into Jenkins Security to see if they were a front to launder money from Reeves’s side gigs. Security companies run by ex-military were plentiful and didn’t always care about their clients’ real business as long as they got a paycheck and a fix of adrenaline.

She swung her legs, which seemed to be the only part of her body that wasn’t screaming at her. “I didn’t stop them. I let them slam the door and abduct him.”

“You did what any of us would have done. You were attempting to save his life.”

“You can quit the bullshit. We all know his kidnapping is on me. I should have called for backup, put him in a safe house when we found Tex.”

“It isn’t bullshit. I didn’t think it was necessary, and neither did Reeves. He wouldn’t want you second-guessing your decision. I reassured his sister that he was safe. So don’t put all the blame on your little old self. There’s plenty to go around.”

“We can have a pity party later.”

He laughed. “No touchy-feely, huh?”

“Nope. Army and four brothers knock it right out of you.”

“We have