Page 33 of Deserving Maisy
“Maybe we should take you to see a doctor.”
“I’m okay,” he told her.
Maisy sighed in frustration against him, her warm breath gliding over his chest. “It shouldn’t still hurt,” she told him.
“If the headache is still there in a week, I’ll go. Okay?”
She immediately nodded against him. “Okay. Promise?”
“I don’t make promises I don’t keep,” he reassured her. He played with the ring on her finger as it lay on his chest.
A minute or two went by before she spoke again. “You really love me?” she asked quietly.
Jack didn’t know why she sounded so surprised. “Yes.”
“But you just met me.”
He frowned at that. “Not really. I mean, we were married before I lost my memory, and it’s obvious my soul recognized yours. I might not remember what we did day in and day out, but a love like ours obviously can’t be held back by something as trivial as memory loss.”
“I’m going to do right by you,” Maisy said solemnly. “I’ve made mistakes. Huge ones, but I’m going to make this right if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Shhhh,” Jack soothed, not liking the distress he heard in her voice. “Sleep,Stellina. Tomorrow you’ll have your meeting at the bank, then we’ll find a realtor who can helpus apartment search. We have the rest of our lives to figure things out.”
“I love you, Jack. I do.”
The words settled into his soul. Jack kissed her forehead before closing his eyes.
He had no idea how long he’d been asleep or what had woken him up, but one moment he was sleeping peacefully, and the next, his eyes popped open and he stared not at the ceiling of his and Maisy’s room, but at a dark, dank metal box. He heard the sounds of yelling and moans, and his heart began to race.
“Stone? You okay? Hang in there, buddy! We’re not dying here, you hear me? We aren’t! The Army’s coming for us. They wouldn’t leave two of the best Night Stalkers here to die. Don’t you give up on me, Stone!”
After blinking several times, the dark cell gave way to the comfortable room he’d shared with Maisy for the last two weeks. The overhead light was still on, and Maisy snored lightly in his arms. Jack was covered in sweat and his head was pounding so hard it hurt to even breathe.
What the hell had he just dreamed?Wasit a dream? The crazy thing was that he knew the person speaking was someone named Owl. But he had no idea who Stone was. Nothing in the dream made sense.
Closing his eyes, Jack did his best to slow down his breathing and heart rate.
It was a nightmare, nothing else.
Deep down, he suspected it was much more. But he couldn’t think about it right now, instinctively knowing if he did, his head would literally burst. So instead, he counted Maisy’s breaths. Concentrated on the feel of the puffs of air from her exhalations against his bare skin.Inhaled the smell of sex and apples that permeated the air and bed. Listened to the faint sound of vehicles outside the house. Licked his lips and tasted Maisy’s musk from when he’d eaten her pussy earlier, before they’d had sex.
Swallowing hard, Jack allowed himself to fade back into an uneasy sleep. This time when he dreamed, it was of a beautiful mountainside filled with trees, cabins interspersed throughout the forest, laughter, the smell of food cooking, and a cow mooing impatiently from inside a big red barn. It felt peaceful, and it calmed him into a restful sleep.
“I can’t believe we haven’t found anything!” Owl said as he ran a hand through his hair in agitation.
Brick wasn’t happy either, but he had to be the voice of reason here, otherwise Owl would go off the deep end. It had been two weeks since Stone’s kidnapping. And since then, there hadn’t been any sign of where he’d been taken—or by whom.
Lara had gone over and over what had happened in that hangar in Seattle, and nothing she could remember had given them any clues as to where Stone could be. She had given them a pretty good description of the man who’d taken him, as well as the car, but she hadn’t been able to catch a license plate number. And without that, they were as much in the dark as they’d been when they’d started. They knew a serial killer had hired a man to kidnap Lara, and that man had sold Stone. And that was about it. Both the serial killer and his hired hand were dead, taking any secrets to their graves with them.
The surveillance cameras at the regional airport hadn’t been working, and the one camera that had caught the car leaving the hangar was too far away to be able to read the plate.
Stone had disappeared into thin air, and there hadn’t been any clues as to where he could be. And Owl, his former Army Night Stalker partner and fellow prisoner of war, was on the verge of completely losing it.
“I can’t believe that with the best people on this—Tex, that Elizabeth woman he works with, even Ry the supposed computer genius—we can’t find hide nor hair of him! He has to be out there somewhere, Brick! And he’s probably wondering why the hell we haven’t come for him. We need to find him.Now!”
“I know, Owl. And we’re trying.”
Owl crumpled into a chair at the table in the smaller conference room at the main lodge at The Refuge. “Wehaveto find him,” he said in despair. “I can’t bear to think of what he’s going through. It makes no sense. Who would’ve taken him? And why? If they haven’t asked for a ransom, why kidnap him?”
