I scream as Javier's fist comes comes crashing across Logan's mouth, knocking his head sideways with a thud. Javier hoots and shakes his hand. "Dios mio, Papi! You got a jaw like a fuckin brick wall!" His goons cackle at his joke as Logan turns and spits blood on the floor.
"Logan!" I start to jump up from my chair when one of the big guys shoves me back down. Javier hoots out another laugh and turns back to Logan. "You know, I take it back. I might just learn to enjoy smackin you around with her here watching it."
He cracks his fist across Logan's face again, and the sound of his grunt tears at me like someone ripping my heart out.
"So how about it, cabrón. You gonna go fight who I tell you to fight next week? We learn our lesson yet?"
Logan grimaces and shakes his head before he looks up, blood trickling from his lip as he grins like a crazy person at Javier. "You know what? I'm actually having a hard time with the first part of the assignment if you wouldn't mind going back over it."
Javier shakes his head slowly before he turns to me. "Your boyfriend's a funny man, you know." He whirls and slugs Logan in the gut with his fist, and I can feel the sharp jolt of anger pounding inside of me.
"Don't watch, Quinn." Logan's looking right at me, his mouth bleeding as he shakes his head. "Look away, just-"
Bam. Javier's fist crashes into his gut again, doubling him up as much as the ropes tying him will allow. I cry out, wincing and turning my head as if hit myself. And it's then that I notice my bag sitting on the ground next to my chair, my medical supply bag from the plane.
"How about now, Papi? How's my fuckin tutoring going with that little problem you're having with the lesson?" Javier back-hands Logan sharply across the face, and suddenly, it's like something is snapping inside of me. It's a slow burn, and at first I just think it's the fear and helplessness of the situation tightening inside of me. But slowly, the burn grows hotter and hotter, and suddenly I realize that the emotion clawing up from somewhere deep inside of me is rage.
And there's another emotion I'm suddenly realizing as I flinch again at the sound of Javier hitting Logan. Because it's right then in that dingy room that I recognize the emotion totally consuming every fiber of my being for the man bound, beaten, and yet not broken in the chair across from me.
And I recognize it as love.
The burn flares inside of me, and I'm suddenly filled with purpose. Fiery, blazing hot and steely purpose.
Javier's fist connects once more with Logan before he whistled and steps away, shaking his fist. "Goddamn, Irish! We shoulda done this years ago!" He turns and steps towards me, moving closer and closer as he brings a handkerchief out of his pocket and starts to wipe the blood off his knuckles. Blood from the man I love.
The man I love.
"You know, chica, a lot of Papas bring toys home to their little girls from business trips." He puts his hands on the arms of my chair and leans right down close to my face. "Too bad your daddy brought you back such a broken one."
And that's when I snap.
In the medical field, you always hear stories of people taking on almost super-human abilities in crisis situations, like mothers lifting entire cars off their kids after an accident or something. I'd never believed those stories, but that was before that exact moment. Because in that moment, I move faster than I could have ever imagined.
Or Javier, for that matter.
It's like the whole world except me goes into slow motion as my hand jabs down into my medical bag to the side of my chair. My fingers push through gauze and wrappers and and bandages until they touch cold steel and lock around it. And before my brain can really process what I'm doing, I'm yanking my hand back out of the bag and sinking the surgical blade deep into the side of Javier's neck.
And that's when all hell breaks loose.
Javier screams as he clutches at his neck and falls back onto the floor, blood gushing out from his fingers. Both of his goons look frozen to the spot, and just start to scream at him while Logan starts yelling my name.
I'm froze for half a second, drowning in the surging chaos of the moment around me before I stand from my chair.
"STOP!" The room goes silent at my scream. The two goons whirl on me with guns drawn, and Logan strains at his ropes. But for some reason, I've never been more focused in my life.
"I'm a doctor," I say evenly, leveling my gaze at the two men with guns. "And I've just cut his artery." I glance down to Javier, choking and sputtering and holding his neck on the floor. "He has one minute until he goes under. Two before he bleeds out entirely."
One of the two guards cocks his pistol and my eyes dart to his. "And I'm pretty fucking sure I'm the only one here who knows how to fix that!"
The room goes still like a frozen scene from a movie.
"Untie him, now." I say, my eyes blazing fire at the two goons. They quickly turn to each other and shrug and I feel my fists clench tight. "Now, motherfuckers!"
One turns and gives me a quick nod before he goes over and and starts to cut away the ropes holding Logan, who looks up at me with this wild grin on his face.
"I like this side of you, Doc." He mumbles out, grimacing as he tries to grin.
"I'm working on it." I toss him the cell-phone from my bag. "Now figure out how to call the cops while I save this piece of shit's life."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I don't remember making the phone call at all, but I'm on the floor and barely conscious when they come for us. I'm aware of the flashing lights, the cops with guns drawn, and Javier's two guys being shoved against a wall and cuffed. Medical personal swarm over Javier, who looks pale lying in a puddle of blood on the floor. But then they're hooking him up to a respirator and loading him up onto a stretcher, and they're not covering him with a sheet, so it looks like Quinn actually managed to stop the piece of shit from bleeding out.
I can't pretend I'd have done the same in her shoes.
I peer up as another group of EMTs start to load me up onto a stretcher of my own. ‘Tallahassee Emergency Medical Response' is says on the their jackets. I realize I've never been to Florida before, and the thought that this is my first trip here has me almost laughing and mumbling something about "beating the lines at Disneyworld" before I realize I might be in way worse shape than I even think I am. The world starts to fade a little at the corners as I trying to cling to consciousness, and suddenly I'm glancing wildly around, trying to look for her.
Quinn.
"Hey, hey. Keep still, pal, don't move aroun-"
"Quinn!" I'm pushing their hands away from me and struggling to sit up before my head swims and I drop back down to the stretcher with a grimace. Quinn.
But then she's just there, leaning over me as as they wheel me out of the concrete room and into the steaming heat of the night as we wheel towards an ambulance. Her face is tight and there are tears in her eyes as she clutches at my hands.
"I thought we said no hospitals?" I mumble out, trying to grin and hoping it doesn't look too horrible with the state I'm sure my face is in right then.
But she's choking out a laugh. "You used up all my band-aids, dummy." She says, the tears starting to run down her cheeks.
"Hey, hey, I'm gonna be fine you know." I wince as the stretcher hits the side of the ambulance and the EMT guys lift me up and into the back.
Quinn starts to jump up after me, but one of them stops her. "Ma'am, I'm sorry bu-"
"I'm his Doctor, and I'm coming with him." Her voice is bold, firm, and demonstrably confident in a way I realize I've never actually heard from her before, and the thought makes me smile.
The EMT nods curtly. "Of course, Doctor," he says, stepping aside and letting her into the ambulance.
"You're completely nuts, you know that, right Doc?" I mumble out, grimacing as I try to smile at her through my bruised up face as she slides next to me and takes my hand.
"I love you. You know know that, right Marine?"
The words hit me harder than any punch ever has, and the lasting glow exploding through my body better than any win, better than any adrenaline high I've ever had. Her hand squeezes mine and it feels like the whole world is just dropping away into the background, leaving just me and her, and nothing else matters.
"I love you too, darlin."
She sniffs back a tear, and then she's cupping my face gently in her hand as she kisses me. And I know it should hurt, and I know I should be in pain right now.
But then again, it seems I'm not very good at doing what I should when it comes to her.
Chapter Thirty
Quinn
The aftermath of Florida was actually less messy than you would've thought. Especially so when you considering the implications of a plane from Cuba landing without authorization outside Tallahassee, of Logan refusing to tell anyone in the hospital his name, and with me almost killing someone. And the cleanup from all of that was thanks to someone I'd have thought as possibly the most unlikely candidate in the world.
If anyone could've taken a picture of my face when Peyton walked into that E.R. room in Florida, it probably would've broken the camera. I remember glaring at her, my jealousy bubbling to the surface even with everything that'd just happened, including the "I love you" part.