The Complete Mackenzies Collection Read online

  But the shocks had kept arriving, one piling on top of the other. The surgeon came out of the cubicle, his green paper gown stained red with her blood. “Your wife regained consciousness briefly,” he’d said. “She wasn’t completely lucid, but she asked about the baby. Do you know how far along she is?”

  Chance had literally staggered and braced his hand against the wall for support. “She’s pregnant?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I see.” The surgeon immediately switched gears. “I think she must have just found out. We’ll do some tests and take all the precautions we can. We’re taking her up to surgery now. A nurse will show you where to wait.” He strode away, paper gown flapping.

  Zane had turned to Chance, his pale blue eyes laser sharp. “Yours?” he asked briefly.

  “Yes.”

  Zane didn’t ask if he was certain, for which Chance was grateful. Zane took it for granted Chance wouldn’t be mistaken about something that important.

  Pregnant? How? He pinched the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. He knew how. He remembered with excruciating clarity how it felt to climax inside her without the protective sheath of a condom dulling the sensation. It had happened twice—just twice—but once was enough.

  A couple of little details clicked into place. He’d been around pregnant women most of his life, with first one sister-in-law and then another producing a little Mackenzie. He knew the symptoms well. He remembered Sunny’s sleepiness this afternoon, and her insistence on buying the beets. Those damn pickled beets, he thought; her craving for them—for he was certain now that was why she’d wanted them—had saved his life. Sometimes the weird cravings started almost immediately. He could remember when Shea, Michael’s wife, had practically wiped that section of Wyoming clean of canned tuna, a full week before she missed her first period. The sleepiness began soon in a pregnancy, too.

  He knew the exact day when he’d gotten her pregnant. It had been the second time he’d made love to her, lying on the blanket in the late afternoon heat. The baby would be born about the middle of May…if Sunny lived.

  She had to live. He couldn’t face the alternative. He loved her too damn much to even think it. But he had seen the bullet wound in her right side, and he was terrified.

  “Do you want me to call Mom and Dad?” Zane asked.

  They would drop everything and come immediately if he said yes, Chance knew. The whole family would; the hospital would be inundated with Mackenzies. Their support was total, and unquestioning.

  He shook his head. “No. Not yet.” His voice was raw, as if he had been screaming, though he would have sworn all his screams had been held inside. If Sunny…if the worst happened, he would need them then. Right now he was still holding together. Just.

  So he walked, and Zane walked with him. Zane had seen a lot of bullet wounds, too; he’d taken his share. Chance was the lucky one; he’d been cut a few times, but never shot.

  God, there had been so much blood. How had she stayed upright for so long? She had answered questions, said she was all right, even walked around a little before one of the men had found that bucket for her to sit on. It was dark, she had a blanket wrapped around her—that was why no one had noticed. But she should have been on the ground, screaming in pain.

  Zane’s thoughts were running along the same path. “I’m always amazed,” he said, “at what some people can do after being shot.”

  Contrary to what most people thought, a bullet wound, even a fatal one, didn’t necessarily knock the victim down. All cops knew that even someone whose heart had been virtually destroyed by a bullet could still attack and kill them, and die only when his oxygen-starved brain died. Someone crazed on drugs could absorb a truly astonishing amount of damage and keep on fighting. On the other side of the spectrum were those who suffered relatively minor wounds and went down as if they had been poleaxed, then screamed unceasingly until they reached the hospital and were given enough drugs to quiet them. It was pure mind over matter, and Sunny had a will like titanium. He only hoped she applied that will to surviving.

  It was almost six hours before the tired surgeon approached, the six longest hours of Chance’s life. The surgeon looked haggard, and Chance felt the icy claw of dread. No. No—

  “I think she’s going to make it,” the surgeon said, and smiled a smile of such pure personal triumph that Chance knew there had been a real battle in the O.R. “I had to remove part of the liver and resection her small intestine. The wound to the liver is what caused the extensive hemorrhage. We had to replace almost her complete blood volume before we got things under control.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “It was touch and go for a while. Her blood pressure bottomed out and she went into cardiac arrest, but we got her right back. Her pupil response is normal, and her vitals are satisfactory. She was lucky.”

  “Lucky,” Chance echoed, still dazed by the combination of good news and the litany of damage.

  “It was only a fragment of a bullet that hit her. There must have been a ricochet.”

  Chance knew she hadn’t been hit while he’d had her flattened in the creek. It had to have happened when she knocked him aside and Darnell fired. Evidently Darnell had missed, and the bullet must have struck a rock in the creek and fragmented.

  She had been protecting him. Again.

  “She’ll be in ICU for at least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight, until we see if there’s a secondary infection. I really think we have things under control, though.” He grinned. “She’ll be out of here in a week.”

  Chance sagged against the wall, bending over to clasp his knees. His head swam. Zane’s hard hand gripped his shoulder, lending his support. “Thank you,” Chance said to the doctor, angling his head so he could see him.

  “Do you need to lie down?” the doctor asked.

  “No, I’m all right. God! I’m great. She’s going to be okay!”

  “Yeah,” said the doctor, and grinned again.

  Sunny kept surfacing to consciousness, like a float bobbing up and down in the water. At first her awareness was fragmented. She could hear voices in the distance, though she couldn’t make out any words, and a soft beeping noise. She was also aware of something in her throat, though she didn’t realize it was a tube. She had no concept of where she was, or even that she was lying down.

  The next time she bobbed up, she could feel smooth cotton beneath her and recognized the fabric as sheets.

  The next time she managed to open her eyes a slit, but her vision was blurry and what seemed like a mountain of machinery made no sense to her.

  At some point she realized she was in a hospital. There was pain, but it was at a distance. The tube was gone from her throat now. She vaguely remembered it being removed, which hadn’t been pleasant, but her sense of time was so confused that she thought she remembered the tube being there after it was removed. People kept coming into the small space that was hers, turning on bright lights, talking and touching her and doing intimate things to her.

  Gradually her dominion over her body began to return, as she fought off the effects of anesthesia and drugs. She managed to make a weak gesture toward her belly, and croak out a single word. “Baby?”

  The intensive care nurse understood. “Your baby’s fine,” he said, giving her a comforting pat, and she was content.

  She was horribly thirsty. Her next word was “Water,” and slivers of ice were put in her mouth.

  With the return of consciousness, though, came the pain. It crept ever nearer as the fog of drugs receded. The pain was bad, but Sunny almost welcomed it, because it meant she was alive, and for a while she had thought she might not be.

  She saw the nurse named Jerry the most often. He came into the cubicle, smiling as usual, and said, “There’s someone here to see you.”

  Sunny violently shook her head, which was a mistake. It set off waves of agony that swamped the drugs holding them at bay. “No visitors,” she managed to say.

  It seemed as if she spent days, eons, in the inten