Diego’s dark gaze jumped to him, intelligence there. Recognizing all the trips to the swamps when Rubin had gone alone after their missions. When more and more the laughter had faded and there were no more smiles, not even around Wyatt’s little girls—and the three mischievous triplets could make anyone smile.
“Rubin,” Diego began cautiously.
“All those boys, Diego,” Rubin said. “Those kids. No matter what I do, I can’t save them all. I think about their families. Their mothers, what I would have to say to them if I was facing them and they were asking me why I couldn’t save their son when I saved the one next to him. Holding their hands, looking into their eyes.”
There was anguish in his heart. In his voice. The weight of those soldiers he lost pressing down on him, haunting him until he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t find a way to make it right in his mind.
“Imagine having a gift like Mama’s. Like mine. Having such a powerful gift and never being able to use it. You’re compelled to use it, but you can’t. You have the knowledge and even the medical training, but you can’t. That would be the epitome of living in hell. Worse than Mama’s hell. My hell.”
Rubin turned his dark eyes on Jonquille. She shook her head and refused to look at him.
“You did go to the conferences to see if someone could help you. But you’re too good, too careful to get caught. No one saw you. You wore that mesh clothing that concealed you. You saw them. You caught them watching me, didn’t you, Jonquille? You knew I was in trouble. You decided, like my team, like my brother, that I was more important than you.”
He didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He detested the way everyone became his bodyguard, his shield, throwing up a protective safeguard around him whether he wanted it or not. He had made it clear over and over that he certainly didn’t want it, but his wishes never changed anything.
She inclined her head. Just barely.
“You knew they would be coming here, so you took it upon yourself to get set so you could kill them, didn’t you?”
Jonquille glanced at Diego and again her nod was barely perceptible.
“And then you planned to suicide, didn’t you?”
She pressed her lips together, her gaze shifting away from his. She looked at the floor. “If they didn’t kill me, I would have, yes.” Her voice was very low. “I have no future, Rubin. You do. There’s no help for me. The things Whitney did to me make it impossible for me to have human contact. I can’t live like this anymore. I thought I could take out the team trying to acquire you, at least do something before I died. But then you had to come early. You were here so fast and I didn’t expect to be so …” She broke off, shaking her head, looking at her hands.
There was silence after her confession. Rubin could barely think. He forced air in and out of his lungs, letting the night sounds and the air remove the anger from his system. Part of his temper had been fear. Jonquille was the woman meant for him and she had been about to sacrifice her life for him. He would have lost her like he’d lost everyone else. One by one. It was why he held so tight to Diego. To Ezekiel, Mordichai and Malichai, his foster family. He wasn’t about to lose them.
“We’re going to come up with a different plan, one that involves you living. Staying with me. With us. Finding a way to make it work. I don’t want to hear any negative crap from either of you. We’re going to do this. So, unless you can come up with solutions, don’t bother to say anything. I’m already pissed about the lies, Jonquille.”
Jonquille leaned toward Diego. “Is he always like that?”
Diego nodded. “You may as well get used to it. He doesn’t get pissed often, but when he does, he’s like a freight train and just mows down everything in his path. Just go along with him, there’s no other way. No use fighting him. How many in this team coming after him? How close behind you are they?”
“I made certain they got wind that you and Rubin were coming here but early. Like in the next couple of weeks. I didn’t think you’d be even close to coming yet. There are a lot of soldiers and they have heavy equipment with them, which slows them down. I caught a glimpse of it on one of the roads the last place I camped. One is clearly the leader and he hangs back and gives all the orders. They have new weapons. I got up on them several times, although they guard those weapons pretty carefully. They’re getting more and more careless though.”
Diego was quiet a moment, turning that over. “How good are they in the woods?”
“They’re not bad. Nothing to write home about. I can follow their tracks easily. The bad news is, they have access to a drone. The leader likes to put that drone in the air all the time. The good news is, here in the mountains, any stranger is instantly noticed. I haven’t seen any indication that they’re here yet. If they are, they haven’t found a way to move around under the radar, and that’s slowing them down. They wouldn’t just want to kill everyone because you would instantly pick up on that.”
That was true. Strangers never went unnoticed. Rubin was a little shocked that Jonquille hadn’t been spotted. That was part of the reason he had been so certain she was every bit as good as Diego in the woods. If she wasn’t, someone would have known she was using the Campo cabin, and they would have left signs for Rubin and Diego to warn them.
“Maybe the best plan would be to see the patients ahead of time while we decide where we’re going to meet this team, Diego,” Rubin said. “If we see the patients, that gives us the freedom to leave and lead them away from here. We don’t want any civilians to get hurt. They can’t take anyone hostage that way.”
“Or we could skip seeing patients altogether,” Diego suggested. “Head back to Louisiana and call in members of the team to meet up with us to escort us in.”
“I’m not skipping seeing my patients if I have the time,” Rubin said. “There aren’t that many and they count on me. We’re early. I can get started tomorrow morning. Jonquille, have you seen these men in action?”
“Not the men. Just the weapons. They’re pretty badass. Scary badass. A couple of the weapons could tear up the mountain.”
“What would a lightning strike hitting precisely on the weapon do to it?”
She sighed. “Don’t start. I told you I can’t direct lightning bolts.”
“You can’t. I can,” Rubin admitted.
Her gaze jumped to his. “You can? How? That’s impossible.” But her voice didn’t sound as if she believed it was impossible. She was interested—even excited, but trying not to be. “Whitney really did pair us, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“If Whitney really paired you,” Diego said, “then this team of terrorists or whoever they are aren’t the only ones who are going to be coming after you. Whitney likes to test his pairs. He’s done it every single time. He has to know you’ve gone to the conferences on using lightning as a weapon, Jonquille. Even if he can’t put a virus or a tracker in you, he would know that’s your only hope. In order to be a match for Rubin, you have to be equally intelligent, which means you’d seek out answers. You’d go to those conferences. He’d have someone watching. He most likely even knows about this terrorist cell hunting Rubin.”