the one she’d heard all her life. She wanted the time they had left to be special. “Tell me exactly what the doctor told you.”
“There’s a big word.” Her mother waved her hand. “All it means is the cancer moved from my breast to my brain.”
Carolina released a heavy breath. “Metastatic?”
“Maybe.” Her mother spun around, holding up the dress. Then stumbled.
“What does Dr. Laster want to do?”
“Oh...stuff.” Mamá staggered to the sofa. “Not again.”
Carolina pushed out of the chair. “What’s wrong?”
“Maldición.” Her mother collapsed, holding her head. Her eyes filled with tears.
Carolina shot over to her mother. “Are you all right?”
“Headache.” Blood dripped from her mother’s nose.
“Mamá!” Carolina snatched up tissues and pressed them under her nose as her mother tipped her head back.
“How often does this happen?” Carolina grabbed more tissues.
“Headaches? Daily.” Her mother pinched her nose and moaned. “Bloody noses? Off and on.”
This was bad. “What can I do?”
“Shut the blinds.” Her mother sank into the pillows, closing her eyes. “Medicine. In the bathroom.”
Carolina ran around the room, pulling the blinds. Her mother winced at each clank. Dashing up the stairs, she stared at the bottles lining the bathroom counter. One after the other, she picked them up until she found one that talked about headaches. Shaking out a pill, she took the stairs two at a time and headed to the kitchen. After sniffing the milk, she poured a glass and hurried to her mother’s side. “Here you are.”
“Milk?” her mother waved her hand at the glass. “I want water. Or better yet, wine.”
“This is better for your stomach.” She helped her mother sit, forcing her to take the pill with the milk.
Mamá sank back, her fingers pushing into her temples.
Her mother hadn’t been faking. She was sick.
* * *
“AGENT CORNELL?” someone called. “Agent Cornell?”
Sage’s foot jerked from something poking his instep. He waved his hand, hoping whomever kept waking him would go away.
His hand wouldn’t move. What the...?
He forced his eyelids open, though grit sealed them together. Light drilled behind his eyes like a steer’s horn. His head pounded with each beat of his heart. Damn. Even his teeth hurt. “Turn. Light. Off.”
“You’re back.” A woman in nausea-inducing pink scrubs patted his leg. She ignored his request. “Hopefully, for good this time. Happy Labor Day.”
“Back?” he croaked. An antiseptic smell invaded his nose. Hell. He was in a hospital. “Labor Day?”
She brought a cup with a straw to his mouth. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days.”
The water eased the dryness. Damn—two days? What had happened?
The nurse puttered near his bedside.
He lifted his hand but it wouldn’t move. “What the—?”
She unstrapped his hand. “I don’t think you need these anymore.”
“Why?” He pushed the word out. Exhaustion closed in on him like a tornado across the prairie.
“You pulled out your IV. And catheter.” She moved around the bed and released his other hand. “We couldn’t have that.” She checked his blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs. He could barely sit up for her. And when he did, he swore his head would explode.
“Do you think you could eat?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure he could hold a fork. “Sure.” “I’ll order food.” She made notes on a computer. “There’s another agent who’s been waiting for you to wake. I’ll call him.”
Sage closed his eyes. If he didn’t move, his headache receded—a bit. He slowly raised his hand. Lifting his arm had him gritting his teeth and moaning. Bandages. Covering the left side of his head. Yet he couldn’t remember how he’d been hurt.
Shoes squeaked on the floor. “Pain?”
“Oh, yeah.” If he could call a cattle stampede in his head pain.
The nurse clicked away on a computer. “You have standing orders for meds when you wake. I’ll be right back.”
The door squeaked as it opened and closed.
He focused on the pain as it pulsed with his heartbeat. Each beat was an ice pick in his head. He counted. Got to four hundred and eighty-three before the door squeaked again. The nurse bustled back into the room, a syringe in her hand. She pushed the meds into his IV. “That should help.”
Warmth ran up his arm from the IV site. He should be asking what she’d given him. He should be asking her name. He should be asking what the hell happened. But words wouldn’t move from his brain to his lips. Too much effort.
Sage’s body melted into the thin mattress.
He must have slept, because when he cracked his eyes open, Kaden was sitting next to his bed working on a laptop.
Sage grunted.
“How’re you feeling?” Kaden asked.
He swore.
“That good?”
“What happened?” Sage shifted and the pain in his head didn’t roar to life. The meds must have taken it down a bit.
“What do you remember?” Kaden asked.
“Woods.” Sage remembered crouching in the woods. “Mosquitoes. Friggin’ sweat.” He frowned. Pain drilled behind his eyes. “They’d opened a window, so I wanted to find out how many perps. Dog. There was a dog.”
“Anything else?”
His memory was blurry. “Did the dog attack me?”
“Yeah.” Kaden got up and paced. “Bullmastiff. Over a hundred pounds.”
Sage touched his head. Two days unconscious? “This is from a dog?”
“Well, a dog and a bullet.”
“I took a bullet?” Sage cursed.
“It winged you.” Kaden’s gray eyes narrowed. “The
