Beau ran forward just as Ari opened her eyes. “Ari?” he asked tentatively.
Ari’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how she did it, but she saved us both and I felt the presence of our child. It was so powerful. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt in my life. In that moment I knew everything would be all right. Please, Beau, you must see to her now. You can’t let that monster take her. I couldn’t bear it if she traded her life for me and my child.”
Jenna roused long enough to lift her head, though it was obvious she barely had the strength to do so.
“You must get her to the hospital to be monitored at once,” Jenna said weakly. “I did what I could to satisfy Jesus’s demand, but your child is fine and so too will Ari be. I swear it on my life.”
“Thank you,” Beau choked out.
Jenna looked up at the others, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then her gaze found Isaac’s and he nearly fell to his knees, because her expression was one of goodbye. “I’ll always love you,” she said in a low voice. “Be the reason I can endure anything. Stay alive.”
Then Jesus appeared above her and Isaac wanted to bring down hell on him and every last minion in his devil’s army, but they were in a losing proposition and they knew it. The only ace in the hole they had was Ramie and if they did anything to fuck that up now, Jenna would die, they’d all die, and it would have been for nothing.
“Touching. I think I may have felt a tear,” Jesus sneered. “Now get the fuck away,” he said, waving his gun as his men gathered to reinforce the threat.
Isaac and the others had no choice but to back down as Beau cradled Ari in his arms and ran for the waiting ambulance.
“I believe I kept my end of the bargain,” Jesus sneered at Jenna.
She nodded tiredly. “Yes, and now I will honor mine.”
As he turned, his men still facing down Isaac and the rest of DSS, he threw Jenna over his shoulder and strode rapidly into the distance, where a helicopter waited to fly him—and Jenna—away.
Isaac turned as Jesus’s men began melting away and making their escape, looking desperately for Ramie.
“Ramie!” he screamed. “God—please, Ramie, you have to help me. Can you touch something of hers so we know where to look for her? I have the light sweater she brought with her to the restaurant but left on the chair when she went to the bathroom.”
Caleb didn’t even argue. He knew that they all owed Jenna a price they could never repay. He looked anxiously to his wife for answers, but her expression was devastated as tears sliced down her cheeks.
She looked up at Isaac with so much regret that Isaac felt dead to his soul.
“I can’t use my powers yet,” she said urgently, as if trying to make him understand. “All I ever know is what’s happening right here and now, and we know where they are now. They’re in a helicopter. I can’t tell the future and if I did attempt to use my powers now, I’d be too drained to use them again later, when they’d actually do us good and I could then tell you where they have her.”
Isaac completely lost it. His men tried to hold him back, tried to calm him, but he was adrift, with no anchor and no way to find the woman who meant more to him than life itself. Having to wait for God only knew how long, while Jenna endured hell just so they could locate her and then start to mount a rescue that might be too late, was more than he could bear.
TWENTY-NINE
EVERY DSS agent, as well as Tori, Ramie and Gracie, gathered in Dane’s private impenetrable fortress, where he’d taken Tori for her protection. Beau and Ari were heavily guarded by Ari’s father, Gavin Rochester, a very powerful, wealthy man with a shadowy past and vast connections. He had offered his services to Beau for the rescue mission that would be mounted as soon as Ramie was able to pinpoint Jenna’s location.
Dane was busy on the phone as well, calling in every marker he’d meticulously collected during his long years in security—and the man had an astonishing number of people that shocked the hell out of Isaac.
Then there was Wade Sterling, Eliza’s husband, who before marrying Eliza was just as steeped in gray and questionable business practices as Gavin Rochester used to be. He unapologetically offered the full power of his resources, uncaring if DSS knew or found out about them. He kept nothing from his wife, and while she wasn’t happy to have her husband’s dirty laundry aired in front of her coworkers, she wasn’t about to interfere when Jenna’s life was at stake.
Not after she’d done so much to save every single one of the people Eliza cared about so much and had once been willing to sacrifice everything for. She recognized a kindred spirit in Jenna and remembered well the horrific choice she’d been forced to make when she believed her teammates’—her family’s—lives were on the line.
Tempers were edgy and emotions were running high, and an argument immediately broke out when Eliza told Dane and Wade in no uncertain terms that she was not being left out of the mission to save Jenna. Especially since Wade was going with a contingent of his best men. She’d stubbornly set her foot down and while Isaac would have normally sided with Dane and Wade when it came to Eliza’s safety, given that she still wasn’t back on full duty with DSS, at this point he was grateful to have her support. There was no one else he’d rather have at his back than this tenacious, extremely loyal woman.
He was humbled and grateful at the outpouring of unconditional help from so many different areas when many otherwise wouldn’t be so forthcoming about exposing their connections or the gray areas of their past. But for Jenna, not a single person stood on pride, and they opened their lives to the scrutiny and knowledge of the others.
There was trust involved in those offers, and Isaac knew that he could ask for no better men or women to support him in getting back the woman he loved with every piece of his heart and soul.
He checked his watch, swearing in frustration. Though it had seemed a lifetime since Jesus had taken off with Isaac’s entire life in that damn helicopter, it had in fact been only a few hours. Every DSS agent and those connected with the DSS family had pooled their resources in a record amount of time and Dane was still on the phone arranging what sounded like a full-scale military operation from a highly secretive special ops group, though which branch of the armed services they served under was a mystery to Isaac. That was if they even officially existed.