That she witnessed him like this – carnal and primed for the kill – wounded him.
Jack's forearm pressed against Randolph's throat and he waited to hear the distinct crunch that signaled the crushing of the small bones of the neck. Her eyes wide with shock, Livvie stared as he tightened his strangle-hold on Howard Randolph.
Easing back, gazing into Olivia's stunned face, Jack wormed his way into her mind, and saw himself through her eyes. A wild brute, fierce, lustful, without reason or rationale. A creature driven by instincts and the basest desires. One which could kill without conscience or qualm.
The latest model of the Invictus soldier.
Jack remembered when Olivia had promised to love him no matter what. But how could she love a man like that? His heart thundered, the blood burned in his veins, and his muscles collapsed with fatigue. Loosening his grip on Howard Randolph, Jack rolled over onto his back.
The last thing he saw before his eyesight narrowed to a small, dark tunnel was the Judge's florid face hovering over him.
Slater slammed the suspect to the floor and jerked his hands behind him, kneeling hard with his right knee in the center of the man's back. He then tightened the cuffs in a vicious twist. The DLK suspect coughed and sputtered, his throat an angry red blotch.
Warren knelt over Jack, whose face and arms were clammy to the touch. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his body temperature had plummeted. Warren placed two fingers on the carotid artery and felt the pulse, erratic and faint.
From the corner of his eye, he assessed the situation inside the church. The Gant woman sprawled naked on the floor. The Sheriff grabbed the fallen robe, covered her, and gently led her to the row of hard wooden benches. Held her in his arms like she was crystal.
Warren checked Jack's eyes for mydriasis. His pupils were blown, a clear symptom of the overdose. He wasn't a doctor, but he'd seen enough men die that he knew Jack was in trouble. Any moment his internal organs would shut down one by one. The kidneys first, then the circulatory system, and finally cardiac arrest. The distant whine of the ambulance siren reached his ears and he estimated their ETA about five or six minutes.
Not soon enough.
"Bring the damn medeport," he yelled to Myron Higgins.
Higgins, who had hovered in the foyer, scurried over, opened the medical portage unit, and reached for the syringe and the first bottle of serum.
"Straight into the veins," the Judge instructed while Higgins filled the syringe and tapped the raised needle. "Use the neck."
Higgins injected the first vial into the vein at Jack's throat as the Judge prepared the second one. "We'll use the femoral artery for this one."
His assistant looked up in surprise. "Sir, that's a dangerous spot for the injection site."
"Hell, take a good look at him. He's no good to me if I can't bring him completely back. We don't want a goddamn vegetable. We don't have any choice."
Reaching into the medeport box, Higgins pulled out a length of rubber tubing which he wrapped around Jack's thigh, and quickly injected the second antidote. Temporary measure, Warren knew. If Jack didn't get a steady dose of specific drugs in a regimented order, he'd slip into a coma and no amount of miracle workers could bring him back. The third and final injection of this first series was administered into the vein of Jack's right arm.
Warren removed his jacket and tucked it under the unconscious man's head, sat back on his heels and waited. If the Judge was a praying man, he'd likely think of all sorts of fancy bargains to make with God. But sometimes life was a shitty little affair, so he reached for Jack's hand and clasped it firmly in his own.
Then he hunkered down and prayed a little anyway, though he'd given up the notion of God years ago. Couldn't hurt, he told himself, and if it helped… well, it was a small inconvenience. He waited for Jack to snap out of the systemic shutdown of his internal organs.
Warren was peripherally aware of the bustle around him. Two patrol cars arrived a few minutes later with several deputies and federal agents who raced around securing the scene and suspect. Slater took the Gant woman to a patrol car. Howard Randolph was shackled and locked in the back of another car.
The ambulance finally arrived and carted the patient off. By the time they reached the hospital, Jack had begun to recover his color, his breathing stabilized, and his blood pressure normalized. The Judge could tell, however, that the agent was still in a lot of pain, and he knew Jack would need continued medication for at least a week before the recovery journey would begin in earnest.
"Damn, Jack, I'm too old for a rescue mission," he grumbled, standing beside the bed where the agent lay in the emergency room.
Warren understood Jack's refusal to let the ER doctor do more than take blood pressure and pulse. When the doctor left to examine Olivia Gant, Warren administered an injection of fentanyl intravenously. He saw the curtain of pain begin to lift from Jack's eyes.
His agent was returning from the dead.
Olivia couldn't bear to look at him. Through the police custody of Randolph, finishing up at the abandoned church, and the emergency medical attention, she had studiously avoided Jack's eyes. He didn't blame her.
He'd lived with what he'd become – what he was further capable of becoming – for a lifetime. Even though he'd felt the gentle tug of what he'd once been pulling at him again, even though he knew she loved him, he couldn't expect her to accept the kind of life he lived.
The hospital released him quicker than they approved of, but Jack's own body would heal faster than anything civilian doctors could do.
"Are you heading back to Baltimore?" Jack asked the Judge.
"We both need to wrap it up as soon as we can." The Judge eyed him speculatively as if he expected an argument. "I'll be in on the interview with Howard Randolph."
Jack kept the surprise from registering. Warren had never been in on an UNSUB's arrest, never participated in an interrogation. Hell, there'd hardly ever been an interrogation anyway what with the suspects dead for the most part.
"You okay with that?" Warren asked.
Jack twitched a shoulder and immediately regretted it when a pain shot through his ribs. "Why not?"
"I'll meet you there," the Judge said and turned to go.
"One last question," Jack said. He met Warren's faded blue eyes with a steady gaze. "Have you always known about Olivia?"
The Judge hesitated, indecision flitting across his face. "You were always different, Jack. I suspected it was because of her, but I underestimated the, ah,… connection."
With that he and Higgins hustled out of the hospital.
Hadn't they all, Jack thought.
Considering what he'd been through, he didn't feel too bad. The drugs and his body's own healing powers, weak as they'd been recently, were now working their recuperative magic.
He overheard the emergency room physician suggest Olivia stay overnight for observation, but stubborn even in crisis, she squelched the idea quickly. "No, I'm leaving now, no overnight stay."
Jack heard her bewilderment and scented the underlying pain as he watched from the sidelines while the nurse cleaned cuts and scrapes and applied bandages to Olivia's slender body. Someone – probably the ever-vigilant Higgins – had provided clothing, which hung baggy on her small frame. Finally Slater led her down the hospital corridor and pulled a patrol car around to the emergency room pickup circle.
She hadn't once looked Jack's way. Sitting outside on a cement bench, she stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge him as he sat down beside her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
After a long moment she lifted her shoulders in answer.