A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(91)

Panic rushed through him and he knew he needed to keep it together in order to protect Parker.

“Get him all the way in the room! Do it now!” Garrett shouted to Parker as he let go of his hold on Joe, pulled his gun out of his waistband and lunged towards the open door.

No matter the circumstances, Parker knew never to hesitate when an order like that was given. She let Joe down gently onto the floor and then jumped to her feet, dragging him into the room and over to the foot of the bed.

She checked his pulse and his pupils while Garrett aimed his gun out of the open door and looked around frantically before finally slamming it closed and locking the deadbolt.

It wasn’t until Garrett started to make his way over to her that she looked down at the carpet where she had dragged her father across the room and noticed a trail of blood from where she let him drop to where they currently were.

“Shots fired! I repeat, shots fired!” Garrett shouted into the tiny microphone clipped to the inside of his shirt collar, knowing their team was only a few hundred yards away listening to everything. “Joe Parker is down with a gunshot wound to the back. Need emergency medic ASAP and all hands on deck doing a sweep of the entire resort.”

Garrett crouched down on the other side of Joe’s still form and did his own check of the man’s pulse, bolstered by the fact that at least there was one. Parker looked stunned and bewildered. Garrett quickly reached across Joe to cup her cheek in his hand and force her eyes up to his.

“It’s okay, we’re going to get him help,” Garrett assured her.

He hoped like hell he wasn’t lying to her right now. It wouldn’t be easy for her to make sense of the garbage he spouted or his reasons for doing it under normal circumstances. If her father was shot and killed right in front of her, before she got any kind of explanation about his sudden reappearance in her life, he was afraid to think about what that would do to her. She was hanging on by a thread as it was. While he continued to keep an eye on Joe’s heart rate and bent down to listen to his labored breaths, he glanced up at Parker as she sat on her knees with her arms wrapped around her waist, staring down at her father’s still form.

Garrett’s cell phone rang and he took his eyes away from Parker’s long enough to answer it.

“He’s got a pulse, but it’s slow. Did you hear any shots?”

Parker listened to Garrett’s steady voice as he questioned Brady, instead of focusing on the fact that her father, whom she hadn’t spoken to in a decade, was dying on the floor in front of her. Parker refused to believe the last words she would ever hear him say to her were lies. She wondered if by some crazy chance everything he said was true.

“Negative. Whoever it was used a silencer. Call Captain Risner immediately and get an extra team in here for back-up. One of them should be on stand-by and ready to deploy at our command.”

Garrett gave a few more orders, and Parker partially listened to him as her brain processed every single word her father said to her that evening.

The next few hours were a blur of people rushing around, answering questions for medical personnel, and trying to make sense of the night’s events. On top of it all, they still needed to maintain their undercover positions as husband and wife on the off chance that Fernandez had nothing to do with the shooting.

Garrett remained calm and in control through everything, keeping his arm around Parker to hold her upright, making and receiving calls from the team periodically, and leaving her side only once, just long enough to get her a cup of coffee.

Joe was initially taken Hospiten Bavaro, the local hospital only a few short miles away from their resort. Once he was stabilized, they transported him a few hours away to the much larger Hospiten Santo Domingo. Garrett and Parker followed the ambulance the entire way and had made themselves comfortable in the waiting room after Joe went immediately into surgery.

Garrett avoided asking Parker any questions about her father during the drive to the second hospital, not wanting to open up that can of worms until she was ready. Instead, he concentrated on getting an additional SEAL team to the Dominican as soon as possible and briefing Captain Risner on the status of events. Risner assured Garrett that he knew nothing about Parker’s father or his surprise visit to them. Garrett ended the call with an assurance that Risner would send back-up to them within the next few hours, and Garrett promised Risner that as soon as he found out more information about Parker’s father, he would call him.

Garrett slid his cell phone into the pocket of his pants and walked across the waiting room lobby to Parker. She had her back to him, leaning against a marble column and staring out of one of the dark windows.

Parker heard Garrett’s footsteps behind her and let out a huge sigh of relief when she felt his arms wrap around her waist and felt his chin rest on top of her head. She closed her eyes and turned in his arms, sliding her hands up his chest and draping her arms around his neck. Garrett leaned down and placed a soft kiss to her lips, pulling back far enough to look at her.

“How are you doing?” Garrett asked, watching as Parker slowly opened her eyes to him.

“Honestly? I have no idea,” Parker replied. “My father just showed up in the Dominican Republic, over two thousand miles away from his home, to tell me he works for the CIA, and then he’s gunned down right in front of me. It sounds even more insane when I say it out loud. What did your Captain say?”