NURA

Chapter 29

Nate

Nov. 2014, New York

"Take him off the bypass." Dr. Markowitz said as she pulled away from the body lying on the surgical table between them.

Her light brown eyes, which always reminded Nate of a cat since their color was almost yellow, were glued to their patient's heart out in the open. The heart stopped once it was taken off the machine for a few loaded seconds before it started beating again on its own, the color of it turning to a healthy pink.

Nate's colleague smiled at the sight before it turned into a smirk she directed at him.

"God, I am good." she sighed before leaving him to close up the patient on his own. Nate shook his head at her actions but kept his mouth shut as he stitched the poor man back together.

As much as Nate couldn't stand the woman and her God complex, he had to admit that she had every reason to have one. She was by far the best Cardiothoracic Surgeon in the country, which was the reason why he had offered her a job in his hospital in the first place.

However, her bedtime manners were a whole other story, which Nate was not inclined to get into any time soon. After all, he had found that most people did not care if you were an asshole as long as you saved their loved one's life, and she did that and did it well.

He finished the last stitch and gave the surgical nurse the instruments before stepping away from the table, pulling the bloody scrubs off, and getting out of the OR.

"Dr. Robins!" Nancy, his assistant, yelled out as soon as he came out of the room and ran up to him, her high heels click-clacking loudly in the empty hallway as she did so.

"Nancy? Is everything alright?" Nate asked her, surprised to see her all the way down here since, in the two years she has been his assistant, she has never stepped one foot into the OR area.

"You cut people open down there, for fuck's sake! I don't want to see that!" she would say every time Nate asked her about it to his great amusement. Why she had decided to become a personal assistant to a surgeon, he will never know.

"Nate..." she started before abruptly stopping, and he suddenly realized that her hands were shaking, and coupled with her usage of his first name, which she had used only once when Eli had died and never again, made Nate realize that something was seriously wrong.

"It's Nura, Nate. She's missing."

~

"How the fuck did this happen? Weren't your men supposed to be watching the house!?" Nate shouted at the older man as he slammed him into the kitchen wall. His hands gripped Ben's neck so tightly that his face slowly started to turn red from the lack of oxygen.

"Dr. Robins, let Agent Hayes go!" someone shouted suddenly, and Nate stepped away quickly, letting the man almost fall to the ground as he coughed and wheezed his lungs out.

Nate turned around to see that they were surrounded by agents, all of them with their guns pointed at him as if afraid that he would attack their boss again if they stepped away until Ben recovered enough to speak.

"Stand down! It's okay, I'm okay," he said to them and glared until the last one did as he was told before he turned around to look at Nate.

"They were watching the house, so I don't know how this happened. The only thing I can come up with is that the people who did this have waited for the changing of shifts to sneak into the house.

But even if that's the case, that only gave them five minutes tops to get in, disarm a veteran soldier, grab him and the girls, and sneak out, all without making a sound to alert the agents in front of the house.

Somehow, that does not strike me as the workings of the mafia low-rank as Bear." Ben said and shook his head, frowning.

"This whole thing stinks of a professional," Nate said as Ben crouched down to pick up something peeking from underneath the kitchen counter.

He brought the item that looked like a pendant from a necklace up to the light, studying it closely before it fell through his fingertips to the ground as the man started to shake.

"That's not possible. How... how...?" Ben started to mumble and looked at Nate with impossibly wide eyes.

"What's not possible?" Nate asked, completely baffled to see the usually calm and collected man so shaken up.

"I... I think I know who did this," he said, his eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at nothing.

"You do!? Who is it, Ben? Where are they?"

But Ben just shook his head and sat down, his legs finally giving up on him.

"Woodlawn National Cemetery. He's dead. He's supposed to be dead."

~

Nura

Nov. 2014, Unknown location

"Habibi...wake up, love." a deep, husky voice whispered as warm breath tickled the side of her neck, making her shiver in pleasure.

"Come on, Habibi, open your eyes." the voice continued, making her smile. She felt so warm and safe with the man's presence surrounding her that opening her eyes seemed inconceivable.

"No... Just a little bit longer," she mumbled and snuggled closer to the source, unwilling to wake up just yet.

"Habibi, please..." the voice said again, this time sounding more urgent as a pair of hands joined it and started to shake her.

"Wake up! Wake up, Habibi!"

"Wake up, Nura! Please, you need to wake up!" someone shouted next to Nura's ear, and her eyes flew open to see a frantic Zaria crouched beside her.

The girl's face flushed with relief at the sight of her awake, with one of her hands gripping the side of Nura's face and the other handcuffed to a rusty pipe behind their backs.

"What the fuck!?" Nura exclaimed and tried to move and stand up, which she quickly realized wasn't possible since one of her hands was also tied to the pipe, much like Zaria's.

"What is going on? Where are we?" she asked the girl sitting beside her, but just the look on Zaria's face told her everything she needed to know even before a memory of being held from behind flashed through her mind.

"I woke up to a masked man pressing a handkerchief to my mouth, and I tried to fight them off, but it was too hard. I guess I fainted because the next thing I knew, I woke up tied to this pipe next to you." Zaria quickly explained as Nura realized it must have happened while asleep.

"What about Nik?" she asked, remembering that the German wasn't at the house when it all happened, and looking around, she couldn't see him in the dump that eerily reminded her of the basement they used to keep them in back in Morocco.

She quickly stumped on that thought as fear spread through her veins like liquid fire, unwilling to even consider the real possibility that the past was about to repeat itself.

No, never again. Nura would rather slash her own wrists open than allow them to make her into their toy again.

"I don't know. I never saw him." Zaria whispered, but Nura could see it in her eyes, the same question flying through her mind.

Was Nik even alive?

But before she could voice it out loud, the door at the other side of the room opened, letting out a screeching sound that told the tale of how old and unused they were before the main star of all of Nura's nightmares came through them, followed by another man.

Nura's face paled, and her mouth fell open with a gasp at the sight that made her question her own sanity.

"How...?" she said, barely above a whisper, and made herself blink a few times, sure that her eyes were betraying her since it was impossible that the man standing in front of her was alive.

"Long time no see, Nura. " John said as a smirk spread over his handsome face that Nura had believed she would never get to see again.

"Surprise."