“Leo,” he whispered. “You need to wake up.”
He had no idea who she was or why she was here, but he needed to get her to safety. Save the woman, the town, the world. Shouldn’t be too hard.
But first, she needed to wake the hell up.
Chapter 11
Leo opened her eyes to find the big man bent over her, calling her name over and over. “You can stop yelling now,” she croaked. “Elias.”
He shut his eyes and mumbled a handful of unintelligible words, then pressed something to her head. Almost immediately, the cold seeped through.
“Bleeding again.”
“You’ll have to take that up with the guy who bandaged me.”
“Doesn’t look good.”
“No? Think you’ll…” She swallowed and fought to keep her eyes on him. “Have to cut it off, doc?”
With a low snuffle, he lifted the ice and leaned forward. “Better give you stitches.”
“Yeah?” The fingers she touched to her scalp came back glistening red. She met his eyes. “Go for it. I figure, you haven’t killed me yet…”
“Injury gets bad enough, won’t have to.”
A shocked laugh jolted her so hard she had to deep breathe for a few seconds. “No more grim jokes. Especially not about killing me.” She finally managed to lift her head, opened her eyes, still smiling, and went very still.
He was watching her intently, almost hungrily, she’d say, though that was ridiculous, given the state she was in. But she couldn’t deny this new thing filling the air—a third presence as unlikely as everything that had led to this moment: attraction. Ill-timed and absurd, but there.
Bullshit. She was delirious.
“Here, hold this.” He handed her the ice pack and peeled back the rest of the bandage.
A low hum rose from her belly.
“Let’s ice it for a while and I’ll sew it up.”
“I hate stitches.” She grimaced.
“Had ’em before?”
“Yeah.” She just kept her eyes from glancing down at her body. “Three times.”
He grunted.
“Don’t worry. I heal fast.”
“That so?” His brow crinkled. “My mom always said the same about me.”
“You get in a lot of scrapes?”
All humor left his eyes. “Could say that.” With an awkward hand movement, he indicated the open bedroll. “Better if you, uh, lie back down.”
She complied, settling onto her side with a sigh of relief. It felt remarkably good to let her muscles go, even if it meant putting herself at his mercy. Back at his mercy.
A shiver went through her—from the damp ground, obviously. Couldn’t be from the feel of his bare hand at her nape, the whisper of fingers to earlobes and then—
She groaned when the ice pack settled back on her head. After a while—geez, who could tell how long—the pain receded.
“Okay. Hold on.” He messed with something in his bag, then slid his long fingers beneath her head and gently lifted it just long enough to place a cloth under her face. “Gonna sting. Ready?”
“As ever.”
No careful dabbing this time. Whatever he poured over the wound made her grit her teeth so hard, they should have cracked.
“Sure you trust me with a needle to your head?”
“You being…funny again?”
“Is it working?”
She opened her mouth to respond and then realized that his attempts at macabre humor were distracting her from the pain. “Don’t trust many people. Even fewer that I’d allow to hold a sharp instrument to my head. But…” Enigma though he was, he’d saved her life. And that meant something.
He was seated beside her, unmoving, one hand on her head. She couldn’t imagine being in a more vulnerable position.
“Go on then, mystery man. Do your worst.”
He cleared his throat. “Be right back.” He got up to do some more gathering of supplies, including what appeared to be a sewing kit. Jesus, she hoped it was clean. “Go fast as I can.”
She nodded, rubbing her cheek against the wet cotton.
“Ready?” The flashlight’s glimmer hit the curved needle in his hand.
“You gonna disinfect that thing?”
“Nah, it’s good. Few germs never hurt anyone, right?”
“Are you—”
“Ah, come on, Leo. You’re tough. You telling me you can’t handle a little bear blood?”
“You’re not seriously—”
“Only ever used it to sew together hides for my hearth rug. You’ll be fine.”
“Ha-ha. Right.” The smell of alcohol wafted over her, and she shut her eyes. “Sorry I doubted you.”
“Understandable.” After a quiet moment, he said, “Tell me when.”
“I’m ready.” Which was complete bull. The first stitch made her want to cry to her mother. And she’d been dead for three decades.
Forcing the tears back, she ground her teeth together through the prick and pull of two stitches before she fell into the breathing rhythm he’d adopted. Slow breath in, slow breath out while he pierced her scalp, then another in, and so forth. The tears receded, prickling her sinuses until she managed to squelch them, shoving them down to her throat and her chest before they settled as an ache in her belly. If she could ignore the weird pull at her scalp and maybe concentrate instead on the warmth of his other hand anchoring her in place, she’d make it through this.
After a few more minutes, he sat back. “Done. I’ll clean, bandage. Leave you be.”
“Thank you, Elias.” Her eyes sought him out. “Whoever you are.”
He opened his mouth, as if he’d tell her what his role was in all of this. Like he wanted to tell her. And then closed it, tight as a steel trap.
For some inexplicable reason, she felt something like hurt. “My last name’s Eddowes,” she gave him, maybe as a peace offering, maybe as a thanks.
His eyes flicked toward her before skittering away again. Was that guilt on his face?
She’d just opened her mouth to say that it didn’t matter when he told her his last name.
And everything changed.
***
“Thorne.” Elias said the name that had put a target on his back and turned him into a pariah. America’s most wanted. “My name is Elias Thorne.”
Everything was quiet.
There was relief in telling the truth, pressure releasing like a balloon popping in his chest.
Now he’d have to deal with the fallout.
Shock, disgust, fear. Maybe even anger. None of those would surprise him.
She blinked. From where she lay, her eyes dipped to take in his entire form, before rising again. “Bullshit.”
He shrugged and her eyes narrowed in response. “You’re serious?”
“Why would I make this up?”
“The Elias Thorne?” At his nod, she cocked her head, her expression wary. “You sure have changed.”
No point responding to that, was there?
When she started to sit up, he shifted toward her, stopping at her quelling look. “Still got to bandage you.”
Instead of responding, she turned slightly and watched him. It was a weird sort of standoff.
The mass murderer and the woman he’d saved.
“The Point Pleasant massacre.” Her eyes pulled him apart. “That was you.”
His only response was a grunt. Why bother arguing when he’d been judged and hanged before the damn thing was over? Well, shot anyway.
“I thought they killed you.”
“That was the goal.”
“To kill you or to make people think you were dead?”
“Yes.”
She wheezed out a laugh, which quickly turned into a cough, leaving her teary-eyed and
breathless.
He squatted, unmoving, as she considered him, pulled him apart with her big, intelligent eyes.
Finally, he gave in and broke the silence. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“What?”
“What the hell the Elias Thorne is doing here, for one thing.”
He gave her a minute. “Figure it out?”
“What’s the link between you and Campbell Turner and the virus?”
He went still at those last words.
“You know about the virus, Elias?” Her chest moved up and down with each deep inhale.
“Can’t talk about it.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Wanna go first?” he countered.
Distrust pinged through the air between them, as present as the scents of stone and blood and wet dog. After a second, he nodded toward her injury. “Gotta bandage you.”
“Hold on.” She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. They were an awful lot clearer than they’d been half an hour ago. “No way you’re with those guys. They’re after you.”
“You brought them here.” He couldn’t help the accusation in his tone.
“They had your coordinates.”
“You know that for a fact?”
Tightening her mouth, she looked away. No. She clearly didn’t. And maybe she had led them here, but Amka had been the one to send her.
Unless the whole story was a lie. Which seemed unlikely at this point.
Trust, he knew, was hard won, and neither of them had gained it yet.
It was so quiet that he heard her dry swallow, so close that he could almost feel her body heat. Funny how the distance felt insurmountable.
“They said you killed colleagues, witnesses. Whole families. Your own…”
Parents.
He opened his mouth and closed it. Defending himself, he’d proven back then, was not his strong suit. “You wanted my name.” He stood. “You got it.”
She inhaled audibly. “Elias Thorne.” Was she unaffected by his prickly demeanor or just pretending? She set her forearms on her bent knees, looking almost casual despite the stained clothes and the beat-up look of her face. “You were, what…FBI? DEA or something?”
America’s most wanted. “U.S. marshal.” He kept his back to her, eyes unfocused while he cleaned the blood from his hands.
“Were you involved in his arrest?”
He didn’t ask whose. Pointless to play innocent. He grunted an assent.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Bigfoot. Was that a yes?”
“I was the deputy U.S. marshal responsible for apprehending Campbell Turner.”
“After he stole the virus from Chronos Corp.”
“From the Department of Defense.”
She sucked in a breath, the sound like an unvoiced oh. “Huh. Okay. Why did you—”
“Done talking.” He sat back down again and ripped open a bandage. “You gonna let me finish or not? Doesn’t matter to me either way.”
It took her a while to realize he meant her head. Her hand went halfway up and then stilled before returning slowly to her knee. “Oh.” Her gaze shifted from her hand to her leg, where Bo had settled, then on to his pack, and beyond to the passage leading out. Though she didn’t look satisfied with his response, by the time she came back to him, she’d apparently come to some kind of decision. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Leo Eddowes. Retired.”
Right. She looked as retired as the guys who’d flown in on her tail.
“Navy, huh?”
“Aviator first and foremost. The Navy was…” She shrugged and he still couldn’t tell if her nonchalance was real or forced. “A means to an end.”
“Leo your real name?”
She snorted, something approaching a smile hitting her eyes. “It’s Leontyne. But only my dad’s allowed to call me that.”
He grunted.
“Thank you again. For…” Her hand fluttered toward her head. “For not leaving me back there.”
This time, he responded with a slow nod. When she didn’t go on, he ripped off a piece of tape and edged as close as he could without touching her, eyeing his handiwork, trying hard to calm his thoughts while something inside was going wild. His heart, maybe, flailing in his chest like a salmon on a line.
He glanced her way and went still. “There it is.”
“What?”
“Way you’re looking at me. I’ve gotten a lot of that.”
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like you just found out you’re sharing a cave with Osama bin Laden.”
She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it, tilted her head, and stared at him for so long he started to itch. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Understandable.”
“No. I’m getting there. Recalibrating. Adjusting.”
He wasn’t convinced.
“What about Turner? Was he innocent?”
“Depends on what you mean by innocent.”
“Okay.” Her eyes on him were calculating, intelligent. He didn’t see any fear there, but that could’ve been a trick of the light. “Let’s see. Chronos Corporation was running clinical trials for the U.S. government? And, what? Turner went and stole the virus?”
“Something like that.”
“No?” She squinted at him. “How did it really go down, then?”
Wishing he hadn’t said a word, he applied the bandage, his fingers too big and awkward for such a delicate job.
“I’m trying to understand. You were a college football star, right? Turned U.S. marshal? How’d you go from arresting agent to so-called mass murderer? How’d you get embroiled in all this, Elias? How did Chronos get to you?” She watched him. “They did, didn’t they? Chronos Corporation and whatever government entities are involved in this whole thing. I’ve seen the kinds of things they’re willing to do. Did they kill those people to set you up?”
He stilled, hands hovering above her head like a crown or a halo, then smoothed the tape to her shorn hair, one careful finger at a time. Finally, he pulled away and stood. “Hungry?”
“That’s it? You’re seriously cutting off all discussion? Just like that?” When he didn’t react, she shook her head, clearly unhappy. “No. Thanks.”
The air in the cave managed to be both chilly and close. A not very pleasant sensation.
“Here.” He handed her water, returned to his pack, and came back with his own, then hovered, too agitated to sit. “You want to know my story? Who is Elias fucking Thorne?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Then?” He sank to the ground, not sure what he was feeling. “Or now?”
“Now. Who are you now?”
“Now?” An empty husk? A shadow in the woods? A guy who’d become more animal than man in order to survive? He shut his eyes for a sec, working through it in his head. “You got any bad habits?”
She threw him a quick side-eye. “We talking nose picking or, like, mainlining heroin?”
“Shouldn’t have said ‘bad.’ You have any habits—just things you do that are a part of your life? Who you are?”
She half shrugged and wiped a few drops of water from her mouth. “Sure.”
He waited.
“This the part where we share personal stuff?”
He put a hand up, started to turn away. “No. It was stu—”
“I’m addicted to potato chips. That work? I really love those light, kettle-cooked ones. So thin they’re see-through, like lace. But I’ll take whatever I can get. I eat ’em constantly. That’s a habit, right? A bad one.”
He grimaced. “Nothing else?”
“Okay. I found out pretty early in life that if I didn’t move—and move fast—I’d go bananas.” She shut he
r eyes for a few seconds. “Or drive my parents bananas, actually. So I run. Every day.”
“What happens if you miss a day?”
“I don’t. Unless I’m in a…” Her words fizzled out, her hand gingerly explored her head, and she gave him a quick, easy look, filled with unexpected humor. “In a situation like this.”
“Running for your life?”
“Sitting for my life right now, but yeah.”
“So, that feeling? Where you’ve gotta move, get your legs—what’s the word?—pumping, or else… What? What happens?”
She turned her body more fully now, her eyes knowing when they landed on him. One fist went to her chest. “All hell breaks loose.”
“That. That’s what happens if I let this out.” He leaned in, needing her to understand. “Sharing the burden of this particular secret kills people.” He stood again, tired and wired and buzzing. “So, forgive my hesitation.” He wiped his brow, surprised to see sweat shining on his glove. “It’s the only thing I am. Only thing that’s kept me alive.”
He headed to the cave’s entrance, dipped his head, and paused. Without turning, he spoke. “Only thing that’s kept anyone alive.”
***
Old Amka waited for one of the operatives to leave Marion’s house before making her move. The kids and Marion were inside—safe but scared, from what she’d been able to see through the back windows—and a single guard stood watch on the front porch. As good a time as any.
Part of her wanted to siphon all the gas in town, lay some big-ass trap, and blow these bastards sky-high, but that wasn’t practical for a number of reasons—primarily collateral damage. She’d opted instead for a stealth operation. Baby steps, she figured, were better than shock and awe. Now, after three hours of watching and waiting and hunkering down outside the cabin’s windows, her joints were suffering, but it would be well worth the trouble.
Bent low, with one hand on her back, she hobbled up to the front steps. “’scuse me,” she said in her quaveriest old-lady voice.
The toy soldier on the porch turned and pointed her weapon, tracked Amka’s slow progress up the steps, and then dropped it. Apparently, she deemed Amka no threat at all.
The woman—dressed all in black from her coat to her big boots, with a communication device in her ear—had the hollowed-out cheeks and square RoboCop jaw of someone who spent most of her time in the gym. Which wasn’t something Amka could relate to. Or respect, really.
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