That’s when a sudden nasty gust of wind kicked up, spinning me around and lashing me toward the building like a helpless rag doll in the hands of a vengeful toddler. Seeing Torq above me struggling to maintain control of the security line, I uttered a quick one-line prayer.
“Oh, geez!” Torq said, seeing me swinging.
I opened my mouth to scream as my field of vision narrowed to a pinpoint, taking with it a view of the building rushing toward me. Then the world went dark.
When I awoke, I was flat on my back on the asphalt, staring up at a scary kaleidoscope of people silhouetted by the sun and gaping down at me. Several of them were panting as if they’d just gone for a brisk jog. Who were these tense-looking people? I blinked, confused. Then it hit me—camp, I was at spy camp. And I was alive!
Fry and Rockford were barking at people to stand back and give me some breathing space. Torq, looking shaken, yet somehow still calm, was on one side of me, holding my hand and murmuring words of comfort that sounded as far away as if he was whispering them down a tunnel.
Tanner was taking my vitals with Max assisting him. “Her pulse feels thready and weak.” Tanner looked at Rockford. Whatever “thready” means. Must be a medical term. For my part, I felt clammy and slightly nauseous, which triggered the realization that I’d just passed out. Suddenly I remembered the minutes immediately preceding my delightful nightmare—I’d become the fall girl. Guess I should have been grateful to be alive. The thing was—I felt like death would have been an improvement over my present battered and bruised condition. Being an ingrate, I wasn’t particularly pleased that my prayer to live had been answered. I looked up at Tanner and said, “Dr. Tanner, I presume?”
Tanner just stared at me.
“Or is it nurse?” I giggled. I may have been a touch delirious.
Tanner obviously didn’t get my sense of humor. He looked at me like I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. “She’s either in shock or has a classic case of heat exhaustion, or both.” Tanner released my wrist and rocked back on his heels. “We need to get her out of the sun and rehydrated.”
“I’m fine,” I protested, only I was lying through my sun-parched lips. “Only I think I owe Emma more money. ‘Cause Wade was supposed to be next. Emma! Emma! Does it count if I outed Tanner as a medical professional? How much do I owe you now? Can we let it ride?”
“Shhh.” Torq held a finger to my lips to silence me and shook his head at someone off in the distance. I was guessing Emma, but I was too distracted by his warm finger on my mouth to care about verifying my assumption.
“Don’t exert yourself.” Torq’s voice may have been smooth and sympathetic, but he, too, clearly thought I was loco in the head. He opened a water bottle and, gently cradling my head, held the bottle to my lips. “Drink this. You’ll feel better soon.”
I was becoming more coherent by the minute. “How did I survive?” I asked.
“Later.” He pressed the bottle against my lips.
I took a few sips, gracefully sputtering and sloshing water all down my preposterously perky enhanced cleavage. I shifted gingerly. Most of me felt pretty whole and unshattered, but my left ankle throbbed, emitting pain waves of tsunami proportions. Maybe it had been throbbing all along and I hadn’t noticed with the rest of me feeling like death warmed over. Maybe the pain was a good sign … or not.
“Does anything hurt?” Tanner asked.
“You mean besides the obvious everything?” I pointed to my left ankle. “That especially smarts.”
He took a look. “Can you move it? Wiggle your toes?”
I nodded and performed the tricks.
“Probably just a little sprain. We’ll ice it and wrap it back at camp.” Then he motioned to Torq, Fry, and Rockford, and the three of them loaded me into an FAV and rushed me back to the main compound building with Tanner riding along as medic.
“What happened down there?” Rockford asked, speaking to Torq and Fry, not me.
“She passed out and lost her grip, sliding down too fast, burning through the rope,” Torq said.
“Did not!” My denial didn’t explode with as much force as I intended. I still felt weak and reedy. But it got the men’s attention. All four turned to look at me.
“I was perfectly conscious until the wind slammed me against the building. That’s when I lost consciousness.” I took a deep breath for strength. “Someone tampered with the equipment.”
I wasn’t going to let that someone get away with attempted murder. “They were trying to kill Max. He was up first, but I convinced Torq to let me go instead and foiled their plans.”
“You’re not making any sense, Dom,” Torq said dryly. “We switched ropes, remember?”
“But not carabiners,” I argued.
Fry and Torq exchanged another one of those “she’s touched in the noggin and becoming a conspiracy-theory freak” looks.
“I checked all y’all’s carabiners,” Fry said. “They weren’t faulty.”
Tanner whispered to the others, “Classic heat exhaustion symptoms, including delusions and hallucinations. Probably had a nightmare when she passed out. Now she can’t separate the dream from reality—”
“Can too … can too … can too!” I argued with all the erudition of a kindergartner.
Torq gave me a patronizing pat on the arm. “I’ve told you, babe. No one is trying to kill Max.”
“But—” I tried to get a word in, but I couldn’t get my thoughts together.
Rockford turned to Fry. “After we get her settled, gather all the gear. We’ll send it to the crime lab in Phoenix and have them verify it wasn’t tampered with,” he said as if that settled the matter conclusively and for all times. He gave me a wary look, like since I wouldn’t sign that stupid release of his, he suspected I was sue-happy.
Torq gave my hand a squeeze. “You passed out due to heat exhaustion and lost your grip.” He may as well have added “on reality.”
Fry turned his attention back to his driving. Torq sat in contemplative silence.
Back at the compound, they carried me to the sick bay.
“Not here again,” I said, but no one showed me much sympathy. I was thinking they viewed me as a clumsy pain in the ass.
Rockford must have phoned his doctor friend as soon as I fell, because the doc was leafing through a back issue of the WSJ, waiting for me when I arrived, probably happy about the small mint he was making off all these compound calls and plotting how to invest his windfall profits. With Max and me around, Rockford should consider putting the doc on retainer.
Rockford’s doctor consulted with Tanner before he examined me and my ankle, packed the ankle with an ice pack, diagnosed me with heat exhaustion, filled me with fluids, dosed me with pain meds, and gave me instructions to continue drinking plenty of fluids, keep the ankle elevated, and stay off it as much as possible. He dropped an Ace bandage on the cart beside my cot before confining me to bed for observation for the afternoon and went off to talk with Rockford, promising to return in a few to check on me and show me how to wrap the bandage.
“Now get some rest,” he said as he left.
The thing about bed confinement—it gives a person plenty of time to think. So in between alternating ten minutes of ice on and ten minutes of ice off the ankle, I reviewed the situation. Someone had tried to kill me!
Well, okay, they’d tried to kill Max. My head wasn’t quite clear yet, so I allowed that there was a slight chance I was wrong and they were trying to kill Torq. I mean, it had been Torq’s rope that snapped, but the carabiner I’d used had been meant for Max.
I knew nothing about rappelling. I guessed someone could have tampered with Torq’s rope or they could have greased the carabiner, which would have slid too fast and burned through the rope, causing it to snap. And Fry wouldn’t have checked for grease. I mean, why would he think to? But why split hairs now? I had to stop the killer from succeeding.
Damn this injury! Precious time was wasting while I tried to summon enough str
ength to act, or merely walk. First things first—get Pussy’s gun. Then … then what? Then I stick to Max like his gun-toting shadow. Torq was on his own. The way I figured, should the need arise, he could defend himself better than I could.
While I iced, trying to numb my foot enough that I could put my weight on it, I tried to remember everything I’d learned at camp about spying and self-defense. Torq was definitely better on his own. Max was getting the raw deal, but at least I’d have a weapon.
I touched my sore ankle and winced. It was only sort of numb, but it would have to do. Some orthopedic surgeon somewhere was going to love me for this.
I sat up slowly, still feeling weak and slightly dizzy not to mention annoyingly wiped out and tired. My eyes felt heavy. I fought to stay awake. I touched my foot to the floor and cautiously applied some weight, only to wince with pain.
There was a knock on the door. Emma popped her head in. “How’re you doing?”
I motioned for her to come in. “Am I glad to see you! Close the door. I need your help.”
She quickly took in the situation. “You’re not trying to escape? Tell me you’re not.”
“I have to.”
She rolled her eyes. “Does this have anything to do with your crazy notion that someone is trying to kill Max?”
“How—”
“Tanner’s a blabbermouth.”
“Okay, yes, it does. Now come over here and give me a shoulder to lean on. I need your help to get out of here.” I motioned her over, but she didn’t budge.
“What’s your plan?” She crossed her arms and frowned at me.
“I’m going to play bodyguard.”
Emma shook her head but had the good grace not to laugh. “I can’t believe this. What are you going to use for the guard part? Those lethal acrylics of yours?”
“Pussy has a gun under her mattress. I’m going to steal it.” I spoke without thinking, damn drugs. What had the doc given me, truth serum?
Emma stared at me with a look of utter disbelief on her face. “I’m with Tanner. You’re definitely delusional.”
“But you’ll help me, right?” I gave her my helpless-puppy look. No one can resist the helpless-puppy look.
“I must be crazy, too.” She walked over to me and took a look at the offending ankle. “That’s nasty. You can’t walk on that without wrapping it. Even then, you’ll be lucky if you can support your weight for long.”
I pointed to the Ace bandage. “The doc left that. Know anything about ankle wrapping?”
“I’ve had my share of sprains.” She bent to retrieve the bandage. “Now sit down and put your foot up while I take care of it.”
She carefully unwrapped the self-adhering bandage and positioned the end in the arch of my foot. “Hold your foot like this picture shows.” She held up the packaging and I complied.
“Hurry!” I said. “We have to hurry. Max isn’t safe out there all alone.”
She rolled her eyes again.
“I’m serious!”
“Instead of bird-dogging Max you should be using your energy giving Torq a major, and very erotic, token of your appreciation. If he’d just saved my life I’d be making the most of it.” She made figure eights with the bandage around my ankle and heel, wrapping slowly and carefully as I fought to keep my eyes open.
Something was wrong. I shouldn’t be this sleepy.
“If not for him, you’d be a pavement pancake right now. Crow food. He was a hero, for sure.”
“Hero?” I winced as she tightened the bandage. “I don’t remember any heroics.”
“No, of course you don’t; you were out like a light. Too tight?”
I shook my head no.
She wrapped like an expert. “Torq pulled a major Bond move and hauled you down the building, fighting that damn wind the whole way.
“I tell you, it was right out of the movies, or one of those news stories you hear about where some mum gets a rush of adrenaline and superhuman strength and lifts a car off her baby or something.” She finished wrapping and patted my ankle, making sure the bandage was secure.
She grinned. “Somehow he managed to support your dead weight as Fry and Rockford and the rest of us raced from the roof. You should’ve seen the knots of tension in his neck and how red in the face he was from the exertion of keeping the wind from blowing you both off the wall. He was dripping sweat, I’ll tell you. Then he inched his way down the building, hanging on to you until he got low enough to lower you into Rockford’s arms.”
I frowned. “How did I get this bum ankle?”
“You hit the building hard with your foot once or twice just after you passed out. Just be grateful it was your foot and not your head.”
Interesting as Emma’s story was, I felt my eyelids growing heavier in a drugged sort of way and I had trouble concentrating.
The door swung open and the doctor strode in. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“The patient here said her ankle was throbbing and the cot was uncomfortable. She wanted me to bandage it and help her to her room so she could rest on a real bed.” I had to admire Emma’s quick thinking.
“You should’ve gotten me.” He glared at Emma and then came over to me and grabbed my wrist to take my vitals.
For my part, I could barely keep my eyes open. The doctor and Emma were fading in and out. I felt myself swaying.
“I don’t think the cot will be a problem now. The meds are kicking in. Give her a few more seconds and she’ll be dead to the world.”
He must have seen my attempted wide-eyed expression, because he grinned as he took my shoulders and eased me back onto the cot. Dead to the world was exactly what I was afraid of!
“I gave her some strong pain meds. They have the side effect of knocking most people out for hours. I figured she could use the rest.”
“Several hours!” I tried to sit back up, but my body felt too heavy to lift and I fell back.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be fine by evening,” the doctor said. “Now you should go and let her sleep.”
Emma leaned in and patted my shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I’ll look after Max for you.” Emma gave me another pat. And that’s the last thing I remembered….
When I woke up, the air-conditioning unit was humming away and the lights in the room were on full. Someone, probably the doc, had unwrapped my ankle and thrown a thin cotton blanket over me. It was impossible to tell the time of day from the room, so I glanced at the clock and did not believe my eyes. Six thirty p.m.! No way! It couldn’t be. Maybe there’d been a power glitch or something. But my watch said the same thing. I’d been out for over five hours. The class where the abduction was going to happen was scheduled to begin at seven. There was no time to lose.
Trying to avoid another fainting spell, I sat up slowly. The swelling in my ankle had gone down, but it was beginning to look bruised. My head was groggy but clearing as I reached for the Ace bandage and tried the figure-eight maneuver for myself. Fortunately, the package had directions. There was no way I was getting a cute pink tennie back on that left foot. I’d have to go back to my room and get a flip-flop.
Since no one else was around to do it, I discharged myself from the sick bay, standing tentatively on one foot and gently easing some weight on my injured left ankle. It hurt, but I was a Bond girl—tough, fearless, and still doped up. On I limped.
There was no one in the hallway as I hobbled my way back to the barracks. On a lark, I tried Pussy’s door—locked tight. On to Plan B—breaking and entering from the exterior. I snagged a pair of food-handler’s gloves and a left flip-flop from my room, committing a heinous fashion faux pas and a mismatch even of color. The real Dom would have owned a matching flip-flop and headband. So much for style.
My stomach growled. I’d had nothing to eat all day but a muffin. So I snagged some change and got a candy bar out of the machine on my way out.
Outside a cloud cover had formed. The air felt heavy and humid and smelled like rain. The wind c
ame from a different direction than usual, from the southeast. It was the end of July and monsoon season. Oh, great, I thought. The scene was set for a scary movie. Undeterred by the weather, I sneaked off to Pussy’s window.
I’d watched enough It Takes a Thief episodes to know that confidence is the key to breaking and entering. Heart pumping out of control, I boldly marched to Pussy’s window and went rapping, rapping, gently tapping, then lunged for the cover of nearby bushes. No answer. Excellent.
I sidled back to the window and gave it a try. Locked. But not impenetrable.
If my disappearing dad had done one good thing for me, this was it. His absence had made me a latchkey kid. A latchkey kid who frequently forgot her key and whose mother could not leave work to come let her in. Several afternoons spent at the neighbor’s house or on the front steps had led me to develop some very handy breaking-in skills. I knew how to jimmy a window without damaging it.
I donned my gloves, pressed my hands against the window glass, wiggled it, and within a minute had jiggled the lock free and slid the window open. I climbed into Pussy’s bedroom and headed for the bed.
I slid my hand in between the mattress and box spring and, with all the anticipation of pulling out a snake, pulled out … an empty fist. I reached back in and fumbled around some more. I lifted the mattress and looked. Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing! Which meant in all likelihood Pussy had the gun on her. Or she’d moved it.
I searched her closet, her drawers, and her bathroom, coming up empty on all accounts and growing more panicked by the second. Just fifteen minutes to showtime.
Her nightstand held a fine array of cubic zirconia jewelry and a very authentic-looking lady’s Rolex, but no gun.
There was only one conclusion to draw—Pussy was armed and dangerous. Which really freaked me. I slid the window back into place and locked it. Shoot! No phones in the rooms. No cell phone coverage. I grabbed the notepad on Pussy’s nightstand and scribbled a note to Emma, telling her about Pussy and the gun. Just in case.
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