Hell & Back (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  His wrists had red welts around them, evidence of restraints or handcuffs. He had a couple of bruises on his face and a long, bloody scratch on one forearm.

  “How’d you escape from those assholes?” Henry asked.

  “They picked a really stupid place for a hideout,” Ruby’s brother said. “A condemned apartment building. They handcuffed me to a ring cemented to the concrete floor in the basement. I picked the lock on the cuffs with a nail that was just lying around. There were cleaning supplies, paint, and paint thinner piled up with a bunch of rotten wood. I poured some of the chemicals over the wood and, poof, instant fire. I got out a window while the idiots were panicking.”

  “How many were there?”

  “I saw four, but only two close up.”

  “Anything interesting about them?”

  “One of them looked like some kind of professional soldier. He spoke with another guy in Arabic with an American accent. The other guy sounded like he was from Afghanistan or Pakistan, maybe. He talked about explosives like most people talk about their kids.”

  Henry frowned. That was a lot of information from a guy who was supposed to only pay attention to the real world a small percentage of the time.

  “They talk about money?” Smoke asked.

  Nate thought about that for a moment. “No, they didn’t.” He frowned. “That’s kind of odd. The other two guys wore suits. With sunglasses and indoors like a couple of wannabe spooks.”

  How did this guy, a genius-level safety hazard, know what a spook was? And where did he learn how to pick handcuffs?

  “Suits?” Smoke asked.

  “Yeah. I didn’t get a close look at them, but they kind of stood out.”

  “The building burned down,” Smoke said. “Did they get out?”

  Nate shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “You should care. These assholes rarely leave loose ends alive,” Henry told him. Then he said, “You have some interesting skills for a guy who’s only supposed to be interested in outer space.”

  Nate rolled his eyes. “I can do magic tricks, too.”

  “Does your sister know?” Smoke asked.

  “Know what?” Nate asked the veteran Special Forces soldier with an exasperated sigh.

  “That you work for the CIA.”

  “I work for NASA and MML,” Nate answered smoothly. “Though being a spy sounds fun.” He tilted his head to one side. “I wonder if the pay and benefits are any good.”

  Henry’s gut tightened. Nate’s answer was too smooth, too effortless, and with none of the expected outrage.

  Smoke shifted away from the wall he’d been holding up with one shoulder, staring at Nate—evaluating, cataloging, and tagging. “A rare subject expert who travels overseas for work.”

  “Who cultivates an absentminded-professor reputation,” Henry added.

  “Who can also pick locks.” Smoke smiled again, and again, it wasn’t nice at all. “Sounds like CIA to me.”

  Nate frowned at Smoke. “I work for NASA and MML,” he repeated, then hesitated a beat. “Though I do consult for a number of other groups from time to time.”

  “Something your twin doesn’t know?” Henry asked.

  He snorted. “You think I would tell her about that? She worries enough about me as it is.”

  “So,” Smoke said. “The two suits?”

  “There’s a limit to what can be inferred from body language at a distance, but they looked uncomfortable and out of place.”

  A nurse emerged from the hallway. “Ruby Toth’s family?” she asked.

  “I’m her brother. How is she?” Nate asked, his voice anxious.

  “Very lucky,” the nurse said.

  Relief surged so hard and fast through Henry it took a moment for him to reconnect with the conversation.

  “…knife wound was a long one and the bullet nicked a major artery in her arm,” the nurse was saying, “but she’s doing fine now. She’s getting a second unit of blood, and she should make a full recovery.”

  “Can I see her?” Nate asked.

  “Sure.” She paused. “Are you Henry?” she asked Nate.

  “I am,” Henry said, stepping forward.

  “She asked to see you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  1:22 p.m.

  Ruby closed her eyes and let herself float on an ocean of pain. So many things hurt—her back, her side, her abdomen, her right arm, even her hair. But all that took a backseat to her worry for Henry. It rioted through her in a rampage that made the pain worse with every passing second.

  Was he safe?

  The last thing she remembered was moving toward the terrorist fighting with Henry. A cold haze after that.

  The next thing she knew, a nurse was asking her to spell her name and provide her birth date.

  The curtain surrounding her bed moved, and she opened her eyes.

  Henry and Nate entered the room. They took in the IV pump and the bag of blood it was feeding her, the machine that monitored her vitals by her bed, and both men winced.

  “Hey.” She meant it to come out sounding normal, but it was barely above a whisper.

  Nate moved first, coming over and taking her left hand. “Ruby, are you okay? What happened?”

  She blinked slowly. “I’m not entirely sure. My memory is a little fuzzy.” She looked at Henry, who stood at the foot of the bed, one of his hands shackling his other wrist. He had some bruises on his arms and face, but he didn’t look injured otherwise.

  No, wait. He was much too pale, and he held his body too stiff.

  “Henry, you’re okay?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “The lab?” she asked. “The terrorists…did they get it? The smallpox?”

  “No.” His lips pressed tightly together for a moment before he said, “I blew it up.”

  She waited for more information, but he added nothing else.

  “I don’t remember…” she said, but almost like a question.

  It took Henry a couple of seconds to answer. “I killed all the terrorists. During the fight, you were shot. Do you remember that?”

  She nodded. The pain in her arm was a good reminder.

  “What about the knife fight with the guy who shot you?”

  That she didn’t remember. “Knife fight?”

  “You flipped him, but he managed to cut you pretty good.” Henry shifted and shuffled his feet. “We almost didn’t make it out.”

  Why did he look so pale? Was he hiding injuries?

  “I don’t remember any of that. It’s all muddled in my head.” Shouldn’t she remember something so traumatic? One of her hands moved to explore her abdomen. Sharp, cold pain ran up her right side and drilled through her arm. A face—angry and arrogant glaring at her—floated up out of the fog of her memory. “I remember a man and a hole in the Plexiglas.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Nate said to her. He turned to Henry. “Okay,” Nate’s voice was cold and clipped. “You’ve seen her and talked to her. You can go.”

  “Nate,” she hissed. “Henry can stay if he wants to.”

  “It’s fine, Ruby,” Henry said with a shake of his head. “I just wanted to make sure you woke up. Dr. Rodrigues asked me to inform her when you were conscious, so I’ll go do that now.”

  “There are some things we need to discuss.” Something important, something the terrorist said, but she couldn’t remember exactly what. Plus—they’d made love. Twice. He’d demanded her promise that she wanted him before he touched her. Those were memories she’d hold dear for the rest of her life. She’d thought…hoped they wouldn’t be the last.

  He met her gaze, then his slid down to her bandaged arm and stayed there. “There still might be members of FAFO out there. You’re not safe.”

  Why wasn
’t he meeting her eyes?

  He kept talking to her arm. “Your brother is going to stay with you for now.” He looked at her brother full-on. “If you need anything, call me.”

  Why was she being treated like a victim when she’d done her fair share of busting heads with a bat?

  Nate didn’t respond verbally, but he did look angry.

  Before she could formulate a question that might induce him to stay, Henry left.

  She stared at the empty doorway, then asked her brother, “What’s going on?”

  “You nearly died,” Nate said, “and that guy is one of the reasons you’re in that hospital bed.”

  “You’re right. I’m in this hospital bed because he saved my life more than once.”

  “He’s the reason you were there in the first place. You heard him admit it.”

  “What kind of asinine thing to say is that?” She wanted to sit up, but just tensing her muscles to try caused a fog of pain to roll over and through her. That cut might be deeper than she thought. The pain sucked her down into a black pit for a moment. When she found her way out and opened her eyes, Nate was leaning over her.

  “Ruby? What happened? Say something.”

  Movement at the edge of her vision had her turning her head to see a nurse come into the room.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said to the nurse. “One second she was talking to me, and the next she was semiconscious.”

  The nurse looked at the monitor displaying her heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. “There was a bit of a dip a minute ago.” She looked at Ruby. “Were you trying to do something?”

  “Get up,” she answered, sounding oddly out of breath. Nate was wrong—Henry hadn’t done anything to endanger her. Because she couldn’t stand back and let him try to defend himself alone.

  A couple of faces flashed through her mind. Nothing more, but enough to know she’d made a choice.

  “That isn’t going to happen for a while,” she said. “You’ve got a bullet wound through your arm and a ten-inch laceration across the right side of your abdomen. You lost a lot of blood. Until you’ve been given both units of packed cells, you’ll probably be too dizzy to stand.”

  Crap.

  To the nurse she said, “Thank you for explaining.”

  “You’re welcome. In the meantime, don’t try to do anything. There’s a call button next to your right hand. I’m right outside the door.” She looked at Nate. “You can stay for a few more minutes, but she needs rest.”

  Ruby didn’t say anything until the nurse was out of earshot. Then she pinned her brother in place with a hard stare. At least that’s what she tried to do.

  “You were a jerk to Henry.”

  The hand Nate had on the sidebar of her bed curled tight around the metal until his knuckles threatened to burst through his skin. “He deserved it. In fact, I think I was quite restrained.”

  “Why?”

  “He nearly got you killed.”

  “No,” she said with certainty. “Or are you telling me you’d stay out of an uneven fight because it might be a little dangerous?”

  Nate frowned and studied her for a couple of moments. “You remember what happened when you were stabbed?”

  “Not precisely, but…” She ran out of breath and had to stop to catch up. “There were two of them.”

  “Two what?”

  “Bad guys.” As she said the words, more memories surfaced out of the fog. “One of them saw me inside the frozen containment area. He started shooting the glass walls, but they’re reinforced. Henry was fighting the other one with just a knife.” Fear rose in a cold wave from her stomach up to choke her. She forced the words out anyway. “I distracted the one with the gun, grabbed the smallpox sample, and threatened to destroy it.” Pain sliced through her arm. “He shot me.”

  “You shouldn’t have been in the building.” Nate’s voice was low and angry.

  “I was doing my job,” she snapped, her voice rising, “conducting an inventory of all the organisms in storage.” She wasn’t usually at loggerheads with her brother about anything, but this time…this time he was wrong. “At least I wasn’t snooping where I wasn’t supposed to be.”

  Nate stared at her with a face so blank he would have had to practice looking like that instead of surprised. He opened his mouth to say something, but the nurse came in with a frown on her face.

  “Your sister needs to rest. Why don’t you grab a coffee and come back later?”

  “Sure,” Nate said, practically running out of the room.

  Ruby rolled her eyes, and the nurse grinned at her.

  Ruby closed her eyes. Rest sounded like a good idea. Just for a few minutes.

  …

  2:43 p.m.

  Ruby opened her eyes and took stock of herself. Her arm and side still hurt, but her thinking was clearer. That catnap had really helped.

  A voice asked, “Ruby? Do you need something, honey?”

  She knew that voice she just hadn’t expected to hear it. “Mom? When did you get here?”

  “About ten minutes ago. Your Henry picked your father and me up at the airport and brought us straight here.”

  “Airport?” Maybe that nap had been longer than she thought. “Dad, too?”

  “He’s gone for coffee, but he’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Where’s Nate?”

  “Sleeping in a chair in the waiting area.”

  She needed to make things clear to her parents before Nate told them Henry was somehow to blame for her injuries. “Mom, Nate’s being an idiot.” She sighed. “Henry didn’t do anything to hurt me. He saved me.”

  Her mother smiled. “Ah. Your brother did go on a sleep-deprived rant about Henry, so we insisted he get some rest. An older gentleman by the name of DS is sitting with him to”—she put air quotes around her next words—“‘keep him out of trouble.’”

  She smiled. “He’s in good hands. DS has superpowers.”

  “Darling, you need more sleep, too.”

  “I’d sleep better if I knew you’d caught them all.”

  “The FAFO?” Her mother sighed. “I hesitate to say anything definitive.” Her mother’s lips were pursed. Pensive.

  “That means no.”

  “Other people have a different opinion.” She shrugged.

  “Other law enforcement people?”

  Mom nodded. “The FBI and Homeland tracked the mercenaries and that terrorist to their point of entry a few days ago. Came in by cruise ship.”

  “A cruise ship allowed weapons on board?”

  “No, they were smart enough to break into a gun shop in Florida after hours.”

  “Where’d they get all the other equipment?”

  “Still working on that.” Her mother stared off into space for a moment. “They knew too much.”

  “There has to be someone in a position of power helping them,” Ruby said. She knew that was right, because…because… The voice of the terrorist, the one who shot her, echoed through her mind. I’ll tell you who in your government is helping me.

  “Mom, one of the terrorists bragged that someone in our government was helping them.”

  “Hard to say if that’s the truth or not. Is that all he said?”

  “It’s as much as I can remember so far.”

  “We’ve been looking into the surgeon general’s office since he was infected with measles and nearly died a few months ago. Some of his staff have access to a wide swath of government department information.”

  “Does that include the CDC’s computer systems, databases?”

  “The surgeon general is the federal government’s top doctor. Of course they do.” She beamed at Ruby. “Good job.”

  Ruby almost argued with that statement, but what would be the point? Information had been a part of her family’s
business for so long that it was her family’s business.

  “Go back to sleep for a few more hours. Your nurse told me you’ll be released around ten a.m.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She closed her eyes and tried to drift off, but her mind kept replaying the fight Henry had been in while the other terrorist shot her. It all could have ended so badly.

  She woke with a start after seeing Henry’s body lying on the floor of the level-four lab, his blood pooled around him.

  The warm hand around hers tightened, and a male voice rumbled on a groan.

  Male?

  Someone was asleep with their head pillowed on one large, muscled forearm, while his other hand cradled hers.

  Henry.

  She glanced around, but no one else was in the room.

  For a long time she just let herself look at him, but eventually, staring at the top of his head got boring. She sighed. She was alive and he was alive. What did she have to bitch about? Not a damned thing.

  “Henry?” She kept her voice low, hoping no one would interrupt them for a while.

  He didn’t move.

  She tried again, squeezing his hand while she called his name. “Henry?”

  His head jerked up, and he blinked at her owlishly for a moment. “Ruby?”

  She tried to smile but found it oddly difficult. “Surprise.”

  The bags under his eyes made them look swollen and black, and the hand holding hers was covered in small cuts and bruises.

  He’d been hurt in so many ways. How many could have been prevented if she’d told him her brother had been kidnapped? Maybe she deserved to be in this hospital bed.

  “I screwed up plenty,” she said. “I’ve been going through a three-inch-thick file folder of I should haves in my head. I’m sorry.” A tear slid down her face, and she turned away to stare at the ceiling. Crying in front of anyone was never on her list of things to do, but her body refused to listen. It wasn’t even the dull pain at fault. It was knowing she’d let him down, let her brother, her parents, and herself down.

  The hand holding hers squeezed. “Me, too.”

  It was her turn to give him a stern stare. “If I’d told you about my brother’s kidnapping, maybe this could have been avoided.”