He'd just had to go and use that word again, hadn’t he?
Please.
Kate paced the tiny, badly lit washroom, cell phone clutched against her ear. Damn it to hell and back, what was it about Jonas Burke that he could put so much into such a small word? Dozens—no, hundreds—of other people had uttered the same word to her before, and she'd never had a problem refusing them. Please don't tell my wife. Please don't take me in. Please let me go just this once, and I promise I'll never do it again. It was all part of the job, and she'd hardened herself against the word years ago.
Until Jonas Burke had come along with his blue eyes and—
"Constable Dexter?" The OPP dispatcher interrupted her thoughts. "You're connected to Constable Dunham now. You can go ahead."
"Kate?" Scott's voice boomed into her ear. "Change your mind about dinner?"
"Sadly not." She forced a laugh, then launched into her rehearsed story, ignoring the guilt that gnawed at her belly. When she'd finished lying to him, her friend and fellow cop thanked her for the information and promised to take another run out to the farm. After a few more pleasantries, their call ended. Kate stared at the cell phone in her hand, then raised her gaze to the mirror. She regarded the indecision in her reflection's eyes. The deep unease. The borderline panic.
Phone still clenched in one hand, she rested her fists against the grimy porcelain sink and bent her head. She thought back twenty-four hours, to when she and Laura had worked shoulder to shoulder, packing up their childhood home. Even with all that had happened in the previous months—her parents' car accident and subsequent funeral, her fateful lack of focus going into that drug bust days later, not seeing the gun until too late, the surgeries that followed—life had still seemed straightforward compared to what it was now. She'd known what to do, what to expect, how to move forward.
Her weekdays had been divided between doing physical therapy, resenting the desk duty she'd been assigned to, and spending every free hour she could find at the gun range, trying to recapture the skills that had made her one of the top sharpshooters on the RCMP’s Emergency Response Team. She'd driven down to the farm almost every weekend, helping Laura pack up their parents' home and deal with their loss. Much of it hadn't been pleasant, but it had been predictable. It'd had a rhythm.
And now...now she stood in a filthy truck-stop bathroom, helping a fugitive escape the law she had sworn to uphold and wondering what in hell to do next.
She looked up into her reflection's eyes again and watched the flare of panic deepen. She was in way, way over her head with this. She and Jonas both knew it, and the longer she stayed, the worse it would get.
Bottom line, Kate, she told herself. Go from there.
Bottom line, no matter how much she wanted to help him, he was right. Her choices numbered exactly two. She could either turn him in or turn him loose. The choice was hers, and she needed to make it. Now.
Please.
With a groan that came all the way from her toes, she pushed away from the sink, pocketed her cell phone, and flung open the bathroom door.
Well, at least she'd have plausible deniability, right?
***
Jonas was halfway through a smoked meat on rye—a Canadian favorite he took advantage of whenever he was on this side of the border—when Kate returned to the table.
"Long phone call," he remarked. He bit into his sandwich again, watching her as he chewed.
Kate didn't look at him. She picked up the ham and cheese she'd requested and took a bite.
"Any problem with your OPP friend?" Jonas asked.
She swallowed. "No. And Laura's call to the Bureau worked. They think you're still in the area." She set down the sandwich and pushed away the plate.
Not hungry? he wanted to ask.
Not your concern, he answered himself.
Kate's gaze lifted to his at last. "I've decided you're right. About turning you loose, I mean."
A tiny shaft of disappointment surprised him. He turned his back on it and choked down another bite of sandwich. Odd that it tasted so much like sawdust when he’d expected to be ravenous. That ride in the trunk must have been harder on him than he’d thought. "Thank you," he said at last, because this was what he wanted. What was best. For both of them.
Kate leaned back, hands in her jacket pockets, watching him. The keys in her right pocket jingled as she played with them. "What will you do?" she asked at last.
"Take a couple of days to recover. Find a cash job for a few weeks until I have enough to get me back to the States. Go after Lewis and Ramirez."
He watched her wrestle with the questions he knew she wanted to ask. Then she pressed her lips tight and nodded. "Fine. I'll take you as far as Ottawa. There are a couple of cheap motels—"
"No."
"Jonas—"
"No, Kate. You know I don't have money with me, and I won't take money from you." It had been hard enough accepting lunch from her. "A shelter will be fine."
"And a couple hundred dollars will give you a key and your own bath—"
"I said no," Jonas growled. He pushed away the plate of half-eaten food, unable to stomach any more of it. "Take me to Ottawa. That's it, that's all. I'll find my own way from there."
Her gaze narrowed, turning analytical, seeing more than he wanted her to see. More than he wanted to show. Damned pain, wearing him down like this. He fought down an urge to cross his arms. Kate's head tipped to one side.
"You're not very good at accepting help, are you?"
"I wouldn't know, given that I make it a habit not to accept it."
"Not ever?"
He scowled. She watched him for another few seconds. Then, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she stood up from the table and dropped a crumpled twenty beside her plate.
"We still have three hours ahead of us," she said. "We should go."
***
A green distance sign slid past on the right side of the highway and Kate sighed. Twenty-three kilometers to Ottawa. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and yawned.
God, what a trip.
She shot a look at her sleeping passenger. Now that she'd made the decision, dropping Jonas off downtown would be a relief. For the entire three hours since they'd left the truck stop, her gaze had darted continuously from road to rearview mirror to side mirror and back again, watching for pursuers. Her good shoulder had wound itself into a gnarled mass of knots, and she was no longer on speaking terms with the bad one. She'd never felt so paranoid in her entire life—and that included all of those less-than-savory undercover assignments she'd done early in her career.
She eased her aching neck to one side, then the other. Never mind. Half an hour more and it would be over. Or at least, her part would be. Beside her, Jonas slept on, resting against the passenger-side window.
Kate cleared her throat.
"Jonas? We'll be getting into Ottawa soon."
He didn't stir. With a sigh, she reached out to touch the hand resting on a cotton-clad thigh.
"Jonas, wake up. We're almost—" She broke off, drawing back as if scorched. For-real scorched. Freaking hell, the man felt like he was burning up.
Keeping one hand on the steering wheel and one eye on the road, she leaned across to rest the back of her hand against Jonas's stubbled, fire-hot cheek. His hand came up to push her away, and he mumbled something unintelligible. Kate gripped the wheel with both hands again and stared at the highway unfolding before them.
A fever. He had a fever—and probably an infection to go with it. The question of now what? barely brushed across her mind before she dismissed it. Because there was no question. Not anymore.
They’d run out of options, plain and simple.
Freaking, freaking hell.
She put her hand on his arm, wincing at the heat radiating through the shirt fabric. "Jonas, can you hear me? You have a fever. I think it might be an infection. We have to get you to a hospital."
Jonas struggled to sit up straight but s
agged against the door again. His head moved—barely—in the negative. "Hospital—cops—can't."
Kate bit back a string of curses. He was right. If she took a gunshot victim to an emergency ward, the hospital would report it. They would have no choice. And then Jonas would be screwed, and she would be screwed, and—
Her gut twisted at the potential outcomes.
“Sister,” Jonas muttered. “Call.”
His body trembled under her touch, and his teeth chattered. Kate bit her lip, considering his suggestion, hating to involve Laura any more than she already had. She weighed the pros and cons of both alternatives: hospital, cops, and an inevitable visit from the ATF, or her apartment and only a potential visit from the same?
Along with the potential for having Jonas die in her care, of course.
To underline her thoughts, Jonas shivered again. Kate scowled and reached into the back seat for the jacket he’d shed earlier. She spread it over him as best she could with one hand. His fingers clutched at it, drawing it up under his chin. Blue eyes, fever-bright, opened to meet hers.
"Your sister," he mumbled. "Call."
“Fine,” she capitulated with a growl. "But only on one condition. If Laura says you need a doctor, that's the end of it, because there's no goddamn way I'll be responsible for you dying, Jonas Burke. Understood?"
Silence met her words, extending so long that she shot another look his way, expecting to find he'd passed out. He hadn't. He just stared back at her, the bitter defeat in his gaze echoed in the lines around a mouth pulled tight.
"Jonas," she began, her voice softening.
He turned his head away and closed his eyes.
Chapter 13
Somehow, Jonas managed to stagger into Kate’s building and then her apartment more or less under his own steam. She intervened once to keep him from careening into the wall as he came off the elevator, and again when he would have fallen over the back of the sofa in her living room.
She steered him down the hall to her bedroom, ignoring his protests as she pushed him onto the down-filled duvet covering her queen-sized bed.
"I won't take your bed," he growled, trying to rise again.
"Right now you will shut up and do as you're told," she retorted, tugging her cell phone from her pocket, "or I'll call the bloody ambulance instead of Laura."
Jonas subsided, visibly shivering. With one hand, Kate hit the call button beside her sister's name on her phone; with the other, she reached to pull the other half of the duvet over him. The phone rang in her ear. Jonas closed his eyes.
Kate's heart skipped a beat. He looked awful. His skin had taken on a pallor that contrasted sharply with the heavy shadow of stubble across his jaw line, and two bright spots of color over his cheeks looked as if they'd been painted on, like a clown's makeup. His entire length shuddered under the duvet.
Laura's phone continued to ring. Jonas's chest rose and fell unevenly, rapidly.
"Come on," Kate muttered at the phone. She stripped off her jacket and draped it over the back of the chair by the dresser. "Answer the damned—Laura?"
Her sister's voice turned instantly sharp. "What's wrong?"
"I'm fine. I promise. But we have another problem." Quickly, Kate described Jonas's condition, ending with, "What do I do?"
"You take him to the hospital like you should have done in the first damned place!" Laura snapped. "He needs medical attention, Kate. Probably antibiotics, possibly even surgery. He needs to see a doctor."
As if he'd heard her sister's voice—heaven knew Laura had been loud enough—Jonas's eyes opened and his gaze met Kate's, bright with fever, clouded by denial. Kate hesitated, knowing Laura was right...but knowing, too, that Jonas would never forgive her for not trying.
"I can't." She raked the hair back from her face and closed her eyes. "Trust me, sis. Please."
The same plea Jonas had used. On the other end of the phone, her sister hesitated.
"Please," Kate said again. "Just tell me what to do."
Laura let out an impatient whoosh of air. "All right, fine," she snapped. "But if he dies, Katherine Dexter, it's on your head, not mine. Have you looked at the wounds yet?"
"No. Hang on, let me have a look." She tried to tuck the phone between ear and shoulder, but the ache that had been plaguing the latter flared at the suggestion, and she caught her breath.
She switched the cell phone to speaker and set it on her nightstand, then flipped back the duvet. The plaid flannel shirt was too snug to lift, so with teeth gritted, she undid the bottom few buttons and eased the fabric aside, then peeled back the dressing.
"Laura? I have you on speaker. The wound on his side is pretty red. It looks sore."
"Are there any red streaks radiating from it?” Laura’s voice asked from the nightstand. “Any kind of a discharge or swelling at the site?"
Kate tilted the bedside lamp to shine on Jonas's torso and leaned closer for a better look. "No. Nothing."
"What about his leg?"
"He's sleeping right now. I don't think I can—" Kate broke off as Jonas's hands went to the waistband of his sweatpants . She swallowed.
"Never mind," she told her sister. "He's awake. Wait a minute while he gets undressed."
Laura muttered something, but Kate missed it, focused as she was on Jonas lifting his hips to slide the sweatpants down over them. On the knowledge that he wore nothing beneath them. On trying to keep her brain focused on the current emergency rather than—
She swallowed again, harder this time, and wrenched her attention back to her sister's voice.
"What?" she asked. "Sorry, I missed that last bit."
"Color me not surprised," Laura muttered. "Just look at the man's leg, Kate."
Jonas had collapsed back on the pillow, the duvet haphazardly covering his nether region and sweatpants still clinging to his thighs. Kate went to the foot of the bed, steeled herself, and tugged the garment the rest of the way off. She removed the second bandage.
"The same. No red lines, no discharge. A bit of swelling, but not much."
"Good. That's good. That means his body is fighting off the infection for now."
"So what do I do?"
"Keep him quiet and hydrated, give him acetaminophen for the fever, and check the wounds every couple of hours. As long as there's no change in the next twenty-four hours, he should be fine, but if you see any signs of red lines or discharge, or if there's any swelling, get him the hell into a hospital, all right? And if the fever hits one-oh-four, or the acetaminophen doesn't take it down, or he's still running a temperature at this time tomorrow, see a doctor."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. It damn near kills me to say this, but he needs somewhere to stay until the holes heal. He can't go wandering off by himself the way he is. If a hospital really isn't an option..."
"Yeah, yeah." Kate didn't want to hear this right now. Didn't want to think about anything beyond not having Jonas Burke die in her bed. "Thanks, Laura. I'll call you again in a couple of days."
"Tomorrow," her sister corrected. "You'll call me tomorrow. In the morning. Because if I don't hear from you before breakfast, Katherine Dexter, I will call the ambulance myself. And the cops you should have already called. Are we clear?"
"We're clear. And, Laura? Thank you. I owe you for this."
"Yes. You do. And I'll thank you to not get yourself arrested and thrown in jail so that you'll be able to pay me back."
Kate might have chuckled at her sister's tart words if they hadn't had such a large grain of truth behind them. As it was, she had to dig for a smile and force a note of lightness into her voice. A semblance of reassurance.
"I'll do my best," she promised. She reached out to hit the end call button on the cell phone. Jonas's chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths, but even in sleep, he looked truly ill. A string of curses ran through her mind, but none seemed sufficient. She settled for a succinct, heartfelt, "Shit."
It had been one thing to get him through the
roadblocks and away from the search for him; it was quite another to keep him squirreled away in her apartment for who knew how many days. The difference between claiming, "What cookies?" and being caught with her hand in the damned cookie jar.
Jonas's powerful frame shuddered, and Kate's heart did a guilty little flip-flop in her chest. She’d have time enough to regret her involvement in this later, when he was back on his feet again. For now, he was sick and vulnerable, and far more in need of pity than she was. With a last, deep sigh, she set to work.
As carefully as she could, she eased off his shirt one sleeve at a time. Then she rolled him over until she could pull the garment out from under him, trying—and mostly failing—to keep the duvet tucked around his hips while she did so. Her shoulder gave a twinge of pain, a welcome distraction from hormones that had no business flaring up, no matter how smooth Jonas's skin was. Or how solid the muscles beneath that skin. Or how many of those muscles her hands had to caress as she—
Kate's cheeks flared hot. Touch, she scolded herself, balling up the shirt and tossing it onto the chair to join her jacket. You had to touch him, not caress. And now you're done.
She pulled up the duvet and tucked it around his shoulders, then looked down at him. Her fingers curled into her palms against a sudden desire to sweep the hair back from his forehead, and her hormones did another little jig along tightened nerve endings. Laura's voice echoed in her mind.
"...he needs somewhere to stay until the holes heal. He can't go wandering off by himself the way he is. If a hospital really isn't an option..."
Freaking hell, this was going to be an interesting few days.
Chapter 14
Jonas came awake to dark silence and a tangle of damp covers. He lay without moving, listening to the stillness, trying to orient himself. A truck rumbled by outside, its brakes hissing as it rolled to a stop. Faint light crept around the edges of the blind-covered window above his head, just enough to outline the room's features: double sliding closet doors, a long, low dresser with a chair beside it, a nightstand and lamp beside him. Nothing looked familiar.
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