He looked down at his wrist and turned it to and fro, frowning. Yep, the wrist worked okay. His brain, too, he guessed, if he’d been able to send his arm the message to move that way.
He looked down at the end of the bed, where his toes were sticking up under a very stiff and not-at-all-warm sheet, and sent them the message to wiggle.
They obeyed.
So. Brain intact, arm intact, toes still responding to messages.
A quick but thorough examination of the rest of his body told him that everything was attached where it was supposed to be, and everything seemed basically functional. His entire body hurt like he’d just been through hours of fist fighting, but nothing seemed broken. He definitely wasn’t paralyzed.
What was he missing, here? What had happened between that shot from behind him and the world exploding? What had happened afterward?
And what was he going to do now?
Because now that he realized he was alive and mostly functional, he also started remembering the rest of it. He was in a military hospital, certainly, and if it was a military hospital then it had to belong to the same assholes who had been trying to kill him. He still didn’t understand what the explosion had been, but he obviously hadn’t gotten to Marie and she obviously hadn’t gotten to him. The men who were chasing him must have picked him up when he was out.
It was really the only explanation for the handcuffs.
And that meant that he was in a really big pickle.
He jerked at the handcuffs, wondering how strong the railing of the bed actually was, but everything seemed way too solid for him to even think he’d be able to just pull his way out of it. He’d heard of people who could get out of handcuffs even when they were locked, but he’d never thought he would need such a skill, and so had never bothered to learn how they did it.
Besides, you probably needed more than just skill to do that. Like bones made of jelly.
So getting out of the handcuffs was out.
He yanked harder, just once, to see if he thought he could pull the actual railing off, but the thing didn’t even move. No dice.
“Shit,” he whispered, his eyes snapping from one side of the room to the other as he tried to figure something out. There had to be a way out of here. There had to be something in here that could help him. Because if the guys who had been shooting at him had him here, then it wasn’t going to take a genius to figure out what they were going to do with him.
They’d been shooting at him before. He’d killed their main guy, David Clyde, and then his associate had killed their other guy, General Nolan. Those soldiers already hadn’t liked him. They’d already been ready to kill him.
If they just killed him now without doing anything worse, he would be flat-out lucky. He didn’t think they would, though. He’d seen enough of Clyde’s followers to know that they all came with a healthy dose of sadism.
He had to get the hell out of here. He needed to be gone like five minutes ago, rather than laying here like a log thinking about it.
And that was when he realized that his vision wasn’t as sharp as it should have been. Instead of clear-cut, the stuff around the room was… sort of fuzzy. Like he was seeing it through some sort of filter. Or a curtain.
His eyes went to his left, horrified, and he saw exactly what he’d already known he was going to see. A drip bag attached to an IV that was in his fucking wrist.
God, they had him on pain medication. Of course they did. It was the right thing to do, as far as what you did when you had someone who might have been hurt and was in the hospital. It was responsible, and even humane.
But they must have known it would also make him sloppy. No one made good decisions on pain medication. Fuck, he didn’t even know if he’d be able to run in a straight line, even if he did manage to get unattached from the bed and out of the room.
Did they have guards posted outside of his room? His gaze went to the door, which was closed, and he finally got it together enough to start listening for people out there. Because if there were guards—which he thought there had to be—then it was going to be even more difficult to escape this place.
God. He should have listened to Marie about not trusting the military. He should have listened to her a whole lot earlier than he did. If he had, Jack might be alive, and he might not even be in this situation.
And Marie…
Oh God.
She’d been behind the wall, he remembered, but had she still been there when the world had exploded? Had it actually exploded? Or had that been his imagination? And if it had, had she still been behind shelter? Or had she done something stupid like run out into the open to try to save him, only to get herself blown up by that explosion, whatever it had been?
Was she dead, too?
His stomach dropped through the bed and right to the floor at the thought that she might have died and he hadn’t even been there to see it. Not that he wanted to see her die, of course, but the not knowing was somehow even worse. If he’d been awake at the time, he would have at least been able to help her.
He would at least know.
“Simms,” a voice suddenly thundered through the closed door. “What’s the word in there? Our boy wake up yet?”
The door swung open and Pete, thinking that it was probably better if they didn’t know that he was actually awake, shut his eyes and tried to make the muscles in his face relax so he looked like he was still knocked out.
Whoever had opened the door stared for about a million years in the dead silence, then closed the door behind him.
“Nope, fucker’s still out cold, looks like. Honestly, if I was getting that much morphine, I’d probably be sleeping, too. He’s lucky we’re giving him that much. Deserves to die a long, slow death, if you ask me.”
The other guy—not Simms—snorted, and Pete wondered for a moment how thin these walls were that he could hear this entire conversation. Maybe they were just talking louder than usual.
After all, they thought he was unconscious. Maybe they didn’t think there was any reason to be careful with what they were saying.
“How’s General Nolan?”
“Alive. She got him in the shoulder, but it passed clean through. Knocked him out, but you know him. Nothing keeps him down for long. He’s already awake again and asking when he can get his hands on that asshole in there.”
Ah. Pete was, he assumed, the asshole in question.
Pete yanked on the handcuffs again, then tried desperately to pull his hand through the hoop. Because he wasn’t going to lay here and just wait for Nolan to come get him. It had never been his style, and it wasn’t going to start being an option now.
Unfortunately, the handcuffs were tight and secure, and his hand was way too big to fit through them.
Maybe he could find something in here to pick the lock on them, though, he thought suddenly. Maybe he could find something to break them. Though he’d have to do it quietly. It would be awfully hard to pretend to be unconscious if there was a lot of noise coming from his room.
Another quick scan of the room, his brain actually turned on and alert and watching this time, showed him that whoever was running this show was one step ahead of him on that one. The room might have once had convenient things like bobby pins and pieces of wire wrapped around legs of tables.
If it had, those lockpicking mechanisms had been removed just in case he decided to use them.
The place was a freaking wasteland. As bare-bones as you could get. The bed in which he was laying consisted of sheets and a very thin blanket, plus the metal railing that he was handcuffed to. There was a bedside table, but it was one of those very utilitarian hospital ones. Nothing interesting there.
And a chair, in case anyone decided to come in and visit him.
Now, if he could have gotten to the chair, he might have found a screw or something he could use. Unfortunately, he was currently secured to the bed.
God, he realized, he might really be in trouble. He was locked in a ro
om with guards, and handcuffed to a bed. He had no weapons, and no way of getting to them even if he had them.
He was alone.
And he had no idea whether Marie had survived that explosion… or not.
Chapter 26
He put the thought out of his mind, knowing that it wasn’t going to do him any good at all, and went back to trying to do something useful.
Namely, get out of this damn room before anyone from the so-called military (which he took leave to doubt) showed up in his room with a gun—or worse, some form of torture.
The table, he realized suddenly. There was definitely a drawer in the table next to his bed, and everyone knew that you kept the most useful things in drawers. Maybe there were tweezers in there. Fingernail clippers. Lotion to put on his hand so he could make another play at squeezing it through the hoop of the cuffs.
He should have seen that right away, dammit. Sure, he was on pain medication, but that didn’t mean he could afford to just turn his brain off entirely.
He reached a hand quickly toward the drawer, thinking that it might just be close enough for him to be able to get to it while being handcuffed to the bed.
It wasn’t. But it was close to close enough. There were maybe two inches of space between his reaching fingers and the handle of the drawer. Close enough to be possible. Far enough that it was still going to take work.
He let out a long breath of air, knowing this was going to hurt, and then stretched, straining at the handcuffs and ignoring the bite of them cutting into his wrist as he reached for that drawer. Doing everything he could to fight through the broken ribs, which had started screeching with the movement.
An inch. It had given him an extra inch. Now he could almost feel the drawer on the edges of his fingertips. One more inch and he’d be there.
He stretched further, groaning as his joints strained and popped with the action. The bite of the handcuffs got painful enough that he couldn’t ignore it anymore, but he pushed past it, stretching with all his might, his eyes on the drawer, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, his—
Suddenly, the door to his room flew open and someone started backing in.
Pete jerked back, his joints all popping back into place and his hand throbbing with the sudden return of circulation.
Then he tried really, really hard to look like he hadn’t been doing anything wrong. That was a nurse, he realized, and she was pulling a cart, so her eyes hadn’t been on him. Maybe she hadn’t seen.
Maybe she wouldn’t tell whoever was running this joint that he’d been doing his level best to dislocate his shoulder in an attempt to get to something that might help him get out of here.
He shut his eyes, thinking that he had an even better chance of not getting caught if she thought he was still asleep. And if she thought he was out—and the guards outside thought he was still out—they might keep talking about what was going on. No, he wasn’t sure whether he was going to make it out of this alive, but if he did, it would be nice to have as much information as possible, and the best way to get that information was to overhear conversations from people in the know.
Unfortunately, he doubted they would give him anything that would help him break out. And that meant that breaking out was still going to be entirely on him.
He listened to the nurse as she shuffled through the room, humming to herself as she moved. He couldn’t figure out what she was doing, though. It sounded like she was… moving furniture. But what furniture? There was nothing in here! What could she possibly—
Suddenly he was being smothered by something warm and heavy, and he jerked and opened his mouth to shout. It was one thing to pretend to be asleep when it might help him. He was not, however, going to lay around like some vegetable while someone smothered him!
He brought his free hand up and started to shove at whatever was on his face, his movements frantic and a whole lot weaker than he would have liked. Still, if they thought he was going to go out without a fight—and via smothering!—they had another thing coming.
No way, no how.
He found a strong grip on something and pinched, then shoved, and was rewarded with a shriek right in his ear.
“Pete!” a voice hissed moments later. “For fuck’s sake, hold still!!”
Wait. He froze, his mind churning and trying to think past the rush of adrenaline he’d experienced. What the…
He knew that voice.
“Marie?” he asked, his voice still muffled by whatever she had over him.
The weight on his face disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and he blinked and looked up, trying to make sense of everything. Why was Marie here? Why was she trying to smother him?
Why was she dressed like a nurse?
“Marie?” he asked, too surprised for the moment to think of anything more useful to say. “You’re still alive?”
She gave him one of her patented looks. “Last time I checked. Unless I’m a zombie and just don’t know it yet. Now hold still. I need to get these off of you and get us the hell out of here before anyone finds the actual nurse in the room downstairs.”
“Actual nurse? Marie, what did you do?”
Another long, sarcastic look. “I did what had to be done. I knew they had you in here, and I knew there had to be nurses if there was a hospital. So I found one, knocked her out, and took her uniform. Bing, bang, boom. And here I am to save you. Shouldn’t you be thanking me rather than struggling with me?”
He realized he was still struggling against her hands—which were doing something with the handcuffs—and froze immediately.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to pick this goddamn lock,” she hissed, leaning over him once again. “I tried to get the keys, but they’ve got them under lock and key, if you’ll excuse the pun. So I had to figure something else out.”
“And you just learned lockpicking in the last hour?” he asked, his eyes going to the handcuffs—what he could see of them—and watching her try to manipulate two long, thin slivers of metal.
“You would be surprised at what the people of Anchorage know,” she said, speaking around the lip she had caught in her teeth as she focused on the cuffs. “Evidently they don’t have a lot to do up here. So they learn random skills. Like lockpicking.”
She turned her face toward his momentarily and gave him a quick wink, then went back to work.
“It also turns out we’ve made quite a few friends in this town already. They don’t like the military. They do like that we slowed down long enough to pull them out of a collapsed building.”
Pete shook his head, trying to keep up with it all. “So let me get this straight. You somehow survived the explosion, found the people we saved, learned how to pick locks, and then disguised yourself as a nurse, all in the time I’ve been knocked out?”
She snorted. “It’s not the first time I’ve dressed up as a nurse, Pete. The rest is pretty new, but I figured in this life, you’re always learning. Am I right? Ah!”
She breathed out in triumph, and a moment later, he heard a click and felt the handcuffs snap off his wrist.
He brought the wrist over to his other hand and rubbed at it, trying to work some feeling back into the joint, and still trying to figure out how all of this was happening. Even after what he’d been through over the past week, this all felt insane.
And way too coincidental.
“How did you survive the explosion?” he whispered, deciding to take it one point at a time.
“That little wall I was hiding behind,” she hissed back. “I saw that guy’s shot go wide—you’re lucky he slipped just as he pulled the trigger—and I saw the tanker sitting just to the side of you. And I hit the ground. I would have tried to save you, but honestly, what was I going to do? The only reason I knew you lived through the whole thing was that I saw them gathering you up afterward and dragging you away.”
Pete sat up, already trying to think of what their next move could possibly be.
�
�So what now?” he asked. “I appreciate you getting me out of those cuffs, but it looks to me like we’re still in a room with guards outside.”
Marie gave him a sly, crafty grin. “Except they think that I’m a nurse. Their nurse. So they’ll never expect me to do anything I shouldn’t be doing. I mean, what woman would be stupid enough to turn on those guys out there, with their guns and their enormous egos and their shortcomings?”
She turned away from him suddenly and yanked a sheet off the cart, which he’d totally forgotten about.
“I figure there’s just enough room on the bottom level to fit you in there, and the sheet makes it a pretty convenient hiding spot,” she told him quickly. “And also…”
She reached into the bag she had sitting down there, rustled around a little bit, and then turned to him with two guns.
“What is that thing, Mary Poppins’ suitcase?” he asked, shocked. “Where the hell did you get those?”
Marie shrugged. “Like I said, our new friends don’t like the military much. Think they’ve been doing a whole lot worse than we even realize, and our friends are more than ready to be rid of them. We can’t kick them out of town, of course, but Benny and his friends were pretty happy to loan me weapons if it meant screwing the military over. What’s that song again? I get by with a little help from my friends.”
“Cute,” he muttered. “But we don’t have time for a singalong. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Hey, you’re the one still lying in bed,” she muttered, wheeling the cart over. “The door’s locked right now, but if they try it and figure out that I locked it behind me, they’re going to know something’s up. Climb in and fold yourself as tight as you can go, and then pray like hell that this works.”
He didn’t bother answering her. Instead, he slid from the bed to the bottom level of the cart, folding himself up as tightly as he possibly could—which he didn’t think was nearly tight enough—and then wrapping his arms around his legs.
Marie inspected him quickly, tucking him in further here and there, and then turned her eyes back to his.
Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn Page 14
