It was human hair, short and bristly, not Wulf’s. No pulse here, either, but the torso angled away and up as if it covered a second person. Like a nurse changing sheets, she flipped the body to expose another underneath. The blood-matted hair couldn’t be identified by feel, but the nose and cheekbone contours, open collar and shoulder holster matched her memory. Wulf.
Her heartbeat hung suspended too until she found a flutter of life in his neck. While she searched for a wound, hope rose from her chest to her throat and she wanted to sing, He’s alive, he’s alive! His clothes were sticky, as if he was drenched with blood, but she couldn’t feel an obvious injury on his chest, abdomen or thighs. Under one pant leg she found an empty sheath. Under the other, a tiny flashlight.
Thank you, Wulf. Her finger on the circular button, she took a deep breath.
And heard rushing water. The background wail that had filled her ears since the blast of gunshots was silenced; she could hear. When she pushed the flashlight button, she could also see, and that made her believe they’d both make it safely out of this sewer.
A clear, round tube stuck out from Wulf’s shoulder. Despite having seen thousands of identical tubes, it took her a moment to recognize it was a syringe.
“Wulf? Can you hear me?” Her voice sounded as if she’d exhausted it at a concert. She shined the light in his eyes. Fixed and dilated pupils indicated brain stem impairment or coma, but thankfully his breathing and pulse were steady. Slow, but steady. The syringe had been jabbed so deep his deltoid had clenched around it, and she needed both hands to yank the barrel free. As she watched, his breathing normalized and his blue lips regained a flush. This time, when she played the light over his face, his pupils contracted evenly. Like in Afghanistan, he was healing before her eyes. She leaned close enough to his face to see his cheek stubble. “Can you blink?”
His eyelids twitched frantically as his eyes rolled in his head.
“Stay calm.” She pressed her hand to his cheek.
“Nnnn.” His lips parted but he couldn’t form a word.
“Don’t try to talk.” She stuck the flashlight under her chin and used both hands to steady his head. “I’ll find help.”
“Nooo!” Jerking like she’d zapped him with a crash cart, his wrist whacked the side of her head. The impact knocked the flashlight loose. As she tried to catch it, it hit her thigh, then clattered on the metal catwalk before rolling to the edge. It hung, mocking her clumsy hands, for a fraction of a heartbeat. Then the light disappeared.
“Fuck!” She peered through gaps no longer distinguishable from darkness. She could almost see a glow through the black water. Almost. But not really.
“No...help.” His words sounded like they came from under a mountain.
“That was our light!” This blackness was worse because it was so unnecessary.
He breathed heavier and somehow shifted his body.
“What are you doing?” She groped for his wrist. “Stay still.”
“Need...eat.”
“Absolutely not.” His pulse was stronger. Part of her wanted to squeeze too hard—she was that mad at him—but she didn’t. “Not until we figure out what was in the syringe.”
“In...purse.” He panted after each syllable. “Eat. Mints.”
“Not a chance. Candy won’t help you flush whatever drugs those were out of your system.”
“Please.”
The word weakened her, and she found his hand. A connection in the darkness was almost like having a candle. Then her purse strap tugged across her shoulder and she heard a telltale rattling tick-tick. “What are you—” She dropped his hand and grabbed for her bag, but it was too late. The sneak had opened it and swiped the box. “I said you shouldn’t—”
“Too late.” The rising tone on the end of his statement—was he laughing?
She hunted through the air, but couldn’t find his hand to retake her mints, so she gave up and scooted against the wall. She was in a Roman sewer with two dead men, another man who was too weird to die, no light, no phone and no idea what had happened to Theresa Chiesa of Jersey City. At least the stones felt solid, and her knees pressed into her chest felt like the knobs of bone and cartilage she knew they were. This space and these two knees belonged to her and she could count on them, even when nothing else in her life was stable.
“Before I finish these, want one?” He sounded better.
She shook her head before she remembered he couldn’t see her. “No, thanks.”
Wulf had been drugged into a coma and then, click, he’d snapped to life, exactly like he’d done after the Black Hawk crash. What the hell could produce both a super kidney function to flush a systemic drug and super healing ability?
She heard crunching. “Those are loud mints when you chew thirty at once.”
“I offered to share. I need calories.”
It felt like an hour passed without either of them speaking, but it was probably only moments. The sound of tearing fabric was audible over the water.
“There are two dead men,” she finally said.
“Two?”
She couldn’t interpret his thoughts from his neutral tone. “I think I shot one.” She’d been in Afghanistan more than six months, but the first time she’d fired a gun at an actual person had turned out to be while on leave in Rome.
“You okay?” His hand and forearm landed on her like a falling branch.
She winced. Should she be okay? “Yeah.” Killing probably wasn’t a big thing to him. “I mean, he was trying to kill us, right?” Her hands felt dirty and crusty, as if splotched with dried blood, like Lady Macbeth. “What’d you do the first time?”
“First time I what?”
“Killed someone.”
A lighter flame in his palms became, within seconds, a ball of light hanging from the catwalk railing. He’d crafted a lantern from the dead man’s pants fabric and wire. The whole conglomerate hadn’t yet caught fire, and he hadn’t answered. “What did you do after?”
“It wasn’t what you’d term politically correct.” He scooted closer to the body, every movement an odd jerk, like his synapses had to fire individually to activate his muscles.
“By definition killing a person isn’t politically correct.” Flickers of light reflected on the corpse’s open eyes. She’d seen death, lost devastating battles in the hospital to it, but this wasn’t remotely the same because she hadn’t lost. She’d won. Here winning meant death.
Wulf stared down at the heavyset man. “Here’s the solution to one of my problems.”
“What?”
“My team’s been looking for this guy.” He turned out the dead man’s pockets. “He was a flight-line manager at Bagram until last month.” He removed the man’s shoes, lifted the innersoles and tried to twist the heels. “Disappeared after a pilot was shot,” he added as he searched inside the man’s belt, waistband, cuffs and collar.
“You’re thorough.” He didn’t fumble over buttons or zippers. He’d regained his physical control, at least in this small way, and it soothed her.
“Ideas?” He handed her a leather case the size of a long wallet. It held another hypodermic and two vials of liquid, one empty, one full.
By turning it toward the flames, she was able to read the label. “Ketamine. A sedative, mostly veterinary, off-label use as a rave drug.” She calculated from the listed amount. “This would work on a Clydesdale. Maybe a whole team.” Her throat closed and she stared at his face. The flaming cloth cast shadows that merged with the dark bloodstains until he resembled a ghoul from a Bosch painting. No miracle-science lab had created him. Her mind asked the question: What are you?
Her mouth opened, but surrounded by death, her lips refused to take the last step.
He reclaimed the drug case, put it and the dead men’s identifications in a p
ouch fashioned from a jacket, zipped it closed and tied it around his body.
“What are we going to do about them?” Without asking, she knew the police wouldn’t be one of his choices.
“Leave ’em. It’s a time-honored tradition.” After wiping his knife on a man’s pant leg, he replaced it in his ankle sheath. “Emperor Elagabalus was tossed in the sewer at the end of his shelf life, so it’s good enough for these scum.” He hauled himself upright with help from the wall. “You’re fabulous, you know that?”
“Not really.” She shivered and hugged herself with hands as clammy as her wet pants, but she made it to her feet. “I lost it before you regained consciousness.” His opinion shouldn’t have made her feel better, but it warmed her at least as much as the coat she still wore.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen fresh Rangers not stay that cool.”
“You don’t have to be a guy to be...” Tough wasn’t the right word. “Capable. Up to the job.” Sure, she’d been scared. She couldn’t think about the crunch of the first dead man’s rib without her shoulders and neck hunching, but that had nothing to do with being a woman. “I’m a doctor. I deal with unexpected shit every day.”
He untied the cloth ball and dangled it in front of him. The smoldering light swung wildly close to his jeans as he staggered. “Come on.”
“You’ll burn yourself.” She scrambled after him.
“It’ll heal.”
That sounds like the truth, she thought. She followed Wulf’s light downstream. At the moment, she didn’t see another choice.
* * *
Theresa knew no self-respecting Roman restaurant opened before six, but Wulf had promised food if she climbed this last hill. After leaving the sewer at the main opening with barely a wave from tourists on the bridge, they’d cleaned up in a church’s dingy basement bathroom and walked backstreets to this spot. On one side of the alley, ramshackle buildings backed into the rising ground. On the other side a screen of trees, brambles and ivy hid the cars honking below. Now that they’d stopped walking, her legs felt odd.
“Fighting makes me hungry.” Wulf knocked on a black-painted door. “This was the meatpacking district in the old days. My friend Cesare’s father was a butcher.”
The ground tilted. Maybe I should sit. The restaurant stoop looked clean.
“Cesare learned to cook from his mother.” Instead of letting her sink to the step, Wulf put a hand under her elbow and knocked again. “Butchers’ wives cooked the scraps. Good stuff.”
Scraps. Behind her closed eyes, she saw the raw, burned face of the man who’d tumbled into the water.
“Hang with me, Theresa.” He shifted her shoulders against his chest and reached around her to rattle the door. “This hill is a former Roman dump. Made of more than fifty million olive oil amphorae. Interesting, isn’t it?”
She struggled to raise her eyelids, prepared to tell him no even as he tucked her deeper under his arm and pounded the wood with the bottom of his fist.
The old man who opened the door barely reached her collarbone. When he saw Wulf, his squint changed to a grin and wide-armed hug. They chattered in Italian, but she didn’t care if they were twins separated at birth, because she’d detected the aromas of her mother’s house—garlic and onions and meat, all simmering and roasting. If these two characters didn’t move out of her path to that food, they might end up more crushed than Wulf’s ancient amphorae.
“Cesare, mi scusi.” Wulf drew her across the threshold. “Permetto introdurre Signorina Theresa Chiesa.”
The cook kissed her cheeks, and Wulf guided her to a chair at the back of the room. He fiddled with a freestanding screen until she wanted to yell, Get on with it! She’d had a long day, no lunch and she’d freaking killed a man today and would do it again—see if she didn’t—if they didn’t bring out that marvelous-smelling food pronto.
Hot, damp towels arrived with the bread, shutting up the voice in her head. It stayed quiet while she savored antipasti, sliced meats, olives and a glass of Barolo.
“I’m ready,” she finally said. “Let’s start with the real medical story. No bull.”
Wulf stared at his bread plate and shook his head. “This isn’t the place.”
“You’ve said that before.” She popped an olive marinated with thyme and pepper in her mouth and worked the pit out with her teeth. “Ostia wasn’t the place. The car, with Joe-Jim in the trunk, wasn’t the place.” The slice of culatello between her fingers folded and clung to itself as she draped it over a piece of melon. “But we had some time to ourselves in the sewer. That would’ve been a good place to explain how you do your nifty healing trick.”
“I need more information.”
“About yourself? I don’t think so. Look, I followed you all day, broke several major laws.” A statement so absurd she almost choked on her next olive. “And I haven’t called the police because something makes me trust you.” Maybe because she’d seen his kindness with Nazdana and Meena. Or maybe because the other guys were the ones firing first.
“Is it the food?” He nudged the bread basket closer to her plate.
“I’m serious.” She used the look Sister Beatrice had bestowed on parents who skipped the Holy Names school auction. “I think the events of today have made security clearance issues irrelevant, don’t you? I’m done following that rule.”
“You have a crumb...” He touched a spot under his lower lip, where the skin made a dent above his chin. He didn’t politely look away while she dabbed with her napkin. Instead, crammed in this intimate corner behind a screen, he stared at her like she was breakfast, lunch and dinner, even though she felt more like an olive—briny, bordering on bitter.
“I won’t give up.” She took a gulp of wine to reinforce her resolution.
With a sigh, he swirled bread through the plate of olive oil. “I told you my team’s investigating heroin smugglers who use Black and Swan logistics.” He smushed the piece harder into the dish, as if stamping a passport. “The guns didn’t surprise me, but the tranquilizer was an unexpected move.” Saturated blobs broke off the bread. “Maybe I was wrong and this is personal, not army business, but either way, they’ve linked you to me.”
“But what is—” she curved her fingers to make air quotes, “—‘this?’ And why would ‘they’ be interested in you personally?”
“I thought the Ostia guy wanted to stop the drug investigation. Ditto the shooters. Clearly they’re involved in the drugs, because one of them was a former Black and Swan manager.” Abandoning the shredded bread in the olive oil, his hand covered his shoulder where she’d removed the syringe. “But that much ketamine. They have more information about me than they should. I need to know how they got it.”
This was her answer, the big one. Her fingers clenched the edge of the table as she forced herself to stay seated. “So what do they know that I don’t?”
“Coda alla vaccinara.” Cesare set a dish family style between them. It held steaming chunks of oxtail in tomato sauce studded with pine nuts and raisins.
“Saved.” The corner of Wulf’s mouth tilted as he slipped a plate in front of her.
One bite, then she’d press him again. The sauce had an underpinning of bitter chocolate she associated with Mexican moles after living in Texas. Maybe another bite. He wasn’t leaving.
“Did you have a laptop in your hotel room?” he asked.
“Unfortunately.” She scooped a forkful of the disintegrating meat and lush sauce.
“Did you have information on it about me?”
Her mother had emphasized that it was rude to speak while chewing, so she nodded.
The lines between his nose and mouth deepened. “I hope you merely raved over my excellent tour-guide services.”
She snorted and set down her fork. “Get real.” While she considered an explanation that didn�
�t sound clinical, she sipped her water. “I keep notes on medical situations and outcomes. Nothing scientific, no names.” Nothing like real research. Because the army had sent her to Darnell Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas, after her residency, she’d never had a chance to compete with her medical school peers for a research fellowship.
“These people, whoever they are, they may want to capture me. To know more.”
So did she, but she wouldn’t kill—or die—for the answer, although she might whack him with an olive oil bottle. Apparently it wouldn’t hurt him for very long. “Look, I have a yes-or-no question. It’s really...” Dumb.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Are you...” She stared at her cutlery. The question was crazy, influenced by her roommate’s choice of escapist reading. If she looked at his face, she’d never spit it out. “A vampire?” She glanced through her lashes.
“There’s no such thing.” His nostrils spread and his lips twitched. “Or, if there is, I’m not aware.”
Fine, he wasn’t a sparkly bloodsucker, but his answer sure as hell didn’t feel like the complete truth.
The restaurant’s front door jingled.
Chapter Sixteen
Immobilized, Theresa watched Wulf leap past the screen. He’d disappeared before his chair hit the floor. She half ducked under the table, expecting shots or crashing furniture, but then Wulf laughed and she recognized an Italian greeting.
In a moment he returned with a third chair and wineglass. Behind him, a dapper man in his early seventies wearing a subtle pin-striped suit and red-patterned tie paused to eyeball her. His mouth tightened until it looked unfortunately similar to a cat’s butt.
She could guess what he saw. Her black pants, soaked and dried in place, itched. She’d scrubbed her hands and face in the church bathroom, but her clothes deserved a burn barrel. Ditto her hair. Wulf wasn’t in much better shape. Dousing his hair in the sink and drying it with paper towels had only created cleaner snarls. He’d repossessed the leather jacket to cover his blood-soaked shirt, but the coat was unable to hide the dark splotches on his jeans.
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