“Um. Maybe?” Cabe finished donning the gloves and curled his dominant hand comfortably around the butt of his Glock again, should the danger not yet be over. “I think so? I figured keeping myself from, y’know, freezing to death would be integral to doing my job to the best of my ability. Sorry about that, sir.”
“No, don’t apologize, Cooper.” Elliot smiled coolly at him from behind the impervious purple-blue lenses,but there was a note of honesty in his voice. “You make it look good.”
For the second time in just ten minutes, the wind was violently knocked out of his lungs. Was his client – no, was notorious womanizing playboy Elliot Wright – flirting with him again? Or was this just another sadistic streak, pretending to care about Cabe’s emotional well-being before throwing him off his game?
Whatever it was, Cabe’s nerves were frayed and raw, and he was in no mood to be fucked with. Whether the person doing it earned more in a day than he did in a decade or not.
“Look, sir –”
Maintaining eye contact with Elliot Wright at all times – especially when he was deliberately attempting to make you uncomfortable with it, or when he was wearing those six-bajillion-dollar sunglasses to maybe hopefully hide some small shred of dignity and morality he didn’t want the world to see – was absolutely integral to giving yourself any sort of hold, control, or leverage over the conversation whatsoever. This was something Cabe had learned very early on, having pegged Elliot as the type from his years of having to read and psycho-analyze strangers in a very, very limited amount of time.
Now, he was grateful that he had paid attention, and even more grateful that he had accepted Elliot’s open-ended staring contest challenge with his usual amount of stubbornness and gusto.
Because as he stared, zeroing in on the shapes and colors and reflections in those perfectly-polished lenses, he was able to clearly make out the fuselage of the jet sunken into the snow behind himself. Even closer, he was able to make out the tall, dark shape that was Max, knee-deep in snow, halfway between the wreckage and themselves.
And he was able to make out the shape of a gun in Max’s hand, extended in front of him, pointed right at the spot where the two younger men were waiting for him.
And then, the shot rang out.
Seven
Three things happened at once.
The shot echoed probably as far as Spokane; in fact, Cabe would be surprised if he learned later that Flint, who was doing his annual inspection of the weapons storage facilities in the valley this weekend, hadn’t heard it himself. Cabe personally both heard it and felt it; it rang like an alarm in the space between his ears, and sent a white-hot streak of fire searing across his left bicep.
Ouch.
In the same heartbeat, Cabe had seized Elliot by the tie without even thinking, and barreled into his charge forearm-first to drive him into the ground. Into the snow. As deep as he could without suffocating him, using both his grip on the tie around Elliot’s throat and the weight and positioning of his own larger body to pin him there on his back.
Double ouch.
Elliot choked on his breath as his back hit the snow and his bodyguard hit him, but the sound was easily muffled by the much louder crack of a Glock 19 going off only the length of Cabe’s arm away from his face. The blond man’s grasp on his tie was vise-like, doing almost as good a job of suffocating Elliot as it was keeping him anchored in the snow, out of sight, as he silently choked for breath.
Cabe only relinquished his hold once he realized that Elliot was both understanding how important it was for him to stay on the fucking ground, and finding it difficult to breathe. The W.A.R.D. agent’s free hand remained planted firmly in the centre of Elliot’s slim chest as he carefully lifted his chin, peeking out over the top of the snowbank he had thrown the both of them into. Blood was splattered across the blanket of white snow where Max’s body had gone down, a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead. If there was one thing that could be said about Cabe Sparrow, it was that his aim was impeccable. Even when under extreme duress.
And the award for the biggest goes to Captain Max. Sorry about that, mate...
It was a good three minutes of tense, torturous quiet before Cabe decided to end the now telepathic red alert blaring between them. Or at last take it down to a solid amber. “You said something about him being a friend of yours?”
He was anticipating something sarcastic in response, another devil-may-care remark which only proved how independent and elevated the WrightTech C.E.O. thought he was. Instead, Cabe was served silence, which in itself was surprising.
Not as surprising as the look on Elliot’s face, though, when Cabe finally glanced down to check on him. The usually cool, collected socialite was visibly shaken, his porcelain skin drained of any and all color save for the very tip of his nose which was bright pink from the cold. His breath came out in short, sharp, jagged puffs of air. For a moment, Cabe thought he might be hyperventilating.
“Do you... need some help, sir?” Cabe asked, as neutrally as he could.
Apparently, though, there was no neutral way to ask a man with that much pride if he needed assistance. The blood rushed back to Elliot’s cheeks in a single tsunami of emotion, as the high-powered and highly-esteemed young man finally hit his breaking point.
“Do I need help, Cooper?” he spluttered, and it was almost as if Cabe could see each and every tiny little thread of control holding his sanity in place snapping one at a time in quick succession. “Do I need HELP!? In the last half an hour, my jet, my baby, has been compromised and crashed, one of my father’s oldest and dearest friends that I trusted with my life has attempted to kill me, and my personal bodyguard, who is supposed to have my best interests at heart, decides now would be the perfect time to asphyxiate me! My suit is drenched, my ass is frozen, and you’re bleeding all over my twenty-thousand-dollar Valentino jacket! I am a businessman, Cooper, a man of intellect and society! A man whose worth has been proven over and over again in the offices of some of the most powerful and influential men and women in the modern world! I do NOT play G.I.-fucking-Joe frolicking about in a magical Canadian wonderland, shooting goddamn bullets at my buddies and throwing each other around in the snow! So I wonder, Cooper, do I need your help...? I don’t think you can provide the help I need! So unless you’re about to talk to your friends over at Hogwarts and pull a steaming hot jacuzzi, a Venti triple-shot espresso, and a brand new Gulfstream G650 out of your tight British asshole, then no, I doubt very much that I need your help!!!”
Cabe simply blinked at him. A part of him was surprised, but a part of him wasn’t. “... feeling any better after that?”
“Ugh!” Elliot growled and threw his head down, resting it against both of his forearms. His body appeared to curl into itself a bit more tightly before he finally relaxed again.
“Yeah... yeah, I’m... I’m sorry...” he ground out, his voice thin and raspy. “You weren’t... supposed to see any of that.”
“Consider it un-seen, sir. Can I help you up?”
The two men locked hands and Cabe gently aided the smaller man to his feet. “Easy... how’s your head?”
“Hurts like a bitch now the adrenaline’s wearing off. Your arm?”
“About the same. We need to set up shelter and wait for a rescue team to bring us in.”
“Well that’s fine, we can just... climb into the raft.” Elliot pinched the bridge of his nose between two gloved fingers and sighed again. “I’m sorry. I promise, I won’t point out anymore of your very obvious faults until we’re back at the office.”
“I’d appreciate that, sir. I work better when I’m not being shat on.”
“There’s a ridge up there.” Elliot nodded over his shoulder. “It should protect us if a storm blows in from the mountains. “We should set up and look at your shoulder.”
“You’re the boss, boss,” Cabe replied mildly, lugging the canvas survival bags he’d retrieved from the plane onto his good shoulder and keeping h
is Glock in his dominant hand. “So what, boy scouts? You got a badge in all this? You know a lot for a... well, for such a privileged fellow.”
Elliot snorted and snatched one of the bags away from him, evening out the load. “If you have to ask, Peaches, you’ll never know.”
The spot Elliot had chosen seemed safe from Cabe’s initial but intense examination. It was slightly elevated, giving them the advantage of sight on all sides, which made it much easier to defend. The dark stone of the rocky ridge jutted out from beneath a thick helping of snow, causing Cabe to wonder exactly what the plane had landed on, grass or rocks; it would provide excellent cover from both dangers lurking in the wilderness and, as Elliot had said, Mother Nature herself.
Unzipping the two larger canvas bags, Cabe found several strong tarps, lengths of rope, thermal blankets, a sheepskin throw, granola bars and bottles of water (which he immediately discarded to one side, not entirely trusting them yet if this entire journey was one long, well-laid-out deathtrap for Elliot Wright), and a second smaller first aid kit.
If there was one thing Cabe had learned from his days on the farm, from what the older guys who worked it taught him, it was that wind was always the enemy, but snow itself could be manipulated for warmth. Using the canvas bags themselves to keep their hands and arms dry, the two men dug a fair-sized hole into one of the banks of snow, creating a wide, several-feet-deep pocket that was protected from the wind and insulated by mounds of packed snow on all sides, as well as mostly hidden from view. While they wanted to be found, they wanted to make sure it was the right people who found them.
As much as Elliot had mocked him for his decision, it turned out that the raft, once inflated, provided the perfect waterproof cushion of air between themselves and the icy snow in the bottom of the shelter. Elliot was surprisingly good at knots and, other than a few bitchy comments tossed here and there, was even good at taking instruction too. In less than twenty-five minutes, a fairly secure sunken structure had been erected for the two men to take shelter in while they waited to be found.
“What’s the temperature out?” Cabe asked as he crawled through the thin space between the tarps he had deliberately left open.
Elliot was fussing about with one of the thermal blankets, no doubt still damp and chilly from his time on the ground. “Check the dock on your WrightPhone.”
“What makes you think I have a WrightPhone?”
“Cooper, please. Everybody has a WrightPhone. It’s why I can afford to crash a priceless jet into a field somewhere in Canada.” He stopped to pull his own out from his back pocket; there was no signal, but the little weather dial was lightly snowing in the top-left corner. “It’s seven degrees without windchill.”
“Windchill ain’t gonna matter much in here. Pass me that first aid kit?”
“‘Please’. We’re safe now, you have time for basic courtesy.” Regardless of his resistance, Elliot tossed the little red bag in his bodyguard’s general direction.
Cabe caught the pouch, but said nothing in response to the other’s comment. He wanted to give his charge a few more moments of sanctuary before having to explain to him that they were in fact still very, very not-safe.
“Let me look at your head. I want to check the bleeding I saw earlier.”
“I’m still having a mild heart attack, check your own bleeding.”
“It’s not deep, sir, and I would feel a lot better if you let me check you first.”
Elliot huffed out an exasperated lungful of air and rolled his eyes. “Well, I suppose it is all about your feelings, isn’t it?” he muttered as he eased himself into a more upright position, adjusting the silver blanket that was wrapped around his legs. Both men had removed their drenched shoes and socks and rolled up their slacks, their legs from above the knee to their feet bundled together in the sheepskin to stave off any frostbite. Cabe scooted closer over the bottom of the raft, leaning against the inflated side next to Elliot as he unzipped the kit to check the supplies.
“Wow. Whoever packed this definitely gets boners over being ready for anything.”
“Emiko. She cares too much about my health.” Elliot chuckled and shook his head. “She would lose her mind if she knew how much poutine I was planning on eating in Montreal.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten poutine,” Cabe said distractedly as he sifted through the kit, pulling out several things he thought he may need to treat any surface injuries, such as head wounds and bullet grazes. “Cheese curds and chips just sounds... wrong to me.”
“The gravy ties it all together.”
“Okay, now, gravy and chips are tolerable.” Cabe shifted back and motioned for Elliot to lean in closer so that he could reach his scalp, where he had seen the blood before. “But the cheese curds... no. That’s just wrong.”
“You have no sense of adventure, Peaches.”
“I just took a bullet for you, sir. Don’t you talk to me about a sense of adventure.”
It was at least a little warmer in the shelter than it had been outside, and the shared heat within the sheepskin blanket was bringing sensation back to Cabe’s legs and feet. It also made the idea of removing his gloves so that he could properly inspect his client for injuries slightly less unbearable. He tucked the gloves between his thighs to keep them warm, and urged Elliot closer.
“Tell me if I touch anything that hurts.”
Somehow, even with everything he’d been through, Elliot’s hair was still almost impeccable. A few chocolate waves brushed across his forehead as he leaned forward, the rest slicked back and relatively tidy. Cabe imagined it would be firm and gelled in place, but it parted easily as he slid the fingers of one hand into the dark, silken strands to find Elliot’s natural crown at the top of his head.
“Don’t enjoy yourself too much there, Peaches.”
Cabe scoffed. “Mr. Wright, even if I was getting off on this, the constant heckling would kill any wood I’ve got going for me right now.” His fingers gently parted the other man’s hair in various places before he found the patch of red he’d been looking for, sad and sticky behind his left temple.
“Okay, it’s a small cut, but it’s deep. I just wanna help your body do its thing and get this sealed up.”
“Then seal me up nice, baby,” replied Elliot, his monotone forced through gritted teeth. Cabe got the inkling that perhaps he wasn’t the biggest fan of medical treatment.
However, unlike Elliot, Cabe wasn’t about to use that assumption to his own sadistic advantage and wield it over his client like a cat toying with a mouse. Instead, he decided it would probably be better to distract him from what was going on above him, for everyone’s sanity.
“Let me guess, you’re also one of those people who forces everyone to try weird gross seafood.”
“Oysters are not ‘weird’ or ‘gross’, you uncultured limey. Not everything you eat has to be dug up from the ground and boiled into oblivion.”
“But aren’t they so much better that way?” Cabe didn’t believe that for an instant; basic British cooking was some of the worst in the entire world. But he was using an antiseptic wipe to clean out Elliot’s head wound, and, well, arguing with him seemed like it might be more distracting than agreeing with him.
“Given the fact that you were raised on a farm in one of the most boring states our fair country has to offer, I’ll cut you some slack,” said Elliot. “But the next free meal I have, I’m telling Emiko to book us a seat at my favorite seafood place in town, and, Eliza Doolittle, I’m going to culture you.”
Now, it was Cabe’s turn to be cheeky. “Are you asking me out on a date, sir? Because I’m not typically allowed to sleep with my clients.”
Elliot easily caught his smirk out of the peripheral of his vision, and returned it with a darker one of his own. “Hmph. Be careful what you wish for, Peaches. I’m not exactly renowned for playing by the rules.”
For the first time since waking up and remembering he would be taking a flight today, Cabe gave a ge
nuine laugh. “Okay, hold still... this is just a topical antibiotic.”
“Thank you, mom, but this isn’t my first boo-boo.”
Cabe screwed the cap back onto the tiny tube and half-lidded his eyes in annoyance at his charge. In all honesty though, he was glad the other man’s sense of humor had returned. Being trapped in this sort of situation with a panicking, fatalist ward was probably one of the most awkward and irritating things to have to deal with.
Whoa, I’m glad no one heard that... that would probably sound really, really dickish out loud.
“Um, no. That? That’s not going to happen.”
Elliot was pointing at the length of rolled self-adhering bandage in Cabe’s hands, the way Elliot’s nose was turned up almost reminiscent of whenever Cabe offered Bruce Wayne a different brand of kitty food than what he was used to.
“I need to make sure it stays sealed and clean,” Cabe said.
Elliot raised a single, immaculately-groomed eyebrow at him, and in that split second, something in Cabe snapped and he understood perfectly. When you were someone like Elliot Wright, visible signs of weakness and injury were not something you wanted broadcast to the world.
“All right. C’mere. I know a trick.”
It was an odd moment between the two of them, magical in its own way; it was as if Elliot suddenly felt, after his bodyguard had fought his own fears, taken a bullet, and dug seventy per cent of a hole in the snow for him, that he could trust him. Bizarre. The C.E.O. had scooted a little closer, lowering his head more so that Cabe could properly access the slowly-clotting wound.
“Hold still, my mum taught me how to do this.”
“Old farm secret?”
“Something like that... I guess they didn’t have a lot of supplies to waste...”
Cabe’s dextrous fingers were separating the hair, parting it right where the wound was and gathering a small tuft from each side to pinch between the thumb and index of each hand. Carefully, he crossed the two sprigs of hair over one another, stretching the skin it was rooted to in a way that pulled the wound shut.
Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives Page 12
