Connor (In the Company of Snipers Book 5)

by Irish Winters

  Very slowly, he flexed his fingers until they encompassed most of that luscious part of her anatomy. As small as she was, Izza was like his own private toaster. The tips of his fingers descended to the seam of her pants. If she’d have been naked, they’d have descended to more, but that day was gone. Still, a man could dream.

  She stretched against him, and he stilled. She yawned. Just before she opened her eyes, he closed his. Feigning sleep, he fully expected she’d push off the minute she awoke. She didn’t. Unborn feet fluttered against his ribs again. Izza felt it too. She rubbed her stomach, her hand between him and the baby, her head still resting in the crook of his arm. She wouldn’t stay any longer than she had to, so he shallowed his breathing and relaxed.

  Easy does it, Maher. Steady.

  She didn’t move, but she was staring at him. He could feel the pinpoint laser burn of her gaze drilling into the side of his face. The feeling in the air had changed the moment she’d awakened. Izza was no longer relaxed, but neither was she ready to leave. Yet. He’d felt her head turn as she noticed where his hand was. Oddly, she didn’t move his hand like he’d half expected. She seemed to be studying him, looking without getting caught looking. In a million years, he’d never be able to figure out how her mind worked. He didn’t care. In this one perfect moment, he hoped she’d stay.

  But that was not to be. With a grunt she rolled to her side and got to her feet. And straight out the door she went. Of course, she probably had to find a bush or a tree this early in the morning. So did he, for that matter, but the place under his arm where she’d just been felt empty.

  He stretched, his hands high over his head. Just as he rolled to his stomach and pressed his dead weight off the ground, she burst back into the cave. Man, she could pee fast.

  “You did it.” Her eyes were wide with excitement. “I never thought you could, but you did. It worked.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t his brightest early in the day. Connor cringed. “What’d I do now?”

  “You caught a rabbit!” Izza was smiling. Now that was something to get up in the morning for.

  “Cool,” he muttered as he crawled to his feet, but moving was difficult. His stomach wound felt hot and wet beneath the bandage. That wasn’t good. As stiff as taffy in the dead cold of winter, he staggered out of the cave.

  Wow. The view. There were actually puddles on the desert ground. All that dusty sagebrush was the most vivid shade of dark mint green this morning. The sand had transformed from bleached out tan to shades that ranged from deep browns to oranges and reds. He stood wavering on his feet as he breathed in a lungful of cool, moist air. And then another. His poor broken nose actually felt better.

  A flock of noisy birds tumbled through the sky overhead, chirping a melody that sounded happy. Brilliant pink hues stretched toward him for the most perfect sunrise he’d ever seen in his life. He sucked in another fragrant breath until his ribs expanded enough to make his gut hurt. Okay. Enough fresh air for now.

  “Damn it, you’re slower than dirt,” Izza grumbled while pointing toward the snares he’d set. “Look. See ’em? What’d I tell you?”

  Connor turned from the heavenly scenery to Izza. She was so excited she hopped up and down. He cast his gaze to the snares. Sure enough. He’d caught not one but two rabbits. Now the hard part began.

  “I’ll go get them.” He meant to sound confident, but his words came out breathy like he’d just run a mile. “See if you can find something sharp and pointed to help skin them. Maybe a piece of rock.” Just that fast, he dropped to his hands and knees, dizzy from moving too fast. Crap. There was no easy way to look like a man while in that position. Once again, he dragged himself upright and headed out. The two snares seemed a lot farther away this morning.

  And then I have to walk all the way back? He groaned at the prospect. His feet moved like lead. His head buzzed, and his insides felt like they were falling out. Keep it together, Maher. You can do this. You’ll feel better after you eat.

  He stumbled on. By the time he got to the rabbits, all he could do was sit and stare behind him at the cave. It looked like it was a mile away. His energy was spent and the bright Utah sun was back on the job. The rain created waves of humidity, steaming up from the rapidly heating desert. The air felt more like a damned blanket of stifling sweat. There was no way to win.

  He untangled the snares. For two scrawny jackrabbits, they were awfully heavy. Just the smell of them brought on a wave of nausea that laid him flat to the steaming desert floor. Black birds with enormous wingspans circled in the acid-washed sky above. Vultures. Buzzards. Eyeball eating ravens.

  That’s not funny, Lord.

  He lay still for another minute, hoping the world would stop spinning. It didn’t. As hard as it was, he forced himself to sit again. Izza needed to eat. Their baby would die without him. He had to do this. There was no other choice. Grabbing the two rabbits by their ears, he lurched to his feet and headed back, lucky to be moving at all. Step after step on a drunken path, he kept going. The damn cave got farther away instead of closer.

  Izza stood with her eyes shielded, searching for him, probably cussing too. Yep. She’d be mad by now. His legs collapsed. He bowed his head for a one on one pep talk. I can do this. Marines don’t quit. We keep going until we die. We do.

  Gritting his teeth, he shoved off one more time. This was it. If he dropped again, there would be no more getting up. The dead rabbits flopped against his leg. Each step became a do or die mantra. For Jamie. For Izza. For our baby. Gotta keep moving.

  Suddenly, she was at his side, her hand to his chest like she was holding him up. Too busy watching his feet he hadn’t seen her approach. He looked down into her pretty face. She didn’t scream or growl. What was wrong with her now?

  “I... got two rabbits.” He turned into an idiot who just had to say something. Yeah, she already knew he got two rabbits. She wasn’t blind. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can,” she answered confidently, but those deep brown eyes looked worried when they scrolled over him and stopped at his gut. It had to look pretty bad for her to be so kind.

  “For Jamie,” he said weakly. “For Uncle Jamie.”

  Silently, she hooked her arm through his, and let him lean on her as they stumbled along. He tried not to lean much, but there was no way he could make it back to the cave without help.

  “Did you find something sharp?”

  “Yes.” She held him upright, her palm flat to his chest. Finally, they were at the cave. She guided him to the rock where she usually sat. The rabbits flopped to the ground. He didn’t care. He needed to breathe. Izza brought him a bottle of tepid cave water. That was nice of her. He gulped it down, panting his lungs out from the short walk.

  Izza was watching him too closely. What did she want now?

  “Where’s the sharp... thingee?” He could barely catch his breath to talk.

  “Here.” She handed him a long rock, semi-sharp on one edge like a knife. It would have to do.

  Picking one jack up from the dirt, he dropped to his knees and forced himself to the gruesome task at hand. Bunnies were never his first choice for a menu item. He didn’t like the sounds they made when they were caught. They screamed and his heart always hurt for the scared little creatures. But that was then, and this was now.

  He dropped to the ground and laid the bunny flat on its back. The hardest part was the first cut in their soft and fluffy gut. He sawed at the rabbit’s belly for a long time. Once the stone blade broke through the tough hide, everything went easier. Finally, the first carcass was skinned and cleaned, and he could not bear the smell anymore.

  “I found this.” Izza showed him an old dented pan. Once upon a time, it had been covered in white enamel with blue specks. Today it was mostly rust. Connor grunted. By the looks of it, she’d scrubbed most of the rust away. Damn, she was good in a tight spot.

  “Maybe we could boil them?” she asked. “What do you think?” She looked so damned excited that the
y had something to eat.

  “You got matches?” he asked.

  “No, but I’ve got this.” She handed him the bottom of an old soda bottle.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” His vision blurred as the last of his energy faded.

  “It’s my fire starter. It works. I’ve already used it. Want to see me start a fire?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Good then, I guess.” He turned to the cave. “I’m going to lie down for a minute.”

  With one hand on the wall and the other clutching his gut, Connor staggered into the dark cave. He was sure of it now. He was bleeding. And oozing. Crap. He collapsed onto the pile of junk clothing. Being horizontal and finally out of the sun felt great. And it was easier to breathe in a prone position.

  Izza stayed away. Good. A man should die alone.

  By the time she did join him, he’d lost track of time. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she’d brought that old coffee pot to where he lay dying. Without asking, she lifted his shirt and pushed it all the way up to his chin. Very gently, she pulled the bandage away.

  He tried not to groan, but even that gentle touch felt like a razor slicing away at his insides. The minute he saw the soggy bandage in her hand, he knew what it was made out of. She always wore two tank tops, one over the other. Wife beaters. What a stupid name for a woman’s shirt. So she’d used one of them to dress his wound? Hmm. He watched her eyes, still too serious as she examined the bullet hole in his side.

  “I have to take your shirt all the way off.” She didn’t look at him, just the hole in his side. Reaching her arm under his neck, she pulled him forward until the shirt was out of her way.

  Out of breath again, he stared at the ceiling and let her do whatever she wanted. He didn’t speak, afraid she’d bite his head off, and he just didn’t feel good enough to fight with her.

  Silently she poured cool water over the burning hole in his abdomen. It stung, but it felt cold which probably meant he had a raging infection. She tugged at his wound a little. He grimaced, growled, and endured. Somewhere along the line, she’d placed a cool cloth on his forehead. He hadn’t even noticed.

  “I need to see your back,” she said before she rolled him to his other side and cleaned the exit hole. By now, he knew he was not gut shot. A small caliber through and through was the safest way to get hit, no bullet to dig around after and less tissue damage. But it still hurt like hell. And he needed real, no kidding medical treatment. Creeping tendrils of fever invaded every muscle and nerve. His teeth hurt. His eyes. Every last damned part of him.

  Finally, staring at the ceiling again, he panted like a dog. The pleasant morning had changed into an endurance test, and all he did was go for a walk and pick up two little bunnies.

  “You know I... I really thought... umm....” He forgot what he wanted to say. “Never mind.”

  She finally met his gaze, looking down on him like she knew what she was doing. Like she was a nurse or something. “You thought you were some kind of cowboy, didn’t you? You thought you’d be able to jump up after you’ve been shot and ride off into the sunset on your trusty horse, huh?”

  For some reason she was getting prettier as he got sicker. And her brown eyes were so dreamy. She did remind him of an angel. Kind. Thoughtful. Sweet. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t as mean as he thought.

  “Well, yeah. Kind of. I guess,” he admitted. Isn’t that what every Marine thought? They could take a licking and keep on ticking?

  “The cartel took everything I had when they dumped us.” Again, she sounded friendly and competent. “They slashed all my pockets.”

  “Huh?” He didn’t have a clue why that bit of trivia was noteworthy.

  “You know what I’m talking about—my knife, my blowout kit, matches, extra ammo and MREs. They took all of it. Stripped ’em bare. Heck, they even took my clean pair of underwear and socks. Sure could use them now.”

  Hmmm. Izza. Stripped bare. Underwear and socks....

  “I found something when I was exploring. I think it’s time I used it. Your wound is infected. You’re sick.” She left but came right back with a brown flask in her hand. Izza knelt at his side again, her cool hand to his forehead.

  He shivered at her gentle touch. What now?

  “How much of a cowboy are you, Boston?” she asked. “Are you really tough, or do you just talk tough?”

  Man, he was too exhausted to play mind games. “Why?”

  “You can scream if you want.” Without a single word of warning, she poured scalding, gut-wrenching, piece of shit, brown liquid from hell out of that bottle and into the hole in his gut!

  “Sweet Mary and Jesus!” He jerked away from her as fast as he could go, which was not fast at all. She’d just burned the living hell out of him. He smelled singed flesh. His!

  As soon as he rolled over, she poured that same damn crap onto the hole in his back. By then, he was belly against the wall with no way to get away from her. Tremors lit him up from the inside out. “God! Stop it already! Izza! Stop it! Don’t kill me!”

  “It’s going to be okay,” she soothed while she eased him to his back again, but why should he believe her? She danced in and out of focus. Forget the angel of mercy. Izza was a three-eyed troll from Hell.

  Connor placed both hands flat to the ground, intending to sit up and get far, far away from the beast he shared the cave with. He couldn’t. The cave spun in a fantastically awful terror ride with him caught dead center like a stupid fly in a mean spider’s trap. Fragments of the bright Utah sun darted through the cave’s entrance with tongues of liquid flame until—

  He passed out. Again.

  Eighteen

  Poor Connor.

  With a dented old hubcap full of water, Izza rinsed the rag and smoothed it over his fevered brow again. Everything she’d come across in her wanderings had been repurposed. The hubcap made an excellent, albeit shallow washbasin. Her own clothing had become bandages or washcloths. Connor’s breathing had at last settled into a normal rhythm, but the look on his face when she’d disinfected his wounds with that old bottle of whiskey she’d found? Priceless.

  She actually felt bad dosing him unexpectedly the way she had, but she didn’t have a choice. The second she’d touched his hand out there on the desert she knew he was sick. High fevers demanded drastic measures. Poor Connor. Already hurting so much, she hated hurting him more.

  All night long, she battled his fever with cool water baths that evaporated as quickly as she’d smoothed them over his burning chest, shoulders, face, and arms. Nursing him became her number one mission; preparing the food he’d caught, secondary.

  Sunrise the next morning funneled the blast furnace of dry desert heat straight into the east facing entrance. As the cave grew warmer, his fever ramped up. So did Izza’s efforts. She lost herself in service to the man she thought she hated. Connor would not die, not if she had anything to say about it.

  At last he opened his bleary, bloodshot eyes. Yeah, he was still sick. She could tell. His breathing quickened when he caught sight of her. Easing to her feet, she went to the pool of water in the back of the cave and filled a fresh bottle. Back at his side again, she lifted his head and pressed the bottle to his lips. His brows knitted together in the cutest V, but he would not drink. The tables had flipped. Now she was the sorry one and he the angry one. She couldn’t hold back the small smile that tugged at her lips.

  “It’s just water,” she coaxed. “Come on, Boston. I wouldn’t hurt you. Have a sip.”

  He scowled, but accepted the offer. His hands were shaking so she held the bottle with him. Watching his Adam’s apple bob while he gulped half the bottle down brought an unexpected measure of satisfaction.

  Encouraged, she left his side and returned with a cup of the broth she’d made from the rabbit meat. She had to smile. He still looked suspiciously at her, and she didn’t blame him. Once again he tried to pull back when she urged him to try it.

  “Connor, open up. You have to eat,” she scolded. Honestly,
this full-grown man acted like a little boy. He took the tiniest sip from the cup, just enough to wet his lips while those dark blues pierced her with suspicion. The broth must’ve hit the spot, though. After one taste, he relented and eagerly slurped it down. She wiped his mouth and face with another cool cloth when the meal was gone.

  “Do you want more?”

  Izza was by far the meanest, nastiest woman he’d ever met. And what was that stuff she’d poured on his gut before? The damned crap burned the hell out of him! He was pretty sure he had blisters. As soon as he was strong enough to take her on, he wanted answers even if he had to torture them out of her.

  But not now. Connor was too tired to think so he lay quiet and watched the she-devil he was unlucky enough to share this stinking hole in the wall with. She was in and out of the cave, busy with something – hopefully nothing painful. Eventually, she brought another cup of broth and held it so he could drink it without slopping it all over his neck. Her gentle deceit made him wary. What’s next? A poke in the eye with a sharp stick when I’m not looking? He drained the cup anyway, but he kept an eye on her.

  She placed a cold compress to his forehead. Damn. He must be really sick for her to be so nice. He’d let her do anything she wanted as long as she didn’t hurt him again. Theirs was the relationship from hell. When he felt good, she treated him like crap. When he felt like crap, she treated him good.

  Izza peered kindly into his face. “Did you like it?”

  “What?” He couldn’t believe she was being nice to him. That alone made him want to push her away so he could get a better look.

  “It’s rabbit stew,” she said. “It’s thin. Maybe I should call it rabbit soup. How does it taste?”

  “Good.” He offered his standard answer. That seemed to make her happy. At least she didn’t attack him with the stuff in that brown bottle again.