Which would've been fine with Tracy, except that his eyes very literally rolled back in his head and, if she hadn't dropped the phone and caught him, he would've face-planted on the concrete floor of the garage.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Decker! Deck!”
But he didn't rouse. He was completely limp and much heavier than he looked and she sank under his weight—dead weight. God, no. She tried to lower him down without hurting him, or at least not hurting him worse than he already was.
“Decker,” Tracy kept saying, “Deck!” She bumped into something hard—his gun in a shoulder holster—as she wrapped her arms around him. Gravity won and she fell backwards, smacking her butt on the cold floor, as his head lolled and one of his booted feet caught on the running board of the truck.
And oh, merciful God, as she cradled his head, she felt a huge lump already formed in the back, beneath his hair, and yes, her hand came away smeared with blood. It fact, it seemed possible that most of the blood on his clothes and in the truck cab had come from that cut on his head. “No,” she heard herself saying. “No, no …”
She was almost entirely underneath him, and as she shifted to get him onto the floor without letting go of his poor battered head, her elbow burned. She dismissed the pain as she gently lowered him to the concrete.
His face was slack, his eyes open a small but frightening slit as, kneeling beside him, she felt for his pulse. Both his neck and her fingers were slippery with blood, and it had been a long time since she'd checked another person for a pulse. It was vastly different from monitoring her own heartbeat during an aerobic workout at the gym, and she couldn't find it, and panic surged.
“Please don't be dead, don't you dare be dead—”
And the overhead light went out, plunging them both into darkness.
The fixture must've been set on a timer, hooked up to the opening garage door, rigged to shut back off after a limited amount of time.
But before she could react, before she could even start to wrap her brain around what to do next, she felt it.
Bump. Bump. Bump. Decker's heart was beating—steady and even strong beneath her fingers—and her relief almost knocked her over. “Thank you, thank you!”
The pitch darkness was disorienting, and she knew that the door to the truck was hanging open, somewhere over her shoulder. The last thing she needed was to smack into it and knock herself unconscious, too.
She used Deck's prone body as a frame of reference, turning, intending to follow his leg—his foot was still hooked into the cab—to the open door of the truck, where she could turn on the headlights, and jeez, this wouldn't be a problem if, like normal people, he'd set his interior light to go on whenever the door was open and…
Okay, that wasn't his thigh beneath her outstretched, exploring hands. “Sorry,” she told him, even though he would never know that she'd groped him in the darkness. As embarrassing as it would've been, she desperately wished he was conscious and alert and talking to her.
Honey, it's all right. I know you didn't grab my junk on purpose. Just be careful of that open door, turn on the headlights, and then I'll tell you where Sam and Alyssa hide their extra key so we can get into the house, get cleaned up, and figure out how to contact Tess and Jules so they don't think we're dead.
His actual leg was solid, and she followed it all the way to his foot. She had no idea where the switch for the lights was, but she felt her way to the usual places in the dashboard. Nope, that was the windshield wipers. Nope, those were the emergency flashers. Okay, the flashing was obnoxious, but they provided just enough intermittent yellow light for her to find and turn on the headlights—thank goodness—before she switched them back off.
She had to slide Deck forward slightly to unhook his foot. She lowered it to the ground—his boots weighed about four tons; no wonder he was buff, walking around all day in them—and then scrambled to the door that obviously led into the house, and found and flipped the switch for the overhead lights and swiftly looked around.
As far as garages went, it was neat and clean. Orderly. Everything was hanging on the walls, from work tools to bicycles—except for a pint-sized pink bike with streamers at the end of the handlebars and a license plate saying “Haley,” no doubt ready for use by Sam's daughter when she came to visit. It was parked near a lawn mower and a weed wacker and it was all so suburban-normal that it gave Tracy pause. Or it would have given her pause if the unconscious man on the garage floor hadn't been potentially bleeding to death from a gunshot wound.
In truth, she'd imagined an arsenal of weaponry hanging on the walls. A collection of swords and knives, stakes and beheading tools. Alyssa always made her think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sam … Former SEAL Sam Starrett made Tracy think of perfect sex—the kind that ended with her unbelievably handsome lover smiling into her eyes and saying in his adorable Texas accent, Darlin’, I'm going to love and cherish you forever, but please, right now? Would you let me clean your refrigerator while I do your laundry? It would make me the happiest man in the world.
She hurried back to Decker, stopping to scoop up her cell phone. The battery had come out when it had hit the concrete—she had no idea if it was broken or simply dead from temporary lack of power. Either way, she knew she couldn't use it. Deck had warned her, repeatedly, back when they were on the beach, that it wasn't secure.
Still, she would use it—to call for help—if it looked as if Decker were going to die.
She knelt beside him, gingerly pulling back the open front of his over-shirt to take a look at his gunshot wound. But she couldn't get it over his shoulder, so she tried instead to pull up the short sleeve and …
Oh, jeez, oh, no. There was what looked like a furrow, about three inches long, in the side of his upper arm. It looked raw and painful and it was still oozing blood—but at least it wasn't pouring out of him. That was good, wasn't it?
Still, she looked around for something relatively clean to use to apply pressure.
Sam and Alyssa's washer and dryer were out here in the garage—along with one of those utility sinks—and Tracy headed for the dryer, praying for a load of towels or sheets. But it was empty, which wasn't really a surprise, knowing Alyssa, who was too perfect to leave a load of anything anywhere before she left her house.
Tracy's pants—only partially bloody—were still in the front of the truck, and she grabbed them and returned to Decker, wrapping them as tightly as she dared around his upper arm, tying the pants legs together.
She realized that she had to check him for additional gunshot wounds—for all she knew he'd been hit more than once. His jeans were sodden with blood, mostly on his right side, which could've come from his injured arm or that cut on the back of his head. But it was impossible to tell whether or not he'd been hit in the leg, too. She tried running her hands across the denim, checking for holes—little tears like the one in her computer bag and…
Computer!
She had her computer, and her plug-in-anywhere Internet access. She could e-mail Tess and Alyssa and Jules—at least let them know she and Deck were alive.
She yanked the case from the front seat and brought it back over to Decker. She took the computer out and set it on the floor and—she hadn't turned it off after leaving the beach. It had only been hibernating, so it sprang immediately to life.
Tracy quickly accessed her address book, found Tess's, Jules's, Alyssa's, and Sam's e-mail addresses, and typed a short, quick note, fingers flying over the keyboard. Alive. Need help. Gunshot and poss head injury. Phone not secure. We're in garage. Key?
She didn't want to be more specific than that, and it really wasn't going to be that hard for them to figure out. Tess didn't have a garage— their apartment building had a carport. And Jules didn't live in San Diego, which left Alyssa and Sam.
Before she hit send, she added Cant help D&S—please provide backup, because there was no way Decker was going to make it to the airport to pick up Dave and Sophia. Even if he miraculously came to right now,
his truck was missing its back window. Not to mention the fact that there were an unknown number of mad bombers and gunmen scouring the city, quite probably looking for them.
Tracy also zapped a quick e-mail to Lindsey, her best friend at Trouble -shooters—petite, Asian American, and a former detective with the LAPD. You home?! 9-1-1—need help now.
She turned up the computer's volume so that she'd hear when a response entered her inbox.
And then she turned back to Decker—who may or may not have been bleeding to death from a second gunshot wound in his leg.
She didn't have a choice; she just had to do it. She took a deep breath, exhaled hard, and unfastened Decker's belt. Silently apologizing to him, she unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, then pulled them down to his knees.
His thighs were like tree trunks—well, okay, maybe not redwoods, but still… For a man of Decker's size and seemingly slender build, he looked as if he ran marathons in his spare time. She knew he didn't—she would've heard about it by now, in the office, over coffee. Wouldn't she have? Maybe not from Decker himself, but from someone.
His legs were tan, with crisp, springy man-hair that, on his right side, was damp and matted with blood, but beautifully uninjured. Except— shit—his tightie-whities were dark red, again on his right side, and Tracy took another deep breath and pulled them down, too, freeing—eek!—an extremely impressive package that she had no business looking at, so she didn't, except God, it was right there, flopping about as she made sure he hadn't been shot in that vulnerable juncture between leg and groin.
She tried to be businesslike, tried to think in medical terms as she then tipped him onto his side to make sure he hadn't been shot in the gluteus maximus. He hadn't been. Nice gluteus maximus. Okay, wrong, wrong— that was another inappropriate thought, and she shouldn't be thinking it, except it was true. It was a simple fact. A completely no-ulterior-motive, emotion-and attraction-free observation—nice glutes—and yes, maybe later she could attempt to sell herself the Brooklyn Bridge.
She pulled up his overshirt and T-shirt, and his back was smooth and tan and muscular and unmarred, save for what looked like a terrible raspberry all across his shoulder blades—no doubt from sliding in the dirt, pushed back by the explosion as he'd tried to shield her from harm. She had several similar rug-burn-like scrapes on various parts of her own body, she was sure, but none as bad as that one.
Tracy lowered him back down as gently as she could, and there were his man-parts again—which she was really only looking at because she was trying to decide whether or not to pull his blood-soaked briefs back up, or find him a clean pair from his luggage in the back of the truck, when she realized …
His eyelids were fluttering.
“Oh, my God,” Tracy said, her heart leaping into her throat as she leaned over him. “Decker! Deck!”
She pushed his hair back from his face, touched the rasp of unshaven beard on his lean cheeks, and he opened his eyes.
He opened his eyes!
And he looked straight at her, frowned slightly, and said, “Tracy. What the hell…?”
And Tracy couldn't stop herself. “Thank God you're all right,” she said, and burst into tears, which was stupid—she knew it was stupid—and foolish and girly and all those things she tried so hard not to be. Tried and nearly always failed.
But it hadn't just been the threat of his bleeding to death that had scared her. That bump on his head had also been a terrifying prospect.
Sam Starrett liked to tell a story about their boss, Tom Paoletti, who'd once been his commanding officer when they were both back in the SEAL teams. Tom had received a near-fatal head injury while out on an op, in the middle of some godforsaken desert. Sam occasionally did an imitation of Tom walking around and giving orders—and then gingerly lowering himself to the ground and saying, “Tunnel vision's getting worse. Sorry to be such a motherfucking pain in the ass, men, but I'm checking out now. Goddamn son of a—”
Everyone always laughed when Sam did his impression, closing his eyes and going limp mid-sentence. Tracy had always assumed that Tom's walking and talking right up to falling unconscious was an exaggeration— part of the good-natured mocking and ribbing that happened daily in the office, but Tom had told her, no. Even with a head injury bad enough to put someone into a next-step-is-death coma, there was often a stretch of time called the “lucid interval.” And it could end rather abruptly.
It seemed unlikely that, if the drive from the motel to Sam and Alyssa's house had been Decker's lucid interval, he would rouse from a coma without extensive medical intervention.
So it was far more likely that his head injury wasn't all that massive. And for that, Tracy sobbed her relief. She wanted to grab him and hold on to him, but she was afraid to jar his injured arm, and—oh, yeah, don't grab him there— he was naked from the waist down. Well, not totally, since his boots were still on and his pants and briefs were around his knees. It not only looked really awkward, it was really awkward. And embarrassing.
“Good news! You weren't shot in the butt,” she wanted to tell him, but she couldn't get the words out, she was crying too hard.
And he didn't seem to care, because he started to sit up, wincing as he put weight on his injured arm, but then lowering himself back down. “Whoa. Light-headed … I'm … Jesus …” Still, he reached up to touch her, to push her stringy, straggly hair back from her face so he could better see her. “Are you hurt?”
She couldn't answer. She just shook her head no, as she tried—and failed—to stop crying.
“You sure?” He looked like he was going to give sitting up another try, light-headedness be damned, so she put her hand on his chest, to keep him lying down. He touched her arm with a hand that was warm, with fingers that were slightly rough against her bare skin.
And she forced some words out. “I'm sure. I'm fine. But you're not.”
“What the hell happened?” He winced again as he shifted his injured arm, checking the makeshift bandage she'd applied—and she realized he was still foggy.
“You were shot,” she said. “You also hit your head when the bomb went off. At the motel… ?”
As she watched, his memory came stuttering back. She could see his growing awareness—coupled with confusion—in his eyes.
She helped him along by telling him, “We're hiding in Sam and Alyssa's garage. We're safe. You made sure we weren't followed.”
And suddenly he did sit up, banishing his light-headedness with sheer will as he grabbed both of her arms, his face suddenly fierce. “Did we really get a text from Tess? She and Jules are alive? God, please say yes.”
She nodded. Said it. “Yes.”
It was quite possibly both the craziest and the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. It was certainly the last thing she'd expected, but as Lawrence Decker gazed at her, his eyes filled with tears. “They're alive,” he whispered, not exactly a question, but not an absolute statement, either—as if he couldn't quite believe it.
Tracy nodded, laughing even as she, once again, began to cry.
Decker laughed, too. “Thank you, thank you, sweet Jesus,” he breathed. And out of all the solemn and self-proclaimed-holy religious services Tracy had attended back when she still lived with her parents and they made her go both to temple and to church, his six barely voiced words were the most heartfelt and sincere prayer of thanks she'd ever heard in her life.
He pulled her against him in a crushing embrace that was probably no more than a dodge to keep her from watching him fight to push his tears away, but Tracy didn't care. He was warm and he was solid and he was alive, and she wrapped her arms around him, too. She held on tightly as she sobbed shamelessly into his shirt, nearly overcome by her own relief.
She wasn't relieved—as he obviously was—about Tess and Jules, because she'd never truly believed that they were dead. No, her relief was all about this man with his beautiful never-the-same-color eyes. They'd been mostly green in this light—or maybe it was the sheen of tear
s that had made them look so exotic.
“It's okay,” he murmured, his arms tight around her, his hand in her hair, stroking down her back—warm and soothing and solid. “It's going to be okay, thank God.” His voice was a rich rumble in his chest, but she felt it catch, felt his body shake, and she knew he was fighting like hell to keep himself from crying the way she was, and it didn't seem fair.
“It is okay,” she pulled back to tell him, but then there he was—his face, those eyes, that usually tight, grim mouth—mere inches from her.
Which was when he kissed her.
And again, she knew instantly as his mouth crushed down on hers— demanding and hard—that his motive was purely about not letting her see him cry. Or maybe he was kissing her so that he wouldn't cry. Maybe it was a substitute release that would keep those tears that brimmed in his eyes from overflowing.
But then, God, it didn't matter why he was kissing her—only that he was. Because kissing Decker was nothing like she'd expected. She'd imagined that locking lips with him would be not unlike surfing the lava spilling out of a volcano. But she was wrong—it was a thousand times more extreme. He was rough, he was hungry, and he was completely in charge. No hesitation, no May I? No maybe about it. No hidden sweetness beneath the maelstrom. Just pure unadulterated, passionate sex, laced with ownership and domination as he took total possession of her mouth with his tongue, with his lips, with his teeth, and it should have turned her off, feminist that she was, but it didn't.
It only made her want more.
Which he gave her by touching her, his hands sweeping down her back to cover her bare butt, pulling her closer, massaging her—fingers slipping beneath the silk back of her thong, even as his other hand claimed her breast. There was nothing even remotely gentle about his touch as he found and caught her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and she heard herself moan as she kissed him and kissed him, as the heat she'd been fighting for seemingly years now pooled, liquid and hot, between her legs.
Which was when he pulled back. “Where the fuck are my pants?!”
Dark of Night Page 24
