Leah woke up to find herself alone in bed. She didn’t hear a sound. Not the shower or a whistling teakettle or the creak of a floorboard. Where was Spencer?
They’d made love a second time, slower and more tenderly, his voice deep and almost velvety in the darkness, the Southern accent strong as he told her how beautiful she was, how soft. He called her strong, defiant, smart. He hadn’t said how he felt about her, but that would have been expecting too much. Really, how could either of them know so quickly?
Just for a minute she pushed back at the sense of dread that would swallow her if she let it, and instead remembered the feel of Spencer’s callused fingers, the raw hunger in his kisses, the way he filled her until she felt complete. She wished...she wished so much, but her chest suddenly felt as if a band squeezed, tightening until she couldn’t draw a breath.
He wouldn’t have left her behind when he went to meet with Joe, would he?
Horrified, she threw back the covers, struggled out of bed and only grabbed a dirty T-shirt of Spencer’s to throw on before she rushed out of the bedroom.
Spencer sat on the futon, feet on the coffee table, appearing his usual composed self. He held a coffee cup in one hand and gazed at her in mild surprise.
She lurched to a stop, her heart hammering. “I thought...”
“I might be gone?” His voice was low and tender despite his impenetrable expression. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“What...what time is it?”
He glanced at the steel watch he wore. “We have twenty minutes.”
“I didn’t know you’d set a time.”
“Higgs did. He wants us to get the fight out of the way before breakfast.”
“Oh, God.” Her sense of impending disaster wasn’t alleviated. “I need to take a shower.”
She should have done laundry yesterday at the lodge, she thought in that part of her mind still capable of mundane thoughts. Rooting through her suitcase, she found a pair of jeans that she’d only worn one day and a clean T-shirt. Her last pair of clean panties.
Right now she couldn’t care less if she was filthy. Even the shower was only a way to put off facing what was coming.
Clutching the small pile of clothes, she went to the bathroom without looking again at Spencer.
What if...? But she couldn’t let herself think that.
She stayed under the thin stream of water only long enough to get clean before drying herself with the pitiful towel and hurrying to dress. She combed her wet hair, then looked down at herself. Her battle armor didn’t seem adequate.
Taking a deep breath, she went back out, set on not letting Spencer see how scared she was. What he needed from her was trust and confidence. She should have felt both wholeheartedly, but the dread remained.
As soon as she appeared, his gaze landed on her. “I’ve been in fights before,” he said calmly.
Some of her fears had to be leaking out, like too-bright light between the slats of blinds. “Don’t hold back,” she begged him. “He’ll do anything to win.”
He still looked unfazed. “Cheat, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“Let’s go out on the porch.”
He rose effortlessly to his feet. Bemused, she followed him. He closed the door behind them and leaned against the porch railing. Leah desperately wanted the chance to soak in the comfort of his strong arms around her, but they could be seen.
Not heard, though, she realized, at least not from a bug inside the cabin.
Confirming her guess, he spoke very quietly. “There’s something you need to know. You’re imagining that I always take the high road. I don’t. I’ve long since lost count of the number of men I’ve killed. I told you I was military, but not that I was a sniper. I saw those dying men’s faces.” Gravel roughened his voice even as he kept it low. “Some of them will haunt me for the rest of my life, but I kept doing what I thought I had to do. If I have to kill Joe Osenbrock today, I won’t hesitate. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Maybe I shouldn’t be glad, but I am. It’s not just for my sake that you need to win, you know.”
The bones in his face seemed more prominent than she remembered. “I do know.”
She nodded.
“We need to get going.”
He touched the back of her hand lightly as they descended the steps. She studied him, bothered by that seemingly unbreakable calm. Today he wore black cargo pants and a gray T-shirt that showed his powerful pecs and biceps, as well as flexible black boots that would allow him to move fast. He wouldn’t be able to kick or stomp the way Joe would, but speed was surely more important. At Spencer’s belt, he wore his usual black leather holster holding a steel-gray and black handgun. The men here seemed to go armed all the time as a matter of course. Maybe as a law-enforcement officer, Spencer always did. Leah hoped not, that he could sometimes set that part of his nature aside.
The minute they started down the porch steps, she saw the crowd gathered in front of the lodge. Were they excited about the entertainment? Or were some worried about the outcome?
“If you get out of here and I don’t,” he said in that same low voice, “the attack’s set for November 11, Veterans Day. The president is set to speak, although the location hasn’t yet been identified. And they have the components to make a dirty bomb. Remember that.”
She opened her mouth in an instinctive protest but closed it. Nodded. “Will you tell me your real name?”
He cut a glance at her sidelong. His hesitation was infinitesimal but real, replaced by a flicker of amusement. “Alex Barr. Alex, most of the time. But stick to Spencer.”
“Thank you.”
That was the last thing she had a chance to say. They’d reached the crowd, now re-forming into a circle. She followed in his wake until she was close enough to the front to be able to see.
Joe Osenbrock already waited in the center. Not patiently; he was pacing, rolling his shoulders, acting like Leah vaguely thought heavyweights did in the ring before the bell.
Spencer stopped to unclip his holster and hand it and the gun to Garrett Zeigler. Then he walked into the clear space within the ring of bodies and stopped, still seemingly relaxed. Despite appearances, he had to be poised to explode into action.
The mood was more subdued than she’d expected. Even low-voiced conversation stopped when the lodge door opened and Colonel Higgs appeared. He walked forward, took in the scene with one sweeping glance, then asked, “Are they both disarmed?”
“Yes.” Del Schmidt held up one weapon. Zeigler raised Spencer’s.
“Good. Let’s not waste too much time with this.” Higgs studied the two men in the ring, his thoughts hidden. Then he said, “Go.”
It all happened so fast, Leah wasn’t sure which man moved first, only that within seconds they were toe-to-toe, fists swinging. Grunts of exertion and pain rang out. Blood splattered.
Spencer swiped blood from his face with his forearm, then stepped back to let Joe charge past him. When their bodies collided again, they fell hard to the ground. Spencer got a headlock on Joe, but only briefly. They rolled, pummeling each other, grappling for any advantage, punishing each other brutally with fists and holds that contorted their bodies in ways that had her whimpering.
They fought their way back to their feet.
A few men called out. Occasionally a warning, sometimes a “Good one!” But mostly they were silent, so intent on the battle in front of them, she could have plucked a gun from one of their holsters and started spraying bullets.
Except...she couldn’t tear her eyes from the savage fight, either.
Twice she had to step back along with the entire side of the circle when the two men flung themselves in that direction. Mostly, she knew she was begging, or even praying.
Please, please, please.
After a strike against his neck, Joe roared with rage and seemed to redouble his attacks. Spencer countered them, once tripping Joe, who crashed to the ground, somersaulted and came back up.
Spencer spat out some blood and jeered at his opponent. “Getting tired?”
With another roar, Joe charged forward like a three-hundred-and-fifty pound linebacker ready to drop the quarterback. But Spencer was not only fast, he was as big a man if not quite so muscle-bound. A quick side step and an elbow to the gut sent Joe to the ground again. He seemed slower to get up, pausing with one knee still down, even his head slightly bent. Was he done?
Spencer came at him with a kick that sent Joe sprawling again, but he latched on to Spencer’s leg and brought him down, too. And suddenly, something metal flashed.
“Gun!” somebody yelled, but it wasn’t. It was a knife, and he slashed at Spencer. Blood didn’t just spatter, it spurted.
Ready to leap forward herself, she saw Spencer grab Joe’s wrist and wrench his arm back. Spencer’s teeth showed in a snarl; Joe fought that powerful grip in silent agony.
A couple of the men did surge forward, but before they reached the two combatants, Spencer flipped Joe, slammed his hand on the ground to force him to release the knife, and slugged him in the face so hard Joe’s head bounced.
The next second he’d gone limp.
Spencer rolled off him and lay on his back, his chest heaving, his clothes blood-soaked.
Above the tumult of other voices, she heard Higgs’s. He’d descended into the crowd and now raised his voice. “Wyatt’s the winner. Tim, Brian, haul that cheating scum up to one of the bedrooms.” He jerked his head to indicate the lodge behind him. “Shawn, Rick, you’re responsible for getting Spencer back to his cabin.” Higgs looked around, spotting her. “You’ve had practice sewing up wounds. Make yourself useful.”
Oh, God, oh, God. Her teeth wanted to chatter. Somehow, she managed to say, “Do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Townsend, you know where it is.”
It took three men to lift Joe and carry him up the porch steps and into the lodge. Leah only peripherally saw them go, Joe’s arms flopping. On her knees beside Spencer, she snapped, “I need something to stop the bleeding.”
Spencer watched her, one eyelid at half-mast. The socket holding his other eye was grotesquely swollen, purple. His teeth were clenched, and she’d swear what skin she could see was gray beneath the tan. Or maybe it only looked gray as an accent to the shockingly vivid color of the blood.
She bent her head close to his. “You’ll be all right. You won.”
One side of his mouth lifted as if he was trying to smile but couldn’t quite make it work.
Two bare-chested men thrust cotton T-shirts at her. Neither looked very clean, but they were the best she had. She wadded one and pressed it hard against Spencer’s thigh, looked around until she saw Del Schmidt and said, “Can you hold this?”
He dropped to his knees and complied. She pulled up Spencer’s shirt, used the second T-shirt in her hand to wipe at the blood until she saw a narrow slit over his rib cage, and pressed it down. Panic scratched at her. If there were more wounds, they’d have to wait, but what if one she hadn’t found was fatal? The slit frightened her the most. That one was a stab instead of a slice. She hadn’t seen it happen. What organs lay beneath?
Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone pick up the huge knife lying in the dirt. Blood dripped from the double-edged blade.
A man ran up carrying a metal box big enough to look as if it held fishing tackle. “Do you want it here?”
“Take it to the cabin,” she decided. Three men prepared to lift him, Leah ordering Del to keep the pressure on his thigh while she did the same on his muscular torso.
They moved slowly, awkwardly, with five of them bumping into each other, but finally made it up the two steps onto the porch.
“Not locked,” Spencer growled.
The man with an arm under his shoulders—Rick Metz, built like a boulder—fumbled for the knob with one hand and got the door open. Once inside, she said, “Can we pull out the futon?”
Del did it while she used her free hand to maintain pressure on Spencer’s thigh, too. The mattress looked grungy enough she wished desperately for a clean sheet to lay over it, but hadn’t seen one. Pain tightened Spencer’s face until it was all bones and skin stretched taut between them. He groaned when they laid him down.
To her distant surprise, the men continued to follow her orders. One put on water to boil on the single working burner here, while another ran for the lodge to boil more. A third went for any clean bedding and towels he could find.
Spencer never looked away from her.
HE COULDN’T DIE.
Through the pain, that was all Spencer could think. Leah needed him. Don’t give in. Don’t lose consciousness.
A couple of times she whispered, “Stay with me,” and once he even managed a nod. He didn’t know if she meant stay in the sense that he had to remain conscious, or that he couldn’t abandon her by dying. Either way, he hung on. At least he was done with Joe, who was as good as a dead man.
The guys around him seemed to be doing their best for him. He wasn’t even sure who was here. He’d have had to look away from Leah to be sure, and he couldn’t do that.
He managed to tell her he had pills in his duffel. At least, he thought he’d told her.
Don’t give in. God, that hurts. He wanted to curl up to protect his belly, sensing that wound was the most dangerous. If the knife had sliced into his guts, all the resolve in the world wouldn’t save him. Half-digested food would be spilling into the abdominal cavity, introducing bacteria where it didn’t belong.
But Leah looked focused and determined in a way he didn’t remember seeing her before. She was fighting for him, and he could do his part.
Don’t give in. Trust her.
He floated in a sea of pain as she worked. There had to be broken bones.
Paper ripped. Somehow, she’d come to have a wicked-looking pair of scissors in her hand and was cutting most of his clothes off him. Wet washcloths, hot enough to have him jerking involuntarily, ran over his legs.
“I’ll need to stitch that one up,” he heard her say to someone else.
All he felt was pressure on his thigh again.
Once, they rolled him. His back hurt like hell, but in a generalized way.
“Man, he’s going to be one solid bruise,” a familiar voice said. Del.
It went on like that. He hazily understood that they were searching his body for knife wounds.
“Think the blade hit a rib,” Leah said. “If it went very deep...”
He lost the thread of what she was saying.
Eventually, something cold was sprayed on his thigh. Her face appeared above his. “This should numb you enough to help,” she said.
Still gritting his teeth, he nodded.
He felt the needle pricking in and out of his flesh. Pricking, hell; stabbing. The spray hadn’t numbed anything, but he fought to hold still.
Then on his torso, almost on his side. He couldn’t stop a raw sound from escaping.
They produced ice and what he vaguely saw were bags of frozen vegetables to lay on his face and half a dozen other places on his body. The worst bruising? He didn’t know, only that the cold burned.
Time passed. He wasn’t always sure he was conscious. Leah was his anchor, distressing him when she moved out of his line of sight a few times. Dripping ice packs and frozen veggies were removed and replaced at least once.
Rick—yes, that was Rick Metz—was the first to leave and not reappear. Given his lack of emotional content, Rick was a strange one to tend him with care.
When Spencer was able to roll his head slightly, he saw Shawn Wycoff and Del Schmidt. They were more logical as nursemaids. He also became aware that when Leah asked for something, they jumped. Funny that Higgs had appointed her medical director early on. The first day? He didn’t remember. Spencer hadn’t guessed he would be the one to need whatever trauma-care expertise she possessed.
He had to get her to safety so that she could go to veterinary school, the way she deserved. Since the slightest move brought stabbing pains—yeah, that was a pun—he couldn’t figure out how he’d protect her, but he’d do it. Somehow.
He surfaced to hear her thanking the two men, sounding almost tearful. Del shrugged. “Let us know what you need.”
Say, I need to go home. Help me get away.
Of course she didn’t. “I will.”
The door closed quietly behind them. The mattress shifted enough that he knew Leah had sat down beside him. Her fingertips stroking his forehead was the first good thing he’d felt.
No, he could wriggle his toes with no pain. In fact, thanks to his boots, his feet seemed unscathed. That was good news. If they had to walk out of here, that was what they’d do, he decided.
“You with me?” she asked softly, her eyes so vividly green he would have been happy never to look away.
“Yah,” he mumbled.
Her smile lit the room like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. She sobered faster than he liked.
“Thank heavens you didn’t lose consciousness! Even so, I’d give a lot to be able to send you for X-rays, or even a CT scan. I think your left wrist might be broken, although I can’t be sure. It’s wrapped tight enough to immobilize it.”
He arrowed in on his wrist. Yeah, that felt like a break. Ribs, too, he guessed, although those might be only cracks or even just bruising.
He could hope.
“It’s really lucky you had that oxycodone. Aspirin wouldn’t have helped much.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.
He shared that gratitude. So he had told her. He hadn’t quite realized what those pills he’d swallowed were.
“What will they do with Joe?” she asked, worry carving lines in her forehead. “Should I go volunteer to look at him?”
“No.” That sounded almost normal. “Don’t shink—” he tried harder “—think he’ll survive.”
“Why? Did you—” Comprehension changed her face. “You mean...”
He managed a tiny nod. Best not to say it out loud.
“Oh, dear God,” Leah whispered.
He somehow lifted a hand enough to lay it on her arm. She looked down, then up to meet his eyes, and understood. Careful.
“Later I’ll have Del and Shawn or somebody else move you to the bedroom. I know the futon must be horribly uncomfortable. But if we were going to ruin one or the other with blood, I decided it should be the futon.”
He absolutely agreed. After last night, he’d developed fond feelings for that bed.
“Could somebody take you to an ER?”
She meant, would it be allowed. “No,” he said. Steeled himself and added, “Okay.”
That earned him a wrinkled nose. “You’re a long way from okay. But I suppose you must have been injured during your years in the military.”
Another slight inclination of his head, although even that set off fireworks. He had to close his eyes momentarily.
Yes, he’d been hospitalized several times. Strange to think that he might have come closer to dying today than he had from bullet wounds or shrapnel from an IED. If that knife blade had plunged deeper, or struck higher or lower, it could easily have been curtains for him, given that the best medical care available was from a veterinary technician with access only to a basic first-aid kit. He’d been damned lucky, and he wouldn’t waste that luck.
He really was done with undercover gigs. No hostage rescue for him, either. He’d transfer as soon as he could—once he’d taken down Colonel Higgs and his hatefully misguided army.
And Leah. If she wanted him, he’d do what he had to do to have her in his life, too. He could transfer to the Seattle office, or the office closest to wherever she would be attending grad school.
All good plans. Unfortunately, right this minute a soon-to-be-needed trip to the bathroom reared ahead like Kilimanjaro. Only positive was, he knew he was thinking more clearly.
These injuries would buy him a day or two off from a role that he hadn’t been able to set down in months. That said, would Leah still be expected to cook and clean rather than care for him? That would leave her vulnerable...although he thought Higgs had been pissed off enough about Joe’s behavior to lay down the law where she was concerned.
Maybe.
Spencer grunted. What he needed was to get back on his feet as quickly as possible. For starters, he wouldn’t have a chance to pocket the key to start the Jeep unless he rejoined activities, even if only as a spectator.
A good place to start was with that short journey to the bathroom. The hell he was going to piss in a jar and make Leah dump it out.
Despite the explosion of pain, he started to shift his body toward the edge of the futon amid her cries of, “What are you doing? Stop!”