42

Orkney Islands, Scotland

They huddled in the car outside the apothecary. Charlie had volunteered to go in. If his parka was zipped to his throat, most of the blood soaking his shirt was hidden. There was no way to hide the damage to his face, which was taking the color and shape of overcooked pot roast, but at least he could walk without dragging a limb.

Salem stuffed money into his unmangled hand. The other would remain in his pocket. He would buy clean shirts, pants if they carried them, antiseptic, bandages, and painkillers. Wounds licked and clothes swapped out, they’d do their best to get on the next plane to Dublin.

Bode’s body was back at the Gloup, a blanket tossed over him.

It broke Salem’s heart to leave him there, but she’d agreed it was the only option. They could not involve local police. She’d wanted to contact Agent Bench, or have Charlie pull strings at MI5, so at least Bode could get a proper burial.

“There’s good points to that,” Charlie had said, driving one-handed. “And it’s possible that the only reason the Grimalkin has been so effective at following us is he knew all along where we’d be going, at least up until the next step, St. Brigid’s Cathedral. But what if there’s more to it? What if my boss, or yours, is filling the Order in on our activities? Wouldn’t be the first time.”

No, Salem thought, it certainly wouldn’t. Still, when Charlie walked into the apothecary, she’d held her phone. It itched in her palm. She wanted to tell Lucan Stone what they had learned and where they were going next. But what if he was the one who’d been feeding the Grimalkin the information she’d sent to him?

She tucked her phone back into her pocket, watching locals walk down the street. Kirkwall appeared to be a lovely town. She imagined it was full of salt-of-the-earth people. They deserved better than conspiracy and murder. She and Charlie needed to get out of here before they brought more bad. He was right that it would be best to call in an anonymous tip on Bode once they were safely in Dublin. It didn’t feel good, but she couldn’t risk being detained here.

The driver’s door opened. Charlie slid in. “The pharmacist asked if I’d been in a good fight. Told him he had no idea.” He held a large bag toward Salem. “Got everything we need, though. You take care of yourself while I drive, and I’ll wash up at the airport parking lot, yeah?”

Salem nodded. She dug around in the bag and pulled out a pair of gray sweatpants. They were so clean, so normal, that they made her want to weep. Underneath them was a roomy navy-blue t-shirt with Orkney Islands written across the front in plaid.

“Limited selection,” Charlie said apologetically.

Salem returned to the bag, searching until she hit on the bottle of antiseptic, a roll of gauze, butterfly closures, and a scissors. She set the rest of the bag in the back seat and took the scissors to her jeans. Her leg was too swollen to take them off naturally, so she’d need to slice them, all her modesty gone out of necessity. The waistband was difficult to cut through. Once she’d breached that, she could rip the rest of the way down, working toward her ankles.

She was grateful to see that her underpants, at least, were still clean. The first bruise showed up halfway down her left thigh, a matching, cantaloupe-sized blotch of yellow and green near her right knee. She needed the scissors again to cut through the slipshod bandage she’d fashioned around her shin wound.

A light-headedness washed over her when she grabbed them.

This is where it would get tough.

She’d have to look at the gash in her leg straight on, in the cold light of day.

Her blood had made her pants leg stiff as a cast. The cloth remained rigid as she cut through it, revealing the wound beneath. The laceration had gone swollen and puffy around the edges, the alarming white of bone visible in the center. She would need to sanitize the wound or risk losing her leg to gangrene, but the pain of pouring antiseptic into the wound was unimaginable

“Let me help you with that,” Charlie said quietly.

Salem looked over at him. She could feel the early stages of shock murmuring in her ears, a numbness creeping over her. It was the perfect time. She grabbed the bottle of antiseptic, twisted off the top, and poured it into the gash.

The pain was exquisite, searing, so loud she had to fight to stay above it.

And then it passed, leaving nausea and a sick heartbeat.

“Holy hell,” Charlie said. “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

Salem couldn’t answer. If she opened her mouth, she’d throw up. Using a clean edge of her shredded pants, she wiped at the perimeter of her wound, cleaning it as best she could. After she’d removed the blood and dirt she could bear to touch, she ripped open the package of butterfly strips. After testing to make sure she could remove their adhesive covers with one hand, she called up a mental image of Mercy and Bel, arms around each other, safe, smiling encouragingly at her.

She could do this.

She would do this.

She drew in a deep breath and then squeezed her wound closed, tearing the healing flesh and producing deep red blood. Once the sides of the wound were touching, she held them together with one hand. With the other, she began applying the butterfly closures.

When she was done, her patch job wasn’t pretty, but it would suffice. She slathered the area with bacitracin and wrapped the gauze tightly around the butterflied wound, both to keep the flesh in place and to repel bacteria. Removing the last of her pants, she discovered no more serious wounds. The fleece sweatpants felt so good against her skin that she couldn’t keep in the moan when she pulled them on. As an afterthought, she cut Mrs. Molony’s sachet from her wrecked jeans and fastened it to the sweatpants’ drawstring.

She traded out her ripped and bloody blouse for the Orkney t-shirt, yanked a zip-up wind parka over that, brushed her hair and tied it in a bun, used some wet wipes she found in the glove box to clean her hands and face, chewed a handful of aspirin plus two Ativan from her bag, and felt almost normal.

“Your turn,” she said to Charlie.

“Just in time.” He pointed ahead. “I’ll park at the far side of the lot, close enough to those cars so as not to draw suspicion but far enough from the door so we have privacy.”

Salem was prepping to treat his wounds. “Do you have any cuts besides the one on your face and your—where your—”

She couldn’t finish. Someone had cut off Charlie’s finger. Not out of self-defense. Not to get any information out of him. Just because they could.

“Ah love, it’s not that bad,” he said, smiling weakly. “It’ll make it harder to get pissed off at people while driving, is all.”

It took her a moment, but when he held up his mutilated hand, she understood. They’d taken his middle finger.

“I bet they have prosthetic ones.”

Charlie chuckled as he parked the car. “Like what fans hold at football games, maybe? A big foam finger? I like the sound of that.”

His laughter warmed her. Their eyes connected, and she returned his smile, amazed at how bright-eyed he looked, how rosy his cheeks. For the first time, she thought they might get through this. “We should wash off your hand and your face before you change. That way, you won’t get any blood on the new clothes.”

Charlie nodded, holding out his injured hand. Salem wadded her jeans underneath it to catch any liquids that would wash down when she cleaned the wound. She steeled herself to examine the stump. Her jaw clenched. It had been cleanly sliced between the base and first knuckle, leaving a half inch stub. The steady blood flow had slowed to a seeping. The white of the bone was centered in the flesh, no splinters, the whole of it reminding Salem of a cartoon rendering of a pork chop.

“I think they cut your finger with the same knife they sliced my rope with.”

“Makes sense,” Charlie said through gritted teeth.

“Ready?”

He jerked his head by way of a nod and started to speak, but Salem was already pouring the antiseptic. He yanked his hand away, but she was done. All that was left to do was clean it off.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph does that sting,” he said. “Give me some cloth.”

She found a clean spot on her blouse and handed it over. He scrubbed around his wound. When his hand was spotless, she slathered it in the salve and gently wrapped a bandage over the stump and around the base of his thumb, making several rounds to protect it. Next, she cleaned up his face, closing the cut on his cheek with another butterfly closure. She left him to clean off his face in the rearview mirror, which he angled down.

“Bloody hell. It’s a good thing you didn’t let me look at myself before going into the apothecary. I might have chickened out.”

“Here’s a new shirt.” Salem folded it onto the dashboard and shoved their soiled clothing and bandages into the bag, which she intended to leave on the floor. Their overnight bags plus the B&C rested on the seat. They could walk away from this. Once they’d solved the Stonehenge train and Mercy was safely at home, she’d track down Bode’s family and let them know what a hero their son had been.

“Down!” Charlie yelled, reaching for his gun and shoving Salem’s head toward the floor of the car.

But not before she caught a glimpse of Alafair peering through her window.