“Yours truly.”
“So you scoped out a few places.”
“When I first arrived. You go in undercover, you need a fallback position. An exit corridor if the heat comes on. You also need places you can meet.”
“Or deliver things,” she said softly.
“But you can’t always be sure you’ll have a clear frequency when you need one to set up the meetings.”
“So you pre-designate the places and use the code.”
“Exactly.”
“PS5 is—”
“Bitter Lake—twelve thousand acres and not very crowded at five in the morning.”
Dean didn’t wake her until he pulled off the blacktop into the wildlife refuge parking area. Though the lot appeared empty, Dean cut his lights and pulled to the far corner, backing into the last slot.
“Did you see that bobcat?” Lucy stared into a field to the west.
The cat returned her gaze, then padded into the tall grass.
“He won’t hurt you, sweetheart. Come on out.” Dean was already removing the tarp, folding it and storing it in the tool bin. “The Pecos River runs north through the Salt Creek Wilderness. The Oxbow Trail is four miles and follows it northeast to the curve in the plateaus. Martin should be there by the time we are, so we need to move.”
Lucy inched her way out of the truck, but she continued to stare at Dean uncertainly. “You’re going to carry Angie? Four miles?”
Instead of answering, Dean pulled a backpack from the bin. “You’ll need to carry this. It has water, food, rations, and a few other supplies.” He also pulled out two flak jackets.
They strapped them on in the predawn light, then he helped her with the pack. Satisfied they were ready, he shouldered the body bag, and they started down the trail. His watch said five-thirty. The comforting cloak of night was receding as quickly as the bobcat had fled.
Ω
Lucy considered herself to be in shape—less than eighteen percent body fat, one-hundred-and twenty-two pounds, and she could run a mile in under twelve minutes. So why did she have to push to keep up with Dean when he was carrying a dead body?
“Watch the sinkhole,” Dean called back.
Lucy jogged around a hole big enough to hold all of her dirty laundry. “What are those things?”
“Sinkholes created by groundwater erosion.”
He wasn’t even breathing hard. She vowed to check under his bed next time he had an early shift. He probably had a workout bench hidden there.
“I think I saw something in that one.” Lucy resisted the urge to look back.
“Probably did. Sinkholes are marvels of nature, Doc.”
“How so?”
“They provide habitat for things.”
“Things?”
“Fish, amphibians, other wildlife.”
“Back up to amphibians. I hate frogs. They sound harmless, and everyone sells them as knickknacks with smiling faces. But those suckers can jump.”
Bobcats she could handle—they, at least, resembled her Aunt Daisy’s cat. Amphibians creeped her out. What if there were hundreds of them? She’d seen a movie once where frogs took over the world—large, evil frogs.
Lucy jogged faster to close the gap between her and Dean. “You never know where frogs will land. Can we shoot one if it provokes us?”
“You wouldn’t shoot a lowland leopard frog, would you Doc?” Dean laughed, then gave her the grin which bewildered and melted her at the same time.
How could she have both reactions at once? They rounded the trail and came to the place where the Pecos made a turn through the red-rimmed plateaus. Lucy stopped to soak in the landscape that had unfolded before her. Her mind tried to untangle the fact such beauty could exist even as they carried the results of pure evil.
“Good place for a water break.” Dean placed his burden on the ground with care, as if the bag contained more than Angie’s flesh and bones. He crossed to Lucy, put his hands on her shoulders.
She thought for one moment he would kiss her again, like he had only a few hours before in the bar. Instead, he spun her around and grabbed a bottle of water from the pack before pulling her back snugly against him. His arms around her, he pointed toward the Pecos, where a flock of birds rose against the lightening sky.
“Ducks?” she asked.
“Yes. Canvasbacks. They migrate here by the thousands.”
As they took wing, the sun broke the horizon and washed the plateaus in a dazzling array of red, orange, and copper. The colors played before her eyes, and Lucy remembered her vision as she’d first stepped onto the boardwalk outside E.T.’s. Looking at the desert sunrise, she knew more blood would be spilled before this mission ended. She closed her eyes, pushed the thought away, and grew aware only of Dean’s warmth, his hands on her arms. They would survive this together. As surely as the sun would rise over the plateaus and the canvasbacks would return again next year.
She found comfort in that certainty. Comfort and strength.
Dean kissed her cheek and stepped away. “One more mile.” He shouldered Angie’s weight once more.
This time when Lucy followed she had no trouble keeping up. She’d found her pace. They were partners now. She had his back, and she felt confident Dean knew where he was going.
Ω
Dean stopped Lucy before they made the final turn into the clearing he’d chosen for PS5. He set Angie down, this time placing her beneath some scrub where she couldn’t be easily seen from the ground or the sky. Lucy shrugged out of the pack. It felt like she’d shed a hundred pounds.
“Around this corner, there’s a small clearing. I’ll circle around and take up position on the far side. I want you to stay here, where you have a clear view of both the field and Angie’s body.” As he spoke, he pulled out two semi-automatic rifles from the pack she had placed beside Angie’s body, fastened on their scopes, and handed one to her.
“But, you trust Commander Martin, and no one else knows about this location.” Lucy checked the weapon, then took up the position he had pointed out. The clearing was empty, as he’d promised.
“Better safe than dead. Always assume you’ve been compromised, until you’re certain you’re not. If anyone comes into this clearing other than Martin—if anyone else steps out of the ’copter—you start shooting.” He reached back into the pack for two helmets. “Wear this, gorgeous.”
“I wondered why that pack felt so heavy.” She donned the helmet, unhappy about wearing it in the heat.
“It’ll protect your beautiful head.”
“Are you expecting an air attack, Dreiser?”
He smiled as he donned his own helmet, then tapped the comm unit and tested it. Satisfied with the signal, he gave her one last canine grin and jogged away, leaving Angie’s body beside her. She focused through the scope and saw only the clearing, red plateaus in the distance, and, once, Dean’s silhouette before a rising sun.
Ten minutes later, she heard the helicopter’s approach. Heart racing, she glanced at Angela’s form, then back at the sky. The helicopter was unmarked—which could indicate Martin had reason to take extreme measures. Or it could mean Dean’s spooks had arrived.
“Hold your position, until he steps out.” Dean’s voice in her head was a calming breeze. She sighted in the ’copter and waited.
“Skies remain clear.”
The helicopter landed with a soft thump. A man stepped out in a black jacket, USCIS printed across the back.
“Wait until I make confirmation.”
Martin ran in a crouch from beneath the whirling ’copter blades as dust from the Chihuahua Desert swirled up and around. When he had cleared the ’copter, he straightened and waited.
“That’s him. I’m coming down. Do not move from your position. Keep him in your sight.”
Lucy kept her weapon focused on Martin, though she couldn’t imagine why. She felt more than heard Dean beside her. Then she watched them both through her scope as Dean carried Angie out, loaded her in the helicopter. She coul
d hear him talking to Martin, but she couldn’t make out his words over the noise.
Martin boarded the ’copter, and Dean hustled out from under its blades. He had covered half the distance between the ’copter and her when she caught the smallest glint of sun off metal from the northwest corner.
The plane had risen no more than twenty feet when the shooting began.
Dean dove to the ground and rolled. The helicopter tilted. She heard the ping of shots against metal and thought maybe it was beginning to fall.
Lucy sighted in the camouflaged form, adjusted for distance and the slight morning breeze, took one steadying breath and fired.
She fired again as he fell backwards.
She waited, counted, watched to see if he would move. Through the scope, she saw the blood seep out around the hostile, confirmed the kill.
Only then did she allow herself to lift her eye from the scope. The helicopter was again gaining altitude, pulling away from the clearing.
Lucy whirled to search for Dean and rock exploded behind her.
Heart pounding, she brought up her rifle and whipped around in time to see the second hostile fly backwards, a bullet tearing through his neck.
Dropping to the ground behind a rock, she searched the ridgeline for more attackers but saw none. The morning grew eerily quiet. Martin’s helicopter disappeared. At first, only the sound of her pulse pounded in her ears, then Dean’s heavy breathing joined hers.
“Is the north side clear?” he asked.
“Affirmative.”
“South is clear.”
“I don’t have a good visual of the east and west.”
Dean threw himself against the front of the rock she hid behind. “They came in on a north-south heading. I don’t think you’ll see any others.”
“Other than the two dead ones?”
“Other than those.”
“Great. Dead hostiles are the kind I prefer.” Her breathing remained fast, and her voice shook, but her adrenaline helped her hold herself together. One part of her mind was wrestling with the fact that she’d just killed for the first time. She pushed the thought away. Right now she needed to continue to scan the rocks around them. Nothing stirred, but then they wouldn’t move now. They would wait.
“Looks clear,” she admitted.
Lucy finally dared to peer over her position at Dean. Blood ran down his arm.
THE LOOK ON LUCY’S face hurt nearly as much as the wound in his arm.
“Oh, Dean.” She knelt on the ground beside him, tearing off her helmet then gently removing his. “You need to lie down.”
“We don’t have time. It’s six-twenty now. The headquarters office at the wildlife refuge opens at seven-thirty. We need to be gone before anyone else arrives.”
“Not going to happen.” Brown eyes snapped, and behind the anger something else simmered, something Dean hadn’t seen in a woman’s eyes in a long time—perhaps ever.
She began lecturing him in Spanish. He wasn’t fluent enough to understand all the words, but he caught the general gist as she tried to look at the wound.
“Apply a pressure bandage and stop the bleeding,” he said.
“Did you earn a medical degree in the last hour? No? I didn’t think so. Then lie down before I knock you out and make you lie down.”
Her fingers probed the bullet wound, and he wondered how her lab mice had survived her bedside manner.
“No arterial bleeding. There’s an entry and an exit wound. You’re very lucky, Dean. Other than the blood loss—”
“You are starting to take on an angelic glow,” Dean muttered, but he didn’t argue when she retrieved the pack, pulled out a cotton shirt and pressed it against the wound.
“I need to call Martin.”
“No. Martin’s delivering Angie. We do this alone.”
“Bad idea. This isn’t exactly a sterile area.”
“There’s an emergency med kit in the pack.”
“Dean, let’s get you to the hospital then—”
“Lucy, we can’t do that. You know we can’t.” He clamped his jaw against the pain. He’d been shot before. It felt every bit as bad as the last time.
“Stay with me, Dreiser.”
“Keep your weapon close,” he mumbled.
“Right. I’ll perform triage in the desert with my right hand and shoot the bad guys with my left.” But she pulled her rifle closer and searched the horizon one last time before she opened the field kit. He watched as she positioned a tourniquet above the wound, but she had to release the pressure bandage in order to tie off the tourniquet. When she did, the bleeding began again in earnest.
“If it didn’t hit an artery—”
“You still have a hole in your arm, Dean.”
He thought he should feel something at the sight of so much blood. Given that it was his own, he should feel panic. He didn’t, though. What he felt was tired. She tried packing gauze into the wound to staunch the flow of blood, but it, too, became saturated.
“I need your help. Dean? Stay with me.”
He could hear her, barely.
But his eyes felt impossibly heavy, heavier than Angie had been.
The next thing he knew the unmistakable odor of ammonia pulled him back, causing his eyes to water. The pain in his arm had doubled, which he wouldn’t have thought possible.
“You need some new perfume, Doc.”
“What I need is your help. If I’m going to do this, you have to stay awake. Got it? Stay awake, or I’m calling Martin and you can argue with me about it later. As it is, I’m getting pretty tired of doing everything your way.”
“You’re the one who woke me up.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
She took his good hand, placed it firmly against the wound and pushed.
“I suppose I feel indebted because you saved my life, and I like the way you kiss. You don’t have to start grinning like a wolf. Save that energy. You’re going to need it if you really expect to walk out of here.”
Her eyes appeared in front of his—Spanish eyes, a beautiful chocolate brown, soulful eyes. Promising him the world. There...
And then he must have slept because suddenly she was gone. Instead of Lucy, he stared up at a clear blue New Mexico sky, one well into daybreak. And that didn’t seem right. How could it be right?
The mission came back to him like an arrow piercing his core. They should be walking. They had to be back. He had to take care of Lucy now, get her to the truck, get her out of the desert before anyone else showed up.
“Crap.”
“Sounds like you’re back.”
“Yeah. I’m here.” He heard her ripping open supplies, laying out a makeshift triage. “How am I doing, Doc?”
“You’re still losing blood.” She removed the soaked bandages and applied new ones, then pushed his palm back over the top. “I need you to hold this compress. Steady pressure. Two minutes, Dean.”
His world shrank into a blur of sounds and images. The snap of rubber gloves. The glint of sunlight on a scalpel. The wetness of blood soaking through the bandages, pulsing into his good hand. Lucy’s eyes peering into his.
“The kit contained a small amount of morphine. I saved it for now, but I’m not sure how much it will help.”
“No.”
“Dean, you are not in charge right now. Do what you’re told for once.”
“Lucinda—” He had never used her full name. He’d been saving it, but not for this moment. The thought surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. “You can’t carry me out of here. I’m walking. No morphine. Now let’s do this.”
She nodded, leaned forward and kissed him quickly and gently. When she pulled back a calmness and change had come over her. He wasn’t looking at Lucy Brown the agent anymore, but at Dr. Lucinda Brown. In the instant before he passed out, he realized he’d pull through with her caring for him.
Ω
Lucy knew arguing with him was a complete waste of their time. Studies showed
the use of morphine on the battlefield was largely for psychological reasons. She for one had no desire to test the theory—on herself or anyone else. Yet here she was, and Dean’s argument made some sense. She’d never be able to carry him out.
The point was a moot one, as she knew it would be.
He slipped into unconsciousness as soon as the scalpel probed the wound. While the bullet had exited, small pieces of residue remained—his shirt, dirt, even pieces of rock where he’d fallen on the ground. She removed the pieces she could see with the scalpel, then irrigated the wound to clean the rest.
Dean remained blissfully unaware. The human body had its own way of dealing with pain. With unconsciousness, his heart took on a slower and steadier rhythm. She should have knocked him out earlier. She’d have to remember that next time. God forbid they ever share a next time quite like this one.
She resisted the urge to look around and assure herself no one had a firearm pointed at her head. If they did, she couldn’t do anything about it at the moment. Her hands flew, doing what they had been trained to do—healing. As she sutured the wound closed and applied a clean dressing she became aware again of her surroundings, of the sweat pouring down her face, of the fact they still had four miles to hike back out.
As gunshot wounds go, it was actually somewhat minor. Now that she had him sewn up. Of course, he’d need antibiotics, but she had some of those packed in her things at Josephine’s—just in case.
His pulse remained steady and strong.
He continued to amaze her. Had she actually considered him old and decrepit on that ride from Albuquerque? Pouring water over a bandana, she wiped his brow, then his face, let her fingers brush through his hair. She pulled a jacket from their pack. It still smelled of him and she buried her face in it, allowing the terror of the last hour to claim her—only for a moment though. Dean needed her. She rolled it up and placed it under his head. He still didn’t stir.
Knowing she couldn’t postpone the inevitable any longer, she took a long drink from the bottle, recapped it, and stood. After repacking all their supplies, she did the one thing left to do. She approached the dead guy lying twenty feet behind them.
Ω
Dean woke to a vision of true loveliness—Lucy sitting three feet away, staring straight at him, holding the rifle. She still wore her flak jacket, and she had dirt and some of his blood smeared across the bridge of her nose. He’d never seen a more beautiful woman.
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