Pulling her readied Glock from its holster, she said, “Absolutely.” Please Lord, let my hand be steady, she thought, adding her regular prayer in silence.
John nodded and maneuvered the Explorer into a turn lane. Next he reached to the dash and pressed the key that would open the moon roof, getting it ready for her to pop out of in order to deliver a few 10mm surprises to their pursuers. For several minutes he drove lazily through Langley, leading the SUV following them on a wild goose chase across the city, before determinedly heading toward the edge of town, picking up speed as he did so. When there were fewer cars around to hide behind, the vehicle following dropped all pretense, gunning their engine to get closer.
Billie looked over her shoulder. The back window was tinted as dark as the sides, so the crew behind them might not notice her change in position; she could still see the car’s front end well enough, however, and mentally gauged the distance between them now at only two car lengths.
“Remember, She-Devil,” Gabe said, turning to face her from the front. “You’ve got no spotter, no one to take a wind reading or calculate actual distance. We’re in a moving vehicle and you’ve got a moving primary target that could close in any moment. Said target also has secondaries inside that could—and probably will—return fire. You’re only going to have one chance to stop them. Don’t get dead.”
Despite the tension between them, she smiled when he used the familiar phrase, their team’s version of “break a leg.” She knew his words weren’t meant to psych her out—rather they did as intended, and helped her mentally prepare. Closing her eyes, she held her gun ready played out the scene in her mind: she would turn around and rise through the open moon roof, firing off a round at each of the front tires, effectively disabling the vehicle. Shooting the tires carried with it the risk of the SUV overturning, but that was a chance they had to take—whoever was in the car had accepted any inherent risk when they’d accepted the order to pursue.
The goal was primarily to disable the SUV so they could no longer be followed, as there was a chance they’d been ordered to do so by General Wainright. If their pursuers were Marines who were merely following orders, she didn’t want to kill them outright. They didn’t deserve that. But if she saw Andre Sardetsky either behind the wheel or in the passenger seat, then she planned to shoot to kill.
“Billie, on my mark,” John said, and she took a deep, cleansing breath. “Three…two…one…GO!”
At his shout, her eyes snapped open and she pushed to her feet, twisting her body so she faced the rear of their car and standing just tall enough that her head and shoulders cleared the roof. She had her gun brought to bear and was squeezing the trigger in under two seconds. Two rounds were fired in rapid succession, a loud pop followed each: she’d hit her targets. Her eyes looked then to the persons occupying the front seats, and indeed, Andre’s enraged scowl stared up at her while his man behind the wheel fought to keep the large SUV under control. She kept her eyes on Sergei’s bloodthirsty nephew even as she swung her weapon slightly to the right and put a third round squarely into the chest of the driver. The car swerved wildly even as a man in the back seat was popping out of his window to fire back.
“Billie, get back inside!” John shouted.
Andre’s car screeched to a halt with a loud bang, colliding with an electrical pole as he wrestled with the wheel from the passenger seat, his man behind the wheel clearly incapacitated. The first man she’d seen climb out of the back was joined by another who held an AK-47 pointed at her over the roof; his comrade held in his hand a semi-automatic pistol. Even though John was hitting the gas to put more distance between them, Billie fired at the man with the assault rifle at the same time the two Russians fired at her.
“Duck!” she called down to the men even as bullets struck the Explorer, embedding in the bottom panel of the hatchback and shattering the rear window. Heat seared her left leg but she ignored it, instead using the pain to focus. Leaning forward over the roof she fired again, cheering internally when her shot hit home and the rifleman’s head snapped back as her bullet struck him between the eyes. She fired another couple of rounds at the man with the pistol but missed, the growing distance flubbing her accuracy with the Glock. If she’d had her M107, his head would have exploded like a sledgehammer decimating a pumpkin.
She turned and dropped into the car again, feeling great until she sat down. Hissing at the stab of pain that ran up her leg, she looked down at her left thigh, saw the blood spreading on her jeans and dripping onto the seat.
“Well, fuck me… There goes our security deposit,” she joked as she holstered her gun with one hand and pressed the other over her wound.
Gabe twisted in his seat. “Son of a bitch!” he hollered. “Courtney, pull over. Billie’s been hit!”
“No!” she declared at the same time John bellowed “What?!”
“No,” she said again as John was applying the brake. “Don’t stop now—just get us back on track.”
“Billie, for Christ’s sake, you’ve been shot!” he said with alarm.
“John, Gabe—I’m fine. It’s just a graze,” she told them.
“Then you won’t mind us having a look at it,” Gabe said, the expression he wore angry but concerned.
“When we reach the first rest stop on the freeway, maybe,” she said firmly. She didn’t want or need them worrying about her. She’d been shot before, she could handle this.
Though if she were being truly honest with herself, flesh wound or no, it was beginning to hurt like hell now that her adrenaline was ebbing. Billie bit her lip as she lifted her hand away and looked down at the wound again. What she could see of it in the twilight streaming through the open moon roof and windows showed a deep gash that would probably need a few stitches if she didn’t want a hideous scar.
“On second thought, find me someplace with a bathroom so I can patch myself up,” she said, pressing down on the wound once more.
Andre angrily kicked the SUV. That fucking shlyukha had killed two more of his men—both Mikhail and Vladimir were dead. She and her cohorts were getting away because she’d fucking disabled his car.
His grandfather would not be pleased.
“Trakhat’sya!” he screamed, kicking the flattened passenger tire again.
“Boss, we gotta move,” Anton said as he rushed to gather Vladimir and Mikhail’s weapons. His own guns and his laptop bag were already slung over his shoulder. “The politsiya will be here any minute.”
Anton stepped in front of him, and Andre snapped his gaze up at his friend. He no doubt looked more than a little crazy, his eyes wide and his breathing shallow. But how else would he look? His goat would be thoroughly fucked if his grandfather heard of this latest travesty.
“I tell you now, Anton…” he said darkly as he stepped away from the SUV. He was not concerned about leaving fingerprints behind—the police would find them but his team was not in the Americans’ AFIS database. Anton had made sure of that.
“…when I get my hands on that bitch, I will fuck her for Mikhail—you can have a go at her as well, if you like—and then shoot her between the eyes for Vladimir.”
Anton looked at him with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “It’s the least we can do for our friends.”
Getting out of the car hurt more than she’d thought it would, and her feet had barely touched the ground before Gabe and John were in front of her, demanding to see her leg. Billie groaned in exasperation, but dutifully turned to the side to show off her latest battle wound.
Gabe was holding a flashlight from the glove compartment pointed at it while John knelt and peeled away the wet, sticky edges of the tear in her pants leg. “Looks like the bullet just grazed her as it was passing by,” John noted.
“Like I said, just a flesh wound,” Billie said sourly.
“Probably the same one that’s lodged in the shoulder of my seatback,” Gabe remarked thoughtfully. “Shit, I’m probably go
nna have a bruise from that one—the impact hurt like a bitch.”
“You’re a Marine, you can take it,” John said as he stood. He then turned to Gabe and added, “The bleeding’s mostly stopped, but could start again if we don’t treat it. She’s going to need stitches, and it should be cleaned to prevent infection.”
Gabe nodded. “I agree. Didn’t see a first-aid kit in the glove box, but surely a truck stop convenience store sells first aid kits.”
It was like she wasn’t even standing there. How twistedly ironic it was that the first time John and Gabe were agreeing with each other was over what amounted to a bad scratch. With a roll of her eyes, she turned and walked to the back of the Explorer.
“What are you doing?” John asked.
“I’m getting a clean pair of pants out of my go bag, if you must know,” she replied tersely as she was reaching through the missing window of the hatchback. Thankfully hers had been the last bag in so it was closest, and she wrenched the duffel open with more than a little aggravation. “Then I’m going to go inside to the store, grab a few things off the shelf, pay for them, and then go in the bathroom and clean my scratch.”
“She-Devil, that’s hardly a scratch. You’re going to need stitches,” Gabe pointed out.
“Potato, po-tah-to,” Billie retorted as she pulled a pair of jeans from her duffel. Walking back around the car, she brushed past the dumbstruck men and headed inside.
She searched for and located a small sewing kit in one aisle, then in the first aid section grabbed a box of alcohol wipes and a first aid kit. In another aisle she grabbed a pack of dental floss. After snagging two cold sodas from the cooler, she headed up to the counter. The clerk looked to be in his early twenties—he still had acne to clear up.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pointing at her leg.
Billie looked down. There was a large bloodstain on the denim encasing her thigh. Looking back at the clerk she smiled. “You should see the other guys,” she replied jokingly.
The kid grinned as he finished scanning her items. “That’ll be $15.78, please. And I can see you got something to change into—restrooms are right over there.”
Billie nodded as she handed over a twenty dollar bill, then took her change and picked up the bag the clerk had placed her purchases in. In the bathroom, she found she actually had to use the facility, and so kicked off the ruined jeans as she was sitting on the toilet. After she finished, she pulled her panties up gingerly, taking as much care as possible to avoid getting blood on them as she had when she’d pulled them down. She then washed her hands and wetted down a couple of paper towels to clean the blood off her leg before stepping into the clean pants she’d brought in. The ruined ones she threw in the trash.
She passed Gabe coming in as she was leaving, and though he glanced at her with raised eyebrows, she said nothing. Out at the car, she found John leaning against it, and the moment he saw her, he took the bag from her hands and said, “Drop your pants and lay down on the back seat.”
Billie lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
He chuckled. “It’s not like I haven’t already seen it,” he said, throwing her own words back at her. “But I daresay stitching your own leg won’t be easy. I’ll do it for you.”
She looked at him and saw his concern for her, saw how hard he was fighting to keep it in check. Billie wondered then if he’d ever been in a combat situation with someone he cared deeply for—or was beginning to—and guessed he had not. She supposed she had to give him some credit for not freaking out entirely, but then he wasn’t just keeping himself together for her, he was certainly also doing it for himself. She suspected even John didn’t know precisely what his feelings for her were; if he was as intelligent and mature as she believed him to be, he was probably fairly confused by how he felt. After all, how could anyone who’d only known a person for two days feel as strongly as he seemed to feel for her?
Unfortunately, the mysterious workings of the male mind and heart were things she simply did not have the energy to contemplate right now. She just couldn’t spare any of what little she had left worrying about John’s feelings—or Gabe’s, for that matter. Coming home and confronting the past had been difficult enough thus far, not to mention she had three lives to save on top of that. Doing the job she’d been brought back to do was about all she could manage at this point, and that was just going to have to be good enough.
Suddenly weary, she merely nodded and opened her jeans, taking care when pushing them past the open wound on her leg. John handed her the flashlight Gabe had held earlier and she clicked it on as he knelt to the asphalt, her bag in his hand. Gabe walked up as he was pulling out the dental floss.
“Good idea to get the flavorless,” her former teammate remarked.
“You want to stitch up your leg with dental floss?” John queried in disbelief.
“What’s the matter, Agent Courtney? Haven’t you ever practiced combat medicine before?” Gabe goaded him.
“Not with dental floss,” John muttered.
“If you don’t want to do it, I’m sure Gabe won’t mind,” Billie said.
He looked up at her sharply, as though gauging whether or not she was serious. “What?” she asked. “You’re the one who said it would be difficult for me to do myself, and Gabe’s done it many times for me and the other guys.”
“Yeah, if you can’t hack it, G-Man, I’ll be more than happy to take care of Billie’s needs,” Gabe said, a sly grin raising the corners of his mouth.
Billie now turned a discerning gaze at her friend. What the hell was he doing, baiting John? Daring him to see if he’d go through with playing doctor? Good grief, she did not need this to turn into a pissing contest between them. It was just a damn flesh wound for fuck’s sake. Better head this shit off at the pass, she thought sourly, as it looked like John was about to argue.
Reaching a hand down, she placed it on his shoulder and waited until he looked at her. “John, you guys agreed this wound needs stitches. Dental floss is a decent substitute in lieu of proper sutures, given we can’t go to a hospital without facing questions none of us want to answer. The floss is strong enough not to snap and flexible enough to allow me normal movement of my leg.”
“I’ve field-dressed gunshots and stab wounds before,” John said testily. “I’ve just never heard of anyone using fucking dental floss, okay? No need to make a damn federal case out of it.”
Yikes, they’d touched a nerve. She decided not to remark about how uptight he was being and simply said, “Then let’s get this done, shall we? While I’m sure the two of you are enjoying the sight of me in my underwear, I’d like to pull my pants up sometime before midnight.”
THIRTEEN
After John had used an alcohol wipe to clean in and around the wound, after he’d sterilized the needle from the sewing kit with another, he threaded dental floss through the eye and put four stitches in her leg. It had hurt more than she thought it would, but Billie exercised as much control as she could muster and uttered hardly a sound through her gritted teeth. When he had tied off and cut the last one, she looked down at her leg and saw that he’d closed the edges of the gash neatly.
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it sincerely.
“We still have to put a bandage on it to keep it from getting infected,” John said.
“That, I think, I can manage on my own,” she told him with a smile. “Why don’t you go inside for a bit? Go take a piss if you need to. Buy yourself a drink—whatever. Better stretch your legs while you can before we get back on the road, because we’re gonna be there a while.”
After a moment, he nodded and stood. Handing her the bag with all the supplies in it, he turned and walked away toward the gas station. Billie watched him for a moment, then turned and set the bag on the back seat so she could get out a gauze pad, tape, and the antibiotic ointment from the first aid kit.
“You want any help with that?” Gabe asked her.
Turning again, she sat on the runner a
nd held up the flashlight. “You can hold this while I work.”
He snorted. “What, the spook putting his hands on you is okay, but the thought of me doing so is repulsive?”
I really don’t need this right now, she thought. “Thunderhead, it’s not like that and you know it.”
“I also know you could have stitched yourself up without any help,” he countered.
Billie loosed an exasperated sigh. “He insisted. And doing something productive probably made him feel better about me getting shot.”
Gabe stepped closer, invading her personal space. She was forced to look up at him and saw on his face an expression he’d shown her only a handful of times in the years they’d known each other. “What if I insist?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave. “What if touching you would make me feel better?”
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, drawing a breath she hoped would steady her fraying nerves. Why the hell was this happening now? Just because she was single again, suddenly there was not one but two men vying for her attention? Any other woman might be flattered, but she wasn’t. She didn’t need the headache or the distraction.
Looking up again, she schooled her features into a neutral expression. “Gabe, please. Don’t do this. Not now. Not when you know perfectly fucking well that I’ve got way too much shit on my mind to be even remotely capable of dealing with anything else.”
He sighed and inclined his head, then stepped back and held his hand out. “Give me the flashlight,” he said gruffly.
Handing it over, he held the light in place while she made quick work of putting a dressing over the stitches. Billie sighed with relief when she finished and finally pulled her pants back up from around her knees. After putting the roll of tape and the ointment back into the first aid kit, she tossed them back into the bag and pulled out the two sodas, holding one out to Gabe.
“Figured you could use a refresher,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied, unscrewing the cap and taking a long swallow.
Two Evils Page 18