by Loretta Ross
“They do. Let’s see how scrambled they are.” She addressed Death. “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
“Saturday.”
“Good. Remember my name?”
“Rosie. Rosie Keystone.”
“How about your full name?”
“Death Bogart.”
“No middle name?”
“Not one I’m going to admit to.”
“All right then.” She smiled and sat back. “I think he’s going to be okay. We’re looking at a moderate concussion and a few bruises. Wake him up every couple of hours and make sure he’s coherent. If he’s not, or if you can’t wake him, get him to a hospital. He needs to take it easy for the next couple of days.” She turned back to Death. “I’m going to give you something for the pain, okay?”
“Thanks. You got anything for a wounded ego?”
“From what I’ve heard, you put up a good fight. I don’t see why you think you should have a wounded ego.”
“Are you kidding? I got kidnapped by a substitute home ec teacher and rescued by a girl. What the hell blew up out there, anyway?”
“Oh, that.” Wren grinned. “Nothing blew up very much. Really. I just threw an atlatl dart through the window and it kind of exploded the work light. Just a little bit.”
Death sighed and shook his head. “This woman’s not sane, you know,” he told Rosie conversationally.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’re both dissing someone who throws spears at people and you claim that I’m not sane?”
“She’s got a point,” Rosie acknowledged wryly. “I think, if you want to keep her from atlatling anyone, your best bet is to not get kidnapped anymore.”
“Yeah, because I totally did that on purpose,” Death snarked.
“Well, don’t do it anymore, capisce?”
“HUA,” Wren corrected. “He’s a Marine. You say ‘HUA’.”
“HUA?”
“Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.”
“Ah. Right. HUA, then?”
“HUA,” Death agreed with a wry smile. “From now on, I promise, I will do my best to avoid any and all evil home ec teachers, substitute or otherwise.”
sixteen
By Rosie’s decree, there wasn’t anything clean enough in the old house to bandage Death’s wrists, so she decided to accompany them back to Wren’s place. Felix and Grigsby helped him stand and supported him out to Wren’s truck. In the yard, he blinked at the sun disappearing below the treeline and shook his still-addled head.
“How late is it?”
“Not very,” Grigsby told him. “We’re in a valley.”
With their help, he hoisted himself up into the pickup. Wren was still across the yard, talking to the sheriff, and Death took the opportunity to lean close to the older Marine.
“Man, I do appreciate the rescue, but did you really have to let Wren come along? What if she’d gotten hurt?”
Felix snorted. “I didn’t let Wren come along. She let me come along. ’Course, it helped that I was the one who knew how to find this place.”
“You drove?”
“Nope. She did. Like a bat out of hell.”
Death just stared at him for a long minute. “You’re not serious?”
Felix grinned and raised two fingers in the Boy Scout salute.
Death turned to gaze at Wren, approaching now with Rosie, and wondered what she would do if he were in a military hospital in Germany.
_____
Rosie put the last piece of surgical tape around Death’s wrist and pulled the coverlet up to his shoulders. “Keep him warm,” she told Wren, who was perched on the edge of the bed. “Wake him up every two hours like I told you. Make sure he gets plenty of fluids and make him take the pain meds if he looks to you like he needs them. “
“Yeah,” Death mumbled. “Climb under here and keep me warm, honey.”
“He needs to take it easy for at least the next forty-eight hours. And just so you can’t say I didn’t tell you, ‘take it easy’ means loaf on the couch and watch game shows. ‘Take it easy’ does not mean monkey sex.”
“Howsabout monkey sex on the couch while there’s game shows playing in the background?”
Rosie tapped Death on the nose gently with one finger. “No monkey sex!”
“How about soft, gentle, bunny sex?” Wren suggested.
“You’ve obviously never seen rabbits mate,” Rosie said dryly. “No sex!”
“Spoilsport,” Death complained.
“I know. I’m a big meanie.” She got up to take her leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you. Call me if you need me.”
She started for the door but stopped when Death called after her. “Hey, Rosie?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“Thanks for looking after me.”
“You’re welcome.” She winked and was gone.
Wren circled the bed, crawled under the covers and pulled Death gently into her arms. “Is this okay? I want you to be comfortable.”
“Mmm. S’nice.” He stiffened suddenly. “Crap!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Where’d my gun get to? We’ve got two psychos gunning for us and I’m unarmed.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s on the nightstand. Felix gave it back.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed him reassuringly. “I let him keep my slingshot.”
“Can Felix shoot a slingshot?”
“Sure. He’s the one who taught me.”
“Good. That’s good.” He snuggled closer, appreciating the warmth and gentleness and the rare human contact. “Wren?”
“Mmm? What, sweetheart?”
“I think you’d better let me teach you to shoot. Lord knows, I’m worthless these days.”
Wren was silent for a long time, long enough that he almost drifted off before she spoke. “You’re not worthless,” she said, and he thought she sounded like she might be crying. “You’ve always been the tough guy, haven’t you? The big, bad Marine who solved every problem with backbone and elbow grease.”
“I used to be. Once upon a time.”
“And now your body keeps betraying you. And as long as you keep expecting it to behave like nothing’s happened to it, it’s going to keep on betraying you. I think maybe it’s harder for you than you let yourself acknowledge. Soldiers who have more visible injuries are at least forced to come to some kind of terms with them. If you lose your leg, every time you look down you’re going to remember that your leg is gone. But your injury is mostly invisible, so you seem to feel that you shouldn’t let it affect you. That it’s some sort of weakness on your part if it does.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Death. You have nothing to be sorry for!”
“Maybe not but … A year ago I’d have taken down Fairchild and Ten Oeck both the first time they came after me. Now, I’ve failed repeatedly. I can’t help being ashamed of that. I’ll keep trying, and I might improve, but I’m never going to be the man I once was.”
“Maybe not,” Wren said. “But that doesn’t mean the man you’re becoming won’t be just as good. Or even better.”
_____
The A/C in the Hummer was cranked too high, overcompensating for the desert heat. They knew they were in a dangerous area and they were all four on high alert. Baker was a baby-faced newbie and twenty-three-year-old Porter was too worldly for his own good, but they were good men and they were his men, and Death had always taken care of his own.
They were driving down the main road, down what had been the only street in a now bombed-out village. They were the third vehicle in an eight vehicle convoy and, to all appearances, they were the only living souls around for miles. Then a fleeting figure appeared just on the periphery of Death’s vision and rolled something into the road. There was a bright flash and a burst of noise and the Hummer flipped on a wave of heat that was partly the bomb but mostly the desert coming in through shattered windows.
He blacked out several times,
but only briefly, so that the intervals of consciousness seemed like parts of a play seen under a strobe light, or the jerky, stop-motion imagery of early black-and-white films. His shirt front was covered with blood. There was pain in his chest and he was having trouble catching his breath. Barlow was trapped under the steering wheel, dangling unresponsive from his seat belt. In the back seat, Porter had an obvious head injury and Baker was incoherent, muttering with the pain of a shattered leg.
Around them, the ruins had erupted with tan-clad insurgents. Their caravan drew up into a protective circle twenty yards from where they had come to rest, and everybody was shooting at everybody else.
Death tugged at the seatbelt holding Barlow, but to no effect. Porter had a head injury and Baker’s broken leg was a compound fracture. From the amount of blood he was losing, it was entirely possible that he’d taken damage to his femoral artery. Giving up on Barlow for the moment, Death got the other two out of the vehicle and, half carrying them and half dragging them, muscled them into the shelter of the circle of friendly transports.
His chest was burning, there was a fire in his lungs and oxygen seemed to be in short supply.
One of his men was still in peril.
Before anyone could stop him, he ran out into the crossfire and dived back into the wrecked Hummer. Arms caught him, circling him from behind, and he fought back without conscious thought but with deadly intent, turning on his attackers and taking them down.
“Death!” His name came out more a squeak than a shout, but it was enough to snap him out of nightmare and into a reality that held its own horrors.
He was kneeling on the floor beside Wren’s bed. He had her pinned down, with one hand on her jaw and the other on her temple and he was a hair’s breadth away from snapping her neck.
_____
Keyed up by the day’s events, Wren was still lying awake and restless when Death began to mutter and thrash. He had one hand fisted over his chest, like he was in pain, and his breathing was becoming more labored by the second. Recognizing a nightmare when she saw one, Wren moved to wake him without thinking. She wasn’t even remotely prepared for his response.
He spun like a snake, grabbed her and tossed her up over his body and off the other side of the bed. It was like being caught in a tornado. She hit the floor hard with 230 pounds of muscle on top of her, his hands reaching for her head and neck. The reassuring murmur she had on her tongue came out as a barely audible squeak, but it was enough to snap him out of his dream. She could see in his eyes when he became aware of his surroundings again. Comprehension turned swiftly to shock and abject horror and he flung himself away, scrambled backward into a corner and huddled in on himself.
“No,” he choked out. He was gasping and wheezing. “No. No. God, no!”
“Death?” She crawled towards him but stopped when he cowered back against the wall, one arm guarding his chest and the other flung out to ward her off. “Death, it’s all right now. You’re okay now. You’re safe. It’s fine.”
“You’re not safe,” he countered. “I almost killed you.”
“You didn’t. You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. Everything’s fine now.”
“Nothing’s fine. Don’t you understand? I almost killed you. I almost killed you.”
Wren swallowed hard. She didn’t know how to handle this. “It wasn’t your fault. It was my fault. It was all my fault. I know you were a soldier. I should have known better than to try to wake you up like that. I just acted without thinking. I do that a lot. But I know now and I won’t do it again. I promise. It’s okay.”
Death pressed back into the corner, drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, ducking his head and hiding his face. His whole body was clenched like a fist. Stray shafts of streetlight coming in the window glinted off his cheeks.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“This. Soldier on. Everyone I love keeps dying.”
“Oh, Death.”
He pulled even further in on himself, which she wouldn’t have thought was possible. “Even Randy,” he whispered. His shoulders were shaking now, tears running free. “Even Randy’s gone. He was my little brother, dammit. He was supposed to outlive me.”
Wren was on her knees in front of him. She leaned toward him, reaching out one hand, but he flinched away before she even came close.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, choking on tears of her own. “I know it’s hard and I know it’s scary, but you’re not alone anymore. I’m not going anywhere, and I swear to you, one way or another, we are going to make things better.”
_____
“Spy show featuring the exploits of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Roger.”
“What is The Man From U.N.C.L.E.?”
“That is correct.”
“I’ll take 60s television for $800”
“That’s what you should do!” Wren exclaimed.
“Go on Jeopardy?”
“No, silly. Though I bet you’re smart enough. I was talking about The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. I was trying to think of ways you could compensate for not being 100 percent physically. Did you ever see The Man From U.N.C.L.E.? It was an old spy show. They had all these nifty hidden gadgets and things tucked into their clothes and whatnot, y’know? Ink pens that were really radios and exploding tie tacks and the like.”
He rolled his head along the back of the couch, turning to look at her with a minimum of effort. “What would I do with an exploding tie tack? I never even wear a tie.”
She eyed him thoughtfully. “You’d look good in a tie.”
They hadn’t talked about what had happened the night before. Wren knew Death would just as soon pretend it hadn’t happened at all. It was obvious he wasn’t used to losing control, though, actually, she thought it had probably done him some good. He seemed calmer and more at ease today than he had at any time since she’d met him.
He smiled. “I don’t think I even have a suit that fits anymore. If I do it’s in storage.”
“I said you’d look good in a tie. Who said anything about other clothes?”
“Why Miss Morgan,” he teased. “Are you making a pass at me?”
“If you have to ask, it must not be a very good one.”
“Any pass from you is a good one. You know what Rosie said about monkey sex, though.”
“Yeah. But, you know, what Rosie doesn’t know won’t hurt us.”
“True,” a new voice said dryly from beyond the open front window. “But you’re forgetting that there’s nothing that Rosie doesn’t know.”
“Oops!” Wren grinned. “Hi, Rosie!”
Rosie opened the door and came in. “Am I going to have to assign you two a chaperone?”
“Nope,” Death said. “We’re good. Look. Couch, game show, no monkey sex.”
“But I did hear the two of you talking about monkey sex.”
“You didn’t say we couldn’t talk about it.”
“True. So how are you feeling today? Any problems last night?”
They exchanged a brief glance and Wren held her silence, leaving it up to Death what to tell and what not to tell.
“I feel great,” he announced with a too-bright smile. “I’ve been cuddled and fed and drugged and I gotta tell you, Wren’s a lot better than the military on at least two of those things.”
“Death Bogart,” Wren said, “I’m going to be really upset if you tell me I’ve been out-cuddled by an army sergeant named Spike!”
Death just grinned at her and then sat patiently while Rosie changed the bandages on his wrists. “You know,” he said after a minute, “it would be nice if I could hide some kind of knife or razor so that I could get to it if my hands were tied.”
“It’d have to be a small knife. One of those little folding pocket knives, maybe?” Wren wrinkled her forehead in thought. “You know how jeans have that leather tag on the waistband, usually? Maybe if we slit the stitching on one side we could turn that into a hiding p
lace. A pocket knife would make it bulge out, though.”
“A pocket knife would,” Death was grinning, “but I know what wouldn’t. And I’ve got one in my duffel bag out in my Jeep. Which is out front,” he realized suddenly. “How did it get out front? I left it at that house where the auction was.”
“Yeah, and Sam took it home last night and one of his boys brought it around this morning.”
“You’re good, Death,” Rosie told him. “You’ve got people behind you now. We’ve got you covered.”
His eyes misted. “Thanks. A lot. You guys are awesome.”
She flashed him a bright smile. “Yeah. We know.”
Wren ran out and fetched his duffel bag, lugging it over her shoulder and staggering under the weight. “What do you have in this thing? Rocks?”
“Only a few.” He hefted it up onto the sofa beside him, dug through until he found a smaller bag and extracted a tiny metal gizmo, about an inch and a half long, with a hook on one side and a hinged blade that folded out.
“Oh!” Wren exclaimed. “I have one of those!” She jumped back up from her seat the other side of his duffel bag and went to rummage through a kitchen drawer, coming back with a mate to Death’s gadget. “What are they, anyway?”
“You had one and you don’t know what they are?”
“I found it in a box of junk I bought at an auction.”
“Of course. Well, this is a P38.”
She frowned at him. “Okay, I’m not that stupid. A P38 is a plane. A great big, huge plane.”
“Actually, a P38 is a small plane.”
“Not that small. And, I think, less pointy.”
“Yes, because the plane is a P38 Mustang fighter. This is a P38 hand-held can opener. They used to give them out with KRations and CRations from the second World War through Vietnam. Marines called them ‘John Waynes’. No one really knows why. You don’t see them much anymore. A Vietnam vet I knew gave me this. You think one of these would fit under the tag on a pair of jeans?”
“I don’t know. Take your jeans off and we’ll see.”
Rosie gave her a stern look and Wren sighed dramatically. “Fine! I did your laundry yesterday. I’ll go get a pair you’re not wearing.”
The tag on the jeans Wren fetched was set off-center in the back of the waistband, over the right hip. She had also brought back a small sewing kit and she hesitated over the tag with a seam ripper.