Sweet Water

by Lena North

  I trailed off and wished I could communicate with the hawk the same way Wilder did. The bird moved closer and made a small movement with its head, in a way caressing my arm with the side of its beak. I hoped this meant that she’d told Wilder, but I feared it was her way of comforting me for the loss of my beautiful golden dog.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, and got another soft touch from the bird.

  Then we sat there, watching the sky where the dark clouds were breaking up. The darkness that had given me cover as I ran through the forest shifted and the moon painted a silvery path across the dark water. Without thinking about it, I started breathing in through my nose, slowly letting it out again through the mouth, relaxing as I did. My mind was blank, and I deliberately kept it like that. I could plan for what would come next when someone had come to pick me up.

  Minutes passed, and my head started to spin a little, but I kept breathing, forcing myself to remain in my sitting position. I was shivering from the cold and drained of all energy, but if I lay down I might fall asleep, or pass out, and I had to stay lucid for a while longer.

  Suddenly the bird twitched and spread its wings. With a loud shriek, it took to the air and disappeared. It flew in over the small island and not out over the water, so I turned a little to see where it went.

  The dark shadow of a man was outlined against the sky, standing too far away for me to see him clearly, and the shape looked warped among the shadows from the trees. I got to my feet, staggered, but held myself up.

  “Who are you?” I asked quietly, but he didn’t reply or move.

  The bird suddenly dove toward him, and he turned. The clouds parted fully, and suddenly the shadow took the shape of a man. I could see his dark clothes, and pale blond hair.

  I could also see the crossbow he held in his hands, and as I watched in disbelief, he raised it and took aim.

  “No!” I shouted and tried to get my exhausted body to move.

  He was aiming for Wilder’s hawk.

  A shot suddenly rang out, and I couldn’t hold back a small scream. The bullet hit the crossbow, or maybe the man’s hand, and the weapon fell to the ground. He turned toward me, and I stared back at him. Then we both heard the sound of a boat approaching, and I knew who the shooter was.

  It had to be Mac. He was a phenomenal sniper and the only one who could have made such a shot from a rocking boat at that distance.

  The man in front of me moved toward me, hesitated, and turned around to pick up the crossbow. Another shot hit the ground next to him, and I turned to watch a small open boat approach at such a high speed I feared they’d crash into the island.

  Mac was standing wide legged in the center with a rifle raised, taking aim again. Wilder was crouched in front of him at the bow, and at the steering console stood Danny. The boat stopped abruptly, just a few feet from the island, and then I saw a part of Wilder that I knew existed but had never seen.

  She flew off the boat in a leap so fast and high it looked like she was floating on air. She landed running and passed me without even looking. Her full focus was on the man. He had started to move away, but she caught up with him and ran straight into him, taking him down with her shoulder and the full force of her speed. He pushed her off and got up, but she went at him again.

  I’d seen Wilder fight before, sparring with Olly and her father, but that had been different. I’d seen her deliver a lesson to someone who needed it in a bar brawl a few times, but that had been even more different. That had been a single punch or kick to make a point. What I had in front of me was fury, unleashed in a way I hadn’t known she was capable of. I’d always thought she was exactly like her father, but at that moment I realized that I’d had no clue just how much she was a Johns.

  Her arms pumped blow after blow, and she drove the man relentlessly backward. When I noticed how she deliberately pushed the man closer to us, I understood that she was furious and dangerous, but she was in no way out of control. Her face was a hard mask, and her yellow eyes seemed brighter than usual, but her mouth was set in a condescending sneer.

  “You tried to kill my friend,” she growled and kicked the man in the ribs.

  He grunted and side-stepped, but held his ground and fought back.

  “You tried to kill the hawk,” she roared, and a whirl of punches drove the man to his knees.

  He slumped to the side, but when Wilder took a step closer, he righted himself with a grunt and found the strength to push back one final time, jumping up to grab her and throw her to the side. She hit a tree and gave up a loud shout, but if it was from pain or rage, I didn’t know.

  When she was on her feet again, the man was running away from us. She started to move, but Mac called out.

  “Leave it, Wilder. Jinx needs help, we don’t have time to chase him down.”

  That stopped her in her tracks, and her focus shifted to me. Danny had pulled off his thick flannel, torn my wet shirt open and was pulling it off my shivering body. Then he took one of my arms and pushed it into the sleeve of his shirt. I let him dress me as if I was a small child, and to my horror, I whimpered, once.

  “We’ll get you to a doctor, Jinx,” Danny murmured gently.

  “Carson is hovering inland with the chopper. We’ll just go across to the shore –”

  I interrupted Mac immediately.

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Jinx,” Wilder said, and our eyes met. “You do need a doctor.”

  I held her eyes, urging her to understand, hoping that she’d help me.

  “I need Dante,” I whispered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Permission to pee

  Wilder looked up at her bird, clearly communicating something to it. Then she said calmly, “We’ll go to the lab. Carson says he can put the chopper down on the field next to it, and the others will be there when we dock.”

  They got me into the boat, wrapped a blanket around my legs, and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have the energy to explain what had happened and I was too afraid to ask about Joe. My head was pounding in a way that worried me, and I was also feeling a little nauseous, which meant that I probably had a concussion. We had to get out on the water where I could blame the waves if I had to throw up because I couldn’t let them to know about the blow to my head yet.

  My hair was still wet so I hoped it would cover the wounds and the blood until we got to Dante.

  Danny crouched down next to me and put a hand on my leg.

  “He wanted to come, but the boat would be faster if he stayed. My mom’s family was fishermen, and I still go out with my grandfather every now and then. I know the inlet better.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “It wasn’t easy for him to stay behind, and it hasn’t been easy for anyone to watch him try to keep it together the past hour. I thought he’d break down the walls when he understood that you locked us into the house.”

  “Can you get me to him, Danny?” I asked, knowing that he was trying to comfort me but wanting him to start up the boat.

  He looked at me for a few seconds, and his eyes moved over my hair, stopping briefly right where I had the wound. I thought he’d say something but he got to his feet abruptly, and without a word, he started up the engine, moved the boat around slowly and pushed the throttle to the max. The sounds drowned out any possibility to talk, but Wilder sat next to me and held my hand, squeezing it every now and then. I concentrated on breathing, keeping my eyes forward. When I could see the lights from the house, I sighed. Safety.

  Danny slowed down and then we were gliding toward the shore. A few men were already in the water, and they pulled us all the way up to the river bank. Danny immediately put his hands around my waist to help me off the boat, and I started walking toward the man standing alone just a few steps away, completely still, watching me.

  “Dante,” I whispered, and as I watched he unclenched his fists and exhaled visibly.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he growled then, and I stopped
walking, but that didn’t stop him. “You left us, without discussion and without a plan. And then you deliberately put yourself in a situation that was dangerous beyond what you could know because you didn’t talk to me.”

  He roared the last words out, and I took a few steps backward. Everyone had frozen, and I heard Wilder make a small sound. I’d never seen Dante angry, not like that, but I remembered him telling me that I couldn’t be afraid of him. He’d been scared and was frustrated because he’d not been able to help me, so I stayed silent, waiting for him to calm down.

  “You’re completely impossible. You know that, right?” he asked, and when I didn’t reply he made a frustrated sound.

  “Yes,” I whispered, hoping that agreeing with him would take the edge off his temper.

  It didn’t.

  “I thought we were building something, but it’s clear that you still don’t trust me,” he went on.

  The unfairness of it hurt, and I opened my mouth to protest, but he raised a hand, so I closed it again.

  Danny suddenly moved to stand in front of Dante and put both hands on his shoulders. “You have got to calm down, man,” he said quietly. “Look at her.”

  When Dante clenched his jaws, Danny shook him a little and repeated, “Look at her, buddy. She’s hurt, wet and exhausted, and the first thing she asked for was you. No doctor, no warm clothes. You.”

  That got through to Dante, and his eyes met mine.

  “I do trust you,” I whispered. “I trusted you to come after me when the men took me away. When I was in the water, and I thought I’d drown, I heard you. Go left, you said, and I did. It was dark, Dante, and I couldn’t see anything at all, but I still followed the current downstream even though it didn’t make sense at all and the logical thing with the highest probability of success would be to continue pushing toward the shore.”

  He made a small sound and Danny moved to the side, but I kept talking.

  “And I trust you now. I can’t go to a hospital, not ever, but I need one now. So, I trust you to go with me, and not leave me alone, even for a second.”

  He moved, and stopped in front of me, cupping my cheek with his big, warm hand.

  “God, I’m sorry, Nellie,” he murmured.

  “I know,” I said and leaned my head into his hand.

  “Why can’t you go to a hospital?” he asked softly.

  “They hurt me in hospitals,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “That’s why I became a doctor, Dante. I never wanted to practice, I wanted it for me, so I’d never have to go to the hospital. Never have to see a doctor.”

  “What?” he repeated, clearly confused.

  It was crucial that he understood, so I laid it all out.

  “I was ten the first time, and they made me stay a month. They told my parents that it was for testing my intelligence and in a way, I guess it was, but it hurt. They took samples of my blood several times each day, and they put sensors in my scalp. Tested my resistance to pain. My endurance. Strength. Lots of other things. And I had to do so many brain tests, solve so many problems. Faster, they said, but my head burned like fire. I cried and begged them to stop, but they said I couldn’t leave the hospital until I’d solved all the problems satisfactorily.”

  I heard Hawker mutter his favorite crude word, and Wilder echoed him loudly, but I was focused on making Dante understand, so I ignored them.

  “Then I cheated on the intelligence test, you know that. It got easier then because they thought I was mostly just a regular genius.”

  “The first time?” he murmured, and I knew what he was asking.

  “I had to go back once every year until I turned fourteen.”

  “Your parents let them do this to you?”

  “I told Mom and Dad, but I was just a kid, and two doctors backed up by a whole cadre of important scientists told them I was exaggerating. They never did anything that left marks in the last week, so I only had some small pinpricks from the blood works.”

  “I fucking hate your parents more and more, Nellie,” he growled.

  I heard Wilder say something in the background that sounded like she agreed with Dante.

  “They got me out of it,” I pleaded. “The last time I was there, I cracked the code to the security system, picked the locks and went home. I had ripped the sensors from my scalp, so I was bleeding all over my head. I had bruises on my legs and…” I trailed off, but gathered all my courage and told him. “I bled from my eyes.”

  “Nellie,” he whispered and tried to put his arms around me but I straightened, and he held back.

  “Dad went completely out of his mind, Dante. He went to the university board and the hospital board, shouting at them and showing pictures he’d taken of what I looked like when I got home. Mom called the police and wanted them to arrest the ones involved. In the end, it was all hushed up, though. There were too many high-profile scientists involved, and Mom still wanted to go after them, but I talked her out of it. I wouldn’t have to go back, that was all I needed.”

  “They should have trusted you,” Dante stated, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that.

  “Maybe. But that was how I made Mom and Dad leave me,” I told him quietly.

  “What?”

  “Just a few months later I was fourteen, and I wanted to live on my own so I could go to Uni, and they could travel the country fairs… I told them I didn’t trust them, didn’t like them and the only way I’d ever forgive them was if they left.”

  “But they wanted to go.”

  “In a way they did, but they wouldn’t have left. They knew that they had been too proud of their brilliant daughter, and ignored what she said when it didn’t fit in with their image of what things were like.”

  “Nellie…” he whispered, and then he pulled me into his arms.

  “But I know you won’t leave me, and you won’t let anyone in the hospital do anything to me. You’ll keep me safe.”

  He held me tight to his chest, and I sensed the others moving restlessly around us, but I spent what energy I had left on holding myself up.

  “Why do you need to go to the hospital, baby,” Dante murmured. He had raised his head, and I felt him make some kind of gesture behind my back.

  “Don’t get upset, Dante, but a log hit my head when I was in the water. It probably looks worse than it is,” I murmured, and when he pulled back and called out for the others to aim their flashlight at me, I smiled weakly.

  “Jesus,” he whispered when he saw the dried blood in my hair, and he moved his hand to make a trail down my neck as if following the traces. Then he moved my hair away from the wound, and called out immediately, “Get Carson to start up the helicopter. Now!”

  Feet moved around us, and I had a flashlight shining straight into my eyes, but I could see Wilder and her dad hovering behind Dante.

  “You can’t get scared, Dante,” I said, trying to reassure him, “but it’s likely that I’ll pass out in three or four minutes. I probably have a minor concussion, but the cut just needs to be cleaned and stitched. I’ve lost too much blood, though, and they might have to give me –”

  “Jesus,” Dante murmured again and lifted me into his arms. “I won’t leave you, Nellie, I promise. Not for one second.”

  “Okay,” I said weakly, thinking that there must have been an error in my calculations because I could feel how I was slipping away. “Call Jamie. James Jamieson. No one else can do anything to me. Only one MRI, and only if they absolutely have to. No medicines except painkillers.”

  “Okay, Jiminella. I hear you. Only Jamieson, no treatments, only painkillers,” Dante confirmed, and I closed my eyes.

  Then I whispered, “Joe?” My voice was shivering from the cold and because it hurt to think about him, but I had to know.

  Dante heard me and squeezed me gently.

  “Miller is working on him at Mrs. C’s, baby. Mac is heading over to help. He was shot twice, but he’s alive, and Mill sounded pretty confident that he�
��d make it.”

  I didn’t make a sound because darkness was closing in from the sides and strange yellow dots were dancing in front of my eyes.

  “Nellie?” Dante said, and when I didn’t reply he said my name again, louder this time. I tried to tell him not to worry, but my lips felt numb, and I couldn’t get a word out. Then I heard him shout, “Jesus fucking Christ, get that chopper ready. We have to leave!”

  There seemed to be people running around everywhere, and Dante walked with long strides toward the sound of Carson’s helicopter. He’d almost reached it when he jerked to a halt and made an impatient sound.

  “Jinx,” a voice called.

  “Leave her alone,” Dante growled.

  “Jinx!” the voice insisted, and I recognized it. Hawker.

  I managed to pry my eyes open and look straight into his yellow eyes. They were burning with anger, and I knew what he wanted to know.

  “They had blue socks with a yellow line, government issue scramblers, and carried FC-240 guns,” I whispered.

  He nodded, understanding that I had just told him the men who captured me and chased me through the night were government agents. Then he asked, “When you were fourteen and got away, who hushed it up?”

  “You know him, Hawker,” I breathed out. “He was sheriff in Prosper back then, but he’s a special agent now. Special Agent Dickinson.”

  Dante shrugged Hawker’s hand off his shoulder and leaned down to carry me into the helicopter. While they buckled me into a stretcher on the floor, I thought I heard Hawker roar outside, but it could have been the sound of the engine or the buzzing in my ears. Before they closed the door, I saw him walk off, with his phone pressed to his ear and Wilder at his side.

  Dante spent the ride up to Prosper shouting into his phone, talking to Jamie, my parents, Mrs. C, Jamie again and then Miller. I spent that time floating in and out of consciousness, and I was mostly out, but every time I opened my eyes, they met his. It felt as if he held me together the way he'd done before, brushing my mind with warmth and comfort. Then he leaned down and took a gentle hold of my hand.