“Hang in there, buddy.”
“I’m… fine… Sam. But I’m gonna… kill… you.” Jack muttered the words under his breath, his eyes closed. He was barely conscious. Sam didn’t stop their progress up the side stairs of the building, and the unchanged expression on his face revealed that he wasn’t, in the least, taken aback by the statement.
Cassie noticed the odd exchange, as did Annabelle. The two glanced at one another. However, Annabelle was far too concerned with Jack’s well-being to give it much more thought. Whatever trouble it was that had suddenly developed between teacher and student, it was going to have to wait until Jack was a little more cognizant and a little less dying.
“Get him to the bed and help me get the clothes off.” Cassie gave the order and Sam and Annabelle rushed him into the apartment, through the fire escape door. Craig and Virginia met them in the mud room and Craig took Annabelle’s place under Jack’s left arm.
“What do we have?” Craig asked, almost as a physician working the emergency room would ask.
“Can’t tell yet,” Cassie answered.
“He’s been shot more than once,” Annabelle supplied.
“Oh, God, Jackie,” Beatrice took a step forward from where she stood in the hallway in front of them, and then, on second thought, she instead put her arm up to stop her daughter from running forward.
“Da!” Clara tried to pull free to join her father, but Beatrice pulled her back out of the way and the two cleared the hallway so that Sam and Craig could get Jack into the first bedroom and lay him on the bed.
Blood trailed down the hall after them. Clara caught sight of it and screamed, rushing once more toward the bedroom where her father lay.
Virginia and Beatrice held her back and Annabelle shut the door to the room, leaving Cassie, Craig and Sam to take care of Jack.
Then she moved forward, and, on overwhelming instinct, she pulled Clara into her arms for a hug. A few silent seconds passed. Tears streamed down both of their faces.
And then, in a moment of quiet, empathetic clarity, Clara Thane hugged her back. After all, there was no other woman in the world who loved her father more than Clara, herself, did. Except, maybe, for Annabelle Drake.
It was a full thirty minutes before anyone came out of the room where they tended to Jack. Annabelle hadn’t stopped pacing. Clara couldn’t stop hugging herself and trembling. Beatrice tried to comfort her daughter, but it was useless and they both knew it. The only thing that would bring solace to the child was knowing that her father was going to be all right.
So, when Sam finally came out of the room, it was with barely-checked frenzy that both Clara and Annabelle rushed him with questions.
At once, he held up his hands and motioned for them to head back into the living room.
“He’s fine,” he told them as he ran a hand through his thick white hair. He looked tired. And still pale. “He lost a lot of blood, but it isn’t the first time, and he’s tough. The bleeding’s stopped, more or less, and he’s stable. Just needs to rest, is all.” He took a deep breath and sighed, his shoulders slumping. “And drink a hell of a lot of juice.”
He headed into the kitchen and Annabelle and Clara were hot on his heels.
“How long will it be before he’s on his feet again?” Annabelle asked.
“Knowing Jack, not long.” Sam shook his head and opened the refrigerator door. He peered into its depths and then his shoulders slumped even more. “Wouldn’t ya know. No juice.”
“I can go buy some,” Annabelle offered right away.
“I’ll go with her,” Clara joined in, eager to help in any way she could.
“Not a chance. I’ll call it in.” Sam turned back to face them and pulled his cell phone out of his front jeans pocket. He’d taken off his sports coat in the room where Jack was and his long-sleeved shirt had been rolled up to his elbows. As he pressed a speed dial number and placed the receiver to his ear, his eyes fell on Annabelle and narrowed.
He studied her, then, as Jack sometimes did – from head to foot, and methodically.
“Yeah, it’s me.” Sam spoke into the phone, not taking his eyes from Annabelle. She shifted from one foot to the other beneath his gaze, growing steadily more self-conscious.
“I need red supplies delivered to house three ASAP.” He paused. Then he nodded. “Good. See you soon.” He closed the phone and straightened, re-pocketing it.
“Drake, go back and tell Miss Reid to look you over. You’ve been shot at least twice and you’re suffering from shock.”
Annabelle blinked. She’d been shot? She hadn’t noticed anything. She looked down, suddenly quite startled to see that her bullet-proof clothing was dented, for lack of a better description, in several places. And her boots were soaked through. She should be freezing. But she barely felt anything at all.
And then, as if with the realization came the symptoms, she shivered violently.
“You need to get those clothes off and get into a warm shower.” Sam moved forward, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her around. “Right now.” He walked her down the hall toward the first room on the right, where they’d taken Jack.
There, she paused, forcibly stopping Sam in his tracks. She didn’t want to go in. She wasn’t sure she could handle seeing Jack in whatever condition he might be in. What if he was white as a sheet? All bandaged up? What if he looked like he was dying?
She would throw up again. And she didn’t have anything left in her stomach.
“Fine. Wait here.” As if sensing the reason for her hesitation, Sam let her remain in the hall while he stepped around her and poked his head into the room.
“Miss Reid, out here, please.”
Sam stepped back and Cassie came out into the hall. Sam didn’t have to tell her why he’d wanted her to step out, because when she caught sight of Annabelle, her eyes widened and her brow furrowed.
“Jesus, Ann, you look like shit.” She rushed forward and took her friend’s hands. “And you’re cold as ice.” She began to feel Annabelle’s arms, moving the sleeves up as if searching for wounds. When she got to her right shoulder, Annabelle suddenly let out a piercing cry. Pain had stabbed through her joint, shooting down to her finger tips and even down her right side.
“Your shoulder’s jacked up, at the very least.”
“Is that the medical term?” Annabelle joked, trying to hide her fear and exhaustion behind humor. “’Jacked up’?”
Why did everything bad always have to be named “Jack?” Like when someone was messing with you, they were “jacking” with you. And when someone was hurt, they were “jacked” up. What was the deal with that? She didn’t like it.
“It is,” Cassie replied, not pausing in her examination. She continued to look Annabelle over, pulling the edge of her shirt up to expose a taut stomach that was already bruised from Annabelle’s unpleasant treatment by the Colonel’s men. And now there were new scrapes and bruises forming, but nothing life-threatening.
Sam remained with them in the hallway, watching in that careful way that Annabelle realized long ago just came with being an assassin.
When Cassie got to her right thigh, Annabelle barely stifled another cry of pain.
“You see these strange sorts of dents or tears in your clothing?” Cassie pointed at the two larger anomalies in Annabelle’s bullet-proof outfit, one over her right shoulder, the other over her right thigh. “That’s where the bullets hit you. And that’s why those areas hurt so much. Your leg is going to be really bruised, and will probably hurt to walk on, but nothing’s broken. Your shoulder, on the other hand, is sprained.” Cassie sighed and straightened. “The force of the bullet striking you must have jerked the ligaments back until they tore.”
Annabelle didn’t say anything. It made sense, after all. And, what was there to say?
“Now, you need to get warmed up. I know you can undress and bathe yourself, Ann, but the truth is, I want to make sure there’s nothing I’m missing. Plus, you might need so
me help when it comes to using your right arm.”
“Fine,” Annabelle nodded once and headed back toward the second bedroom on the left, which sported a large bathroom and a rather nice shower.
It wasn’t until she was standing under the water and Cassie had left the room that Annabelle remembered the vial of Craig’s Erythromelalgia cure. What had happened to it? Had Jack ever gotten the brick out and retrieved it? The men had come around the corner and begun shooting before Annabelle had had a chance to find out.
She thought of this as she washed her hair with one hand and then rinsed it out as best she could. Then she used the same hand – her left – to soap her body. This wasn’t nearly as difficult. When she was clean and rinsed, she stepped out and dried off.
It seemed to be the night for late revelations, however, because it was then that she realized she had no clothes to change into.
“Mr. Brandt, thank you for everything you’ve done.” Sam stepped into the room where Jack lay propped up against the head boards. He nodded at Craig, who stood by the bed, monitoring Jack’s blood pressure. “When you’re done there, give us a minute alone.”
Craig looked up at Sam and then back at Jack. He pulled the cuff off of Jack’s arm and laid it on the table beside the bed. Jack nodded at him and Craig nodded back.
“Sure.” He stepped around the bed and left the room, softly closing the door behind him.
When he was gone, Jack straightened a little more and pinned Sam with a blue-eyed gaze that would have made a lesser man wet himself.
Before Jack could say anything, Sam raised his hands in a gesture of placation. “I’m more sorry than you can possibly imagine, Jack. I had no idea-”
“You gave me an untried weapon, Sam. You nearly got us both killed.” Jack’s tone was low and deadly. His expression turned lethal. “I trusted you,” He ground the words out through clenched teeth.
Sam swallowed audibly, slowly lowering his hands to his sides. “It was tried, Jack. I swear it. I never would have given you that gun without testing it first.” He shook his head, once, from side to side. His eyes were wide and pleading. “I shot it and cleaned it and shot it and sighted it and goddamned cleaned it and shot it again.” He ran his hand over his face. It was shaking.
Jack watched him carefully. What blood he had in his veins was boiling with fury, but at the same time, he knew Samuel Price very well. And he recognized agonizing guilt when he saw it.
“Christ, Jack. I thought it was perfect,” Sam continued. “I never would have given it to you otherwise. You have to know that.”
Jack watched his old friend for several silent moments more and then finally pulled his gaze away. He let himself sink into the cushions behind him and closed his eyes. The truth was, he knew good and well that Sam would just as soon see himself killed than see Jack hurt. Jack was the son that Sam had never had. And the gun was a relic. Jack should have known better than to trust his life to something so uncertain.
What had happened was an accident. A horrible, nearly fatal accident.
He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I do know that, Sam.” His Sheffield accent was incredibly strong. He was incredibly tired. “But the gun jammed after one bloody shot,” he continued, his tone soft. “Four men came around the corner into that chamber.” He opened his eyes again and re-focused them on Sam.
Understanding dawned in Sam’s expression. His eyes widened even further.
“Annabelle’s earned her bones,” Jack said. “Whether she wants them or not.” He closed his eyes again and took a slow, deep breath. “We’re both lucky she’s such a bloody damned good shot.” A low pulsing dread was riding through his system. And for good reason. Annabelle wasn’t going to be happy when she learned she’d single-handedly killed at least three men. “And I think I’m gonna let you tell her.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair again and took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. “Fair ‘nough.”
“How is she?” Jack asked then, pinning Sam with another blue steel gaze.
“A little bruised up, with a sprained shoulder. She’s in the shower now.”
Jack’s brows raised. “Then she’ll want clothes.”
Sam’s face fell. He blew out a sigh. “Crap.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Once new clothing had been procured and everyone was clean and fed and had had a chance to rest, the group of them moved from Sam’s apartment to another safe house not too far away.
Sam wanted them to keep moving to throw any sniffers off of their trail. But Jack had to remain more or less in bed for several days, so only smaller moves were allowed.
By the third day and their second move, Jack was up and moving around.
“Sit down, Jackie, you stubborn old coot. I’ll get you some tea.”
“I’m fine, Bee.” Jack kept his tone cordial, but he was clearly irritated by the extra attention. Annabelle watched him move down the hall toward one of the cushioned seats in the study and she tried very hard not to smile.
Sam had moved them into a renovated mansion for their second shift, and it turned out that the mansion actually belonged to Jack. It reminded Annabelle a lot of the pictures she’d seen of the Winchester Mansion in San Francisco, which she’d always wanted to visit. Only, this particular house didn’t have more than a hundred rooms and she was pretty sure there were only the two bathrooms. Still, one of them did have a claw-foot tub. Pretty damned Winchester-ry, if you asked her.
On the day after Jack had been shot, he’d called her into the room where he was laying. She went in, relieved to see him looking more or less like his normal self. She loved that so much about him. He was tough as nails. He was her port in a storm, and it had sure as hell gotten windy of late.
He’d told her that the vial he’d retrieved from the chamber beneath Buell Hall was under the seat in the stolen Ford Mustang downstairs and that she needed to go and get it and hide it somewhere else. And not tell anyone where.
She wasn’t sure why he asked her to do this. But she followed his instructions anyway, retrieving the time capsule when no one was looking and then hiding it in the best place she could think of.
And then they moved to another location. At the time, she had wondered whether she should move the vial along with them. However, she decided against it, leaving it where it was with the reasoning that the less attention she brought to it or herself, the better.
So, while the rest of them had left the island and settled into a mansion in Middlesex, New York, the time capsule with its cure was still in downtown Manhattan, hidden in plain sight and yet almost entirely invisible to approximately two-million people.
Now they all sat in the dark study, a fire blazing in the hearth and Annabelle continued to watch Jack enter the room from the darkened hall beyond. Though it was May, the house was old and older houses were notoriously cold. It also possessed no internal heating system other than the fire places that graced most of its rooms.
Annabelle honestly didn’t mind this all that much. She enjoyed staring into the flames in fire places and getting lost in the crackling sound. It comforted her. Add to that the coziness of curling up under a blanket and she was pretty much pleased as punch.
Jack caught her gaze from across the study and moved to sit beside her. She scooted over to give him room. Though it had only been three days, he managed to take the seat without wincing at the pain that must have resided in his leg and side.
She arched a brow at him. “I’m impressed. No need to fake it though, sweetie. It’s your party. You can cry if you want to.”
He smiled at her, flashing straight white teeth. His sapphire eyes sparkled in the light from the hearth. “I did all my crying into my pillow this morning,” he told her softly. “Thought I’d get it out of the way early.”
Her smile broadened. The sound of his accented voice warmed her more than the fireplace a few feet away ever could. “Good idea. Cassie hates whiners.”
Across from them, Cassie shot them a look of
mock hurt.
“Speaking of parties, luv,” Jack turned his attention back to the woman by his side. “You didn’t think I was going to forget, did you?”
Annabelle blinked at him. Her brow furrowed. “Forget what?” She asked, her expression blank.
Jack reached around to the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small white envelope. He was wearing a white thermal long-sleeved shirt and a double shoulder holster, guns on both sides. Apparently, he didn’t at all feel like taking chances.
He held the envelope out to Annabelle.
She glanced down at it and then back up at him. “What is it?”
“Your present.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Happy birthday, luv.”
Across the room, several gasps went up.
“Holy crap, girl, I totally forgot! Happy B-Day!” Cassie got off of the couch and moved across the room to give Annabelle a hug. Annabelle hugged her back, her face pale. Cassie wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten.
“I can’t believe I forgot my own birthday.”
“It happens,” Virginia told her. She was seated on an old trunk against one wall, Craig standing beside her. “Life tends to get strange.”
She was right. Annabelle knew that better than a lot of people. But she’d never forgotten her own birthday before. Even though, for many years, she’d desperately wanted to. And not for the reasons most women cite. She didn’t care all that much about numbers and as far as she was concerned, every year under a person’s belt was a little more wisdom that could help see them through the years still ahead.
It wasn’t the idea of growing older that had made Annabelle want to forget.
No.
It was that, as Virginia had submitted, life did, indeed, tend to get “strange.” And life for Annabelle had gotten particularly strange twenty years ago.
To the day.
Cassie moved back a little and eyed Annabelle, taking in her abrupt silence and the pale coloring of her cheeks. Jack noticed it as well. Out of everyone in the world, they were the only two who would know and understand the reason behind Annabelle’s sudden change in behavior.
Hell Bent Page 31