by Linda Ladd
“Where is she?”
“They just moved her into a private room, just down there.” McKay pointed down the hospital corridor to his right. “Room 157. She’s waiting for you. Afraid you’d be worried.”
“Damn right, I’m worried. But thanks, Joe, for everything. I owe you.”
“I better warn you, Nick. She doesn’t look so good.”
Black took a bracing breath. “Thanks again for getting her here. I mean it, Joe.”
“I know. I just wish I’d been there when it all went down.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Black hurried down the hallway, pushed through another set of swinging doors and found Claire’s room right next to the nurses’ station. Claire was inside, sitting up in a hospital bed, her face turned to the window, wrapped up in electric blankets with a warming lamp focused on her. At first, he was relieved because she wasn’t on IVs or flat on her back and unconscious. Then she turned her head and looked at him. Nick’s stomach plummeted, and the floor seemed to drop out from under him. Appalled, he stared wordlessly at her. Her left eye was black and swollen shut, the other one getting there, her nose was packed with gauze to stop the bleeding, maybe even broken, and her bottom lip was stitched up and twice its normal size. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Black just tried to absorb the shock he felt on seeing the extent of the damage to her face.
Then Claire said, “’Sup, Black?”
Definitely not amused, Black moved over to the bed. “Oh, God, Claire, what the hell happened to you?” He reached out and picked up a strand of her hair. “You’ve got blood in your hair.”
“It’s not all mine. I got in a few good punches.” Claire tried to smile, but it looked more like a painful little grimace. Her voice was hoarse. “Hey, I’m fine. Really. Just a little cold. Ran into some trouble tonight. Kept wishing that you’d show up and bail me out again but couldn’t get through to you. Or anybody else. Big blizzard going on, and all that.”
Black couldn’t manage even the slightest smile. He kept shaking his head. “If I’d known you were in trouble, I would’ve been there.”
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Nick picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. He tasted dried blood. God only knew whose blood it was. The knuckles on her hand were cut and swollen, but she still had on her engagement ring. It was caked with dirt and more dried blood. For a moment, he just felt ill, really, really sick, down deep in the pit of his stomach. Overwhelmed with helplessness and hopelessness and the inability to stop terrible things from happening to her, he just sat there and stared down at her injured hand. In that moment, he wasn’t at all sure that he could deal calmly with the seriousness of the situation anymore. He wanted to slug somebody. He wanted to yell and curse and ram his fist through a wall. He wanted to beat whoever had done this to her to a bloody pulp. He tried to gain control but couldn’t quite pull it off, so he just sat there and said nothing.
“C’mon, Black, please don’t look like that. I’m okay. See. Just a little bit worse for the wear, that’s all. I’ll be okay after I get some sleep. I’m just really, really tired.”
“You’re not okay, Claire. You’re terribly hurt. Your face alone looks like you’ve been hit by a damn truck.” Suddenly, Black felt so angry that he could just barely contain it. He stood up. “Where’s your chart? I want to see what they did to you.”
Claire didn’t answer, just sat there, all beaten and abused and watched him move to the end of the bed. He jerked out the metal chart and skimmed through the reports. Good God Almighty. Hypothermia, mild frostbite on her legs and feet, possible concussion, two cracked ribs, lacerated nose and mouth, cuts, abrasions, bruises, contusions, on and on and on. She was damn lucky to be alive. Then Black’s fury got the best of him, and almost overwhelmed him completely, but he somehow managed to fight it down. It wasn’t so easy. He wanted to explode and rant and rave and yell at her for putting herself into that kind of danger.
“Who did this to you?” His voice was now so low and controlled and gruff that he barely recognized it himself.
Claire was frowning at him, and it looked as if that effort was hurting her bruised, swollen face. “You need to chill, Black. Hey, you know that guy we were looking for? Punk Fitch? Well, I found him. And his very real twin brother, too. Guy named Bones. And get this. Bones has been impersonating Patrick Parker all the time Punk was in the hospital. Apparently, Patrick really was one of their brothers but Bones killed him and took his place somewhere along the line.” She stopped there and wet her stitched lip. The talking was hurting her, all right, but she continued as if it weren’t. “And he played that role pretty damn well, too, enough to fool me and Joe, and Bud, too. You see, all the Parker boys look a lot alike, especially with the beards they wear. His brothers were so deathly afraid of Bones while Punk was locked up at Fulton that they went along with whatever he said.” She paused there, swallowed, wet her lips again, and shut her eyes for a moment. “You know, killing your brother in front of your other brothers is an awfully effective deterrent to ratting somebody out. The shrinks made the wrong call, too, with that split personality thing. Except that they both were homicidal maniacs, I’ll give them that.”
“Tell me everything that happened tonight.”
Claire sighed and started to relate a very ugly story that began with his phone call to her earlier that evening. Nick listened, his frown growing deeper and more disbelieving as she talked, halfway shocked that she managed to escape alive from that hellish lair, or mine shaft, or whatever the hell it was. Despite her condition, Claire had been lucky, and extremely so.
Unfortunately, Claire was not finished. “And there’s more. Your old Moscow buddy, Ivan Petrov? One of his guys sucker punched me, believe it or not. A guy named Misha Chicherin, or at least that’s what he told me it was. He works for Petrov, and it seems Petrov is hot and heavy into a little gunrunning business down Mexico way with our pious little Fitchville friends.” She stopped there, took a breath. “The FBI’s been all over that with surveillance, and they’re probably raiding the place as we speak, or will when they hear about what happened to Laurie Dale out there tonight. But Misha let me go because of you and your brother’s connections. So you did save me in a way, so thanks for that. Misha wasn’t so lucky. He might not make it. Last I heard he was still in surgery.”
Nick said nothing at all to any of that, but he didn’t like a single word of it. Claire laid her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes, as if all the explanations had finally taken their toll. She sighed heavily. “So, Black, how about we talk about the rest of this stuff later, huh? My mouth hurts pretty much now, and I am just so damn tired I can’t think straight.”
“I’m not sure you should go to sleep just yet. If you’ve got a concussion, you might ought to stay awake as long as you can. Just to make sure.”
“Dr. Atwater said it wasn’t that bad, a mild one, so I’ll be fine. They’re gonna give me sedatives so I can rest tonight and quit thinking about what happened. Don’t think I need them, though. I can barely stay awake.”
Nick leaned forward and gently fingered the giant bump and stitched laceration behind her ear. He felt his teeth clamp down hard and his fists ball up so tight that his nails bit into his palms. He was still so furious that those animals had dared attack her and lock her up in a cage that he couldn’t even speak.
Claire opened her eyes again and studied his face. Her left eye was so swollen that he could barely see it. “You’re mad, right?”
“Well, no. Not at you. What makes you think I’m mad?”
“Your jaw is clenching like crazy, and you haven’t even tried to climb in bed with me, which is a first.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Claire. How do you think I feel? Seeing you all beat up like this?” Black paced a few steps away from the bed, shook his head, and inhaled a couple of deep, calming breaths. After a minute or two, he turned back around. “I’m just glad you’re here now, safe and alive. I’m not mad.
I’m just upset that you got hurt again.”
Claire watched him and then he watched her wet the stitches in her cut lip with the tip of her tongue again. She was in more pain than she was letting on. There was no way that she couldn’t be. She had a couple of broken ribs, for heaven’s sake.
“Oh, God, Claire, I just can’t take seeing you like this. What did they do, just tie you up and hit you with their fists?”
“Kind of, I guess, but not exactly. I tried to fight back. I know I don’t look like it, but I did get in a coupla good licks and a kick or two before it was over. They were going to beat me to death, but luckily Laurie Dale showed up and that didn’t happen. I’m gonna have to buy her a great big thank-you present.”
Yeah, luckily. After listening to that less than reassuring little speech, Black paced over to the window and stared outside at the falling snow. The wind was still gusting hard, billowing snow up in swirls and whorls around the light poles in the hospital parking lot. He had just about reached his breaking point, was maybe half an inch from losing his cool entirely. Fortunately, a nurse walked in and gave Claire some pills out of a little white cup, helped her suck water out of a straw, and then checked her body temperature. Black recognized her from his own stay at the hospital. Her name was Chris Dale Cox, and she was friendly and very good at her job.
“Well, now, we’ve almost got you back to normal,” Chris was saying to Claire, switching off the warming lamp and patting Claire’s hand. “You’re almost there, detective. Just get a good night’s sleep and you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
Claire appeared to be more concerned with her friends’ medical conditions, which was par for the course with her. “What about Laurie Dale? You sure she’s gonna be all right?”
“She just came out of surgery. They repaired the gunshot wound to her shoulder, and she lost a lot of blood before your friend, Joe, got her down here. She’s in recovery now. She’s gonna be fine. Her husband, Scott, and her parents are all down there with her.”
“What about the other guy? Misha Chicherin?”
Hesitation. “I’m afraid that’s still touch and go. The bullet missed his heart, so that’s good, but it still did a lot of damage. The surgery is going well, and the good Lord willing, he’ll pull through somehow.”
When the nurse finished straightening the bedcovers and left the room, Claire shivered a little. “You see, Black? Everything’s looking pretty good now. Laurie and I are gonna be just fine. Misha’s gonna pull through, too, I know he will. So no need to get all bent out of shape and worry yourself half to death. I’m alive and talking and walking, so that’s the important thing, right? Just in time for the wedding, too.” Claire was trying to smile again, and it hurt her again. Which made him angry again. Good God, with all his money, his training, his security, his supposed ability to protect her, why the hell couldn’t he do it?
“What am I going to have to do, Claire? Lock you up with me and throw away the key. Goddamn it, this is getting old.”
Claire managed another weak smile and ignored everything he said. “You gonna get up in this bed and help me warm up, or not?”
Black was still fuming, but he wasn’t about to turn that down, so he stretched out beside her on top of the warm blankets and pulled her close, then cringed at how cold her skin still felt to the touch. But inside him, frustration was building up with nowhere to go, and he was still so damn enraged that those psychopaths had put their hands on her and abused her that he couldn’t think about anything else.
“Somehow you just don’t seem overly happy to see me alive and breathing.” Claire was half-heartedly joking again, but Black knew that she was also well aware of how he felt. He knew that. He just didn’t think any of it was the least bit amusing.
“This is not funny. I could have lost you tonight. I was just sitting home working in my office, totally unaware that you were being beaten up and held captive by a couple of madmen. I had no idea that you were even anywhere near danger. You told me you weren’t. I should’ve been there. Damn it, I should’ve come up there.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. I was doing my job, that’s all, and it turned bad on me. C’mon, Black, when you called, I told you I was fine, and I was. Then. But some bad guys found me after that, but I’m here now, with you, safe and sound. Just a little cold and with just a little bit of a headache. It could’ve been so much worse. I could be in a coma again. I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this. That’s the good thing, and you know it. You are definitely overreacting this time.”
“Yeah, that’s the good thing, all right. You’re alive. It’s just hard for me to stay calm after a bunch of guys beat the hell out of your face.”
Claire didn’t answer for a while, and then she spoke against his shirt, not looking at him. “I was there when he beat a guy to death, Black. I couldn’t do anything about it. He had me locked up in that cage and I couldn’t get out. I just had to listen while he hit that man over and over with a bat and then a hammer and then his fists. It was the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Just awful, the way that man suffered. I can’t even stand to think about it.”
Wincing at the pain and remembered horror in her words, all Black could think about was that it could have been her who died that way, that he could’ve found her body in that hellhole, dead and beaten beyond recognition. “Well, try not to think about it, okay? It’s over now. There was nothing you could do. It’s not your fault, Claire. You would have stopped it, if you could have.”
Claire sighed some more and pressed herself in closer against his side. “Well, let’s just talk about something else, think about something else. Plan the wedding, maybe, since we’re just lying here and I’m too weak and sleepy to do anything else.”
How Claire could continue kidding around after what she’d been through was nothing less than incredible to Black. She had just escaped a life and death struggle and barely survived to tell about it. But that had always been her way of coping. Then it occurred to him that she was probably making light of it for his benefit, trying to make it easier for him to handle. After that realization, Black felt himself start to relax. Okay, she really was all right. She was still breathing and not hurt terribly bad. Hell, she had been hurt a lot worse than this in the past, just like she’d said. The guys who hurt her were already dead, so he couldn’t go find them and blow their heads off, which is what he really wanted to do. He had to live with what had happened to her, what happened to her all the time. He didn’t like it, in fact, he hated it, but he had better get used to it if he wanted Claire in his life. And he did. That was the problem. A problem he couldn’t quite seem to solve.
Although she had to be exhausted, Claire was still trying to stay awake and change the subject. “I know. How about us having a shooting contest as soon as I get outta here? Ten rounds with our new nines, and whoever wins gets to plan the wedding?”
And she was talking about the wedding to get his mind off her condition, too. And maybe her own mind off what she’d been through. That was pretty damn obvious. He played along, tried to make his tone light. “That’s hardly fair, Claire. I’m a damn good shot with a handgun. I’ll definitely win, and I thought you said that you wanted to plan everything.”
“No way. I’m the one with the sharpshooting medals. You don’t have a chance against me.”
“I know what, sweetheart. Let’s just be real quiet now and let you get some rest.”
So they were quiet for a while, so long that Black thought that she had gone to sleep, but then she spoke, very softly, not looking at him. “I thought I was gonna die out there. I thought my life was over, that I would never see you again. I thought about how upset you’d be when you found my body.” Beside him, her body began to tense up, and Black could almost feel her fear. “I pretty much made my peace, Black. I accepted that I wasn’t getting out alive, that I was going to die. I’ve never felt anything close to that way before. I really, truly thought that I’d die alone in that awful place. Then Laurie came, and
I thought it was all over and I was gonna live, that we had killed him, that everything was all right. Then the other guy showed up and shot her down, and I had to fight for my life again. I got him, though, shot him in the heart, but I was so tired then, Black. The last thing I remember was lying alone in the snow in the dark, just waiting to die.”
Black squeezed his eyes shut, felt a shudder move deep inside him. He finally found some words. “But you didn’t die, Claire. You need to quit reliving it, let it go. You’re okay now, you’re here with me, and we’re going to figure out a way to keep you safe from now on. I’m going to do that, Claire. I’ve got to. This kind of thing cannot go on any longer.”
Claire didn’t say anything, but Black knew she was suffering now, reliving the trauma. He needed to do something to get her mind off what had happened. “I’ve got big plans for us as soon as I get you the hell out of this hospital.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I sure do. Plans concerning that trip to Tahiti. We’re going, and I don’t want to hear any argument about it. And we’re going to stay there for a month, maybe two, maybe even a year. Hell, Claire, maybe we’ll never come back. That suits me just fine. And we’re going to get married there, too, maybe. I’m sick and damn tired of finding you all shot up or beaten up or lying half dead in some hospital bed.” He stopped for a moment, but he kept his voice nice and low and pleasant. “And we’re going to talk some more about that private detective agency I offered to set up for you. Okay? That’s back on the table again, you hear me, Claire? And we’re going to leave in the morning, first thing, as soon as you’re warm enough and back up on your feet.”
Claire said nothing for a moment, didn’t even open her eyes. Then she said, “Okay.”
Black wasn’t quite sure he could believe his ears. “Okay? Just okay? That’s all you’ve got to say to all that?”