“No.” However much I want to, I don’t. Trusting someone without knowing them leads to stupid decisions.
The only sign he’s pissed is a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Too bad. I can stitch up the cut on your arm and the one on your hip. If the cut on your neck needs stiches, it’ll require more skill. You have two options. You can leave the one on your throat, risk infection and a nasty scar, and I’ll take care of the others. Or you can trust me, and I’ll take you to someone who will do a better job than I can.”
“No hospitals.”
He smooths the hair away from my forehead. “Not a hospital.”
Vain as it sounds, I don’t relish the idea of a thick, ugly scar on my throat. I’ll likely have one anyway, but if it can be minimized…
“Okay,” I whisper.
He redoes the patch job on my arm and helps me into a shirt. In a moment of perfect symmetry, he bands his arm around my waist and helps me out of the condo and into the elevator, mimicking our long, labored walk the day we met.
I fall asleep. I don’t mean to, but fatigue and hunger and my horrible aching body demands it, and I wake with a kink in my neck. I glance at the clock on the dash. We’ve only been gone fifteen minutes. “Where are we?”
Nick eases the car to a stop at the curb. The street outside is a residential one, the dying evening sun casting long shadows. A couple of kids are playing what looks like a mean game of tag a few houses over, running from the yard to the middle of the street and back again.
“Hermosa Beach.” He gets out of the car and walks around the hood to the passenger side. Cool air rushes over me as he pulls open the door. His gaze lands on my arm, the line reappearing between his brows. “Shit.”
Without warning, he unclicks my seatbelt and gathers me up, carrying me from the car. “Nick. Put me down.” My protests sound weak, even to my ears. Damp warmth covers the skin below my wound.
He ignores me, stalking up the front walk and around the side of the house. The door rattles in the frame as he kicks it in lieu of pounding on it with a fist.
The man who opens it is dark haired and dark eyed like Nick. That’s where the similarities end. He’s shorter, slimmer, and kind of forgettable looking. He’s also glaring up at Nick. “Try knocking next time.”
“Hands full. You ready?”
The other guy catches sight of the blood soaking through my shirt, and he steps aside. “You sure it didn’t nick a vein?”
“No.”
He leads us through the house, down a flight of stairs, and into a brightly lit room. It’s mostly white. In fact, it looks like a hospital room. Glass encloses the rear half, a table, and a metal tray covered in one of those blue papery things sitting under a big, round light. An IV stand is next to one end, a bag of clear liquid already hanging from it. There’s other equipment, but I’m not given a chance to examine it.
Nick sits me on a counter and maneuvers my shirt over my head, then plants his hands on either side of my hips, his dark eyes intense. “You’re going to be fine.” Quiet words, meant to soothe.
They don’t. Being around all this sterility is nerve-racking. I’m about to let someone I’ve never met near me with a needle. Needles rank higher on my list of nightmare objects than spiders.
I fist the front of his shirt. “Don’t leave.” I don’t care how much it sounds like begging. If begging is what it takes, I’ll do it.
“You stay, you scrub in.” Nick’s friend looks over from the sink where he’s washing his hands. “Tish will be here in a minute. Wasn’t sure if I’d need her for this.”
On cue, a short blond woman rushes in. “Anesthesiologist,” Nick says. “Hey, are you going to use a local anesthesia?”
“Makes the most sense, unless she’s going to be a difficult patient.” He shakes water off his hands and snaps on the gloves Tish gives him.
They’re going to keep me awake? Oh, hell no.
It’s pathetically easy for him to stop me from sliding off the counter. “Cass. Hey. Look at me.” For the first time since I showed up at his condo, I do. I really look at him and see worry and fear and anger, one right after the other, darkening his expression. “He can use general anesthesia instead, if you want. Your arm wound hasn’t stopped bleeding. He needs to get in there to find out why, and it’ll be less traumatizing for you if they put you under. I’ll be here,” he murmurs. “Let them fix this.”
Vulnerable doesn’t sit well with me. “I hate needles,” I confess.
He grins. “Figured that one out myself, love.” He picks me up off the counter and sets me on my feet, hands on my hips to steady me. “I think Tish has one of those embarrassing gowns for you to change into.”
I nod, and Tish comes over, a wad of blue in her hand. Nick busies himself washing his hands while Tish helps me into the gown. I manage to get my jeans off on my own, and she walks me into the glassed-in room.
The last thing I see is Nick, his hand clenched around mine as the IV slides in and the drugs rush through my veins.
* * * *
I’ve swallowed burning coal. My eyelids have been replaced by anvils, but something’s prodding me to lift them anyway.
The amount of effort required to open my eyes isn’t worth it.
“Cass.”
I like that voice. I like it a lot. I still don’t want to open my eyes. If the voice could keep talking for a while, I’d be quite happy.
“Cassidy.”
Fine. I slit open an eye and immediately shut it again. “Too bright,” I whisper.
Click. “Light’s off.”
I try again, raising a single lid a millimeter. No bright lights. I force my eyes open. “Need sleep.” God, I need more sleep. I could sleep forever and still be tired.
Nick’s in a chair next to the bed, hair mussed, forearms braced on his thighs. “Need to get out of here first. Simon promised to keep this under the radar, but if someone else calls in, he can’t turn them away without raising suspicion.”
Simon? Simon must be the doctor. “We can’t hide here for a few more hours?”
He shakes his head. “We could. But if you’re right, and it’s someone in my family who wants me dead, that’s not a risk we can take.”
He’s taking me seriously? Goody. I think. Moving might be a problem. “Can you move the elephant?”
“Elephant?”
“The one sitting on my legs. I’m not sure I can get up.”
His laugh brings a goofy smile to my face, or maybe that’s just the drugs. Probably the drugs. He slides one hand under my back to help me into a sitting position, and I push back the blankets, sucking down air to fight off the wave of dizziness. I’m still in the hideous blue gown. “Clothes?”
He hands me my jeans, and I stare at them. Somehow I’m supposed to get them on my legs. Hard to do, what with the elephant and all. Plus my fingers have been replaced with shrimp.
In the end, Nick has to help me dress because my limbs are weighed down with sandbags. Tish sticks her head in as I’m putting on my shoes. “Got another call. Tried to delay them so she’d have more time to sleep off the anesthesia, but they’re almost here.”
“Fuck.” Nick grabs my hand, pulls me to my feet, and cages me against his side, his hold like titanium. It’s necessary, unfortunately, since I’ll likely trip over my own feet if left alone. We follow Tish out of the room and along the darkened hall.
Voices drift down the stairs ahead of the clatter of feet on the hardwood floor overhead. Nick swears again. “That one,” Tish whispers, pointing at a closed door to the right. Nick pushes it open and drags me inside. He shuts the door with a soft click as the stampede hits the stairs.
The room is pitch black. Even after my eyes should have adjusted, I can’t see. But he’s there, bracing me against the wall, chest rising and falling as we listen to the shouts coming from the other end of the hall.
“Nick?”
“Shhh.” He cups my head, cradling it
to his chest, and I will my heart in my throat back down to my chest.
We’re never getting out of here. We’re stuck, trapped by the shouts coming from the sterile room. Long minutes pass, the shouts growing in volume, and someone starts wailing. Another set of feet race past our hiding spot. More waiting, more time for panic to coalesce and ball in the pit of my stomach. Nick eases the door open a crack and sticks his head out to check the hall. He slips into the hallway, pulling me with him, and we creep up the stairs.
The adrenaline’s doing funny things to my head. I’m dizzy and tired and my hearing’s all wonky, my pulse thudding and racing like a greyhound. The distance to the side door we came in is miles long and takes an eternity to cover, but once we’re outside we’re not in the clear.
We still have to sneak out of the yard.
He pulls me toward the neighbor’s house when I try to veer toward the front yard. “Moved the car,” he mutters, and I want to cry. My body doesn’t want to keep moving. It wants to curl into the fetal position and wait out the rest of the anesthesia.
Step by step, staying to the shadows, my head throbbing in time with my heart, the aches in my body roaring back to life, we skulk like thieves through the neighbor’s yard to the next street over, and he picks up the pace, heedless of my stumbles. His car is near the opposite end of the block, and I fall into the passenger seat as he climbs in behind the wheel. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod mutely. I don’t have the brainpower to do anything else. Certainly not talk.
The drive to Manhattan Beach passes in a fog. Hunger, thirst, pain, and exhaustion battle for dominance, and I don’t know which to give in to. Hunger, maybe. I can satiate hunger and thirst at the same time. Hopefully he hasn’t eaten all the food I bought the other day.
Nick’s got other ideas, though. Ideas that don’t include me eating and drinking and collapsing into bed. As soon as we’re behind the closed door of his condo, he rounds on me, all cool and arrogantly demanding. “What,” he says, pointing at my throat, “the fuck happened?”
I burst into tears.
Chapter 12
I am not a crier. It never solves anything, and when it’s over, I feel awful, my head stuffed up and achy, eyes burning and dry. Worse, I feel weak. Like my soft center is exposed. Everyone has their breaking point, and this moment, with Nick standing in front of me demanding answers to questions I don’t want to address, is mine.
“Shit. Cass. Cassidy.” He draws me to him, ignoring my feeble attempts to shove him away, and I drop my head onto his chest. The worn cotton of his shirt soaks up my tears. They won’t stop. No amount of deep breaths or fisted hands halt the flow, and the strength drains from my body as I give in and accept that it’ll be over when it’s over.
Hours or days or years later, the flood’s subsided to the occasional sniffle and, as expected, my head weighs a ton, I can’t breathe, and my entire face feels swollen and hot.
I’m also on the couch, squished up against Nick with my head on his shoulder and my legs across his lap. He moves first, carefully shifting away and getting to his feet, and my head lolls to the side, resting on the back of the couch. I’ll be embarrassed in a moment. Promise. Right now, my brain’s not engaging.
“Here.” He hands me a box of tissues before resuming his previous position, his hand warm on my knee.
I wipe my face and blow my nose—a honking, unattractive sound—and lower my head to his shoulder. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“I grew up with sisters. I’m used to it.”
Laughing hurts, but I do it anyway, the sound trailing off into a soft moan. “I was attacked in my apartment this morning. I was supposed to be meeting one of the police officers to go over the place, you know, because of the break-in? I went out to buy a new deadbolt to install. When I got back, I went in to see what else I could mess up since I cleaned the place last night. I didn’t think about locking the door, and he came up behind me.”
He slides his fingers under my chin and tips it up. “He got your neck. How’d that happen?”
I grimace. “He screwed up.”
“He screwed up.”
“Yeah. He had me solid. He was behind me, knife at my throat, but he hesitated. Said something about being not so tricky to find. When I hit him with the deadbolt, he lost his hold. We fought. It was sloppy, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and he was pissed. I killed him, and then I left.”
He rubs the ball of his thumb over my lower lip. “I thought you’d be able to defend yourself better.”
I draw back, his touch unwelcome, mostly because it makes my stomach flip inside out. “I’ve taken self-defense classes. That’s different from actively engaging someone in a knife fight, which I was not trained to do. Some assassins will engage their targets if it’s necessary. Turner always structured my training to maximize my skills. Going on the offensive was never one of them.”
My stomach rumbles. “You didn’t eat everything I bought, did you?” With the crying out of the way, I can get to the eating and drinking portion of the evening before I end it with sleeping for twelve hours straight.
He squeezes my knee. “You bought a lot of food. No, I didn’t eat everything.” His mouth curves in a wry half smile. “Can’t cook worth a damn, either. I can handle eggs. That’s about it.”
“I can fix something. Don’t worry about it.” After I wash my face. It feels grubby. I’m grubby all over. I wonder if I can take a shower.
He leans in, nose practically touching mine. “No,” he says quietly.
My blood heats, and my hands twitch with the need to touch him. Sweet Jesus, this is the last thing I need. “The rule stands.”
“I really fucking hate your rule.”
Space. Please, please, please give me some space. “You’ve said that. Has anything changed in the last twenty-four hours? You still have issues with my age and past choice of employment?”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Yeah,” he mutters. He gets up and stalks into the kitchen.
Uncertain if I’ve dodged a bullet or done myself a disservice, I slide off the couch and head for the bathroom. I wash my face, which is awkward because I’m trying to keep the gauze on my neck dry, brush out my hair, and discover there’s dried blood on the ends. Fantastic. I yank it into a ponytail to deal with later and sort through my clothes to find some different pants to change into.
The scent of burning bread greets me as I make my way to the kitchen. Nick’s in front of the stove, manning it like it’s about to attack and he needs to brace himself. I pop the lever on the toaster and flick the two partially burnt pieces onto a nearby plate. With a lot of butter and jam, they should be palatable.
Hopefully his egg-making skills are better than his toast-making skills.
One look at the frying pan confirms my worst fears. I reach around him and turn down the burner. “Move over.”
He scowls, but doesn’t argue. The eggs are runny around the edges and bubbling in the middle. I pick up the spatula he was using and push the eggs around in the pan, moving the runny parts toward the middle where most of the heat is.
Less than a minute later, I have a plate of scrambled eggs and burnt toast piled high with raspberry jam, and Nick’s scowl has turned into a look of chagrin. I pat his cheek as I walk past. “It’s the thought that counts.”
I sit with my legs straight out in front of me on the couch, plate balanced on my knees, and fork up egg. I pause before I shove the food into my mouth. “Any progress on your list?”
He sprawls on the other end, beer in hand. “No. It’s a fucking long list, and going only by my impressions isn’t helping much. I pissed off a lot of people over the years. Don’t know which of them are angry enough to want me dead.”
Crap. He’s going all broody again. As dead tired and miserable as I am, I can’t handle sexy, broody Nick, because sexy, broody Nick makes me forget about the stitches on my throat and the blood in my hair.
>
I give the food on my plate my full attention. The sooner it’s gone, the sooner I can escape. “I know I warned you against being too trusting when it came to your family, but maybe one of them can help. Someone with enough knowledge of the deals but wasn’t too close to them? Is that even possible?”
His prolonged silence makes me glance up. He’s still broody and sexy, but his brow wrinkles as he considers my question. I dive back into my eggs.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “Constantine.”
Constantine. A very Greek name.
“You don’t have a very Greek name.” I hunch over the plate, biting into a piece of toast, crumbs falling on the last of the eggs. “I mean, your last name is, but Dominic?”
He snorts and lapses into silence once more. I crunch through one piece of toast, finish my eggs, and eye the second piece.
It disappears, along with the mostly empty plate, and I’m left staring at my lap. Strong hands grab my waist and drag me across the couch that ends with me on Nick’s lap and bearing the full brunt of his broody, sexy frown. He traces the edge of the bandage on my neck with the tip of a finger. “It’s easy to forget how young you are.”
I am not up for having a serious conversation. “Can we save this discussion for another time?”
“You should be partying. Pulling all nighters, going to study groups, freaking out about what you’re going to do after graduation,” he continues. “Not figuring out the most efficient way to end a man’s life.”
I cover his mouth with my hand to keep him from saying anything else, and the warmth of his lips on my palm sends tingles up my arm. “One. I do do all those things. I stayed up until three in the morning the other night writing that damn paper. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, because hello, liberal arts degree? It’s just a really expensive piece of paper. Although sometimes I think I might want to be a teacher. Two. I haven’t plotted a man’s death in almost a year. You were my first job in eleven months.” The date of my last hit is burned on my brain. It’s the one that convinced me to reconsider the choices I made, the choices that did nothing to earn me the affection I craved. “Three. You’re taking this entirely too seriously. It’s just sex. Four. I’m fuckin’ drained. Can we please stop this conversation and continue it some time when I haven’t been bawling my eyes out and getting stitched up?”
Game of Shadows Page 9