Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(129)

She bandaged it, following the directions on the box to close the torn flesh until the surgical glue set. It took only seconds. Whether it would hold, she didn’t know. The shoulder was the worst, but she worked on his battered hands and knees as well. Then she dove into the poison kit, where she kept her emergency pharmaceuticals. Too bad she didn’t have a topical anesthetic, but at least there was a full spectrum intramuscular antibiotic. She loaded the syringe, poised it over his good arm.

“Allergic to antibiotics?” she asked. “Don’t even think about going into anaphylactic shock on me, big boy. My nerves are shot as it is.”

He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. She jabbed.

He was still vibrating with cold, and in the absence of a hot bath, she could think of only one solution to that. She stripped off the rest of her clothes, lifted the blanket, and clambered on top of him.

She braced herself for a shock, but oh, God, he was cold. Shuddering, clammy, sticky with sea salt. She wrapped her arms around him, tried to give him all the warmth she had. Wishing there was more. She wanted to cover every inch of him with comfort. Wanted to be bigger, wider, softer. A down comforter of a woman. Not a tight, wound up, stringy female, all bent metal and barbed wire and twine.

The contact seemed to help him anyway, thank God. His shuddering began to ease, and he began taking deeper breaths. She ran her fingers through his salt-stiffened hair, which had dried into a spiky punk do, which she kind of liked. à la Hollywood bad boy.

“What the hell happened to you, anyway?” she asked.

He opened his eyes. To her alarm, they welled full of tears.

“Imre is dead,” he whispered brokenly. “He killed himself. I watched it on videophone. He stabbed a piece of glass into his femoral artery.” His voice was shaking like a young boy’s. “He did it to free me.”

She drew in a long, careful breath. “Oh, my poor baby,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

It was either exactly the right or exactly the wrong thing to have said, because it melted him right down, and that, to her startled horror, melted her down too.

The two of them blubbered, arms wrapped tight and shaking around each other. As if his grief and loss were her own.

And it was, she realized, as she cried against his chest. It was her own, and he was her own. He had been for quite a while now, but she hadn’t wanted to face it yet. She should have known when he’d made her cry by telling her to pretend she loved him two nights before. She should have known after that dream, after he picked up her stuffed valentine heart out of the dust and rubble of her broken doll self and brought it to life. Miraculously.

When the emotional storm subsided, she wiped her face, propped her chin on her forearms. Both of them embarrassed and shy.

She sniffed back her tears, and went on the offensive as usual. “So? Let’s have it, loverboy. The bruises, the shoulder, the dip in the sea?”

“András,” he said.

She nodded. She knew the man, and wished that she didn’t. It was not safe to be on that guy’s radar screen. He was in the same class as Kurt and Georg. “How did András find us?”

“He had a tracer on me. He must have gotten it from Hegel.”

That was a nasty shock. “He had a what?” Her voice squeaked.

He jerked his chin in the direction of his shoulder. “There,” he said. “It must have been in there since I was treated for that bullet wound last year. Looks like PSS stopped trusting me even then. They wanted to keep me under control. Hegel must be dead, I assume.”

“So that’s how they found us at the hotel. And the airport, too.”

“Yes.” His voice was subdued. “By following me. I should have figured it out earlier. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she heard herself say. Though of course, it was. She couldn’t help the meaningless words from coming out. Look at her, trying to make the guy feel better about almost getting her and Rachel killed, hah. What a gooey, soft-headed chump she was becoming. Frightening to contemplate.

The story came out of him, terse, halting phrases issued from his chattering teeth. The death-defying dive into the stormy sea, swimming through icy salt water in underground caves, digging transmitters out of his own body in the watery dark with the tip of a pocketknife. Could she have done it?

“Why didn’t—”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t call you,” he said simply. “I couldn’t lead him to you. And there was no time for a doctor. András would have had me and that would have been it. Game over.”

“Got it,” was all she said.

He started to give her his habitual shrug, but froze halfway through, grimacing in pain.

She refused to let herself melt with pity. His machismo was pointless. His pain hurt her. If he suffered needlessly, then so did she. Life had too much suffering in it as it was. Suffering needlessly pissed her off, big-time.

But not all of him hurt. Amazingly, Val’s body was stirring beneath her, his cock growing long and hot and hard against her belly. She wriggled against it, hardly believing the evidence of her own senses. Yes, sure enough. Rock hard and ready. Even now.

“Val,” she said sternly. “You have got to be kidding.”

“Sorry,” he said innocently.

“You know that this naked hugging thing is strictly therapeutic in nature, right? I was worried about hypothermia and shock. I was not looking to wank your willie. We don’t have time.”