The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(93)

Oh, and as for daylight? It was fine for him to play that bullshit night owl card up to a point. But how about when the seasons changed and there were over fourteen hours of daylight? Sixteen? What was he going to do when, on some nice summer afternoon, his female wanted to go for a picnic? How was he going to handle that?

Other than bursting into flames in front of her, that was.

“Assail?”

Closing his eyes, his entire body stooped at the sound of her voice. “Marisol…my love.”

“I think you need to tell me what’s going on here.”

After the longest time, when he could see no other way about things, he said in a hoarse voice, “I agree. Unfortunately.”





FORTY-TWO


As the mobile surgical unit rumbled through the streets of downtown, heading for the bridge to Caldwell’s other side, Jane went into one of the overhead compartments and took out a clean sheet. Flipping the soft white fabric free of its folds, she laid it across the body and then pulled things up so that the civilian’s face and head were covered. Then she took a seat next to Vishous.

When he reached over and clasped her hand, she looked at him. “I didn’t know how to bring him back.”

“His heart couldn’t take it. There was nothing else you could have done.”

“I know.”

“Come here.”

V pulled her into him and she leaned on his strength, his big body catching her. In her head, she reviewed everything in sequence, from her arriving and making the assessment to the transfer onto the table…to the chest compression…the defibrillator…the drug protocol.

“Did he have any identification on him?” she asked.

“Q?” V called out. “Did you find ID?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Qhuinn said from behind the wheel. “No one I recognized so I texted it to Saxton.”

Jane spoke up. “I want to talk to the family. When they’re found, I want to be the one who’s there for them.”

“You got it,” V said.

Qhuinn glanced over his shoulder. “ETA at Havers’s is about twenty minutes.”

“I texted them we were on the way,” Jane muttered. “But should we call, too?”

V shook his head. “Let’s just take a breather. They know we’re coming.”

“All right.” She exhaled her sadness. “God, that’s someone’s son. Maybe mate. I just…I really hate to lose a patient.”

“That’s why you’re such an amazing doctor.”

As she stared at the body, she started to frame what she was going to tell the next of kin, trying out a couple of different approaches. Typically, family members needed to know two things: namely, that everything possible had been done, and that the suffering had been kept to a minimum—

V’s fingertip under her chin brought her eyes to his.

“You know how tight I am with Butch, right?” he said. “How that cop is like…”

“You are brothers, the two of you.” She smiled a little. “You couldn’t be closer.”

“When we were in that alley the other night, and Butch was injured”—V cleared his throat—“and I couldn’t get to him? I was terrified that he was dying. And then you were there—and as I watched you take off to go treat him, I thought…”

There was a long pause, those diamond eyes searching her face. “I thought there was no one else in the world, and that included myself, who I would rather have taking care of him. I trust you that much. I believe in you that much.”

Jane found herself blinking away tears. “You have the best ways of saying I love you.”

“Nah.” He stroked her face with his gloved hand. “I speak sixteen languages, true. And even with all those words, sometimes I don’t know how to put what’s in here”—he touched the center of his chest—“out to you right.”

“I think you do just fine—”

Out of the corner of her eye, something moved and she glanced over to the treatment table.

Probably just a shift from the surgical unit hitting a bump.

She refocused on V. “When we arrive at Havers’s, we need to go with the body to the morgue. I think it’s important to just—I don’t know, I want to see him there safely.” On that note, she leaned around her mate. “Hey, Qhuinn? Has Saxton gotten back to you—”

The sound that percolated through the RV was like that of a pneumonia patient gasping for oxygen, the rattling a combination of loose fluid in the lungs and bronchial tubes that were clogged.

And then the dead body sat up with the sheet over its face.

“He’s alive!” she barked as she jumped forward and went to pull the cloth away. “You’re awake—”

Everything went into slow motion: her hand reaching out to the sheet and pulling it back, the cover dropping, the face…the gruesome, distorted face exposed.

And swiveling toward her like that of an owl, the neck vertebrae snapping one by one.

Jane screamed.



* * *



—

As the dead patient sat up and looked over at his mate, Vishous’s brain, great and powerful though it was, took a second or two to catch the fuck up with reality: