Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(57)

How long had they been out here? It was hard to know. She’d been given an examination and then provided fluids by mouth—otherwise known as a high-test Coke served in its ice-cold red can—and when it had become obvious that she could stand on her own and was fairly steady, Goatee had escorted her out the back of the surgical unit. A moment later, someone she hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of had entered the garage through a side door and gotten in the vehicle’s front passenger side.

The perfume of fresh flowers had suggested it was a woman. Maybe a nurse?

“You cold?” Goatee asked.

“No, why do you ask?”

“You just shivered.”

“Did I?”

What do you know, she didn’t care if she were cold. And she wasn’t sure she actually was.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Erika glanced over. God, he was big, and all the black leather made him seem even larger. He also had some of the strangest eyes she had ever seen, icy white irises surrounded by a navy-blue rim. The pupils in the center were black as the pits of hell.

She thought of the suspect lying on that examination table, nothing but a blue surgical sheet covering his lower body. She remembered him standing up against the brunette, and saying things about a place called Dhunhd.

“I want to see him before I go.” Or before they killed her? “The man in there.”

When there wasn’t a reply, she was acutely aware that she had no gun on her or within reach. And the fact that she couldn’t remember whether hers had been taken from her or lost along the way was nothing she could get too worked up about. Too many other problems were ahead of worrying about where her service weapon was.

At this point, she could only pray that she’d live long enough to have to make a report on it.

Man, she was breaking all kinds of protocols recently, between what had happened with that environmental services woman last night and now her empty holster. Her badge was gone, too. When she’d gone to pat for it at the clip on her belt, she hadn’t found it, and given that the CPD shield wouldn’t have fallen out, she had a feeling they’d taken it and knew she was a cop.

Staring down the flank of the RV, she wondered whether she was ever going to be on the far side of those garage doors. Alive, that was. And as she confronted the idea that she wasn’t going to walk out of this situation, but rather be carried out, she thought…

Well, she was worried she’d forgotten to turn off her coffeepot when she’d poured herself a traveler at two p.m. that afternoon to go back into the Bull Pen.

Okay, that was ridiculous. She’d seen a man fight a shadow and try to murder himself, had people poof!’ing in and out of sight right in front of her, held a glowing orb in her hand… and was currently standing next to someone—something?—who had Grim Reaper stamped all over his bad ass, and she was worried about a fire hazard?

Look at her, being all civil servant. Even when she was on the verge of being killed.

“I told you, nothing.”

She glanced over at Goatee. “I’m sorry?”

“We’re going to do ‘nothing’ to you, and that includes killing you.”

If his words were any drier, they’d come with tumbleweeds.

Erika wanted to curse at the guy, but she didn’t have the energy. “So you’re just going to take my memories and leave me at the side of the road with a headache that dogs me and the sense that I’m being stalked—while those shadow things that attacked him come after me and I have no way of protecting myself because I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

He looked over at her, his half-mast eyes making her think of a Siberian husky. Who bit, didn’t bark. “We’re going to leave you at home, not on the side of a road.”

Down at the front of the RV, the passenger door opened and closed, and then on the far side of the mobile unit, two sets of footsteps walked the length of the bunker and went out some exit.

“He wants to see her.”

Leaning out the passenger door, the guy in surgical scrubs motioned to her—and when Goatee opened his mouth, he put up his palm.

“Doctor’s orders.”

“I’m over this security risk.”

“He’s alive and asking for her. And you like shooting things. So what’s your problem.”

There was some muttering, but Erika ignored it—and so did the doctor with the orders. Heading over to the RV, she was offered a hand up, and she took it—because she was beyond caring about trying to appear tough.

The interior of the cockpit was like the garage itself, neat and clean, and a panel had been pulled aside to reveal the treatment area.

The patient was still lying where he had been, on that stainless steel table, the sheet draped over his lower body. As if he sensed her presence, his head turned and he looked at her—

With a desperation that she did not understand, he reached out… and Erika did not even try to hold herself back from him. For reasons she would worry about later, she threw herself across his bare chest and held on to him.

“I thought you were dead,” she said through tears she couldn’t stop.

“So did I,” he replied hoarsely.

As his heavy arms wrapped around her and held her tightly, she took the first deep breath in what felt like a year.