Untamed: Duty Bound Book 3 (26 page)

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“Avery?” Hoping for a reaction, she brushed his swollen cheek marred with cuts and bruises—and relished the cold, bristly texture against her bare hand. “It’s Hannah. Can you hear me?”

His eyelids flickered, and two chocolate-brown orbs stared at her. “Rory.”

From his lips, the name of her son mimicked a prayer. “Is that where I can find my son? At that Bed and Breakfast?”

He gave a slight nod. “Pink pocketknife.”

Pocketknife? And pink?
As much as she raked her brain for other sound combinations, none made sense. “Did you say…pocketknife?”

“I gave Rowan a pink pocketknife.” A weak smile enlivened his beaten face. “Go to her. She’ll know I sent you.”

“I’m not abandoning you.” She’d believed him when he said Rory was safe with this Rowan. At the moment, that was more than she could provide her son. “You’re coming with me.”

“I have my gun back. I can fend them off. Just go.”

Leaving him at the mercy of these men wasn’t an option. She didn’t care if her old self had lacked character or run away from her obligations.
This new Hannah isn’t shying away from responsibilities or duty.

“Swallow your pride, Stone, and drop the gun. This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Parker…” He stretched his fingers, releasing the weapon. “You’re one stubborn woman.”

Somehow, had she been able to hear, she was convinced it would have sounded like a compliment. “I’m glad we agree.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The blow that had ripped through Avery’s flesh and set his nerves on fire shared a striking resemblance to the bullet that had shattered his life all those years ago.

Bloody thickhead.
Young had plunged head first through a windshield. That should have knocked him out for hours.

Some days, Avery just hated the perks that came with the job he loved.

His stomach was rolling and his upper back on his left side was burning, but it didn’t feel like a foreign object was stuck in his destroyed flesh. He’d retained full motion of his left arm, hand, and fingers, which he tested holding onto Hannah’s waist. Whatever instrument Young struck him with hadn’t caused as much damage as the bloody pain suggested.

He recalled a deafening detonation and the smell of a gun discharged at close range. This time around, the bullet had spared him but if Hannah hadn’t rescued him…

Sane women don’t steal RCMP vehicles. It’s a punishable offense.
Hannah had not only managed to ride away on his snowmobile, she’d also confiscated his gun. The woman was as infuriating as she was smart, quick-witted, and resourceful. Becoming infatuated with a witness broke all the rules in the book.

Dawn had risen, but the storm blanketing the forest hadn’t abated. The longer it lasted, the better for them to elude any possible pursuers.

Hannah rode to a new stucco house built on a wooded acreage. Despite the curtains obscuring the windows, it looked unoccupied. She parked near a shed in the backyard.

Without turning the engine off, she turned to face him.

“It’s Freddy’s new house. He hasn’t moved in yet, but every night, he comes to check on the heating system. Everyone who knows him knows his routine. His visit won’t raise any suspicion, and he’ll be able to look at your injury.” Her ragged breath escaped in a cloud of white mist in the stormy winter air. “I can’t remember my brother, but I recall his schedule, his phobia of frozen pipes, and his keyless password. This is frustrating. My mind is a scrambled puzzle with half the pieces missing.”

As baffling as the mechanism by which her memory operated might be, it’d led them to safety. Weathering the storm in Freddy’s house gave them the option of resting while he figured out what to do next.

He raised his hand and gently brushed her cheek with the back of his glove. “We’ll work on that puzzle together, Hannah, but first, let’s park the snowmobile in the shed.”

Despite a frosty window to peek through, the shed offered the most convenient hideaway.
With any luck, no one but the doctor will venture in the area.

***

The knife slipped from Roxette’s trembling hand and clattered on the vinyl floor of Vic’s bathroom. “I don’t know if I can do this, Vic.”

“Aren’t you a nurse?” Vic fed the stripper’s addiction, and he’d enticed her cooperation in exchange for her mounting drug debt.

“I ran out of money after my first year in nursing school.” Her pretty smile, pink hair, and bouncy boobs failed to gain his empathy. “He needs a real doctor.”

The bullet lodged in his friend’s thigh came from Stone’s gun. A doctor was bound by law to report any shooting accident and provide the authority with the bullet. Unfortunately for all of them, Vic’s blackmail list didn’t include any doctor, only a crackhead who’d bragged about being a nurse the last time he had sex with her.

“You get me the bullet, baby, and I’ll have a surprise for you. The kind you’re craving.”

Her eyes shone with greed. “Hold him tight.”

Regardless of his friend’s unconscious state, Vic pinned Matt’s pelvis and legs with both his arms. “Make it fast, baby. I need a drink.”

She retrieved the knife from the floor. Without cleaning it, she cut through Matt’s trousers and made a small incision at the bullet’s entry point. Some blood leaked down his leg, which she wiped with a towel. If his friend survived, he’d need a massive dose of antibiotic.

“That’s the tricky part.” She traded the knife for a pair of needle-nose pliers and plunged the instrument inside the wound. “If I nicked the artery, he’s as good as dead.”

His childhood friend hadn’t moved a muscle since Vic had carried him inside his bathroom. For all he knew, Matt might have died since Roxette last checked for a pulse. “Keep going.”

To his immense satisfaction, she presented him with an intact bullet coated with blood. “I did it!”

“You did great, baby.” He threw the incriminating evidence in the garbage, then patted her ass. “Go clean up in the kitchen, then you can look into the cupboard over the fridge. The bag labeled Cookie Cream is all yours.”

In his spare time, he’d been experimenting with different fillers. Cookie Cream was his latest concoction, one for which he hadn’t tested the potency yet.

Short on bandages, Vic wrapped a large towel around Matt’s leg and secured it with a belt. His friend was still breathing. “I’ll be back. Keep sleeping.”

Vic found Roxette sprawled on the kitchen floor in front of the fridge. With her eyes wide open and face twisted in a hideous grimace, she looked to have been the victim of a vicious nightmare. The lack of pulse confirmed she was dead.
That’s one problem solved.
Her accidental demise had saved Vic the trouble of ensuring her silence.

The bag of Cookie Cream was in her hand, barely missing a pinch. He took the drug and put it back where it came from. Killing clients wasn’t good for business. He needed to perfect the recipe before marketing it.

Once he settled Matt, he’d get rid of her. In the meantime, he put her coat back on her body before moving her by the door for fast and easy disposal. When he returned into the bathroom, Matt was moaning.

Some blood had seeped through the towel. Having read somewhere that keeping an injury above the heart reduced the bleeding, Vic propped Matt’s leg over the ledge of the tub.

“Vic?” His friend looked at him through glassy eyes. “What happened?”

“Stone shot you. No need to worry, I have the bullet. I’ll just run a short errand, then I’ll take you to the hospital.” Dumping Roxette shouldn’t take more than ten, fifteen minutes. “We’ll tell the doctor you shot yourself cleaning your gun and that you used your knife to remove it.”

In the fall, he and Matt had staged a similar scenario to cover up Foley’s murder. The Mounties had bought the accident. This was so easy.

Matt gripped his forearm and fought to sit, but Vic kept him on the floor.

“Where’s Stone?”

“Stay down, and don’t mind Stone. He’s trapped in the cabin.” Later on he’d go back and finish Stone off—if necessary.

“He’s set to expose the evidence against us.” Wincing in pain, Matt labored through the words. “You need to get him to talk and destroy the proof.”

But he’d already stabbed Stone. The officer was as good as dead.

Shit.

Chapter Forty

“You want to undress where?” Hannah hadn’t yet had the courage to tell Avery she’d lost her hearing, but at the rate she asked him to repeat himself, he’d soon figure it out by himself.

“Bathroom.” Except for his boots, which he removed in the entryway of the basement suite, Avery refused to shed anything else. “I’m not leaving a trail of blood on your brother’s floor and carpet.”

“It’s not Freddy’s, it’s…” An argument resurfaced in her mind, the words resounding loud and clear. “The basement suite is mine…kind of.”

“Kind of?” His face scrunched up. He unzipped his jacket and released Snowflake.

The dog retreated to a wolf skin laid on the living room floor in front of a wall heater.

“Freddy wanted me and Rory to move in with him.” Her brother’s insistence hadn’t matched her tenacity. “I refused to leave the cabin.”

“Why?” Crouched on the floor, he struggled to stand up.

She helped him to his feet, and with him leaning against her shoulder for support, she dragged him into the bathroom.

“I couldn’t stomach the idea of living in the same dwelling as his girlfriend, not that I told him that.” At least she hoped she didn’t hurt Freddy’s feelings by admitting the reason behind her refusal. With her cabin no longer standing, she might have to beg him for shelter.

One hand on the sink, he shifted his weight from her shoulder to the counter. “Help me take my clothes off.”

Standing behind him, she slowly slid the clothes off his back. A three-quarter-inch-long slit punctured his jacket and work shirt. Back in the cabin, she’d been too busy patching him up to pay much attention to the details.

“It looks like he stabbed you with a knife.” The upper layer of the green and beige scarf showed no trace of blood. When she lifted it, it didn’t peel. “The scarf is stuck to the wound. If I pull on it, you’ll start bleeding again.”

Through the mirror above the vanity, she watched for his response.

His chest expended, outlining rippled muscles underneath sparse curly hairs. With his clothes on, he looked to be in his late thirties. Without them, he rivaled much younger men.

A brow arched over darkening brown eyes and a smile danced on his moving lips.

“Sorry, I…” Heat rushed to her face. She needed to rein in those wayward thoughts before they got her in trouble. “You were saying?”

He turned around and encircled her waist. “Take my pants off but leave the bandage until we’re in the shower.”

“What?” Stunned by what she read, she gazed past the bathtub at the frosty glass panel blurring a large ceramic shower. “You…you want
me
to go in the corner shower with
you
?”

“You have a son.” With his thumbs, he grazed the sensitive skin along the edge of her sweat pants, cooking up delicious sensations. “I’m sure you washed him hundreds of times. Just think of me as a bigger version of him.”

“Avery…” She could only recall Rory in her dreams, and the images her imagination dreamed up at this moment in time didn’t belong to a
little
boy. “This isn’t a game.”

“I’m not toying with you, Hannah. I can’t stand on my own.”

“Avery…” Under his ministrations, her pants dropped below her hips, then pooled at her feet. These weren’t the circumstances under which she’d pictured him undressing her.

“I need you under the shower with me.”

With her judgment clouded by the kisses they’d shared, she pressed her palms against his chest and gasped. His skin was warm to her touch—too warm. Something had spiked a fever, and she suspected an infection. She needed to clean all the injuries he sustained and check for any foreign objects in the wounds. Stepping under the water with him was the best way to achieve them.

“All right, but you better behave.”

She lowered his pants, exposing black jersey boxers, similar to the ones she’d borrowed from his drawer. The undergarment hugged his
bigger
attributes and looked better on him than they ever would on her.

A yank on her sweater pulled her out of her reverie. He pulled it over her head, then caught her wrist. “What’s that? Why are your fingers taped together?”

Had Freddy not sliced through the chain of the handcuffs with a bolt cutter, leaving only one cuff attached to her wrist, Avery’s glare would have vaporized the links.

“To make a story short, Cooper arrested me. I escaped.”

His chest heaved under the sharp breaths he inhaled and exhaled. “Take the key in my shirt pocket. You can give me the long version under the water.”

While she searched for the key, he held onto the sink with both hands, his gaze enveloping her half-naked body in a warm and fuzzy cloak. Fear, danger, and the fever riddling his body heightened the attraction she sensed between them.

One half-turn of the key, and the cuff fell to the floor.

She massaged her sore wrist. “When this is over, I’m taking a long bubble bath.”

The smell of fresh silicone permeated the shower alcove housing a built-in contoured seat and multiple jets. By the time she figured out the controls and water temperature, her purple bra and panties were soaked and Avery was sitting naked on the seat with his eyes closed, his boxers and the scarf blocking the drain.

She tossed both articles on the bathroom floor. “You know, if you were to tell me you and I were having an affair before I lost my memory, or that you’re the father of my son, that would make this moment way less awkward.”

Battered by the warm water, his face displayed a myriad of emotions she was at a loss to decipher. He opened his eyes and took her uninjured hand. “Hannah…”

Not ready to deal with her past, she pressed a finger on his lips. “Stay still. While I make you presentable, you can listen to what happened when Cooper found me.”