Avenger (12 page)

Barney knocked again, he didn’t look agitated or suspicious yet. Then again, he hardly ever showed any emotion.

Luke whispered in Carmen’s ear, “Give any hint of my presence here and I will blab to them everything you told me about Sully, drugs, and how he plans to use Pru.” When Carmen froze, he added, “Only the two of us know you told me nothing. Barney, though, doesn’t and he’s a man who takes no chances.”

Slowly, he released her and went toward her bedroom. Just before he entered the room, he gestured to a stunned-Carmen to open the door. The moment she turned, Luke came back to the living room, fitted himself in a corner between the TV and window, and went invisible.

Without looking through the peephole, Carmen opened the door and stepped back, allowing Barney to enter. Seeing him, Luke’s body broke in cold sweat and fury bubbled in his chest. This was the man who’d killed him.

“Took you long enough,” Barney said and studied Carmen, paying special attention to the red marks around her mouth.

Luckily, she raised her hand and rubbed her nose, leaving it as red as the area surrounding it. Shrewd Barney still took a cursory look through what he could see from the entryway. “You alone?”

She nodded. “My boyfriend won’t be here for another hour. Did you bring it?”

Barney nodded and flipped her discarded slipper with his foot. “We need your help with one more thing related to Ms. Hall.”

She sniffed. “I’ve already done enough to Pru.”

Barney shook his head. “Her family seems to have
somehow
found her. We want you to delay her release to them.” He reached inside his gray jacket.

Carmen’s gaze zeroed on his hand. “H-how can I do that?”

Still hand in pocket, Barney wandered toward the kitchen. His voice drifted back to Luke, “Don’t know. Do it and we’ll continue to take care of you.”

He appeared again followed by her, she nodded, her sight fixed on his hand. The moment Barney headed toward the bedroom a semblance of awareness came over her face. “P-please give it to me.”

“In due time,” he said and continued to the bedroom, this time alone. Carmen closed her eyes and waited in the living room.

Barney returned and studied her. “Make sure you don’t overdose on it. I need you confident and smiling when you ease her family’s worries.”

Carmen’s gaze shifted between Barney and the bedroom, relief bringing color to her cheeks. She licked her lips. “Yeah. I’ll dazzle them with my charm.”

Barney nodded and reached with his hand into another pocket and pulled out a small package. “Remember, don’t piss off Sully or you will have to deal with me, and I’m not talking drug dealing.”

Chapter Nineteen

After the thrill of seeing her family, Pru had gone to Luke’s apartment to share the great news, only to find it empty. Since he favored the emergency entrance—always rushing in to give his entry a sense of urgency—she knew she would hit the mother lode if she kept an eye on that door.

At present, arms crossed over her chest, Pru watched Luke hasten through the sliding doors, looking hassled enough that no one stopped him. His steps were confident, his swagger virile, and he was all hers. No matter what obstacles he imagined blocked their way to happiness, Pru was willing to smooth them out as long as he was by her side.

A commotion erupted in the emergency room, the staff bustled about as medics rolled in an injured blond teen girl. Her moans were interrupted by yelps of pain whenever someone touched or jostled her. The girl was wearing a shredded—and smoldering in places—light blue unitard drenched in blood. Worse was the bloody bandage wrapped around her eyes. Even as Pru watched, the red spread on the dressing, blotting out the white. The girl’s complexion paled by the second.

Luke halted by the exit door leading to the stairs and looked back, his focus on the injured girl. The moment he paled his appearance he disappeared.

God, please don’t let it be dagger time.
Not with the suffering the girl had been through already.

The girl was writhing, her thin frame twisting in pain. The doctor on duty examined her, instructed the nurses to inject her with something, probably a painkiller, and then asked them to page an ophthalmologist. After that, they rolled her into a room and hooked her to several tubes. They left her alone to attend to a car accident victim who’d suffered a heart attack at the same time.

A fleeting movement caught Pru’s eye. Luke was on the move, sticking to corners, going from one curtained room to another until he reached the girl’s bed. Pru followed him and drifted through the curtain into the room. He was cradling the girls head, his mouth by her ear. She nodded, her moans and yelps reduced to soft whimpers as the medicine worked its magic. At the very end, she said on a weak whisper, “Faye.”

“Is she possessed?” Pru asked. Okay, so he had to do his duty, surly it could wait until the girl was stronger.

For a long moment he continued whispering to the injured girl, whatever he said settled her until she sighed softly. Finally, Luke lifted his head, gestured for Pru to follow him, and stalked back to the stairwell. In there, Luke turned to her, smiling. “You were waiting for me.”

She nodded. “That’s not important. What did you say to the girl?”

He studied her then, his face expressionless.

“I’m not doubting or suspecting you.” She paused. “Well, I did, but not in a bad way since now I know you’re not crazy. It’s just that she looked like she suffered enough and I was afraid she was possessed as well and you would…Anyway, you didn’t stab her and she seemed to relax in your hand. I’m curious, what did you say to her? And why?”

“So many questions. Let me see if I can ease your mind.”

He had a mischievous gleam in his eyes as he went to her, crowding her until she half-went through the wall.

“I don’t usually get hit by others’ emotions, except yours, but something about Faye slammed into me. Not only did she bleed, she oozed desperation and sadness. Her loss wasn’t only physical. I couldn’t leave her wallowing in desperation.” He leaned into Pru, purposefully allowing his torso to go through hers.

Pru inhaled sharply. His sandalwood scent filled her nostrils and like every time, she took in the exalting warmth that came with touching him, except now it was entwined with loss, bereavement. She shuddered. “I didn’t know you could carry others’ emotions.”

“I don’t. These are my feelings.” His eyes were fixed to her lips, she couldn’t help but wet them, nervous. “I couldn’t ignore all that pain, so I tried to put her on a positive path. I figured—” his black eyes flicked up to Pru’s “—she would welcome and grasp at upbeat suggestions. Desolation can do that.”

Such a sweet and beautiful man. “Someone could’ve seen you.”

“No one did.”

“What did you say to her?”

Luke leaned close to her ear, his melting chocolate of husky voice glided through her. “I promised that it wasn’t all lost, the doctors will fix her up and she will be out of here in no time. When she returns to her loved ones, she will see that things aren’t as bad as they seemed. They never are. The sooner she allows doctors and medicine to work their magic on her, the sooner she’ll return to the ones who care for her. This was just a short bad period in her life, one she would overcome and step out of with hardly any memories of it.” As he uttered the last sentence, his voice, all sexy and enticing, ended on a poignant note.

One second he was with her, in her, and the next he pushed away from her and climbed the stairs as though he wasn’t romancing her disembodied ear moments ago.

His promises to Faye were vague enough to apply to any situation. Commendable, really, but what the freak happened at the end?

“Wait up.” She followed and found him waiting by the stairs’ door on her floor. “What happened?”

In an unmistakable bid to misinterpret her question, he said, “I visited Carmen today.”

Before his hands disappeared in his pockets, Pru saw how they shook. She opened her mouth to pursue the change in his mood, then closed it again. If something was distressing him this much, pushing to know it wouldn’t work.
Later I’ll find out.
“I wanted to follow you there but her apartment is out of my boundary.”

When he looked at her in confusion, she said, “I can’t go beyond a certain parameter in my wanderings. I’ve tried and every time I’m snatched back to the hospital. How is she?”

He shrugged. “Strung-out. She admitted that her addiction was used as leverage to entrap you.”

“Oh.” Casting her gaze down, Pru hid the shattering of her heart. His guesses about Carmen’s involvement were true of course, their confirmation hurt still.

“You’re right in detesting drugs and how they muddle the mind. When this is over, I’ll try to help Carmen out of it, however, for now, she has orders to persuade your family to keep you here.”

She looked up, frowning. “Why?”

“I heard few days back that Sully is formulating a new plan for his business and I think you fit in there somehow. Carmen is clueless to the details but she’d hinted your goodness is what got you in this mess.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. She received a delivery while I was there and doped up on it. They were still there, so I couldn’t stop her. By the time they left, she was high and wouldn’t succumb to my suggestions. I’m going to emphasize to Andrew how important it is to take you out of here.”

“He’s not going to leave me here, this much I know. Is this the only reason why you came back?”

Luke paused in the corridor, rubbing his neck. When he spoke, his voice was nothing more than a seductive whisper. “Being without you the whole day felt wrong.”

The admission must be difficult for a hardcore man like him to make. “Even though I’m glad my family is here, I was missing something very important as well.” She hardly recognized her throaty voice.

Luke stilled. “Is this true?”

Pru stood before him, a whisper away from his brawny mass, wrapped in the warmth and positive sensations he evoked in her. “I don’t know when this happened, but you’ve become a huge part of me. I don’t know what will happen after I come out of the coma. All I know, I want you with me the whole time.”

Luke closed his eyes and seemed to steady his breathing. “You’ve softened the harder side of me.”

It took a funky job and a threat to his life to straighten him. He now was her dream man, her prince charming. “What happened in the stairwell, Luke? Why are you sad?

Blinking his eyes open, he said, “I’ll explain later. For now, I need to speak to Andrew about your safety.”

Too early to push for an explanation. Sighing, she said, “Okay.”

Now that most visitors had left and shifts changed, the corridor was almost deserted. Pru and Luke walked side by side, hands almost touching, unspoken promises heard and adhered.

She entered and smiled at the transformation of her drab room. Her family had come and with them brought bouquets of flowers, balloons, and even boxes of chocolate, as though they expected an army of visitors to come by. There was only one tube left in her arm, and she looked more…animated. There was a definite rosiness in her cheeks.

Andrew was giving his autograph to a naturally beautiful blond nurse. Unsurprisingly, today she’d applied makeup. He had that effect on people, especially women. His green eyes held a secret smile in them, inviting others to approach him. Even though he was in his forties, he had an air of prankish boyhood about him, maybe because of the way his flaxen hair tumbled on his forehead. The combination of his charismatic nature and baritone voice attracted attention and kept it. Despite the few gray strands in his sideburns, he’d been looking younger since Matilda was born. That baby got the best mixture from her parents, Andrew’s deep green eyes and Tía Adoria’s pitch black hair. Biased or not, Matilda was the most gorgeous baby cousin Pru every laid eyes on.

“Is Andrew’s son here?” Luke asked, still in the hall. He was referring to Joshua, Andrew’s son from his first marriage.

Luke’s reluctance to go in was understandable. Tía Adoria and her mother’s protectiveness weren’t a match for Andrew’s. Pru suspected he’d psychologically adopted her when he married her aunt.

“Joshua is sitting for exams so they didn’t tell him about my accident. Mom has gone back to the hotel after spending the day by my side.”
Weeping softly.

“Where are they staying?”

“Close by, at the Royal Tulip Hotel. Come now, you’re just dragging your feet,” she said, grinning.

In the room, it was obvious Andrew was going to be a problem from the moment he laid eyes on Luke. His emerald gaze traced Luke’s dark outfit, worn out sneakers, even his gait.

Naturally, Luke narrowed his eyes. Pru slipped her hand through his and kept it there. At once, his breathing became normal and his nostrils stopped flaring.

“Hello, Mr. Taylor. I’m glad you’re with Pru. You might not remember me, I watched over your car when you came over to interview Adoria.”

Andrew studied him. “Luke, isn’t it? How can I forget you? It’s Andrew by the way.” He stretched his lips in a smile that failed to reach his eyes.

The ice wasn’t thawing, Pru chewed on her lip to find a way to ease the tension in the air. The muscles in Luke’s shoulders bunched up with strain. Definitely a defiant gesture.

“I’d like to speak with you about Pru if you have a minute,” Luke said.

“Of course.”

“I think it’s best if you move Pru out of this hospital. Better still, always have someone watch over her.”

“You should’ve broken it to him slowly,” Pru said even though she could almost sense Luke’s urge to leave.

“It’s in the works,” Andrew said. “Does this have anything to do with her being treated for an illness she doesn’t have?”

Luke nodded, a muscle in his jaw twitched. Pru wanted to scream at them both to stop beating their chests. It wasn’t a macho match, they both played for the same team.

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “And does it have anything to do with you?” He asked on a whisper, a threat.

Luke took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. “I haven’t been in touch with Pru for years, only chance brought me here. We grew up together,
Mr. Taylor
, and for me that means something. That’s the reason I asked for you specifically to come, to get her the best medical help away from this place. If you think I had anything to do with putting her in this room, think again. “