On Thin Ice (12 page)

Her mouth was set in a mulish expression he hadn’t seen before, so he simply sighed, moved toward her and slung her over his shoulder before she had time to argue. She pounded on his back, and he cursed when she hit the knife wound he’d been so careful to hide, but he simply continued up the steps, ignoring her, slamming the door after them.

He set her down, keeping a hand on her in case she decided to bolt. He hadn’t needed that extra abuse on his ribs, and he certainly didn’t need to be running after her, but after glaring at him she settled into a sullen, acquiescent silence.

“Where’s the infirmary?”

That caught her nosey interest. “It’s the building right next to this one. This is the school, the one next to it is the hospital, and beyond that are the dormitories.”

“That where you slept?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll be able to find clean clothes. Does this place come with electricity or hot water?”

“It did,” she said after a moment. “Father Pascal was trying to fix the generator when he was cut down.”

“Maybe I’ll see what I can do with it.”

“No!”

He’d released her arm, but she simply grabbed his hand. “Why, Sister Beth, I do believe you’re worried about me. I promise you that the rebels who attacked here are long gone, and if any of them lingered they wouldn’t be likely to get the drop on me. I’m a far cry from your gentle priest.” He was hoping to coax a smile at the absurd comparison, or at least a relaxation of her death grip, but she didn’t move.

“I don’t know what we’d do if you were killed.”

He covered her hand with his, slowly detaching her death grip. “Well, darling, I’ll tell you,” he said, “if someone managed to sneak up on me and slit my throat, then I think you’d both already be dead, seeing as the two of you are much easier targets, so there’s nothing to worry about. If by some miracle I get murdered and you escape, then it’s simple. You steal a car – I’m willing to bet young Dylan knows how to hotwire an engine. You head east, to the nearest port city, which I suspect will be Puerto Claro, and get on the next plane, boat, or surfboard you can find and get the hell out of Dodge. And when you get home raise a glass of the good Irish in my memory.”

“No.”

“Damn, woman, you’re like a toddler who’s just learned a new word. Do you have any idea how much I hate the word ‘no’?”

“I can imagine.” She was clinging to the sleeve of his shredded shirt, and if he didn’t get away from her she’d notice the bleeding and start fussing, and he couldn’t stand fussing.

“Then are you going to let go of your death grip on me and let me take care of business? Or do you want me to come back to your room with you?”

She let go immediately, and he gave her a cynical smile. “That’s what I thought. Why don’t you go see what food they left behind while I look into the electricity? With any luck you can take a hot bath and soak your feet.”

She wasn’t happy with the idea, but she stopped arguing, and he congratulated himself on his cleverness as he headed out in the direction of the utility shed where doubtless the generator lodged. All he had to do was threaten her with his attentions and she’d do anything. He’d been used to things the other way around.

The utility shed was easy enough to locate – they’d hacked at it with their machetes in a futile effort to break the lock, but it was still intact. Something must have scared the rebels off before they could steal the generator. He glanced around the dusty courtyard in search of something that would help him either pick or break the lock and noticed the stained patches. Old blood – the priest and the helpers would have been murdered here, probably protecting the Goddamned generator. Though from what that little monster had said, half the murders were for fun and games. He kicked dust over the tell-tale stains; it wouldn’t do for Beth to come across them. She was already spooked enough, and he needed to keep her calm and distracted while they rested up.

He ended up breaking the lock with a rock, something that lacked finesse but worked just fine, and the generator was a piece of cake. He listened to its noisy hum with satisfaction, then primed the water pump so that water flowed into the mission. His grandfather had been a mechanic, and MacGowan always told himself the gift for practicality had skipped his father and come directly to him. There wasn’t a machine he couldn’t coax to life given enough opportunity.

His rib was bleeding again, thanks to his exertions with Sister Beth. His next stop was the infirmary to see whether the Guiding Light had left any medical supplies behind.

There wasn’t much. He took off his shirt and t-shirt, removing the blood-soaked pad gingerly. He could have used a few stitches to pull the slash together, but it was mostly shallow, with only a deeper gash at the end of the wound. He poured alcohol over it to clean it, sucking in his breath at the searing pain of it, then began blotting it with gauze as the blood began to flow. He ought to let it bleed for a bit, just to finish clearing it out, when he heard a muffled noise, and he froze.

He’d left the machete with Dylan, who’d found great pleasure in trail-blazing through the tropical jungle, hacking at the plant life. He pulled the gun from the back of his jeans and headed toward the noise, as silent as the ghosts who haunted this place.

The adjoining room was empty. He recognized it as a rudimentary kitchen, efficient enough to have fed the daily students and the few inhabitants of the mission. He heard the muffled noise again, and the hackles on his skin rose. It was the sound of a woman, and if anyone was messing with Sister Beth he’d rip them apart, limb by limb.

He moved around the wide counter, silent as always. She was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, her fist in her mouth to try to quiet her sobs, and he realized he hadn’t actually seen her cry before. He knew she had, during their endless march down the mountains. She wasn’t in the kind of shape that trek demanded – few people were, but she’d kept up, and only occasionally he’d seen the marks of tears on her dirty face, and he’d wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.

He hadn’t touched her. He should walk away now, let her cry in privacy, but he couldn’t move, torn.

She must have felt his eyes on her, for she suddenly swallowed her sob on a choked gasp and looked up at him, her huge, sorrow-filled eyes a sharper pain than the knife slash.

He moved slow enough, so as not to spook her, to give her plenty of time to move, but she stayed where she was, her huge eyes looking into his, and she fucking broke his heart, if he still possessed such a useless organ. He sank down on the floor beside her, but she didn’t flinch away. And then it was a foregone conclusion – he lifted her onto his lap, pressed her face against his bare shoulders, and held her, as her weeping returned, no longer muffled, a wail of pain and sorrow that had been boxed up too long, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her with more tenderness than he would have held a child, and let her weep.

He didn’t need her smothered, random words to know why she cried. She cried for the gentle priest who’d been her friend, for the two women who’d teased her about her love life and fussed over her like a pair of nosy grandmothers. And she cried for Carlos, a vicious, murdering piece of shit if ever he’d seen one, but to her a lost child.

He didn’t bother talking sense to her. He simply stroked her braided hair and let her weep against him, enjoying it. He had no problem with women’s tears – he was Irish, after all. As long as he wasn’t the cause he could comfort her for as long as she’d tolerate it.

Gradually her tears lessened, coming to a shuddery, choking halt. He knew when she suddenly realized where she was, whose arms were around her, whose bare chest she was pressed against. The sudden stiffening of her muscles, a slow withdrawal, and he let her go. She scrambled off his lap like he was radioactive, and tried to rise to her feet, but her fit of weeping had taken the very last of her energy, and she sank back down on her knees, at a safe distance from him.

“Don’t worry, love, I’m not taking that as an offer of sex,” he said with a wry smile. “I got the generator working. Why don’t you go take yourself a long, hot bath while I find something to eat.”

She didn’t move. Her voice was raw from her tears when she finally spoke. “There’s still a lot of food left behind. Cans of fish and beans, flour and corn and rice. If you just give me a minute I can make something.”

“You cook?” Teasing might help bring her back to her fighting weight. “Rich, beautiful, virtuous, and you can cook? What more could a man ask for? Well, maybe virtuous wouldn’t be on my top-ten list of desirable traits, but the rest of the package makes up for it.”

She wasn’t responding to his blarney, but then, she’d always proven surprisingly resistant to it, probably because of the intensity of their situation. She glanced down at herself, then at him, and he realized she wasn’t admiring his manly physique.

“You’re bleeding.” Her voice was flat, strong, no longer shaken by repressed grief.

“Just a scratch.”

He saw the tension suddenly sweep her body. “Is someone here?”

He shook his head. “I got this when I went to get the machete. It stopped bleeding until you decided to pummel me.” He wasn’t above using guilt to get what he wanted.

Sister Beth, however, was impervious. “You need stitches.”

“You offering?”

She was considering it, then shook her head. “Much as I’d love to drive a needle through your un-anesthetized flesh, I think I’d rather not. I can put some butterfly bandages on it.” This time when she rose she was steadier. God save him from a holy martyr, who could draw herself together for the greater good but could no more take care of herself than a newborn kitten.

“No, you can’t. They took most of the medical supplies.”

“Not the kit in my cell.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you still swear you’re not a nun?”

“Fine, I’m a nun. So keep your lascivious thoughts away from me. I can find enough butterfly bandages to keep that slash together so that it will heal.”

“’Lascivious’?” he echoed with a laugh. “I’ve never heard them called that before.”

“It means . . .”(

“I know what lascivious means, sweetheart. It’s just not a word I hear in everyday conversation.”

“You surprise me. You’re a powder keg of testosterone ready to explode. I’m surprised more women haven’t mentioned it.”

“I don’t tend to shag women with your vocabulary. And it’s been three years, remember?”

“How could I forget? Are you going to stay there, or come with me to my bedroom?”

He surged to his feet with far more energy than he felt. “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

“Medical treatment only, MacGowan.” Her previous bout of grief might never have happened – she was her calm, indomitable self. “Follow me.”

“To the ends of the earth, me darlin’.”

CHAPTER TEN

Don’t think about it
, Beth told herself firmly.
It won’t do any good, they’re gone and you’ve already fallen apart. You just have to hold on.

They hadn’t gotten into the living quarters. But then, why bother? They’d already killed everyone who lived here, and had her as hostage. She pushed the narrow door open and looked at the familiar, safe confines of her little room once more, and a stray shiver ran across her body.

“Get on the bed,” she said.

Odd how much bigger MacGowan seemed in her tiny room. Without his shirt she could see just how bony he was, probably twenty or thirty pounds under his fighting weight from his years in captivity. He loomed over her, and she finally understood her ambivalence. He had protected her, killed for her, led her to safety. He was safety.

But he was also big and raw and so elementally male that it made her teeth sweat. She’d spent most of her life blissfully above the calls of the flesh and the dark, desperate couplings that subsumed others. She didn’t like sex, didn’t want sex. Body parts were simply that. She looked at MacGowan and thought about sex.

“I’m too bloody, sweaty, and dirty to get on your sheets, sweetheart. You can work while I stand.”

Which kept him looming over her and kept her in a subservient position. She was going to argue with him, but the longer he stood in her tiny room the more overwhelmed she felt. She needed to get him patched up and out of there.

“All right,” she said, reaching under the bed and pulling out her medical kit. A bed that wasn’t as small as the bed they’d shared last night, she realized, feeling her face heat in sudden awareness, and she kept her face down, her voice brisk. She sat down on the bed herself, opening the kit. “Come here.”

He said nothing, moving closer so that his legs were against her knees. The knife had bounced off his ribs, only going in deep in one spot, and it looked relatively clean. She reached for a pair of rubber gloves and started to pull them on when he plucked them out of her hand. “We’ve already been mixing blood, sweat and tears. Save the plastic for someone else.”

“I bet you say the same thing about condoms.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she wanted to bite her tongue. She didn’t want to be talking condoms with this man.

He laughed. “What makes you think I use condoms, Sister Beth? I’m a good Catholic boy.”

That made her give him a disgusted look, but of course he was still teasing her.

“Lighten up. I don’t go around courting disease and dropping bastards. We’re almost out of here, this is just a scratch, and in a few days you’ll be safe back in the states and I’ll be a rich man. No one else is going to die, you’re safe, we’ve made it. Now patch me up and go take a long hot bath.”

She said nothing, bending to her work. Fresh blood had crusted on the wound, and she cleaned it before reaching for the butterfly bandages. She knew it hurt him, but he said nothing, not even flinching, and she began pulling the torn flesh together with the bandages. “How come you have so much hair on your face and so little on your chest?” she grumbled, trying to keep her mind off how warm and sleek his skin was.