Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (7 page)

She returned to the Humvee and checked the
radio, hoping someone else had found him. No such luck. Push had
gone down with heat exhaustion, and the entire pack had returned to
the base. The remaining search parties were starting to talk about
body recovery.

Echo replenished her water and entered the
second canyon, determined to find Torres. Alive. She didn’t like
the thought of him dying alone in the desert, brought down by heat
and thirst. A man who could fight like him ought to die in combat,
like she would some day.

If I’m lucky.

Echo quickly cut off that train of thought.
She hurried down the canyon, limping slightly. Halfway in, she
found scuff-marks in the gravel, left in a winding, uneven trail.
He’d been staggering, either unaware that he was leaving footprints
or too weak to clear them away. Echo hastened on, past the place
where he’d fallen and scrabbled in the sand to get up, past the
shirt he’d abandoned on the ground, and turned the corner at a
near-run.

A ridiculous amount of relief filled her when
she saw him, leaning against the canyon wall and stumbling forward,
his head hanging down. She couldn’t believe he was still on his
feet.

“Torres!” she shouted. He didn’t turn, either
when she yelled or when she ran up to stand in front of him.

“Torres?” Echo put her hand on his shoulder,
bringing him to a halt. “Dale?”

He lifted his head, as slowly as if it was a
heavy weight, and gazed out with eyes so blank that she knew he
didn’t see her.

“I made it,” he muttered, and collapsed into
her arms.

His skin was dry and burning hot, and his
breathing was rapid and shallow. She touched the side of his
throat, feeling for a pulse. His heart was racing.

Heat stroke. As Mr. Dowling hadn’t needed to
remind her, that could kill a person in fifteen minutes. If she
didn’t cool him off first, he could be dead by the time she got him
back to the Humvee.

Echo found an area shaded by an overhang and
laid him down there. As she settled him down, she saw what appeared
to be a gash in his side. She inspected it, concerned, then saw
that it was a wound that had already healed. A mass of scar tissue
stretched over his ribs, shiny and tight and discolored. A long red
furrow cut through it, cracked and bleeding a little at one end.
He’d been badly burned, and not all that long ago. She wondered how
it had happened. A bomb?

She placed cold packs under his back and on
his chest and thighs, then began pouring water over him. His brown
skin was reddened and starting to blister, and the soles of his
feet were bloody and raw. His lips were split with painful-looking
cuts. Though that was the least of his problems, it made her feel
more guilty than that negligible injury warranted. If she’d known
he was going to tear out into the desert and nearly kill himself,
maybe she wouldn’t have hit him so hard.

His eyes opened slowly. They were very dark
brown, almost black, set off by straight, thick eyebrows.

“I broke him,” he mumbled. “I broke him and I
couldn’t fix him.”

At least, she thought that was what he said.
His voice was so hoarse that he was hard to understand.

“Here, have some water,” she said. “Drink it
slowly. Little sips.”

She lifted his head and held a bottle to his
swollen lips. His hair was cut so short that it looked bristly, but
it was soft against her palm. He followed her directions, though
she suspected it was from ingrained training rather than because
he’d understood her.

By the time he was a third of the way
through, all the moisture had evaporated from his body and clothes.
She put down the bottle, picked up another, and drenched him
again.

“Once you finish the bottle, I’ll take you
where it’s cooler,” she promised him.

Torres didn’t seem to hear her. “I screwed
everything up. Me and my big fucking mouth.”

“What did you screw up?”

“My buddy. My brother. Best fucking Marine
you’ll ever see.”

Echo remembered Mr. Dowling’s briefing.
“Farrell?”

Torres nodded. “I tried to fix him, but I
only made it worse.”

So that was what Mr. Dowling had meant about
Farrell probably never being fit for duty again: something had gone
wrong with his transformation. Echo hesitated, unwilling to say
anything that could rebound on Charlie, then decided that she
hadn’t been forbidden from
talking
to Torres. And he’d
sounded so sad and bitter that she felt an odd impulse to console
him.

“You were trying to save his life,” Echo
reminded him. “You meant well.”

His dark gaze drifted out of focus. “I pushed
him too hard. Marco warned me, but I didn’t listen. I’m such a
fuck-up.”

Drawn into the mystery, Echo asked, “Who’s
Marco?”

But Torres wasn’t in any condition to hear
her. He turned his head restlessly to the side. His cheek radiated
heat against her fingers. “Where’s my pack? I can’t reach the pack
sense.”

Torres would probably never see his pack
again. She wondered how he’d hold up without it. In theory, born
wolves could survive indefinitely away from their pack. In
practice, they needed some kind of contact sometimes, even if it
was only a phone call every couple months and a visit once a year.
If they were cut off completely, they grew reckless and
self-destructive, and eventually got themselves killed.

A pang went through her chest, as if a fist
had squeezed her heart. But maybe Torres would be different.
Tougher. He’d smashed his way through the base— he’d defeated her—
he’d survived the desert—

“Nanay…?” Torres called out hoarsely, and
coughed. “Nanay, stay with me. I don’t feel good.”

Echo held the bottle to his lips. “Here,
drink some more. It’ll make you feel better.”

He turned away, letting the water spill over
his chin. “I’m fine. Give it to Alec, he needs to hydrate.”

Echo spoke sharply. “Torres, drink. That’s an
order.”

That got through to him. He swallowed
obediently, in textbook slow little sips. As he did, she wondered
exactly what the base planned to do with him.

Nothing terrible,
Echo told herself.
He’s a recruit, like the made wolves. They’ll send him on
missions, that’s all.

That’s all…

Torres finished the bottle. His skin had
dried up again, so Echo poured more water on him. The cold packs
had gone lukewarm. But she could see that she’d done him some good.
His breathing had slowed and steadied, as had his pulse, and he
looked a little less dazed.

“All right,” Echo said. “We can go to the
Humvee now. It’s air-conditioned.”

“I think you’ll have to help me walk.” He
sounded apologetic.

“You don’t have to walk. I’ll carry you.”

She waited for his disbelieving look, but he
simply said, “Thanks. I’m awfully tired.”

Echo hefted him across her shoulders. He’d
cooled down some, but his skin still felt hot. She set a brisk pace
along the canyon, glad that she’d found him when she had.
Werewolves were tough, but she doubted he’d have survived another
hour in that canyon. Maybe not even another half-hour.

His breathing was steady in her ear, a
comforting sound. When Echo was a child, all five of the sisters
had sometimes slept in the same bed, the rhythm of their mingled
breathing lulling them to sleep.

Not long after Althea died, the handlers
decided that the four of them left were too big and too old to
share a bed. But they did anyway, sneaking into a room after
lights-out and squeezing in together.

After Della died, the handlers had decided it
might be a good thing for the sisters to sleep close together, and
offered them a king-sized bed. Echo and Charlie and Brava huddled
together in it, holding each other tight and feeling the empty
spaces on either side.

Then Brava died, and the sense of someone
missing became overwhelming. Charlie and Echo asked to move to a
smaller apartment with a double bed, where they’d be less likely to
reach out for Brava every night.

Their handlers moved them, but it was never
the same. Every night that Echo wasn’t out on a mission or Charlie
was off with her infatuation of the month, Charlie would fall
asleep and Echo would lie awake beside her, waiting for her
breathing to stop.

Once Echo thought of that, a familiar fear
gripped her. What if Charlie was dying
right now?
Her
imagination sped down a well-worn track, as she pictured herself
returning to the base, Mr. Dowling waiting in her empty apartment,
Echo shouting at him to go ahead and tell her—

Torres stirred, his fingers closing around
her arm. “Are we there yet?”

Startled, Echo nearly lost her footing on the
canyon’s treacherous slope. “Almost.”

When she laid him down in the back of the
Humvee, his eyes were bright and alert. “You’re the woman I
fought.”

“Yes.”

“Were you carrying me just now?”

She nodded. “I found you in a canyon. Don’t
you remember?”

He looked at her like she was a lunatic. “I
was unconscious.”

“You woke up for a while. We had a whole
conversation.”

“We did?”

“Sort of. You were pretty out of it.” Echo
stepped around him to turn on the ignition and the air
conditioning, then returned and opened the cooler. “Who’s
Marco?”

“He’s the team leader of my fire team.”
Torres tried to sit up, wincing.

Echo put her hand on his chest. “Stay down.
I’m getting ice.”

“Oh, right.” He lay still, watching her
curiously.

She began laying ice packs on his body. “And
who’s Nanay?”

“It’s ‘mom’ in Tagalog.” He gave her a
quizzical glance. “What in the world was I talking about that
involved Marco
and
my mother?”

Echo opened her mouth to recite his words
back to him, then closed it. His sharp gaze, quick speech, and
confident air, even as he lay captive and helpless on the floor of
the Humvee, betrayed nothing of the guilt and sorrow and
vulnerability she’d seen before. She felt like she’d accidentally
read his secret journal.

The best she could do was pretend it hadn’t
happened. And she certainly wasn’t going to embarrass him by
telling him he’d called out for his mother. “Got me. You weren’t
making much sense.”

“I’m not surprised. I think I’m really sick.
I should probably go to a hospital.”

“As soon as I cool you off a bit more, I’ll
take you there,” she promised.

“Oh, hey, do you know anything about my
buddy?” Torres asked hopefully. “His name’s Roy Farrell. He was
badly hurt— maybe he’s in the same hospital you’re taking me
to…?”

“He’s alive. But he’s not around here. I
don’t know where he is.”

Torres looked both disappointed and relieved.
“Where are we now? Please don’t tell me that’s classified.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Dr. Semple did.”

Echo put ice packs against either side of his
neck. “Dr. Semple is into mind games. She’ll say anything to fuck
with you.”

“I noticed. So where are we?”

“Death Valley.”

His entire body jerked with surprise, nearly
dislodging the ice pack she’d just laid on his stomach. “Fuck!
Seriously?”

“Seriously. You tried to escape into the
literal hottest place on Earth.”

“Talk about out of the frying pan and into—”
He caught himself. “I bet you’re sick of that joke. Exactly how hot
is it today?”

“117 degrees. You’re lucky you survived.”

His dark gaze met hers, all joking gone. “Am
I?”

She knew exactly what he meant. Echo opened
her mouth to assure him that he wouldn’t be harmed, but he was
still gazing earnestly into her eyes, as if he trusted her to tell
the truth.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What do they want with me?”

“You’re a recruit. They’ll send you on black
ops missions.”

“Assassinations?”

“Well, sometimes it’s other things.”

Torres closed his eyes, his battered face
creasing with weariness. “I am so fucking in over my head.”

Echo took the opportunity to pour water over
him.

He sighed in relief. “Thanks. That feels
good. What are you, a tree shifter?”

“A—” Echo was hard to surprise, but that
threw her. She wondered if he was delirious again. “A what? A tree
shifter? You mean, do I
turn into a tree
?”

Torres opened his eyes and actually smiled at
her. “Well, I turn into a wolf.”

“No, I’m not a— Do tree shifters even
exist?”

He shrugged. “Got me. What are you,
then?”

She was seized by an unexpected mischievous
impulse. “I’m a platypus shifter.”

Now it was his turn to be thrown. She watched
his mobile face register a quick sequence of thoughts: disbelief,
contemplation of the possibility that it might be true, amusement
at the thought that it might be true,
hope
that it was true,
then the rueful decision that she was teasing him. “You are not.”
Then back to hope. “
Are
you?”

Echo couldn’t resist teasing him some more.
His facial expressions were so entertaining. “Maybe.”

“Come on, what are you really? I have to
know. You don’t want to go to all this trouble to save me, and then
have me to die of curiosity.”

“It’ll be tough, but I think you’ll make
it.”

“I might not. I’m a delicate flower.” He eyed
her hopefully again. “You’re some kind of cat, right? You move like
a cat. A mountain lion? A white tiger? A snow leopard? Am I close?
Spill it.”

“Or what, you’ll turn into a precious little
rose bush? Shut up and drink some more water.” Echo opened a
bottle. She started to slide her hand under his head, but he caught
the bottle.

“I got it.” He propped himself on one elbow
and started drinking.

“Slowly,” she cautioned. “Small sips, or
it’ll make you sick.”