Sting (15 page)

“I'm wet.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“I said stop!”

She turned around quickly. “Why?”

He was walking toward her, his right hand held down at his side close to his thigh. “Is this what you're going after?” He raised his right arm. Her heart stopped in expectation of seeing the pistol in his hand.

Not the arrow.

She gasped.

With breath-stealing swiftness, he raised his right knee and broke the shaft over it, then threw the two pieces to the floor.

Jordie gave a strangled cry, spun away, and raced toward the back of the building.

He was right behind her and closing in. “I wondered what had captured your interest back here. I found it just now while you were outside.”

When she came even with the empty water bottle sitting on the two-by-four ledge, she practically threw herself against the wall.

“Did you really think—”

She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled forward a few feet.

“—that I wouldn't know you were up to something?”

Splinters pricked her hands as she blindly felt along the rough wood wall.

He crouched down. She turned to face him, flattening herself firmly against the wall, her hands behind her. “It's no use,” he said. “I found your secret weapon. What were you planning to do with that arrow? Restring the bow and shoot me with it?”

Tears welled in her eyes. She was trembling with fright.

“Come on. Get up.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and tried to pull her to her feet, but she resisted.

His face had become a watery blur because of her tears. But she could clearly see the scar carved out of his scruff, and the lips that looked so austere but which kissed with remarkable passion.

She also made out the stunned disbelief that froze his features when she thrust her right hand against his midsection.

They stared at each other for several seconds, then moved at the same time, he falling back several feet and landing on his butt, she slapping both hands across her mouth to keep in a wail of horror over her own violent action.

He continued to gape at her with bafflement, then bent his head down to look at the broken outboard propeller jutting from his abdomen.

S
haw swore savagely and raised his head to glare at Jordie, who remained with her hands covering her mouth for several seconds more, then she sprang toward him.

“Get the fuck away from me.” He'd tried yelling it, but his voice had already gone thready.

She reached beneath his shirttail and wrestled the pistol from the holster. He needed his hands to support himself, so he let her take the gun without a fight. Shakily holding it between her hands, she aimed it at him.

“Don't move or I'll shoot you, too.”

“Not with that, you won't.” Hissing in pain, he levered himself into a full sitting position. He could feel beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. Any other time, her inexperienced handling of the firearm would have made him nervous. Now, he grit his teeth against the agony in his middle and said, “I took the cartridge out.”

She stopped fiddling with the pistol and gaped at him. “What?”

“Safety precaution. You were getting too interested in it.”

“Where are the bullets?”

“Hidden.”

“Where?”

Ignoring her, he visualized a chart of the human anatomy and tried to remember the organs which, if punctured, would cause him to bleed out. The broken propeller blade had stabbed through his shirt under his last rib on his left side. It would have missed his pancreas, liver, and stomach, all of which were too high and center. Left kidney? Too high and posterior. Large intestine? Possibly. If he was lucky, the blade was too far left of it and had missed.

Worst-case scenario, it had struck that large artery—what the hell was the name of it?—that passed through the abdomen and funneled down into the groin to become the femoral. If that major blood vessel had been opened, even nicked, he wouldn't be a problem for Jordie Bennett much longer. The time he had left would depend on the size of the leak.

He cursed again. “You might not need any bullets.”

She left him and ran to the car. He heard her fumbling around in the trunk, then swearing as she tried to click on the spotlight. “Dammit! Did you take the batteries out? Where are they? Did you hide them?”

“I was busy while you were napping.”

She came back, dropped to her knees beside him, and pushed her hand inside his jeans pocket. Coming up empty, she moved to the other where she found his pocket knife and Mickey's phone. She tossed the knife out of Shaw's reach, her interest solely on the phone. But when she tried to turn it on and realized it was dead, she turned it over and removed the back as she'd watched him do several times. Seeing that it was empty, she turned frantic. “Where is the battery?”

He shook his head.

“Are you crazy? Tell me. I have to call 911.”

Shaking his head had only made him more lightheaded and dizzy, so he didn't respond at all.

“If you don't get help, you could die.”

“Isn't that what you wanted?”

“No! I didn't want to kill you. I only wanted to stop you from killing me.”

“I wished you'd just asked pretty please instead of shoving…ah, shit, it hurts.”

She caught his chin in her hand and forced his head around to look at her. “Tell me where you hid the phone battery.”

He jerked his chin out of her grasp. “Bring me a bottle of water and the rest of those bandanas.”

She looked at him with consternation but got up, went back to the car, and in under a minute returned with the requested articles. He managed to remain sitting, although at a slant, as he took the water from her, removed the cap, then poured it over the piece of metal that had his shirttail pinned to his torso. She watched with alarm as he grasped it with thumbs and fingers of both hands.

“What are you doing?”

He blinked sweat from his eyes. “Move back. If you sliced an artery, you're gonna get squirted.”

“You're going to pull it out?”

“Have a couple of those bandanas handy. Soon as the blade is out—”

“You can't do that!”

“I'm not looking forward to it.”

It was a toss-up whether or not to remove it. It could be acting as a plug to prevent serious bleeding. But if the damn thing was as rusty and dirty as the rest of that outboard, and he left it in there, he'd die of infection or tetanus, and neither would be easy or quick. If he died in a geyser of arterial blood, at least it wouldn't take too long.

“Please,” she said, her voice ragged. “Let me call—”

Before she talked him out of it, he pulled on the portion of the propeller sticking out of him, testing how firmly and deeply it was embedded. Just that tug almost caused him to black out. He inhaled deeply several times, braced himself mentally, then pulled as hard as he could. The jagged metal tore through his flesh as it came free. Blood spilled warmly down his belly.

A thousand noisy flapping wings swarmed toward him, obscuring his vision. Bells tolled inside his head. His skin became slick with sweat. His stomach heaved, filling the back of his throat with stinging bile. He gave up his fight with gravity and collapsed onto his back, favoring his left side.

He was vaguely aware of Jordie popping open the buttons of his shirt, then of her bending over him, packing the wound with the squares of camo print.

“Jordie?”

He wasn't sure if he spoke her name or merely thought it.

But he must've said it because, she snapped, “What?”

“Why—”

“Shut up, I'm busy.”

“Why—”

“Don't talk to me!”

“Why aren't you running for the road?”

She stopped what she was doing and looked into his face. He could tell from her expression that the idea hadn't even occurred to her.

Her naked bewilderment lasted for several heartbeats before she set her jaw and said, hoarsely, “It's raining,” then bent back over him and resumed her effort to stanch the wound.

She found several batteries in the sunken compartment of the trunk where the spare tire was stored. When she put them in the spotlight, it came on. She used it to search the car thoroughly—glove compartment, under the seats, even under the hood. But the search didn't yield anything.

Since the dome light was growing steadily weaker as the car battery drained, she shut the doors and the trunk, but not before collecting a whole bottle of Advil and anything else she thought would be useful toward saving Shaw's life.

She carried the tarp over to where he lay. He was conscious, because when she shone the spotlight on him, he snarled and told her to turn the effing thing off.

“I've got to see what I'm doing.”

She set the spotlight on the floor beside him but out of his reach and made two other trips to the car, carrying back with her items she'd taken from the trunk. When she'd assembled everything, she spread the tarp out on the floor near him. “Do you think you can move onto this?”

He looked at it, then at her, and shook his head.

“This floor is filthy.”

“So's that tarp.”

“I made sure the clean side is up.”

He harumphed. “Like that matters.” Weakly he gestured toward the bloody piece of metal she'd stabbed him with, now lying on the floor a few feet away. “That thing has enough bacteria on it to kill an elephant.”

“Then let me call 911.”

“No.”

“Do you want to die?”

He gave her a hard look, then made an effort to scoot onto the tarp. He clenched his teeth and growled in pain.

“Here, let me help.” She moved to his side and slid one arm beneath his shoulders, the other beneath his waist. “I'll support your upper body while you use your feet—”

“Just do it.”

It took three tries, which must have been agonizing for him, but she got him onto the tarp. By the time he went limp, he was sweating from every pore, and his lips were compressed so tightly they were rimmed with white.

As gently as possible, she began removing the blood-soaked bandanas from the wound and when the last one came away, she had to swallow her gorge. The open gash was four inches long and about three-quarters of an inch wide at its widest point. The flesh inside was an angry red.

He came up on his elbow only high enough to assess the damage. He took one look, then lay back down. “Your bad. You missed the artery.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know how to kill a man.”

Even though she'd missed a major vessel, the wound was quickly filling up with blood. She pressed another folded square against it. He spat an obscenity, then clamped his jaw so tightly the bones stood out. She guided his hand down and placed it over the cloth. “Keep pressure on it.”

Moving hastily, she retrieved the pocket knife and opened the blade, then doused it with water from one of their remaining bottles. They were down to only three bandanas. She used the knife to cut one of them into strips.

“What are you doing?”

She begin tying the ends of the strips together. When she was done, she pulled all the knots tight, then gauged the length of the strip she'd formed against his waist size. “It helps that you're slender. Raise up.”

He must've realized what she had in mind. He lifted his hips high enough for her to thread one end of the strip behind his back. Pulling it taut, she tied the two ends over the square covering the wound.

“That's the best I can do until you let me call 911.”

He closed his eyes and breathed hard through his nostrils as though to stave off waves of pain. She pushed four Advil tablets into his mouth and uncapped a bottle of water. “Here. Drink.”

He raised his head to take a few sips. She poured too quickly and water dribbled from the corners of his lips. Without thinking, she wiped the trickles off his scruffy chin, off the C-shaped scar, then off his neck.

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” She sat back on her heels. “Shaw—”

“Forget it.”

“You don't know what I was going to say.”

His eyes remained closed. “No, but that's the first time you've addressed me by name, so I know I won't like anything you say that starts that way.”

“Let me call for help.”

He merely shook his head.

“Please.”

“Turn out the light.”

“No.”

He opened his eyes. “You're using up the…the batteries, and they're all I've got.”

“Sure they are.”

He sighed. “I swear.”

He seemed close to passing out. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open and focused. His speech was slow, as though he had to search for each word, and holding a thought seemed increasingly difficult.

He repeated softly, “Turn out the light.”

Since she hadn't found extra spotlight batteries anywhere in the car, she reasoned that he might be telling the truth. She switched off the spotlight, plunging them into darkness.

For a time neither said anything, then he murmured, “If I go under, will you take off?”

“In all honesty? I haven't decided.”

“Sucks to be you, Jordie Bennett. Always torn between morality and self-interest.”

“Perhaps I should become more like you.”

“Amoral, you mean.”

“If you were amoral, I would be dead.”

“Greed has kept you alive, not morality.” He shifted his weight slightly and moaned. He panted through the pain like a woman in labor. After a minute, he said, “If I pass out, will you turn this place inside out looking for the car keys?”

“Probably. And my phone. What did you do with my phone?”

“It's a secret. When did you find that propeller blade?”

“While I was washing.”

“I shouldn't have been so nice to you.”

“It was wedged between two boards in the wall. I couldn't get it out while you were counting down. I had to leave it there.”

“When I discovered the arrow—”

“I never saw the arrow until you broke it over your knee.”

“I thought I'd trumped you.”

“So did I. I knew I had only one chance to get to that broken propeller.”

“And you took it.”

“Yes.”

“That was brave. But remember…if you're ever in a similar situation…”

When his voice faltered, she prompted him. “What?”

“Go for the kill.”

“I'll bear that in mind.”

She heard the rustle of the tarp beneath him as he moved restlessly, then he lay still and silent for a time. Finally, he said, “You…you…”

She pulled her legs out from under her hips and leaned down closer. “Yes?”

“You could have killed me a dozen times over by now. What's kept you from it?”

“I told you, and I meant it, that I didn't want you to die.”

“Because of the kiss?”

“The kiss?”

“You remember it. Sexy as hell? When we went from zero to sixty in about a second and a half? Virtual foreplay?”

“I don't recall it like that.”

“Hell you don't.”

“I just don't want you to die, that's all.”

“Okay, okay. Thanks for that.”

He groped in the darkness until he found her left hand, drew it to him, and laid it on his chest. The hair on it was soft, the skin hot. It was rising and falling rapidly and erratically. He rubbed the back of her hand and rolled slightly onto his right side, the one uninjured.

“But in case…in case you were to change your mind…”

Too late she realized what he was doing. He clipped the plastic cuff around her left wrist and his right. She made an inarticulate sound of outrage, mostly at herself for being so easily tricked by talk of sexy kisses.

She pulled hard on her hand, knowing already that it was futile. Then she remembered the knife. She had set it down after using it to cut the bandana into strips. She began searching for it with her free hand.

But he was ahead of her on that, too. “It's in my seat pocket,” he said, “where the cuff was. It was careless of you to set it down within my reach after you used it.”