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The eyes of the woman attending to Bessler bulged from their sockets as they ping-ponged between her and Max.
An attendant in a blue parka started skating toward them.
“Wait!” Ava grabbed the lapels of Bessler’s jacket. “His pills.”
The Good Samaritan sat back on her heels. “Oh, does he have a heart condition?”
“Yes, yes.”
Max growled. “Let’s go.”
Ignoring his command, Ava unzipped Bessler’s jacket and patted his pocket, her hands tracing over his weapon. In a tiny inner zippered pocket, she felt the outlines of a pill bottle. With trembling fingers, she unzipped the pocket and snatched the pill bottle.
“You need to get off that ice—now.”
The attendant skated up. “What happened? Does he need an ambulance?”
“He might have had a heart attack.” The woman pointed to Ava, now crawling across the ice toward Max behind the wall. “His wife was looking for his pills.”
“Ma’am?”
Ava twisted her head over her shoulder. “I’m not his wife. I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”
When she reached the barrier, Max leaned over and pulled her over the wall. She landed on top of him.
“Stupid, stupid thing to do.” He pinned her against the wall, clamping his hands on her shoulders. “Stay down and keep to the wall.”
Bending forward, they edged along the wooden barrier, as the buzz on the ice grew. Was Bessler dead? Why had he gone down? “Max...”
“Shh. We’re going out the front way. I think they hit him from behind the rink, from the mountainside.”
He whipped off his hat and shed his scarf. “Take off that jacket in case they saw you.”
She shrugged off her jacket, shoving the pill bottle in the front pocket of her jeans.
Max grabbed her hand and pulled her behind the rental booth. “We can’t sit around and wait for the shuttle. I saw some taxis by the ski rental shop back toward the bus stop.”
They weaved up and down a few streets, sidling along the walls of buildings, joining groups of pedestrians on the sidewalk. They meandered through the ski shop and exited on the other side.
Max hailed the first taxi he saw. He bundled Ava into the backseat and said, “Snow Haven Lodge and Resort.”
Bessler’s bottle was radiating heat in her pocket and it took all her self-control not to dig it out and discover its contents.
When the taxi reached the hotel, they marched through the lobby without speaking one word. Finally, when Max slammed the door of their suite behind him, she pulled out the bottle.
He took a turn around the room, raking a hand through his hair. “What were you thinking? You were supposed to stay out of sight—no matter what.”
“I thought you’d been hit. I saw Bessler go down and almost at the same time you went down, too.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. Nothing else matters.” She flipped off the lid of the bottle and peered inside. Her heart did a somersault in her chest. “Look, Max.”
He stopped pacing and pivoted. “What?”
She dumped the blue pills into her palm and held out her hand. “Two of them. We have two more days together.”
Her smile faded as she studied his face, his jaw hardening, the lines deepening. “I-it’s two more days, Max.”
His harsh laugh frightened her.
“Is that how I’m supposed to measure out my days left on earth? By counting little blue pills?”
She closed her hand around the pills and dropped her lashes. “These represent two days we didn’t have before.”
“It doesn’t make any difference, Ava. Are we going to lure other Tempest agents here, get them killed and steal their stash?”
Anger flashed across her chest. “That’s not how it happened. I’m sorry for Adrian, but he found us. I just took advantage of a terrible situation. Does that make me selfish? Then, yes, call me selfish for wanting to spend another two days with the man I love, the man I can’t live without.”
He reached her in two long steps and crushed her against his body. He buried his face in her hair. “You have to, Ava. You have to go on without me.”
She clung to him, tears stinging her eyes. “I have the formula for the antidote, Max. I can save you.”
