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If she were any more alert, I would call her out for fucking with me, but the longing I saw in her eyes was too sincere.
I stood, trying to figure out a way to get my six-feet-five, two-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame positioned in such a way that I could put my arms around her without ripping out her IV or crushing her.
When she scooted her body over, the sheet moved with her. I could see her hospital gown had ridden up, exposing her bare hip. I grabbed the bedclothes and covered her before reaching down to give her an awkward hug.
“Lie with me.”
It popped into my head again that Siren was playing me, but after one look into her imploring eyes, I rested my hip on the bed. “Be careful,” I warned when she tried to scoot over a second time. I gingerly put one arm around her waist and folded the other above her head. She closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a different nurse scowled at me. Before she could speak, I eased away from the sleeping Siren, put my finger to my lips, and stood. I brushed past her and out the door when my cell phone rang with a call from the man who’d hired me to do a job I failed.
“Rile,” I answered, leaning against the tiled wall of the corridor.
?
??How is Siren?”
“Out of surgery.”
“And?”
I shrugged my shoulder, not that he could see me. “Stable,” I muttered, trying to recollect the thoughts I’d been able to formulate before Siren’s request to hold her caused my mind to go blank. “Rile, I—”
“Say no more. Your first duty is to your partner.”
“But, Konstantine—”
“Is dead,” he said, interrupting me for the second time.
“Kensington?” I asked of the woman we’d been hired to protect from a Hungarian madman. The Hungarian madman I’d let escape after he shot and almost killed Siren.
“She is safe and asleep at my side.”
“I’m sorry, Rile.” I got the words I’d wanted to say at the beginning of our conversation out.
“I’ll notify Director Hughes of Siren’s condition.”
“Listen, can you keep the details vague for the time being?” If the Director of Irish Military Intelligence found out Siren had suffered several mini-strokes and her memory was sketchy at best, not to mention what the doctor had said about her having trouble controlling movement on the left side of her body, the likelihood of her ever being able to return to duty was minuscule.
“Of course, my friend, given I have none.”
I could envision Rile’s smirk. “For now, she’s out of surgery and her condition is stable. That’s all Hughes needs to know.”
“Very well. We will speak again soon.”
I stuffed my phone back in my pocket, wishing I could get my hands on a shot of bourbon before I went back into Siren’s room. With that thought, the door opened and the nurse stepped out.
“She’s asking for you.”
2
Siren
“Where is Smoke?” I asked when I opened my eyes and felt a cold hand on my wrist.
“Smoke?” asked the woman who was attaching a blood-pressure cuff to my upper arm.
“The man who was here earlier.”
