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CHAPTER 6
Evan
The second Redtold me I’d been hit, a sharp, stinging pain registered in my brain. It was the shock of the sensation more than the depth of it that caused me to veer partway into the lane next to me. I gritted my teeth and breathed through the discomfort while I course-corrected.
Red climbed over the console and into the passenger seat, pulling her medical bag with her. She snapped on her seatbelt, then bent toward me to assess the damage to my arm. When she pulled out nitrile gloves and snapped them into place, I realized she was going to do what she was trained to do: treat the wounded in place.
I glanced at her as she cut off my shirt sleeve to access the wound. She was serene and focused and even more beautiful now that she was fully in her element as a healer. I turned my attention back to the road and let her set to work.
She doused my wound with water, then poked and prodded. I drew in a sharp breath but didn’t lose my focus.
“It’s a graze. It will hurt for a while, but it should heal fine,” she said.
“Lucky me.” I grimaced as she prodded the tissue surrounding the wound. While she pulled out gauze and bandaging to dress it, I did my part by planning ahead to the next step. “As soon you’re done there, I need you to hit 2 on the speed dial on my phone,” I told her. “We need to double back and reroute to somewhere new, just in case those thugs played phone-a-friend and have someone waiting to pick up our trail.” I took the next exit, skidding around the sharp curve and blending into city street traffic without hitting the brake.
“At this rate, you’ll get us arrested,” Red said.
“At least then we’d be safe,” I said.
“You think so?” She sounded skeptical. Then again, in her world, it was probably pretty unusual to call 9-1-1 for help or to count on civilians for backup. “Wait, do you really think we should trust the police with this?
“With arresting those thugs, yes.” I glanced at her. At this point, I wouldn’t trust anyone else with her life, not even the team she seemed so fond of. “With your protection, no. Your secrets, whatever they are, are safe with me. I won’t take you to the police.”
“Good to know.” She dried my wound, applied ointment and Steri-Strips, and layered on gauze. She wrapped a bandage around it so tightly, I wondered if she had cut off circulation to my hand.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Shit, that’s tight.”
“It’s supposed to be. You should take a course of oral antibiotics, too.”
“Let’s call my boss first and worry about long-term infection potential later, ok?” I was keeping a close eye on the rearview mirror and hadn’t seen any indication of a tail, but I wouldn’t be totally at ease until I knew we had a safe place to land.
Red packed up her medical bag and pulled off her gloves, then hit speed dial 2 on my phone on the console between us. Bennet answered quickly, and I summarized our dilemma, skipping over the part where I’d been grazed by a bullet. On the seat next to me, Red hunkered down and closed her eyes, as if treating me had exhausted her. And it probably had, after the unavoidable adrenaline spikes brought on by two high-speed chases and a hail of bullets.
By the time Bennet finished giving me the overview of arrests he’d monitored on the police scanner and provided me guidance about where to drive to stay out of sight while he worked on a new safehouse location, Red was sound asleep. Her deep breaths were punctuated by the occasional snort, after which she would shift and settle again, looking as peaceful as an angel.
I didn’t mind driving around for the next few hours with her sleeping next to me. We made occasional stops. Each time, she would open her eyes just barely, take the water I insisted she drink, and either ask about where we were or go back to sleep without a word. If I’d had to guess, I would have said she wasn’t fully awake or processing what was happening. But her pupils, breathing, and pulse rate were fine, so I assumed this was her body’s way of repairing itself. And who was I to argue with any part of Samantha Bond, least of all her body?
At one of our last stops for the day, about an hour out from the cabin in the woods Bennet had set up for us, I walked around to her side of the van to stretch my legs. I opened the door and helped her drink some water. This time, instead of closing her eyes, she reached for me. She laid her head on my chest. It felt right, like she belonged there, like it had when I’d tucked her into my bed. I wrapped my arms around her. A soft, contented sound rose from her throat.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.
I hugged her closer. “You can tell me anything.” And I hoped she would. With the sun sinking low on the horizon, peepers chirping in the ring of trees and shrubs around us, and a soft breeze caressing our skin, I wanted to stay there, holding her all night while listening to everything she could think to tell me.
To keep myself in the moment and my head in the job at hand, I tried to channel what Bennet would say if he saw me standing there like a hard-crushing teenager. Get laid. His words came back to me, and as always, my cock agreed. Not helpful in the current situation.
“After the hell I saw in the army, I was all ready to go into private practice,” Red continued. “Then my old friend TJ recruited me to HEAT.”
Kind of like Bennet and me.
“For a long time, I didn’t realize I’d gone from the frying pan into the fire,” she continued. “Now my patients aren’t just young, healthy people risking life and limb every day. They’re also my friends. What if I fail them? What if I lose one?”
I wanted to assure her she never would, but that would be a lie and she would know it. In any line of work where bad guys might come after you, people could get hurt or worse. “You’re amazing at your job,” I told her, embarrassed at how inadequate my words sounded.
“I’m so tired,” she said. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in so long.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Rest now.”
She hugged me tightly and breathed against me, as if inhaling my scent. “Ev?”
