“I’ve been watching you.”
Oddly enough, I didn’t find much comfort in that. And I knew of a driving instructor whose leg still ached in rainy weather and who would probably agree wholeheartedly with me. Slamming my door shut, he climbed into the driver’s seat. Two seconds later we were hopping curbs with the rest of the rabbits. Monkey see, monkey do might not be the best learning tool out there, but at least we were in motion. I couldn’t guarantee the result would have been the same if I’d been behind the wheel.
As it stood now, I was hanging my head over the floorboards and trying my damnedest not to be thoroughly sick. The nausea was a living, breathing creature clawing its way upward without mercy. Air disguised as ground glass burned my nose and throat as a vise tightened on my head with every heartbeat. I still had the gun clenched tightly in my right hand, but my fingers were losing their grip. They slowly unlocked and the Steyr dropped onto the rubber mat below. I let it. I’d half forgotten what it even was. Something as familiar as my own face had suddenly turned so foreign as to be unidentifiable. That and the warm dribble against my neck and cheek had me blinking in confusion. “Is it raining?” I didn’t need to see the puzzled look of worry that Michael shot at me over his shoulder to know it was a stupid question. Raining? Sure, because it rained inside cars all the time.
The hand I put to the back of my head came away red—poppy red like Natalie’s freckles. Long-gone Natalie and long-gone Lukas; they were two of a kind. Squeezing my eyes shut, I clutched desperately at the raveled edges of consciousness. No. Not gone. Here. Lukas was here, and he needed help—my help. He was in trouble, and this time I could do something about it. This time I wasn’t a boy trapped under a dead horse . . . even though I could feel the sand beneath me, the sun hot and liquid on my head. Sucking in a breath that didn’t seem to want to go down, I opened my eyes and raised my head to see blond hair haloed by oscillating red and blue lights. It was Lukas . . . just as I remembered him.
“Lukas?”
The car jerked to the left as the blazing lights careened off to the right. I went with them, pulled along in their wake until I was lost. They flew around me, brilliantly glowing butterflies. I soared with them long and far until I sailed off the edge of the world. Beyond that, it’s been said, can be nothing good. Beyond the end, I’ve heard, lies only the abyss. Beyond can be only darkness and monsters.
Big deal.
I’d already lived through both.
Chapter 17
In the tenth grade I played football. I wasn’t particularly good or bad, but I was quick. Outrunning slow-witted assholes who wanted to rip me to shreds had come in handy later in life while working for Konstantin. But there had been one occasion, one game where I hadn’t been quite fast enough. For that, I’d paid the price, and it was one that the three-hundred-pound gorilla who sat on my head was more than happy to collect. It was a feeling I would never forget. A giant fist had tightened on my head until I thought I could hear the literal cracking of bone. The pain was so intense that it froze the air in my lungs, turned thoughts into congealed mud, and sent jagged shards of glass splintering through my brain.
I would have given anything to be experiencing that cakewalk again.
“He needs a doctor.”
Insistent; the words were very insistent, with a calm that sounded stretched to a jaw-locking tightness. There was a pause as I floated in an ocean of black agony, and then came more words. “I can’t put him on. Are you even listening to me? Do you need the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of unconscious?”
Lukas. It was Lukas’s voice, and from the sound of it he was giving someone hell. Now who . . . ah. Random neurons collided with a spark. Saul. I’d told him to call Skoczinsky if he ended up on his own. Apparently the situation we were in was close enough to qualify.
I levered up eyelids that fought me every millimeter of the way. The slice of dusty yellow light that rewarded me was a cheerful ice pick drilling through the liquid mush that used to be my brain. Hissing with pain, I tried to cover my eyes with a clumsy and uncooperative hand.
The conversation continued unchecked as my heroic efforts went unnoticed. “He’s been shot and he hit his head. He may even have a skull fracture, and the first aid I know doesn’t cover that.” I could guess how those biology and anatomy lectures went at the Institute. Here’s the best location to inflict damage; don’t worry about fixing it. It won’t ever be an issue.
From the feel of the surface slick and cool beneath me, I was still in the backseat of the car. And from the sound of Lukas’s rigid annoyance, he was right by my head. He was probably standing in the open door with his back to me, but I wasn’t about to shift the watermelon substituting as my head to see, so I did the next best thing.
Holding up my hand, I croaked, “Phone.”
Instantly Lukas popped into my view, his face directly over mine. From what I could see of the god-awful purple and gold shirt, it was stained to a darker color, almost black, from blood—my blood. He might disparage his medical skills, but it was obvious he had tried. “Stefan.” His face brightened fractionally. “You’re awake.”
“More . . . or . . . less.” Every single word was a molten lava of misery. “Phone.”
He hesitated, then put the cell phone in my hand. “Better you than me.”
Stubborn paranoia meeting paranoid stubbornness; talk about your rock and a hard place. Lukas and Saul were born to butt heads. I fumbled the phone to my ear. “Saul?”
“That is one smart-ass little shit, Korsak.” Saul’s voice, slightly tinny, stung my ear. “Are you sure you don’t want to toss him back?”
“He’s not . . . fish.” I wanted to be amused. I settled on queasy. “Saul, we’re in trouble.” True enough, and the last thing I wanted to do was involve Saul. He’d done more than enough already, gone far above and beyond. Dragging him deeper into this mess was not the way to thank him. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any way around it, not if Lukas and I were going to survive.
“Yeah, I gathered that from the Boy Wonder.” He exhaled and I heard the sound of a hand rubbing over a face. “Tell me, Smirnoff. How bad are you, really?”
“I’m not dying.” At least I didn’t think I was. My eyes were beginning to focus with glacial speed. Through the car windows I could see a low, squat building and weeds as high as a man’s waist. It looked as if Lukas had done a good job of finding us somewhere off the beaten path. “But Lukas is right. Think I need a doctor. Someone who can keep his mouth shut.”
Saul’s network of subcontractors was numerous and far-reaching. If anyone could come up with the name of a competent and ethically flexible physician, it would be him. “That’s a tall order. Let me think a second. Where are you anyway?”
“North. Close to the state line.” My legs were already bent and I used the leverage to try to push myself up. I managed to rise up on one elbow, but the effort had me soaked in sweat. “I don’t know how they keep finding us. It’s been twice now. They come out of nowhere.”
“They haven’t been trailing you?”
“No.” As the arm supporting me began to shake, I felt two hands behind my shoulders bracing and easing me up to a sitting position. Twisting slightly, I leaned back against the seat and gave Lukas a grateful nod.
“The kid’s tagged then,” Saul said brusquely. “Hell, they microchip dogs and cats. It was only a matter of time.”
Tagged. Shit. That was the thought that had slithered away from me when I was stealing our latest car. I’d wanted to avoid anything with a GPS, but here I was hauling around my own walking, talking homing device. “Goddamnit.” And I’d thought my headache couldn’t possibly get any worse. “We’re screwed,” I said bleakly.
“Maybe not. If you can get to a doctor, he might be able to remove the chip as well as fix up your black and blue ass.” I could hear the distant sound of typing. “And I think I have the man for the job. Okay, his name is Lewis Vanderburgh, better known as ‘the Babysitter.’ He lost his license ten years ago and just got out of the joint last February.”
“The Babysitter?”
“Use your imagination,” he ordered curtly over a thick layer of disgust. “Needless to say he wasn’t too
