“Miss Reid, out here, please.”
Sam stepped back and Cassie came out into the hall. Sam didn’t have to tell her why he’d wanted her to step out, because when she caught sight of Annabelle, her eyes widened and her brow furrowed.
“Jesus, Ann, you look like shit.” She rushed forward and took her friend’s hands. “And you’re cold as ice.” She began to feel Annabelle’s arms, moving the sleeves up as if searching for wounds. When she got to her right shoulder, Annabelle suddenly let out a piercing cry. Pain had stabbed through her joint, shooting down to her finger tips and even down her right side.
“Your shoulder’s jacked up, at the very least.”
“Is that the medical term?” Annabelle joked, trying to hide her fear and exhaustion behind humor. “’Jacked up’?”
Why did everything bad always have to be named “Jack?” Like when someone was messing with you, they were “jacking” with you. And when someone was hurt, they were “jacked” up. What was the deal with that? She didn’t like it.
“It is,” Cassie replied, not pausing in her examination. She continued to look Annabelle over, pulling the edge of her shirt up to expose a taut stomach that was already bruised from Annabelle’s unpleasant treatment by the Colonel’s men. And now there were new scrapes and bruises forming, but nothing life-threatening.
Sam remained with them in the hallway, watching in that careful way that Annabelle realized long ago just came with being an assassin.
When Cassie got to her right thigh, Annabelle barely stifled another cry of pain.
“You see these strange sorts of dents or tears in your clothing?” Cassie pointed at the two larger anomalies in Annabelle’s bullet-proof outfit, one over her right shoulder, the other over her right thigh. “That’s where the bullets hit you. And that’s why those areas hurt so much. Your leg is going to be really bruised, and will probably hurt to walk on, but nothing’s broken. Your shoulder, on the other hand, is sprained.” Cassie sighed and straightened. “The force of the bullet striking you must have jerked the ligaments back until they tore.”
Annabelle didn’t say anything. It made sense, after all. And, what was there to say?
“Now, you need to get warmed up. I know you can undress and bathe yourself, Ann, but the truth is, I want to make sure there’s nothing I’m missing. Plus, you might need some help when it comes to using your right arm.”
“Fine,” Annabelle nodded once and headed back toward the second bedroom on the left, which sported a large bathroom and a rather nice shower.
It wasn’t until she was standing under the water and Cassie had left the room that Annabelle remembered the vial of Craig’s Erythromelalgia cure. What had happened to it? Had Jack ever gotten the brick out and retrieved it? The men had come around the corner and begun shooting before Annabelle had had a chance to find out.
She thought of this as she washed her hair with one hand and then rinsed it out as best she could. Then she used the same hand – her left – to soap her body. This wasn’t nearly as difficult. When she was clean and rinsed, she stepped out and dried off.
It seemed to be the night for late revelations, however, because it was then that she realized she had no clothes to change into.
“Mr. Brandt, thank you for everything you’ve done.” Sam stepped into the room where Jack lay propped up against the head boards. He nodded at Craig, who stood by the bed, monitoring Jack’s blood pressure. “When you’re done there, give us a minute alone.”
Craig looked up at Sam and then back at Jack. He pulled the cuff off of Jack’s arm and laid it on the table beside the bed. Jack nodded at him and Craig nodded back.
“Sure.” He stepped around the bed and left the room, softly closing the door behind him.
When he was gone, Jack straightened a little more and pinned Sam with a blue-eyed gaze that would have made a lesser man wet himself.
Before Jack could say anything, Sam raised his hands in a gesture of placation. “I’m more sorry than you can possibly imagine, Jack. I had
“You gave me an untried weapon, Sam. You nearly got us both killed.” Jack’s tone was low and deadly. His expression turned lethal. “I trusted you,” He ground the words out through clenched teeth.
Sam swallowed audibly, slowly lowering his hands to his sides. “It was tried, Jack. I swear it. I never would have given you that gun without testing it first.” He shook his head, once, from side to side. His eyes were wide and pleading. “I shot it and cleaned it and shot it and sighted it and goddamned cleaned it and shot it again.” He ran his hand over his face. It was shaking.
Jack watched him carefully. What blood he had in his veins was boiling with fury, but at the same time, he knew Samuel Price very well. And he recognized agonizing guilt when he saw it.
“Christ, Jack. I thought it was perfect,” Sam continued. “I never would have given it to you otherwise. You have to know that.”
Jack watched his old friend for several silent moments more and then finally pulled his gaze away. He let himself sink into the cushions behind him and closed his eyes. The truth was, he knew good and well that Sam would just as soon see himself killed than see Jack hurt. Jack was the son that Sam had never had. And the gun was a relic. Jack should have known better than to trust his life to something so uncertain.
What had happened was an accident. A horrible, nearly fatal accident.
He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I do know that, Sam.” His Sheffield accent was incredibly strong. He was incredibly tired. “But the gun jammed after one bloody shot,” he continued, his tone soft. “Four men came around the corner into that chamber.” He opened his eyes again and re-focused them on Sam.
Understanding dawned in Sam’s expression. His eyes widened even further.
“Annabelle’s earned her bones,” Jack said. “Whether she wants them or not.” He closed his eyes again and took a slow, deep breath. “We’re both lucky she’s such a bloody damned good shot.” A low pulsing dread was riding through his system. And for good reason. Annabelle wasn’t going to be happy when she learned she’d single- handedly killed at least three men. “And I think I’m gonna let you tell her.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair again and took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. “Fair ‘nough.”
“How is she?” Jack asked then, pinning Sam with another blue steel gaze.
“A little bruised up, with a sprained shoulder. She’s in the shower now.”
Jack’s brows raised. “Then she’ll want clothes.”
Sam’s face fell. He blew out a sigh. “
Once new clothing had been procured and everyone was clean and fed and had had a chance to rest, the group of them moved from Sam’s apartment to another safe house not too far away.
Sam wanted them to keep moving to throw any sniffers off of their trail. But Jack had to remain more or less in bed for several days, so only smaller moves were allowed.
By the third day and their second move, Jack was up and moving around.
“Sit down, Jackie, you stubborn old coot. I’ll get you some tea.”
“I’m fine, Bee.” Jack kept his tone cordial, but he was clearly irritated by the extra attention. Annabelle watched him move down the hall toward one of the cushioned seats in the study and she tried very hard not to smile.
Sam had moved them into a renovated mansion for their second shift, and it turned out that the mansion actually belonged to Jack. It reminded Annabelle a lot of the pictures she’d seen of the Winchester Mansion in San Francisco, which she’d always wanted to visit. Only, this particular house didn’t have more than a hundred rooms and she was pretty sure there were only the two bathrooms. Still, one of them did have a claw-foot tub. Pretty damned Winchester-ry, if you asked her.
On the day after Jack had been shot, he’d called her into the room where he was laying. She went in, relieved to see him looking more or less like his normal self. She loved that
He’d told her that the vial he’d retrieved from the chamber beneath Buell Hall was under the seat in the stolen Ford Mustang downstairs and that she needed to go and get it and hide it somewhere else. And not tell anyone where.
