Well, no one but Gwen.
“Borrow,” she muttered, hauling Mac along—all muscles, no working brain—and jerking the driver’s door open to discover
Or maybe they’d just expected her to walk out that door when she’d had the first chance, leaving Mac behind.
Scrambling, she grabbed the case, shoving it in beside Mac. She flipped his legs inside and slid the door closed with a resounding slam.
She didn’t bother to readjust the driver’s seat; she perched on the edge, reaching for the pedals, and got the thing started, pulling away with an inadvertent squeal of tire as nerves overcame control and her foot jerked down. Out of the parking lot, along the feeder lane that ran parallel to the stockyard spur of the railroad line, and out onto—
Onto...
“What do
This one didn’t seem highly traveled, and the light traffic was exactly what she wanted. She shot out onto the road, turning left toward a distant cross street, and then fought a battle with her foot—getting their speed down enough so they wouldn’t be a cop magnet.
How could she explain the blood to anyone? Hers and the woman’s, all over her shirt. How could she explain Mac? Stunned but not drugged and still looking dangerous. And what the hell would she do if he roared out of his little daze in full dark warrior mode?
More than that...what would she do if he didn’t?
She managed to slow the van. A glance in the rearview mirror revealed no pursuit. By the time she reached the cross street and recognized the I-25 on-ramp not far to the east of the intersection, her hands, wound and all, were nearly steady on the steering wheel.
The suitcase shifted as she took the turn; resolutely, she refused to check back. Either it was rolling around or it wasn’t. Either Mac was rolling around or he wasn’t.
“Shoulda woulda coulda been in Vegas,” she muttered, shifting lanes to reach the highway entrance ramp.
And then, there they were. Merging with traffic, heading for the airport. Imagine that. Evil didn’t just live in Albuquerque—it lived right in the middle of it.
“I am twenty-nine years old,” she said, “and I have found evil.”
It didn’t even sound pretentious.
It just sounded true.
Mac tried to think past the pounding in his head. The blade didn’t help, lurking in sullen retreat. The awkward stretch of his arms to the side, the hard floor beneath him...those things didn’t help, either. The metal biting into his wrists—
“What?” he said.
“Dammit.” Gwen’s voice bit off in frustration—not far, but muffled all the same. “Ow!”
Frustration. Not fear. Pained, but not hurt.
The blade told him nothing. Sulking. Sulking, why, again?
He opened his eyes and found the hotel carpet an inch away. Wow. That sure as hell was dirtier than he’d thought it would be.
He had no doubt. As much as the blade had indulged its sickening obsession, slopping tortured emotions through Mac with abandon, it hadn’t truly engaged anyone for days. Nearly a week. No blood, no flesh, no sustenance. That its hunger plucked at him now...
No, no great surprise.
The handcuffs. Now, those were a surprise.
Gwen muttered another expletive.
“Maybe I can help,” he suggested, wincing at the very sound in his head but his voice no less dry for it.
“Mac!” Her footsteps vibrated lightly on the floor; her bare feet came into view. “You’re back!”
Had her voice always been that loud? He winced again, making no manly effort to hide it. “I’m—”
He found a growl in his throat, his wrists battering against metal cuffs looped around the leg of the bed, his body burning with the blade and the sudden exhaustion of the effort he’d apparently made to free himself.
“And that,” Gwen said, plunking down in a chair she’d pulled up where he could see her, “is why you’re cuffed in the first place.”
For the first time, he saw her shirt—stained with blood both smeared and soaked in. “I don’t—” He couldn’t quite finish past the dread in his throat. “God, Gwen, tell me I didn’t—”
He burst through the other side of it with wrists throbbing and head shattering and stomach
The blade had him. After all this time—
“Tell me,” he said, barely more than a whisper, and his eyes closed against the painful light of the room, “I didn’t do that.”
“I— What?” She must have realized, looking at herself. “It’s not all mine. And what’s mine is thanks to that...that...knife-sword-thing of yours.” She said it defiantly, as though he might laugh at her for thinking she’d seen what she’d seen.
But he had no doubt. Whatever had happened during those missing moments in the warehouse—a woman, the high emotion boiling straight through the blade to his soul, the man above so very certain of Mac’s nature—so very close to being right—the blade had obviously revealed itself to her.
“Please,” he said, forcing himself to audible speech. “Tell me I didn’t kill that woman.”
“Not you,” she said, fast enough. “But she’s dead. And we’re only here because that man thinks he can turn you. I’d ask what that means but I kinda maybe know. Even if I don’t actually have any idea.” She came down off the chair, creeping just close enough to touch his leg. Hesitant, but not for herself—more afraid she’d somehow hurt him. Her hand was wrapped in duct tape.
“Back off!” he snarled, and then was so very sorry, groaning as his head split into shards of thought and being. Slowly eased, as he remembered to breathe again. Not yet. It didn’t have him yet.
Dimly, he heard her say, “I think it’s mad at me. I dared to touch it, you know. And I took you away from there. I...I think I stopped it, when it would have taken you. For good, I mean. Don’t ask me how.”
He forced his eyes open. He had a good view of her now, on her knees on the dirty carpet, one hand on his leg, her hair carelessly twisted back and her light blue eyes gone dark with concern.
Her T-shirt, smeared and blotted with blood, except for the clean wrinkled circle just beneath the notch of her collarbones.
