Hell on Wheels (20 page)

“Yeah, I call it holdin’ it together when you’re scared t’death, but you continue to function in a reasonable, rational fashion. You’re quite a woman, Ali.”

Reasonable and rational?

He must’ve forgotten the part where she threatened to bail off the back of a speeding motorcycle.

Ali gave him her best
you’re certifiably crazy
look and shook her head. “Let’s see if you still think I’m ‘quite a woman’ once I start poking around in that wound.”

Sheesh, his undershirt was soaked. If it weren’t for the few patches of white left here and there, she might’ve thought the thing was made of burgundy material, and he was standing there talking to her as if nothing was wrong. As if he wasn’t
shot
.

Her stomach lurched.

God, don’t puke. Don’t puke.

Just thinking the word made her need to puke.

“Y’gonna hurl again?” he asked.

“
No
,” she assured him, lifting her chin and motioning him toward the toilet seat. “I’m going to cut away your shirt, clean your wound, and hopefully convince you to take yourself to a hospital.”
And
try
my
darndest
not
to
puke
my
guts
up.

“Negative on the last part.”

“Fine,” she growled. “But the first two are definitely going to happen. So take a seat, bucko, and let’s get started.”

He grinned and, like always, the sight left her breathless. Breathless was good, breathless made her momentarily forget the urge to blow chunks.

With a grace so unusual in a man of his size, he lowered himself to the toilet seat. Facing the tub, he presented her with his back, a move for which she was silently grateful. She may be talking the big talk, but she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to walk the big walk once she got going.

She’d never been very good with blood. And there was a
lot
of blood.

Her hands shook as she rifled through her purse and pulled out the little scissors she used to trim loose threads and the occasional wild nose hair.

Nate glanced at her over one large shoulder. “Y’plan to cut my shirt away with those?”

She looked down at the teensy silver scissors and frowned. “Yeah. So?”

“So, I don’t wanna be here all night.”

With one swift move, he slid the huge knife he kept secured at his waist out of its leather sheath and flipped it in the air, neatly catching it by the wickedly sharp blade to offer her the handle.

“Uh,” she gingerly accepted the menacing length of the knife.

“Just make sure the only thing you’re cuttin’ is my shirt,” he said and turned back around. He seemed blithely unconcerned that a woman with shaking hands, who was prone to barf at the slightest provocation, was going to come at him with a seven-inch blade.

She eyed the giant knife for a good long while, silently begging it to do her a huge favor and cut clean and true despite her palsied hands.

“We gonna do this or what?” he asked, still facing the chipped Formica tub.

“
Yes
,” she huffed,
don’t rush me
implied in her tone. Taking one deep breath and two steps forward, she grabbed the neck of his undershirt. “I’m just going through the steps in my mind.”
And
trying
not
to
run
out
the
door
screaming.

“It’s easy,” he told her. “Just pull the shirt out and slice it.”

Uh-huh. Easy. She briefly closed her eyes and, before she could change her mind, pulled the material away from his body and sliced.

The blade cut through the cotton like a hot knife through butter. The two halves of his ruined shirt fell away.

And the ragged wound atop his shoulder waved hi-how-are-ya?

Oh cripes.

She dropped the knife and retched into the sink. Twice.

Wow, she was
such
a loser. He was the one shot, and she was the one losing her lunch.

“You must think I’m a real piece of work,” she told him as she turned on the tap to wash the foul taste from her mouth and the evidence of her rather humiliating little reaction straight down the drain.

Sweating, trying to breathe through her mouth so the metallic scent of his blood didn’t swirl around in her nostrils, she straightened and found him smiling gently.

“Some people’r’cut out for this kinda thing. Some aren’t.”

“Well, I definitely fall into the
aren’t
category, don’t I?”

He reached for her hand. “That’s not a bad thing.”

She grimaced. It was a bad thing when the person who was shot was consoling the person who was perfectly healthy.

She squared her shoulders and said, “Okay, what next?”

“Y’don’t have to do this. I can take care of it myself. It’s really not that bad.”

Not that bad? Not that
bad
?

He had a hole the size of dime through the thick muscle over his collar bone and one the size of a quarter high up on his back shoulder, and it wasn’t that bad?

Yeah, she’d speculated about it before, now she was convinced. He was crazy. Certifiable. Had to be. Sane people were
not
so nonchalant about extra holes in their bodies, especially ones that big and bloody.

“It’ll be easier if I help you,” she told the insane man sitting on the toilet. “So tell me what to do next.”

He offered her another grin, and she could only shake her head. Of all the times to break out that elusive smile…

“In the smaller saddlebag there’s a first aid kit. Grab the disinfectant, the squeeze bottle, the pack of QuikClot, and the gauze bandages.”

She nodded and hurried into the room to do as instructed.

“There’s an extra toothbrush in there, too, if y’need it,” he called.

Oh perfect. Here he was, bleeding down his back and into the waistband of his jeans, and what was his biggest concern? The state of her vomit breath. The night had careened from simply being frightening and bizarre into downright unbelievable. She felt for sure she must’ve somehow become a character in an episode of
The
Twilight
Zone.

Grabbing the first aid supplies—she snagged a bottle of ibuprofen for good measure—she turned to head back to the bathroom.

On second thought…she swung around and snatched up the toothbrush and little tube of toothpaste as well.

After she finished helping him clean and bandage his gunshot wound, then and only then she’d attend to her vomit breath.

Crimeny! She’d been mugged, bugged, surveilled, shot at by an assassin, and now she was about to march into that disgusting excuse for a bathroom and clean out a gunshot wound. She glanced over at the silenced Big Mouth Billy Bass and shook her head.

Don’t worry, be happy.
Right
.

Trudging back into the bathroom, dreading the next few minutes with every step, she silently coached herself.

You
can
do
this. You can do this. You can—

Oh, boy, there was that wound again. Looking like…well, like a bullet hole.

She quickly averted her eyes and dumped the supplies on the counter. Nate turned and once more presented her with his back.

Ugh, that was worse. The back looked so much worse.

Of course, exit holes usually did—or so she’d been led to believe.

“Pour the disinfectant into the squeeze bottle.”

“’Kay,” she uncapped the brown bottle of peroxide and emptied it into the white plastic squeeze bottle. It had a long, narrow, painful looking nozzle.

“Now shove the nozzle into the wound and give a good squish.”

Ali closed her eyes, silently blew out a breath, shoved the nozzle into his tattered flesh and squeezed. The peroxide spilled from the hole in his back, hissing and bubbling like it was mad at the torn flesh. When she glanced over his shoulder, she could see the same frothing pinkish-red mess fizzing down his chest.

Oh cripes.

“Erp.”

“That’s fine, sugar. Take a break if’y’need to.”

“Nope. I’m good.” She thought maybe she’d thrown up a little in her mouth, but…whatever.

“Okay, now grab the pack of QuikClot. Open it up and sprinkle it into the wound, back and front.”

Mr. Stoic wasn’t fooling her. It had to hurt like crazy when she flushed that ragged hole left by the bullet, but except for the single drop of sweat trickling down his left temple, there was no indication he felt the slightest discomfort.

Swallowing down the burning ball of stomach acid sitting at the back of her throat, she grabbed the pack of QuikClot and ripped it open. His wound, sluggishly oozing before the cleansing, was now bleeding in earnest.

“QuikClot works only if applied directly to the leakin’ vessels, so don’t be shy. Really get th’stuff in there,” he instructed, leaning forward slightly to give her more room to work.

As quickly as she could, she shook some powder from the package and pressed it into the angry wound. Amazingly, the river of blood running down his back dried up in an instant.

Huh, it’s miracle powder.

“Good. Now the front.”

He swiveled on the toilet seat and leaned back against the tank. The front of the wound was neater, cleaner, but still oozing blood in a thick line. Straddling his legs, she leaned over him and repeated the process.

Again the bleeding immediately ceased, drying up quicker than a slug hit by salt. And gross. As if the situation wasn’t disturbing enough, she had to go and think of that.

“That’s good, sugar.” His voice was rough.

She looked down, expecting to see him grimacing in pain, but the crazy man was busy eyeballing her cleavage, revealed by the gaping collar of her shirt.

Really? Boobs? That’s what he was thinking about?

She was thinking of gunshot wounds and blood and slugs, and he was thinking of
boobs
?

“You men,” she grumbled with disgust as she backed away, moving toward the sink and the washcloths stacked there. “You really only have a few brain cells, don’t you?”

“Yep,” he chuckled, the sound low and intimate and still so totally foreign to her ears. “But they’re very committed.”

“
Pfft
.”

She wet two washcloths with hot water then twirled her finger, motioning for him to turn back toward the tub. She dropped one of the washcloths over his shoulder and into his lap. “You work on cleaning up your front. I’ll do your back.”

“Roger that.”

As gently as she could, she cleaned the blood from his broad back. Unfortunately, some of it had dried to a sticky paste that required a bit of scrubbing. “Sorry,” she said when he grunted.

“Don’t be,” he hissed, for the first time letting her hear just how bad it really hurt. “It’s gotta be done.”

Yes it did, and amazingly, she was doing it—without tossing her cookies. It was a day for firsts, that was for sure. Then again, it’s not like she had any cookies left to toss.

When they’d washed him clean, she took the bloody washcloths and dumped them in the trash. No amount of laundering would ever make those suckers viable for future use, but she sure as heck didn’t trust the housekeeping staff at Happy Acres not to give it the ol’ college try.

Peeling open two packages of self-adhesive gauze pads, she applied one to each side of the wound.

“There,” she said, dusting off her hands. “All done.”

“Y’did good.”

She rolled her eyes and stepped to the sink, squeezing toothpaste onto the travel-sized toothbrush she’d taken from the first aid kit. “Yeah, I did just great. I only hurled once…er, twice.”

He winked, and she gaped with the toothbrush halfway to her mouth. “Who are you, and what have you done with brooding, morose Nathan Weller?”

He sighed and glanced down at his scarred, callused hands, shaking his head.

It was quite sad, really, that it took the man getting shot before he gave her a true glimpse of who he really was.

“I, uh, checked in with the Knights while you were busy gettin’ us these…charmin’ accommodations.”

She rolled her eyes and started scrubbing the bitter taste of stomach acid from her mouth.

“General Fuller was finally able to speak with the Director of the FBI. It seems he hasn’t a clue what Agent Delaney was investigating. Said the man started actin’ strange in the months before his death.
Secretive
is the word the Director used.”

She spit. “Well, that’s just great.”

He made a face and nodded. “Yeah. But there’s some good news.”

“Oh, yeah?” She wiped her mouth with a hand towel, then wrinkled her nose and tossed it into the sink. The thing smelled like armpits. “Well, what are you waiting for? I could use some good news. Lay it on me.”

“I went through Grigg’s personal correspondence. It appears this was a one-time thing. I didn’t find any other mission requests, so I don’t think he was in the habit of goin’ off reservation.”

“Well,” she sighed, “There’s that. So he was a rogue agent but at least he was a discerning rogue agent.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“No,” she shook her head, seeing her exasperatingly lovable, but most importantly
loyal
brother in her mind’s eye. “I think there has to be a good explanation for his behavior. I can’t fathom him doing something to put me or you or any of the other guys at unnecessary risk. Can you?”

“No. I can’t.”

Good. At least they could agree on that. Grigg may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a traitor, to his country
or
the men he worked with. There was some comfort there, she supposed.

Nate grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen and twisted off the cap. Throwing four gel caps to the back of his throat, he tilted his head and swallowed.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” she asked as she eyed the gauze bandages, checking to see if he was bleeding through. He wasn’t, thank goodness.

“A bit,” he shrugged his good shoulder. “But it’s really just a flesh wound.”

“‘A flesh wound? You’re bloody arm’s off!’” Okay, so her British accent could use some work.