Special Agent's Perfect Cover (20 page)

“Just how old were you?” he asked.

She didn’t even have to think about it. “Almost eleven. It was the year after my mother died,” she added in a quieter voice. There were times when she caught herself still missing her mother. That was never the case with her father. He had died
years
after he’d been lost to her.

Checking everything she’d laid out on the table, she said, “I need one more thing before I get started.” With that, Carly hurried out of the room.

He looked at the items on the table. “What else do you need?” he called out, curious.

“Technically, I don’t need it. But you do,” she told him as she walked back into the room.

She placed an old bottle of whiskey on the table right in front of him. The bottle was dusty. It was also unopened. He glanced at her sharply. If asked, he would have easily bet that there was no liquor in the house. Obviously he would have lost that bet.

“What are you doing with that?” he asked.

Grabbing a kitchen towel, she quickly cleaned the dust on the bottle. She tossed the towel onto the back of a chair, removed the bottle’s cap and set it to the side.

“This is the last bottle my father bought. He dropped dead of a heart attack just as he started to open it. I’m not exactly sure why I’ve kept it all these years, but now I’m glad I did. It’s not going to knock you out,” she told him, getting a glass from the cupboard, “but at least it might help you put up with the pain a little.” Saying that, she poured a liberal amount of the amber liquid into a glass, then held it out to him. “Here.”

Maybe it might help, he thought as he accepted the offered glass. Rather than just sip the drink slowly, as was his habit if he drank at all, Hawk tilted the glass back and drank down the contents quickly, draining it. He put it back down on the table with a “thwack” that resounded through the room.

The whiskey dulled his senses, dragging a fire through his belly and his limbs. He was still having trouble focusing, but now he didn’t mind as much.

“Have at it,” he told her, shifting in his chair so that his injured shoulder now faced her. “I’m ready, Dr. Finn,” he declared, deliberately emphasizing the title she had no claim to.

Well, he might be ready, she thought, but she really wasn’t. Still, this needed to be done, and the longer she delayed, the worse the consequences might be for Hawk. She brought the knife over to the sink and repeated the ritual of liberally pouring the last of the rubbing alcohol over both sides of it. And while she was doing that, she also did one more thing.

“Your lips are moving,” Hawk noticed. “But I don’t hear anything.”

“You’re not supposed to.” That was her answer, but he was obviously waiting for more, so she explained very quietly, “I’m praying.”

The admission surprised him. He thought for a moment, then found that between the triple shot of whiskey he’d just consumed and the blood he’d lost, he really couldn’t do that well.

“Didn’t know you did that,” he told her.

Carly took a deep breath. The rubbing alcohol was all gone and, with it, her excuse for stalling. She was ready, whether or not God was.

“On occasion,” she answered, then nodded at the bottle on the table. “Want another drink before we get started?”

“I’m good,” Hawk told her, bracing himself. He had no intention of passing out like his old man had habitually done. Drinking himself into a stupor was his father’s usual way of operating. “Go ahead.”

Oh God,
was all Carly could think, over and over again, as she applied the point of her knife to Hawk’s flesh and began to go in. Although she knew that this wasn’t his fault, she found that digging for the bullet was exceedingly difficult. For one thing, the muscles in Hawk’s arm were as hard as rocks. Pushing the knife into his flesh was far easier in theory than in actual practice.

Amazingly, Hawk wasn’t making any noise. Muscles or not, this
had
to hurt. “You all right?” she asked, slanting an uneasy glance at him.

“I’ve been better,” he answered through solidly clenched teeth.

She didn’t want to hurt him like this, but she had no other choice. “I’m sorry—”

“Just find it,” he ordered, doing his best not to snap at her.

“I can’t,” she cried, growing more frustrated the deeper she probed for the bullet.

And then, finally, she felt it, felt a definite resistance of another kind. The point of her knife had touched metal.

“I think I found it.”

Thank God,
he silently cried. Out loud he merely muttered, “Good for you.”

“Just a little longer,” she promised, hoping she wasn’t lying as she angled the knife in her hand, trying to get under the bullet to move it along.

And then, in what felt like a million light-years later, she finally managed to get it out. Such a little thing, causing so much damage, she couldn’t help thinking as she put it on the table.

But there was no time to take a breath or admire her handiwork. Without anything to hold it back, Hawk’s blood began to flow freely from the hole in his arm. Acting fast, Carly jammed a large wad of cotton against the wound, temporarily stemming the flow until she could reach for her needle. Her stomach, in turmoil, all but rose up into her mouth.

She felt sick. Whether with relief or the thought of what
could
have happened, she wasn’t sure. But the one thing she knew was that she wanted desperately just to throw up.

As if sensing what she was going through, Hawk said in a very soothing voice, “You’re doing just fine, Carly. Better than I could have hoped.”

“I bet you say that to all the women who stitch you up,” she quipped, releasing a huge sigh. There were at least half a dozen sighs just like that inside of her, waiting for release.

“Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve ever been shot.” He’d gone nine years with the Bureau without incident. He couldn’t say that about himself anymore.

Something didn’t make sense to her. “Then how did you know what I’d need to use?”

He supposed that was a valid question. “It’s not the first time I’ve been around a bullet wound, just the first time I was the one on the receiving end,” he clarified.

“Oh.”

A sense of triumph suddenly hit her. She’d done it. She’d gotten the bullet out, cleaned the wound and sewn it up to prevent it from bleeding. He was going to make it. The relief continued to flower within her.

She took a large gauze pad, opened it and placed the white square on the wound she’d just closed. She then secured it in place with strips of tape around the perimeter of the gauze. That done, she sat back to look at her handiwork.

“I’m done,” she announced with no small pleasure in her voice.

“Nice work,” he commended. After making a quick call to his crew to make sure everything was okay there, he leaned heavily on his good arm and pushed himself up on his feet.

She was instantly alert and on hers. “Where are you going?” she asked.

This wasn’t the time to sit back and take it easy. Good men lost their lives that way, he recalled. “To look around outside and make sure that the guy who shot me isn’t coming back to finish the job.”

“Only place you’re going is to bed, mister,” she informed him, sounding more stern than he could ever recall hearing her. “I can check to make sure that coward hasn’t come back.”

“I’m not going to bed,” he told her firmly.

She knew that tone, knew there was no arguing with it. She compromised. “Okay, then sack out on the sofa if that suits you better. You’ve got a clear view of the front door as well as the window that way,” she pointed out. “But you are not going outside, understood?” she said in a firm, take-no-prisoners voice.

If he’d had more strength, he would have argued with her. But as it was, he really didn’t have the wherewithal to conduct an argument. He just was not in control the way he normally was. Between the blood loss and the quickly consumed alcohol, which had gone straight to his head, he felt as if the room insisted on making a circular journey, and it seemed to be spinning more and more quickly.

“Understood,” he murmured, surrendering. “Did you get a look at him?” he asked her as, with her help, he made his way unsteadily to the couch. Somehow, the distance had become farther than he remembered.

“Yes, at the very last minute,” she told him. And when she recognized the sniper, it was both a shock—and quite honestly—something she’d half expected. “The guy who shot you was Grayson’s pretty boy, Charlie Rhodes.” She set her mouth grimly as she told Hawk, “He’s going to be best man at Mia’s wedding.” It was the startling contrast of blond hair against the dark night that had triggered recognition for her.

All but collapsing onto the sofa, Hawk looked up at her. His brain was foggy, but he struggled to make sense of what he was being told. Rhodes had clearly seen her coming to help him. It was because of her that he was still alive. That meant that, in Rhodes’s eyes, she was a traitor.

Rhodes would go straight to Grayson with that. There was no reason not to. And he knew the consequences.

“The wedding,” Hawk echoed. “How are you going to stop it?”

“Now that they know I’m not one of them?” Was this what he was asking her? The answer was heartbreakingly simple. “I’m not. Grayson is never going to allow me to get anywhere near my sister after what happened here tonight.” Had she been as brainwashed as Grayson had believed her to be, she would have never even been seeing Hawk, much less coming to his rescue by firing at a member of his handpicked circle of associates.

Even exhausted and weak, Hawk knew how huge a sacrifice Carly had just made to save him. “I’m sorry, Carly.”

She forced a smile to her lips, trying to appear as if she’d made her peace. “Not your fault.”

But it was, and he knew it. If he hadn’t turned up, she wouldn’t have had to choose between coming to his rescue or saving her sister. He had to make it up to her. He began to say as much, but discovered to his confusion, that the words just weren’t coming out. Not only that, but his thoughts now moved aimlessly about in his head in slow motion, like disoriented puffs of cotton at the mercy of the hot summer breeze.

Hawk couldn’t think clearly.

He would have to wait to tell her.

Later, he’d tell her later.

It was the last thought that drifted through his head before his eyes slid closed.

With a sudden, jolting start that played along the length of his entire body, Hawk woke up. Initial disorientation dissolved in increments. There was a blanket partially covering him, the bottom half pooling onto the floor. Daylight forcefully pushed its way into the farmhouse through the bay window. Hawk drew in a deep breath, trying to clear his head.

How long had he been asleep?

Sitting up, he saw that he wasn’t alone in the room, the way he’d first thought. Carly was propped up in the dilapidated armchair, her rifle laying across her thighs, giving every appearance of being ready to be pressed into service at a moment’s notice.

She was awake and, unlike him, gave no sign that this was a recent event. When he blinked and looked closer, he realized that she looked tired. Like someone who had been up all night.

Again, that was his fault.

“How long have you been sitting there?” he asked.

The tension that had built up in her neck was practically killing her. She tried to rotate her shoulders to alleviate it a little. It didn’t help. “All night,” she told him.

Guilt burrowed through him and grew. He was the professional here. He was the one who was supposed to be protecting her, not the other way around. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Sleep’s highly overrated,” she answered flippantly, then added more honestly, “I thought it would be safer if one of us stayed awake, just in case.” She saw the concern that passed over his chiseled features, and it touched her that he cared. “I can catch up on my sleep some other time,” she assured him. “Right now, I wanted to be sure Charlie didn’t decide to pay us another little visit, maybe this time bringing along some of his little friends to finish what he started.”

Thinking about it—since she’d had nothing to do all night but watch Hawk sleep, listen for strange sounds and think—it had occurred to her that Grayson’s baby-faced disciple surrounded himself with men who seemed downright dangerous.

She put nothing past that crew, including torture, rape and murder. “The last thing I wanted was for us to be caught by surprise by those happy henchmen.”

Carly got up from the armchair, leaning her rifle against it. She watched Hawk with concern. He’d moaned several times during the night, no doubt due to pain, but mercifully, he’d gone on sleeping.

“How’s the arm?” she asked.

Right now, it felt pretty stiff and ached like hell. “This wouldn’t be the time to take up juggling,” he cracked. “But all things considered, it’s pretty good,” he pronounced, looking at it as if it had just caught his attention. And then he glanced back at her, a grin slowly curving his lips. “You’re welcome to stitch me up anytime.”

That was one task she didn’t ever want to repeat. She’d prefer her stitching to be relegated to mending clothes.