Third Grave Dead Ahead (38 page)

Wednesday sat cross-legged on the opposite end of the countertop, the knife in her lap, and I wondered if it was there to protect her, to keep her from being betrayed by almost every man in her life. Probably not.

The drugs had kicked in and lessened the throbbing in my leg and arm. Clearly, my judgment had been clouded when I decided to make the hazardous journey to the snack bar and summit it like a rookie climbing Everest. I had no idea how I was going to get down.

I could feel Reyes hovering, sticking to the shadows but looking on, watching, waiting. I was just about to tell him to beat it when the door opened and my biker guy, Donovan, walked in like he owned the place. Mafioso and the prince were right behind him. I looked away in embarrassment. Face sutures couldn’t possibly be appealing. Thank goodness I had a huge white bandage covering half my face. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. I’d hate for him to fall out of love with me so soon after falling in.

He fixed a curious gaze on me, then sucked in a soft hiss of breath.

I covered my face with one hand, the other still impossible to raise without screaming.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he asked. He moved a barstool aside for a better look. “Did Blake do this?”

“Who?” I asked, peeking between my fingers.

The prince was studying my leg brace. I had changed into shorts with Cookie’s help and she reattached the leg brace to keep me from bending my leg. Apparently, the tendons had to heal first. The bandages around the knife wound were visible from between the straps on the brace. He put a hand on them then glanced up at me, worry in his eyes.

Mafioso stood against the wall at my feet, hands in his pockets, a decidedly uncomfortable expression lining his features.

“Blake, the guy whose life you saved the other night.”

“Oh, no.” I closed my fingers again. “This is my own doing.”

“Kind of hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

“How’s Artemis?” I asked, but I knew the answer instantly. The same regret suffusing the air. The same pain as when Cookie told me about Garrett.

“She’s gone.”

My mouth pressed together. I’d had enough death for a while. I breathed deeply before saying, “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too, darlin’.”

“Did you find your guy?”

“Who, Blake? He wised up and went to the police.”

“I would have, too, if you had been looking for me.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” I felt his fingers slide along my forearm and rest on my wrist. With the greatest ease, he tugged my hand away from my face. From where I was sitting on the bar, my head was actually a little higher than his, and I looked down. He was quite handsome for a scruffy biker sort. Of course, scruffy biker sorts were exactly my type.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He’d kept the fingers of one hand laced within mine while the other fished something out of his pocket. “I brought you a key.”

I blinked in surprise when he placed it in my palm. “A key to what?”

The prince spoke up, a bitterness in his voice. “To the asylum.”

“Whenever you need to visit Rocket,” Donovan said, glowering at his cohort, “you can go in through the front doors. No more scaling fences and climbing in through windows.”

“You’re ruining everything,” the prince said.

Clearly he didn’t want me visiting, and I thought we were friends. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t go in there if Rocket’s information weren’t so invaluable.”

“You misunderstand his annoyance,” Donovan said.

“Our annoyance.” Mafioso seemed just as perturbed.

Donovan grinned. “They don’t want you to have a key, because watching you get on your stomach and crawl through that itty-bitty window is one of our favorite pastimes.” He held up a gloved thumb and index finger to emphasize the small size of the opening.

The prince smiled. “I especially like it when the window closes about halfway in and you get your ass stuck.”

He high-fived Mafioso.

“I’m completely appalled,” I said, completely appalled. “You guys have known all this time? You watch me?”

“Mostly just your ass,” the prince said with a wink. Charmer.

“What happened, sweetheart?”

I glanced back at Donovan, at the sympathetic gaze in his eyes, and it all came rushing back with hurricane force. A lump swelled in my throat, and my eyes blurred instantly with wetness. “I got one of my best friends killed.” A telling moisture pushed past my lashes as I studied Donovan. At least with a biker, you knew where you stood, which was usually ten feet away from his bike. There were no illusions that you would come first. No promises or guarantees or sweet nothings whispered in your ear.

My breath hitched in my chest, and he stepped within my reach.

So reach, I did.

I wound my fingers into his shirt and pulled him closer. I should have been thinking about how bad I looked. My face had nearly been sliced off, but all I wanted was the taste of him on my tongue. I eased over and pressed my mouth to his. He leaned forward and let me kiss him. The kiss was gentle and patient and a little hungry.

I led my hand inside his jacket and pulled him closer. He deepened the kiss, just barely, trying desperately not to hurt me.

“Is this for me, Dutch?” Reyes growled—so close, I could feel the heat layer over me like a warmed blanket. I offered him a mental
fuck you,
and he disappeared. But the pain that exuded out of him just before he did so stole my breath and I gasped.

Donovan broke the kiss instantly.

When I raised my lashes, the prince had his hand on Donovan’s shoulder, as if coaxing him to stop. Donovan nodded in acknowledgment, and the prince dropped his hand.

“Sweetheart,” Donovan said, appreciation glittering in his eyes, “I don’t know where to touch you without hurting you, and the last thing you need right now is to be hurt.” He brushed his fingertips along my good cheek. “But I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t tempted beyond comprehension.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. The little girl sat wide eyed, the NC-17 rating way above her pay grade. I was seriously going to have to get rid of her.

With the help of his two bodyguards, Donovan lifted me into his arms.

“What are your names?” I asked Mafioso and the prince as they carried me to my bed, which made no sense, since all my bedding was on the sofa. But they threw a couple of blankets down, moved my supplies to my nightstand, and called it good.

The prince spoke up first. “I’m Eric,” he said, offering another wink. “And the ape at your feet is Michael.”

“Ape, huh?” Michael asked. “That’s the best you can do?”

I had to admit, Michael exuded a Brando-esque kind of coolness that I’d have bet my sutures made him quite the chick magnet.

Prince Eric laughed. “I’m working with a limited education here.”

“It shows.”

Once they had me all tucked in and Eric and Michael had stepped out of the room, Donovan kneeled down beside me. “I’m Donovan.”

I smiled even though it hurt. “I know.”

“I like you.”

I placed a hand on my chest as though I were insulted. “Last I heard, you were fucking in love with me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how rumors get started,” he said with a sheepish shrug. “Nobody wants a fool in love for a leader. There’ll be rebellion, chaos, matching biker-gang shirts.” He kissed the back of my hand. “Get some rest.”

He’d barely left before the pain set in again, the emptiness and betrayal swirling inside me. Reyes could bite my ass. My dad could bite my ass. Uncle Bob could … Well, no, I still liked Uncle Bob. I was in serious wallow mode when my lids drifted shut again. Depression really did make a person want to sleep all the time. Who knew?

27

Sorry about what happens later.

—T-SHIRT

Right in the middle of an unsettling scene where a girl with an eye patch kept trying to convince me I owed her twelve dollars for picking up my teeth off the sidewalk and putting them in a Dixie cup, I heard another voice. One so familiar, so close to my heart, it swelled in response.

“You gonna sleep all day?”

I rushed toward consciousness and threw an arm over my eyes in protest. Maybe this time it would work. Maybe this time it would block out reality and I wouldn’t have to face it, ’cause reality was sucking of late.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

After a long exhalation, I opened my eyes. Or, well, one eye. One was superglued shut again. I started to rub it, but I forgot and tried to use my left arm. A scalding pain shot up the underside of it. Clearly, pain meds were overrated. But my fingers were moving better. Grim reaperism definitely had its advantages.

I took a deep breath, clamped my teeth together, and focused through my bedroom doorway on the man sitting on my snack bar just as I had been earlier. He was wearing the same shirt from several days before, loosely fitted jeans, and work boots. With one leg up, an arm resting on the knee, he sat studying me, his silvery eyes taking me in, and he seemed almost disturbed by what he saw.

“Is it my new look?” I asked him when he said nothing.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said. “You’re bright, like a beacon, shimmering and warm. You’re like the flame that draws the moth.”

A lump swelled in my chest as he spoke. I had taken everything from him. He had so much more to do, so much life left to live. “I’m so sorry, Garrett,” I said, unable to stop the sting of my eyes. This crying bit was becoming a tad ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop it. Any more than I could stop the rains from heaven.

I covered my eyes with a hand and tried to get a grip on my emotions.

“Charles, how on earth is this your fault? I was doing my job.”

“And your job was me.” I looked back at him. “I did this. I got you killed.”

“You didn’t get me killed. And I should have ducked.”

A small chuckle escaped. Oddly enough, there’d been two people in that room who could’ve avoided a gunshot wound by ducking. Garrett was not one of them. “You should have called for backup. I figured the military would have prepared you better.”

“They should’ve prepared me better for the likes of you.” His turned away from me. “I have to tell you, now that I can actually see Mr. Wong, he freaks me out even more.”

“And I love knowing that more than you can possibly imagine. It’s too bad you have to go through eternity needing a shave.”

He smiled. “Actually, I don’t. But it is too bad you have to go through life with those chicken drumsticks.” He gestured toward my legs.

I gasped, seriously appalled. “I beg your pardon. These are great legs.” I tried to lift my good one, but doing so hurt the bad one. Maybe it was jealous of the attention its sibling was getting. “These legs are legendary. Just ask the chess team from high school. And whatever you do, do not let the words
chess team
fool you.”

Then a realization dawned, and I fixed an astonished gaze on Garrett.

“I was indirectly responsible for your death. You’re my guardian. The one Sister Mary Elizabeth told me about. This is fantastic. I so didn’t want a dog killer as a guardian, or a big fat liar.”

He let a lazy smile slide across his face. “I’m not your guardian.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty darned.”

“Damn it. How many people am I going to be indirectly responsible for killing this week?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not one of them.”

My phone chose that moment to ring and I chose that moment to ignore it. It was Cookie’s ringtone. She’d understand.

“You might want to get that,” Garrett said.

After casting him a look of suspicion, I reached over and grabbed the phone off my nightstand. How could such a simple act be so painful? “That really hurt,” I said into the phone.

“Charley, Charley, oh, my god.”

“I’ve heard that from men in the past, but I had no idea you felt that way about me.”

“He’s back. They brought him back.”

“Oh, good. I was worried. Who are we talking about?”

“I’m at the hospital. Garrett. The resuscitated him. He died on the table, but they brought him back and no one told us. They’ve been in surgery.”

I bolted upright, steeled myself against the pain as I eased back down, then glanced over at Garrett. He was grinning. “But, he’s here.”

“Exactly, he’s here. He’s not gone. Oh, my gosh, the doctor’s coming. I’ll call you right back.”

I closed my phone and stared wide-eyed at Garrett.

His grin widened.

“I don’t— How are you—? How is this—?”

He pointed up and shrugged. “They said it wasn’t my time.”

“They? You mean—?” I stopped to catch my breath, unable to believe it. Things hadn’t really been going my way lately. Surely there was a catch. No. This was a good thing. I couldn’t question it. My eyes landed on him. “Wait, if you’re alive, how are you here?”

“This is your world, Charles, I just live in it.”

“Would you come in here so we don’t have to yell across my apartment?”

“First, your apartment is the size of one of those balls that hamsters roll around in.”

“Is not.”

“Second, I can’t. Your guardian takes her job very seriously.”

“What? Where?” I glanced around. “He’s a she?”

After trying unsuccessfully to sit up again, I managed to scoot a couple of inches and brace myself against the headboard, when a low rumble filled the room. A coolness settled in the air, causing my breath to fog, and I scanned the room from corner to corner but saw nothing. I held out my hand, palm up, in an invitation to whoever was suddenly haunting me, and a loud, guttural bark exploded beside me, shook the walls, and echoed around the room. My bed dipped as Artemis jumped on.

“Artemis!” I said, pulling her into a hug. She wanted to play but seemed to sense my inability to do so. She lay beside me and nudged me with her nose, her stubby tail wagging a mile a minute.

“I tried to come into the room earlier,” Garrett said. “Just a warning, she goes for the jugular.”