out. “How bad off am I? What do you know? I assumed you did some kind of check before moving me.”
“Given my lack of X-ray vision, I don’t know what the internal situation is, but you’re not running a fever and you seem to be recovering rather than getting worse, so my guess is whatever damage you sustained, you’ll live.”
“Until you kick my ass, anyway.” The corner of his mouth kicked up the tiniest of fractions, which still made him wince.
“True.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer, then let his head relax back into the pillow more deeply, and closed his eyes. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Possibly run over by one as well. And that’s not counting the pharmaceutical fun I’m having.”
“Well, I wouldn’t rule out the run-over part, but there were no tread marks, so maybe they stopped just shy of that. I think you have some bruised ribs, a seriously wrenched shoulder at best—”
“Dislocated. It happens. They didn’t dislocate it. I did, trying to loosen my bonds. I got it back in. Sort of like a trick knee.”
“Yeah,” she said, staring dubiously at him. “You’re tricky all right.” She had to actively keep from rubbing her own shoulder, as she imagined the contortions he’d put himself in, trying to regain his freedom. “If they’d broken a rib, you could have punctured something, trying that stunt.”
“Considering I’d been left for dead, I figured it was a risk worth taking.” He opened his eyes again, turned his head so he could look at her directly. “I would have done whatever I had to. I knew I had to get here.”
“You give me too much credit if you assumed I’d give you safe haven. You’re only still here because I don’t know why you were watching me in the first place.”
“I told you. At least, I think I did.”
She folded her arms, resisting the urge to rub at the gooseflesh that now covered them. But she waited for him to say it again.
“I told you, about CJ.”
All she could do was nod.
“Tate, I wouldn’t have compromised—”
She lifted her hand, effectively silencing him. “I don’t want apologies. It’s too late for that. I want answers. You’ve already been here too long, leaving me in the dark for too long. With someone out there who knows you’re here.”
“Not here—”
“Here,” she reiterated. “Just how good could you have been in covering your tracks from where they left you, to my front door? A child could track you here. A blind child at that.”
He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. For a moment, she thought he’d either passed out again, or fallen back asleep. Then he said, “Storm was coming.”
“And you thought that would hide your trail?”
His eyes remained closed, and he was sounding groggy again. “Best shot I had. Had to warn you. Tell you.”
“If you wanted to keep me safe, you could have dragged your beaten ass anywhere else in this valley, drawn them off me, away from here.”
“Too late for that.”
A cold chill raced down her spine. “Why? What do you think you told them?”
“Doesn’t matter what they know. What matters is what I know.”
She stalked over to the bed and it took all her willpower not to shake him. “What do you know, Derek? What the hell do you know that was worth putting my life in jeopardy? Haven’t I done enough for you and the agency? Don’t answer that. I know damn well I have.”
He opened his eyes, found hers unerringly. “Your life was already in jeopardy before I got here.”
“You’re the only one who knew where I was.”
“CJ is trying to make contact with you. If she couldn’t do it through me, I’m assuming she’d have tried other means. I’m not entirely sure she hasn’t, or that my visitors a few days ago aren’t a result of her digging.”
Tate froze. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? And why, if she’s alive, would her knowing my location put me in any kind of danger? She was my partner. She wouldn’t—” Tate choked down the sudden hot rush that stung the back of her eyes. “She died for me, Derek.”
“That’s just it, Tate.” Derek’s gaze burned brightly into her own. “She didn’t die, did she?”
Chapter 4
He just wanted to sleep. A year should do. He was weary down to his soul. What he didn’t want to do was look into Tate’s eyes and see the shattered pain she no longer tried to hide. He knew what she’d been through before she’d left the team. He had led the team debriefing her. He’d heard every last detail, from her own swollen, cracked, bleeding lips. He’d seen her when she’d been broken, beaten, and reduced to something that barely seemed human. And yet, through it all, she’d never once let it reach her eyes. The last time he’d seen her, spoken to her, they’d been dead, hollow, completely void of all emotion. It should be encouraging to see her now, like this, looking so intensely human.
Except the feelings she should be experiencing these days were peace, tranquility, and, if she was very lucky, joy.
Not more pain, more anguish. She was the last one to deserve that. And he hated it that he was the one bringing those things back into her world. But he also refused to believe that staying cold and emotionless would have served her better.
After all, look where that had gotten him.
“According to you, she didn’t die,” Tate stated, jaw hard as granite, eyes bright with unshed tears. “She took a bullet for me, Derek. Several, if my hearing served me correctly, and it did. I might have been beaten until I could barely see, but I wasn’t deaf. Are you saying that didn’t happen? That I just dreamed it when I had to listen while they tried to torture out of her what they couldn’t torture out of me? While they threatened to shoot her? When they did shoot her? Was it a hallucination when they dragged her past the open door to the room I was being held in, with two holes in her chest and one in the center of her forehead?” She towered over him at the side of his bed, fury now replacing pain. “Are you telling me that those sightless gray eyes that will stare into mine for all eternity weren’t real? Because, even in my diminished capacity, they looked pretty damn real to me.”
“I don’t know, Tate,” he said, speaking the God’s honest truth and wishing he had some other truth to offer her. “I don’t know what happened in that room, or what you actually saw—”
“Actually saw? Actually? I know what the hell I actually saw because I was actually there!”
Derek let her rage rain down on him, knowing the source of it was as real as it got. “The only person who really knows what went on in that room is CJ. And whoever was in on it with her.”
“In on what?” Tate all but shrieked that last word. “We had no leverage, no way out, nothing to barter with.”
“Except the truth.”
“Which would have gotten us just as dead the minute we got done giving it up.”
“Apparently she found a way to barter with it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is that both of you are still alive.”
Tate said nothing more, but the fight was still in her eyes.
“Did you ever ask yourself why, after they supposedly killed CJ, they didn’t finish you off, as well?”
“Of course I did. If you recall, that was a big part of my debriefing. The torture didn’t stop when they