“I can do it.”
Sniffing, she shifted into Neutral, turned off the ignition and let the Z8 cruise on its own momentum. The night was mild. Walking would be nerve-racking, but what hadn’t been so far? She could manage.
As the car began to slow, she steered to the shoulder until the vehicle came to a full stop.
Would it ever start again? She had counted on this sleek, red beauty to finance her future. But, she allowed with a sigh, that was the way of life. As her baba used to lecture, “To live a life is not so simple as crossing a field.”
Feeling tears collecting again, she pulled free the keys, climbed out of the BMW and locked up. Brushing back her shoulder-length hair, she inspected her surroundings. The other warnings flooded back into her memory, how not to venture off into the prairie if something went wrong, how there was as much danger out there as there was on the road, things that did more than bite or sting.
“All I ever wanted was to be warm again,” she whispered to the night.
With no desire to find out what creatures stalked this unwelcoming terrain, she began walking briskly toward the lights. Although dim and minimal, they consoled her somewhat. She was a woman who needed her solitude, needed it desperately, but the company of people, especially strangers, would be reassuring right now. If she could also get a cup of hot coffee and use a clean rest room, she would endure. Blossom.
“I am strong…I am strong.”
Her jogging shoes, still too new to be comfortable, made each step awkward. She was used to high heels, expensive leathers, not these heavy things with soles she suspected were made from military-truck tires. As ugly as they were stiff, they were no less foreign to her than her jeans and Texas T-shirt. Her style was the business suit, preferably silk and exquisite, and handcrafted shoes. These monstrosities reminded her of the old country, difficult times and too much she wanted to forget.
“The point is to blend in with the tourists, not stick out.”
Remembering those cautionary words, her lips, bare of the expensive makeup she was envied for, twisted without mirth. “What tourists?”
All but lost in her dejection, she was slow to realize something was missing.
My bag.
Horrified, she began running back. But after only a few steps, the lights of another vehicle appeared.
What to do? There was no choice but to seek shelter in the first shrubs large enough to hide her. Even as she sent up another prayer, she nevertheless veered off the road and down a craggy draw to seek cover in the deeper terrain. Stumbling over the uneven ground, she barely missed a dive into a thatch of prickly brush.
Ducking behind it, she watched as a vehicle slowed, then pulled in behind hers. Thieves? Of course! Who would ignore such a beauty standing alone for the taking? And in it all that was left of her future.
She cursed the interlopers in the large vehicle parking behind her car. Then she bit her lower lip as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could tell more about it. Oh, no, she thought. Please God, no.
Both driver and passenger doors opened. Two men emerged, the cab lights exposing that both dressed in dark attire. They were barely a hundred feet away, yet she couldn’t make out many details about them except that they appeared large, intimidating. Then they spoke and she knew visual identification wouldn’t matter.
The Russians.
An involuntary cry burst from her.
In the next instant the man on her side turned his flashlight toward where she hid. She ducked lower. The beam slid right over her hiding spot and passed. A second beam duplicated the trail of the first. It wasn’t unlike the prison camp searchlights from the old days, and she knew like those, these dogs of war would not give up easily.
Her worst fears materialized as the men started down the steep incline.
Terrified, certain that she’d been spotted, she turned blindly into the darkness and began running.
8
1:07 a.m.
Once they returned inside, Gray handed Sasha her glass and directed her toward the hallway.
“What for?”
He understood her wariness, realized she wasn’t convinced that, despite what he’d said earlier, he wasn’t ordering her to his bedroom to take up where Frank had left off. In his opinion, he was probably the safest male in Bitters tonight, as physically spent as he was emotionally finished, and from more than wrestling and playing verbal chess with her.
It had been an altogether shitty day thanks to Dub Witherspoon’s favorite cow needing help in delivering a dead bull calf. Dub hadn’t taken “I don’t do house calls anymore” for an answer. As a result, all Gray wanted when he got home after the nine-hour ordeal was to get quietly drunk and escape from that latest scenario and the scent of death.
But to his unwelcome and reluctant houseguest, he merely said, “You’re under my roof, you don’t take foolish chances with infection.”
To his surprise, she went without any additional lip.
In the bathroom, he motioned for her to hop up on the vanity, then shut off the water she’d left running and squeezed out the washrag. Afterward, he locked the window. Replacing the screen would have to wait until morning. He hoped she was intimidated by him; he didn’t think he was in good enough shape to do many more rounds with this spitfire.
With her semi-safely perched, he opened the linen closet to rummage through the offerings there. Most of his medical supplies, even those appropriate for humans, were in the clinic, so he settled on hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, cotton balls and whatever he had in the way of gauze pads and bandages.
He set everything beside her. “You’ll have to lift your shirt again and open the jeans.”
Hardly voiced as a request, he accepted that she first took a good swallow of her drink. The wound had to be giving her more trouble than she wanted to admit—denim tended to be abrasive even without a pair of male hands working it like sandpaper against tender skin—but he knew it wasn’t pain alone feeding her reluctance. It was him. He’d proven to be not much better than Frank. She had to detest him for that.
When she finally relented, Gray grunted at the inflamed slash marring the left side of her small waist. In this brighter light, the shocking contrast against skin otherwise flawless filled him with an even deeper outrage. He understood too well the brutality behind such an assault, and how lucky she was to be sitting there shooting mental arrows into him.
All he said, though, was, “Roll the waistband down a bit more, or I’ll get this crap all over everything.”
“Just do the best you can.”
“Suit yourself.”
He opened the new package of cotton balls and the peroxide and went to work.
“You took a huge risk not bothering to get this tended to properly.”
“I’ve been a little busy.”
“How did it happen?”
She acted as though she’d suddenly gone stone deaf, which was just as well. The condition of the wound demanded his concentration. And although peroxide didn’t usually sting—at least not in comparison to what he should be using—this abrasion was no simple scratch. It was also inflamed, the tissue swollen. That meant his slightest touch had to sting like a needle in the eye, and Gray thought she did pretty well to simply stiffen and suck in a sharp breath with every new dab.
“Hang on. I’ll finish as fast as I can.”
Like a model posing for a sculpture, or an assassin contemplating a target, she simply stared out into the dark hallway, lost in her own focus.
Hoping she wasn’t plotting