Chapter Nineteen
Kini had to pause and rein in her temper. If it turned out that this whole mess was caused by people in some way, as opposed to mice, she was going to hurt someone.
Smoke didn’t say anything, just paced along beside her as they walked to the main entrance of the hospital. There were lots of people around, many of them coughing, all of them going toward the emergency room.
Outside, the sun hadn’t set yet and beat down with an unrelenting heat, which could be its own kind of killer.
She wanted to do something, anything, so badly her hands shook. The problem wasn’t finding something to do, there was too much. A dozen different things crowded into the number one priority spot in her head, until she wasn’t sure which to do first.
It left her in a state of impotence she didn’t like at all.
Down the road, two vans approached, the sun reflecting off their windshields. Both vehicles came to a stop in two of the parking spaces allocated to the police next to the entrance and disgorged six people each.
Kini knew them all. River, Dr. Rodrigues, and four members of the doctor’s advance team members, whose job it was to create order out of chaos.
Rodrigues and River strode up the short set of stairs and came to an abrupt halt in front of Smoke and her.
“Good God,” Rodrigues said, staring at her face. She glanced at Smoke, and her lips tightened into a thin white line. “This is what you call minor injuries?”
“I know it looks bad, but—” Kini began.
“Looks bad?” Rodrigues shook her head. “You’re both off this case. Go back to Atlanta, get checked out by medical, and don’t return to work until I say so.”
“But—”
Rodrigues ignored her to train her focus on Smoke. “River tells me you’re very good at your job, Mr. Smoke.”
“Smoke,” he corrected. “No mister.”
Rodrigues flashed an irritated look at River. “What is it with you guys and your irrational attachment to one-word nomenclature?”
“Irrational?” River asked.
“Nomenclature?” Smoke asked.
Her stare turned razor sharp. “Your job is to make sure you and Kini follow my orders. Understand?”
He nodded, his face taking on all the flexibility of a block of granite. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rodrigues flashed her palm at them all and said to Kini and Smoke, “Go.” Then, she turned and strode through the front doors.
River shrugged and mouthed, “Sorry, man,” before following her inside with the other team members.
That was it? She was just supposed to forget about everything, toss it out of her head, and go home? Emmaline, baby Brittany, even that idiot Dr. Flett, she was just supposed to forget all of them? How was a person supposed to do that?
Smoke stood as still as a statue for about ten seconds then said in a flat tone, “Time to go.”
His words started a slow drip of anger deep inside her gut. “I don’t like leaving a job half done.”
“Same.”
“They need all the help they can get.”
“Help is here and more is coming.”
Kini glanced down, realized her fists were clenched into tight balls, and decided to show him a truth about herself. “I hate this.”
It wasn’t until he turned to look at her with a deep frown that she realized she might have given him more truth than she intended.
She sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I care too much.”
He was silent, waiting for more, but there wasn’t much more.
“Too much?” he finally asked.
“It’s why I’m assigned to public health surveys and fact-finding work, and not outbreaks. I get attached to people and I prefer them to stay…alive and healthy.”
He stared at her, his gaze so intense she was sure he could see all the way to the bottom of her soul.
“When I first got out of nursing school, I wanted to work in an ER. Helping people in distress, victims of accidents, heart attacks, and strokes. What I got were small children with fevers, battered housewives, and drug overdoses.” She stopped to take a breath and found she didn’t have the energy to continue.
Smoke, silent as ever, seemed to watch her and the world at the same time. “Ugly,” he said.
She laughed, at first, but it morphed to tears which, when they dripped onto her hand, were pink with blood from the wounds on her face. “You know how first responders are supposed to be able to put all that ugly stuff into boxes in the back of our heads?” She could hear the hysteria in her voice but didn’t feel connected to it. It was as if she were two different people. One in pain, the other so far past pain she was numb. “Well, it turns out I don’t have any boxes.”
He gave her a narrow-eyed look of disbelief. “Or maybe,” he said. “Your boxes are all full.”
He couldn’t have hit her harder than if his fist had connected with her stomach. She struggled to breathe and found she couldn’t. The earth tilted oddly to one side and Smoke grabbed her by the shoulders, forced her to sit on the cement steps, and put her head between her knees.
The world narrowed into a thin line with high black walls and a ceiling that seemed to lower with every passing moment.
Now was not a good time for a new fucking box to show up.
A voice whispered in her ears, urging her to breathe.
What a fabulous idea. Her diaphragm seemed to work when she concentrated on it. In and out, in and out. The walls retreated, the ceiling rose, and a little more of the world became real.
Hard, warm hands rubbed her shoulders, while two massive knees hemmed hers in. A deep voice kept speaking to her, rumbling low with words she didn’t understand. No, that wasn’t right. Some of them were familiar.
Rest. She knew that word.
Heal. She knew that one, too.
Safe. That word was…dangerous. So attractive, so wonderful she wanted to believe in it, but the thought of knowing it, experiencing it, threatened to reopen wounds so deep and wide inside her they would kill her.
No, safe was not something she could ever believe in.
Still, that voice called to her, soothed her in a way that was unfamiliar. Soft, smooth, and with a strength that made her curious. What kind of creature could heal and entice with his voice alone?
“My people have been healing with song since the beginning of the world,” the beautiful voice said.
Had she asked her question out loud?
“It isn’t the same as the songs of my Scottish grandmother, whose people use it as a battle cry. Song is how we speak with spirit. Our medicine men can sometimes sing a person’s wounded spirit to a place where it can heal itself.”
“Are you a medicine man?” she heard a voice, hers, ask.
“No, I’m a warrior, but even warriors need to know when to rest. When to live in the quiet so they can heal.”
Rest was something she didn’t understand. She kept busy in an effort to stop dwelling on things she dare not discuss, even with herself. How had he gotten so wise?
“You meant it, didn’t you?”
He tilted his head to one side.
“When you said you’d kill whoever hurt me.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s too late.” She tried not to cry, she really did. “The pain lives inside me now.”
One of the hands on her shoulders cupped her face. “No,” Smoke disagreed. “If it did, you wouldn’t try so hard to fix everyone else.”
Was he right?
Hope, something she also tried to avoid, flirted with the edges of her understanding.
“Come, little bird. Let’s go to a place where we can rest, and where the shadows of the dead can’t hunt us.” His hands urged her to stand, but the dizziness came back in a rush.
“How about I sit here and wait until you get the jeep?”
When he didn’t answer immediately, she tilted her head up enough to make eye contact with him and tried to smile. “I’m just a little dizzy.”
He stared at her for a moment, searching, judging. “Don’t move.”
She snorted. “Not even if I wanted to.”
He cupped her face briefly then stood and jogged toward the car.
Kini rested her forehead on her knees wondering if she’d ever get a lid back on the crypt containing her emotions. Maybe he was right. Maybe that box, and every other one in the catacomb at the back of her head, was full.
A shadow fell on her, blocking out the eye-blinding sun.
She glanced up, expecting to see Smoke, but it wasn’t him. Two young-ish men stood over her. The kid she’d kicked in the nuts after discovering her flat tires, Freddy Alvarez, and someone she didn’t know. But the expression on their faces…she’d seen anger like that before.
She opened her mouth, but something flashed past her and a ball of cloth was shoved between her teeth. They grabbed her arms and restrained her before she could pull the gag out of her mouth and scream for help.
The men wrenched her to her feet and carried her into the hospital.
Smoke, where was Smoke?
She struggled, but someone growled in her ear, “Keep struggling and we’ll knock you out.”
In a crowded hospital? She struggled harder and managed to yank one arm free. She sent her fist toward the throat of the unknown man and was gratified when he made a pained noise and let go of her.
“Stupid bitch,” a male voice said then her neck was grabbed from behind and squeezed.
Pain overwhelmed her then dizziness sucked her into a black hole.