Chapter 4

 

He heard a persistent crackling under the throbbing ache in his head. Because the communication system was offline or because they were trying to reach him? His skin felt tight. His body ached all over. He was naked, covered by some sort of blanket, and underneath him a clump of soil or a stone dug into the side of his hip. Where were his boots and clothing? He raised a hand to his cheek and felt the sticky residue of blood but no sharp or stinging pain of a wound.

What the hell?

“You’re awake. That’s good, I think.”

He jerked his head around, startled by the voice, feminine and hesitant, and winced at the spike of pain in his temple. Closing his eyes again he breathed through it. Further movement would have to wait. Just under the odors of dirt and blood and the fire, he caught the scent of a woman. She was familiar, though he couldn’t pin down why. She didn’t smell like anyone from the lab and his field tests hadn’t given him time out of his cell for anything but the mission.

“Don’t try anything,” she warned.

He could barely breathe, much less move enough to threaten her over there on the other side of the fire. The wariness in her voice niggled at him. What had he done?

“Who?” Uttering that single syllable set his teeth on edge. Damn it. He knew this bone-deep agony. He hadn’t been dosed on time and this was only the leading edge of the hell to come.

“The person who saved your life,” she said, bolder.

He wanted to laugh and only managed a rasping sputter. His life belonged to the man in the gray suit and the labcoats who monitored everything from his vital signs to his enhancements and the miserable addiction they’d created.

He touched his ear, hoping to raise the voice that was always there. The small device was gone, a seeping wound and raw nerve endings where it had been. Had she saved him or been sent to take him out? Bracing himself he asked, “How long?”

“This is night two,” she replied. “So far not much better than night one.”

That answered the question of intent and orders. If the system had sent her to kill him, he’d be dead. Delays weren’t tolerated. Eyes slitted against the glare of the fire, he took a good long look at her before the light reduced him to tears. Straight hair, long and black as midnight fell over one slender shoulder. Dark eyes framed with thick lashes reflected the fire between them. High cheekbones, even features and skin the color of warm honey made her Native American ancestry clear.

Behind closed eyelids he used those softer images to distract him from the next wave of pain. Night two, she’d said. He guessed he’d missed three doses of the drug by now along with the injections that kept him on the unstoppable side of the spectrum. Without the drug his body craved, he felt as if he’d run right off a cliff and landed on a bed of rocks. He was more than a little surprised he was still alive.

He couldn’t quite suppress the groan. Withdrawal was a bitch.

Hearing her move, he couldn’t muster up enough energy to check out what she was doing. Then a cool cloth touched his forehead, the contact simultaneously soothing and unbearable. At her touch, more questions rattled through his mind, starting with how he’d been compromised enough to need saving and how someone so slight could have moved him to wherever they were now.

He struggled against the dreadful weakness, determined to sit up and get out of here.

“Easy,” she crooned, moving the cloth over his feverish skin. With the slightest pressure on his shoulder, he was flat on his back again. Damn it. “You’re too weak yet.”

“Where?”

“I’m Hope,” she replied, ignoring his query. “What’s your name?”

Not Pointer. “You should leave,” he said. The man in the gray suit might send someone to find him and that wouldn’t end well.

“Probably.”

The cloth lifted from his face and he missed it, gritting his teeth against the urge to beg her to return. Then she did and his muscles relaxed under her touch.

“I’ll stay with you until the fever breaks.”

He grunted. She didn’t seem so afraid of him now, a fact which pleased him on principle even as some part of his mind insisted that was the wrong reaction, an unwise reaction.

With a deft and compassionate touch, she applied something to the cuts on either side of his face. “This should stop the bleeding.”

His forced his eyes open and caught the frown marring her elegant features. “Bleeding all this time?” For two nights now?

She nodded, averting her gaze.

“Tell me.” He fought the fever, the pain, just so he could keep taking her in. She had a presence, a strong, patient calmness about her that soothed him as much as any cool cloth or ointment.

Sitting back on her heels, she studied him. “You probably won’t remember anyway.” Her dark brown eyes drifted over his face, across his blanket-covered body like a caress. “You were following me and I was, um, scared. I knocked you over the head.” She aimed a slim finger at one side of his head. “You fell and hit your head on a rock in the creek.” She pointed to the other side of his face.

That explained the lack of voices in his ear. The communication device must have been crushed by the impact. When had he been ordered to follow her? He struggled to get back to that moment, to find the context that would have put them in the same vicinity. His memories were as slippery as ever, exacerbated by concussion, withdrawal and who knew what else.

“I ran,” she admitted in a whisper. “Once you were down, I ran. Forgive me?”

This wasn’t a confessional and he sure as hell wasn’t a priest. “Why come back?”

She shrugged one shoulder, her mouth tilted in a half smile. “I couldn’t leave you to drown.”

That made no sense, though he was grateful. “Thanks.” He didn’t understand why she’d saved him when he’d clearly been aimed at her, but he owed her. No chance the man in gray or his operatives would have pulled him out of a creek after he’d let a target escape. 

In this system, failure equaled death. Escape equaled death. Hell, living equaled death of whatever he’d been before. The burst of laughter at his absurd logic caught him off guard and the resulting pain was nearly as bad as a cracked rib. If she was still here when the team found him, they’d both die.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll make it.”

“Not while you’re like this.”

Like what? he wondered slipping toward sleep under the ministrations of that cool cloth.

She started to sing, a soft, sweet lilting sound that knocked back the worst of the pain gripping his muscles, though he didn’t understand the words. He wondered if the comm link had been knocked out completely. What if the voices always in his ear could still hear?

If so, now they knew he’d told her to leave. That was probably worse than letting the target knock him out and missing the rendezvous. Oh, well. The words couldn’t be retracted now. Besides, he didn’t expect to survive any of this.

He blacked out again, this time far more peacefully with her voice surrounding him.

*

Hope poured out more cool water from the canteen she’d filled at the creek onto the cloth and continued bathing the man’s forehead while he rested. She should have helped him drink some water while he’d been conscious, but she’d been afraid of being too close. Even weak as a kitten, he oozed danger. There wasn’t any more she could do for his fever with her limited provisions. Unless she reached out to one of the local families, she thought.

For the better part of forty-eight hours she’d cared for the stranger who’d hunted her, wondering why their paths had crossed. He was handsome, in his way. Her artist’s eye could appreciate his form, despite his actions. His eyelashes were soft gold crescents against his too-pale cheeks, hiding eyes of ice-blue. The white-gold whiskers were more highlight than shadow on his square jaw. Asleep, he looked relaxed and almost kind, but awake and intent, as he’d been when she’d first spotted him, he was peril personified.

“You’re a man far from home,” she murmured in the language of her tribal elders.

She stepped out from under the rocky outcropping she’d chosen for shelter and into the crisp night. The breeze carried the scent of rain. The place she’d found was high enough that she didn’t worry about the creek flooding them out if spring brought a heavy storm. A wash of sparkling stars marked the meeting of dark plain to darker sky arching overhead. No matter how far she traveled, this was home.

And being home, she couldn’t ignore her upbringing. Her shoulders still ached from hauling him out of the creek. In his most lucid moment so far, he had told her to leave. The intuition that had sent her running away from her work two days ago was prodding at her again. This time, that intuition was saying she needed to stick around until he could escape with her. Hospitality traditions and compassion aside, the authorities were far more qualified to tend him.

And still she couldn’t walk away. What was her problem? He was the most dangerous creature she’d ever come across and she’d completed assignments that included trailing grizzly bears in Canada. He’d tracked her down when he shouldn’t even have seen her. He’d aimed that rifle at her. He’d taken the shot.

She would leave, she promised herself. She would. Just as soon as she was sure he could manage on his own. The wound at his temple where she’d struck him with a rock, still seeped, as did the wound at his opposite ear. She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew that wasn’t right for a man who appeared to be in peak condition.

The man needed professional help. Even her grandmother, a woman who had shown kindness to everyone regardless of circumstance, would tell her to hike out at least far enough to get a decent cell signal and call for help. Still she hesitated, as if leaving him was the real risk. It made no sense. She tended him as if he deserved to live, as if his survival was important to her somehow.

Maybe the job had warped her. She’d been accused of having a death wish often enough, usually after turning in another award-worthy photograph. From the split in the rocks that barely qualified as a cave, the man groaned again and she considered there might be something to the death wish theory after all.

When she’d hauled him here yesterday afternoon, she’d stripped him and taken his weapons. He hadn’t carried a pack of any kind, no water or food in his pockets. Keeping his wicked knife on her hip, she’d hidden the rifle, pistol and ammunition in case he woke up and remembered he’d been hunting her. Dragging off his wet boots and clothing, she’d done her best to ignore his stunning body. Defined muscles appeared ready to spring into action even while he was passed out.

Annoyed with herself for the bolt of lust his naked form provoked, she’d covered him with her emergency blanket and searched this clothing for any identification. The effort had been a bust. No wallet, no cash, not even a cell phone. Nothing that explained what he’d been doing before he’d abruptly changed course to chase her.

All she knew for sure was that a man who looked like a Viking didn’t belong on the protected land of the Crow Reservation. She guessed he had a military connection, based on his gear and the way he’d moved. Of course, nothing had been marked with an official emblem—that would have been too easy.

She had the pictures of his face and his weapons. He had yet to be awake long enough to eat or drink anything. He couldn’t go on like that indefinitely. She’d treated the two wounds with her dwindling supplies and still the blood seeped. If she left now, she could get out, take advantage of the full dark and beat the coming rain. That was the most logical option and gave her the best chance to escape.

She stared up at the velvety sky, heavy clouds blotting out the stars, scudding over the moon. Go. The word whispered through her mind. Go. She stepped back toward the shelter, determined to get her pack and actually leave this time.

Suddenly the man was shouting, spewing violent oaths amid the sounds of a struggle. “Get the fuck off me!”

What now?

Rushing forward, she saw him tangled in the mylar sheet of her emergency blanket, the shiny surface reflecting light all over the cramped space. Any second now he’d be in the fire. His eyes were open, glassy, and wild. Whatever he was seeing, she knew it wasn’t her.

Just what she needed, a brutally tough, naked man in the throes of a violent nightmare. “Easy. You’re safe.” She wished she knew his name but she kept reiterating the safe aspect, keeping her voice even and steady. Murmuring nonsense had calmed him during the previous fever spikes. “Relax, friend.”

“You can’t keep me!” he bellowed, shoving to his feet and swaying like a drunk.

“Easy,” she repeated. A single misstep would end with yet another head injury. She stepped aside so he could see the way out. “By all means, go.” And good luck to you, she thought. He might be strong, but unwell and nude with all that pale skin glowing like moonlight, he wouldn’t last until noon out in the elements.

Guilt nipped at her conscience. If he left, she’d have to follow him. He was unwell—at least in part—because of an injury she’d caused. She’d struck him to survive, yes. But since she hadn’t left him to drown, she wouldn’t leave him to wander the reservation until death caught up with him. Probably not sound logic, she’d given up on that where he was concerned. She told herself it was curiosity fueling all of this: if he died she’d never know why he decided to shoot her and that seemed like an important detail.

He took a staggering step forward, intent on escape, she imagined. Giving him room, she stuck close to the opposite wall. She would douse the fire and gather their belongings and then follow him until she could contact authorities.

Apparently he had the sense to bend low to get through the opening, but that was the limit of his coordination. He tripped and pitched forward, catching himself on his hands and knees. A startling contrast to how perfectly he’d moved on the run yesterday morning. He hissed in pain and swore again.

Sitting back on his heels, he tipped his head up to the sky. Lightning flashed and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. He swore again, but his tone changed from that bellow rooted in terror to something akin to bewildered.

“Where am I? What’s happening to me?”

At least one question was easy to answer. “You’re on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana.”

He twisted around at the sound of her voice, his eyes clear.

She swallowed, suppressing the shiver as prickles of unease danced down her spine. “And I have no idea.”