Reaper was out all night. She almost left him and went back to the town to find Mira, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave him alone and vulnerable in the shack. She’d been able to subsist easily on the small amount of water and food Mira had given them, and whenever Reaper woke up, she plied him with food and water. Other than watching him almost without a break, she had no choice but to simply wait and worry.

Midmorning, all the sweat on his body disappeared, dried up by the high heat of a fever. He twitched and tossed and turned and mumbled, but never opened his eyes. She’d checked underneath his gauze when he got still and quiet, and while the wound looked red and angry, there was no pus leaking out. She could only cross her fingers and pray that meant there was no infection.

Plus, she’d found a syringe at the bottom of Mira’s satchel—another dose of antibiotics for her to give him “within the next thirty-six hours.”

She gently replaced the bandage and Reaper flung an arm out, the blow landing solidly across her chest and flinging her onto her ass in the dirt-covered hut.

He continued to mumble. It was mainly gibberish but every now and then she would catch a few words. “Winters” and “Project Mayhem” were two of the things he kept repeating. She hadn’t figured out what it all meant yet, but she knew Winters and what she’d done.

Pushing herself back to her knees, she went back to him and laid her hand across his forehead, snatching it back in shock when his skin practically burned her palm. Panic licked at her, blurring her senses. His fever should be getting better, not worse. What if his blood was infected? He needed that second dose of antibiotics now, and if he didn’t get better within the next few hours, she was going to backpack into town. She found the needle and approached the bed. Mira had injected the last dose into Reaper’s IV. Which meant it needed to go into a vein. Only with Reaper so dehydrated his veins weren’t bulging in the least.

Like many Americans, her medical knowledge came from watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy. She used her scarf as a tourniquet around his bicep and pulled as tight as she possibly could. After almost a full minute, a tiny throbbing vein raised beneath Reaper’s flesh in the crook of his left elbow.

She could do this. How hard could it possibly be to get that tiny little needle into that tiny little vein?

Tension filled up her chest like a hot balloon near to bursting. She bent over and slowly lined up the needle.

“Here goes nothing.”

Caroline bit her lip and pierced his flesh. She felt every layer of skin give way to the sharp point, and when she was sure she’d found the vein, she injected the antibiotics and pulled the needle out. A tiny almost minuscule bead of blood welled.

She’d done it! She’d given Reaper a dose directly into his vein!

Reaper roared, his back bowing off the bed, every muscle in his body straining. He collapsed onto the bed and then immediately dove off it. The needle flew across the room and clattered into the far wall as every bit of Reaper’s enormous body landed on Caroline, knocking the wind from her chest. Bursts of light stars flickered across her vision. She couldn’t breathe or even move.

Reaper’s hand snaked around her throat, squeezing until she couldn’t even suck in a particle of oxygen. She clawed at his grip, but even though he was looking directly at her now, he wasn’t seeing her.

Reaper’s harsh, gravelly voice, laced with violence, filled the tiny hut, “This isn’t what we signed up for. Look what you did to my men.”

Caroline tried to eke out a response, but she couldn’t even manage that small feat. She felt the blood rushing to her face. He was going to choke her to death and he wouldn’t even know it. She clawed harder, but it was like scratching at a brick wall.

“You lied to me. I talked them into this project and you’ve turned them into monsters. You deserve to die.” His grip tightened incrementally and Caroline choked, floundering for any chance to get him to snap out of this nightmare.

His fingers continued to close around her neck and the room blackened in the periphery of her vision.

She could pound on him all she wanted, probably claw the skin from his face, and he still wouldn’t snap out of his delusion.

There was only one possible escape. Caroline used every single ounce of strength she had left in her depleted body to jab the wound on his shoulder.

Reaper immediately released her neck, rolling into a ball on the floor beside her.

Sweet, heavenly oxygen filled her lungs and she lay there gasping for air, hands encircling her neck. The skin there was raw and would definitely be bruised. And the man she’d considered her savior had been the one to do it, however unconsciously.

When she was able to sit up without blacking out, Caroline placed her palms on the floor and straightened her arms until she was in a sitting position. Her entire body trembled and her heart raced like it had in the minutes after Dr. Winters had injected her with the adrenaline.

Reaper stayed huddled on the floor next to her, tremors shaking his body so hard that he was in danger of convulsing.

She touched his back, her hand trembling.

He moaned but didn’t flinch or lash out.

A good sign. She curled her hand around his bicep. His body was an inferno blasting heat.

“Have to find the girl. Have to bring her back. She’s my only chance at redemption.”

Caroline’s racing heart gave a huge thwack against her rib cage and then tumbled over in her chest. There was a desperation born of absolute need in his tormented voice. “Reaper, I’m here. You found me.”

His gaze jerked to her direction and she nearly fell on the floor again. His wide eyes were cloudy and laced with red. “Please don’t leave.”

His words nearly broke her in half. Careful not to startle him, she trailed the edge of her fingers down his temple and jaw, soothing him like she would a wild kitten. “I’ll never leave your side.”

Her touch seemed to calm him somewhat, so she kept it up.

“I—need—you.” A violent tremor took hold, causing his words to come out in a shaky staccato, but nothing could detract from the heart-wrenching message.

She wanted to wrap herself around him like a blanket and never let go. “I need you too. You have to fight this infection. Don’t give up. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said.

God willing he was both lucid enough and strong enough to follow her instructions. “I need to get you back on the bed. I can’t do it by myself. Can you help?”

For the first time in a long, long while, his eyes glistened with comprehension as he glanced from her to the bed and nodded. He got onto his hands and knees and crawled across the floor, threw his good shoulder onto the bed and then collapsed onto his back. The bright red blood stains on his once crisp and clean bandage sent a poison dart of alarm straight through her system. She ran to him. “I need to check your wound. Hold still if you can.”

Reaper didn’t respond. He had passed out.

She gently peeled back the edge of the bandage. Half the stitches had torn loose and bright red blood oozed from his wound. It felt like all the hard work Mira had done in the hospital had just been completely destroyed.

“Oh, what have we done?” Caroline gasped.

There was no way she could get him back to the hospital and she was too scared to leave him here like this. If the infection didn’t kill him, surely a predator would smell his blood and attack. Hot tears burned her eyes and plunged down her cheeks. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t let him die. She wouldn’t. But it felt like fate was out to destroy them both. She collapsed against Reaper’s abdomen and sobbed, giving in to self-pity.

Exhaustion battered her body and her mind. Any adrenaline had long since worn off, and her fumes had burned up. It was all she could do stay awake. Fighting off the tears she was desperate to shed wasn’t even on the agenda. “I wish my dad was here. He’d order a helicopter to air evac us out of this hellhole. He’d get you the best doctors on the entire planet.”

But she hadn’t seen her father in months and she missed him something awful. She’d give anything just to see him and tell him that his only remaining daughter was okay. He must be worried out of his mind.

And she hadn’t seen Reaper use any type of radio or phone. Which meant that her father didn’t know she was alive.

Maybe that was for the best. If Reaper didn’t make it, her chances of survival were nonexistent.

She wasn’t so sure she’d be able to live with the guilt anyway.

Despair and hopelessness tried to pull her under, but Caroline lifted her head and roughly wiped away her tears. Reaper wasn’t going to die on her watch, not until she had exhausted every possibility.

Vain attempt or not, she ransacked the small satchel from Mira, but she’d already gone through it. She knew what was in there. Now that she’d used the antibiotics, there was nothing left beyond a couple of bottles of water and the small stock of food.

Caroline froze on the spot. Needles. Reaper had had an entire pack on him. Maybe he had some kind of field medical kit strapped into one of the pockets lining his black cargo pants.

She practically ran across the room and fell to her knees at his side, ripping open every pocket she saw. Finally, she struck gold on the fifth one she tried. Inside was a small army green kit, equipped with a few fresh squares of gauze, a needle and thread, and a packet labeled iodine. Tucked into the back corner, almost out of sight, was a pinky-sized pile of packaged white powder labeled clotting agent.

Caroline stared at the small kit splayed out in her hands with renewed hope.

She had been complete shit at sewing dresses in her old home ec classes in high school. Sewing up flesh was bound to turn out even worse, but there was no one else here to do the job.

She extracted the hook-shaped needle and threaded it. Then she bent over Reaper’s wound, bracing herself for the heroic task of stitching him back up.

The ragged edges of his skin lay open and bleeding, topped off by the tiny remaining black threads that had remained in place. Should she stop where the other stitches started? But then wouldn’t the old threads just unravel with his movement?

More blood seeped out and her thoughts shifted into overdrive. Mira had disinfected the wound first and then stitched it up, and common sense told her she’d need to remove those last two stitches that were barely hanging on before re-stitching him.

She took the small set of shears out of Reaper’s all-purpose kit and snipped the soaking wet threads, pulling them free with a vomit-inducing tug.

Swallowing back the bile, she reached for the iodine and poured some into the wound. Reaper didn’t even flinch, mercifully staying unconscious. Next, she took one of his other gauzes and mopped up the excess disinfectant before resuming her position just above his wound with the needle in hand.

She could do this. It was just like sewing two pieces of material together. She’d watched Mira do it in the hospital—she had simply inserted the needle and pulled the thread through, winding a running line down the edges of his skin and pulled it tight and then she tied it off.

Only he wasn’t a dress; he was a real live breathing human being.

And he deserved any help she could give him.

Caroline tucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she pinched together the edges of his flesh and threaded the needle through. The thicker resistance of his skin was nearly her undoing. She actually had to put some effort behind her movement. Blood immediately covered the needle and thread and her hands.

The bile she’d been holding back surged and she swallowed again and again to keep from throwing up right then and there. She couldn’t afford this kind of weakness right now. Reaper needed her to be strong and steady; he needed to be able to trust her with his life the same way she trusted him. She could bear a little squeamishness if it saved his life.

Biting harder on her lip, she forced herself to continue, over, under, and through, pulling the edges of his flesh together with every stroke. By the time she finished, her fingers were numb and there was blood on her lip from where she’d bitten down too hard, but Reaper’s bleeding had slowed to a minimum. She wiped the needle clean and returned it to the kit with the remaining thread. Next she pulled the small squares of bandage free from the package in his kit, laid them over his wound and then wrapped his old blood-soaked bandages around his shoulder to hold everything in place. All in all, she hadn’t been a total failure.

Caroline shoved a hand through her hair, her wet fingers smudging across her cheek in the process, reminding her that she was covered in his blood.

She couldn’t keep it in anymore - she rushed out of the hut and expelled the contents of her stomach into the thick grass outside.

That was something she never, ever, wanted to do again. A shudder worked down her as she thought about the way the needle had felt going into his skin. She slammed that thought into a room in the back of her mind, locking and barricading the door. Reaper was alive, and keeping him that way was all that mattered. If she had to stitch him up again, she would do it, even if she had to take a break to throw up during the process.

The blood had dried on her hands by now, and every time she moved her fingers they caked and cracked, reminding her of everything they’d been through. She needed a bath, or even just a bowl of water to clean herself. What she wouldn’t give for her giant clawfoot tub back home, filled with her favorite jasmine oil.

The sound of trickling water reached her ears. She hadn’t heard that before, maybe because she’d been too busy running for her life. Even if it were a small stream she’d rejoice.

She maneuvered through the vegetation, following the sound past the back of the house about twenty yards into the jungle. When she saw the source of the sound she gasped.

A perfectly round pour of translucent blue water lay before her. The sloshing sound was a natural waterfall a few feet above it, re-supplying fresh clear water over worn gray rock. Dear God, it had to be a mirage. There was no way this was real. No way.

She fell to her knees and scooped the wonderfully lukewarm water into her hands, marveling at the way the droplets glinted in the sunlight beaming down from overhead. The lagoon was the most beautiful sight she’d ever laid eyes on. Without thought, she stripped naked and stepped in, the warm water sluicing over her body. She ducked her head in, completely submerged, and her world went silent for one blissful moment.

Something bumped into her ankle. Terror knifed through her chest. She bolted from the water and up onto the shore, gasping for breath.

Images of crocodiles and anacondas big enough to eat a cow swirled through her mind and she scrambled around to stare into her interrupted paradise. Thousands of tiny rainbow-colored fish swarmed around the bottom, just above the shelf rock lining the pool. She searched again, looking for any deadly reptiles ready to rip the flesh from her bones, but all she saw was a tropical paradise.

Idiot. Why hadn’t she looked before jumping into a pool in the middle of the jungle? Even she knew there were anacondas in this area. She could’ve just jumped to her death, been eaten alive and no one would have ever known what had become of her.

She studied the depths of the water for a few more minutes before daring to dip a foot back into the heavenly liquid. She didn’t have any soap, but she didn’t care. As long as she wasn’t eaten alive, she’d stay in this place for hours.

After dipping her head back under the water and scrubbing herself as much as humanly possible, Caroline let out a resigned sigh and pulled herself from the pool. She needed to check on Reaper and she needed to eat.

But now that she was scrubbed clean, she couldn’t bring herself to put the wretched hospital gown back onto her body. It was too much a reminder of what she’d been through. It was covered in filth, dirt and dried blood.

The robe, however, had remained mainly clean, and she quickly slipped it over her head, ignoring the course linen grating across her sensitive skin.

By the time she made it back to their hut, the sun was setting and a chill had taken hold of the air. She didn’t dare make a fire and risk signaling their location, not that she could start a fire from scratch anyway. After tossing her hospital gown into the corner of the hut, Caroline placed a hand at Reaper’s forehead and nearly collapsed from relief when she felt that his fever had begun to subside slightly.

The sun disappeared behind the tall treetops around her hut, casting long shadows and a drop in the air’s temperature ensued. Caroline shivered, on the verge of succumbing to her exhaustion. She grabbed Reaper’s gun and propped it near the headboard and then, carefully testing her weight, crawled over Reaper to lie down between him and the wall on his uninjured side. He moved his arm so that it was behind her and she used his chest as a pillow, his body like a heated blanket calling her name.

Double-checking that the gun was easily within reach, Caroline snuggled up to his side and let her eyes drift shut.