Close together. Breathing the same air.
He leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to her forehead. A kiss of peace, not passion, although there was that, too, in the tense set of his body, in the light in his eyes. "Get inside," he murmured against her skin. "Take care of yourself. I'll check on you tomorrow."
He started to pull away. She grabbed his collar to hold him in place. "Promise me something first. Promise me that—if something happens to me—you'll look after things. After Jazz. After—even after that bitch who got Omar killed."
Something Susannah had said nagged at Lucia, but she was too tired to make the connections. She was running on instinct, not thought.
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"Anthrax," she said flatly. "Something's already happened to me. The stuff can be deadly. I could be dead—"
His fingers touched her lips. Light, but unmistakably a hush. "Don't say that."
"Just promise, okay?"
"I promise."
She thought he'd kiss her. She could see he wanted to, could feel it, but he stepped back as she opened the door, and let her go inside.
"Rest," he said. "That's what you need right now."
When she looked back, he was already walking away, elegant in his tawny coat, hands in the pockets. She wanted to call him back. Wanted to sleep in his arms, stretched against his warmth. Wanted the sheer animal comfort to keep the fears and the memories at bay.
Instead, she shut the door, locked it and set the intrusion alarms for instant alert.
She managed to strip off her guns before she fell on the bed and sank into a sleep so deep it seemed eternal.
She couldn't wake up. Couldn't. She tried, because she knew she should; she felt the danger, but her whole body was sluggish and unresponsive. Inert, heavy flesh, weighing her down.
Dreams. Terrible dreams, full of twisted, screaming bodies, and blood, and friends—old friends dying. She wanted to cry out, wanted to scream, wanted to stop this, but there was nothing she could do, nothing but witness and grieve. Endless dark mazes and corridors and cells and run for your life and the shots ringing out over her head…
Gregory Ivanovich, please, help me… I'll make it worth your while.
Flashes of light.
Smeared voices, nightmarishly slow. She didn't understand them. Was this the past? Was it Prague? Had she never really run, her bare feet sliding over cold concrete blocks and leaving footprints of sweat and blood…oh Dios, was she still there? Were they asking…?
She felt the white-hot burn of drugs in her veins. Slow fire, screaming through her body.
Nothing. Sleep. Dreams.
A feeling of cold on her skin. Her body being lifted, moved. More nightmares, hands on her, moving her legs up and out. A sense of cold invasion that made her flinch and want to weep.
More drugs.
Darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Lucia woke up in the hospital, with an IV in her arm and an oxygen mask on her face, and for a panicked moment she thought, I'm dying.
Didn't feel that way, though. In fact, she felt a lot better. Sore and weak, but better. Her mouth was dry as old paper. She cleared her throat and tried to sit up.
"Whoa!"
A face, looming over the bed. Jazz, looking delighted. Behind her was James Borden, all angles and smiles. His hair was creatively mussed, and his clothes looked lived-in. So did Jazz's, but that wasn't remarkable.
"Look who's awake," Jazz said, and reached for her hand, and the warm pressure of her fingers felt nice. Felt real. "How you feeling?"
Lucia nodded slightly and tried to talk. No good. Her voice wasn't even a hoarse croak. She gestured toward the pink pitcher of water on the stand next to the bed, and Borden hurried around to pour some for her.
Water, after such a long thirst, tasted like a revelation of the divine. Lucia whimpered with delight and swallowed until the cup was dry.
"Better?" Borden asked. He refilled it. "You've been out awhile. Couple of days." Some silent conversation between Borden and Jazz passed over her head. "You remember anything?"
"No." That was a word. A small one, and it sounded rough, but it was a recognizable word. Progress. "Pansy. All right?"
"Pansy's fine," Jazz said. "Never even got a sniffle or a fever. No infection at all. No other victims reported, either. Looks like you were the lucky one."
"What happened?"
"What do you remember?" Jazz asked.
"Going to sleep, after—after the hospital. Tired."
"Nothing else? You're sure?"
Lucia swallowed another ball of fire that seemed to be clinging to the back of her throat. "Dreams, maybe. Nightmares."
"But you don't remember leaving your apartment."
The fragile sense of well-being shattered. "I—left?"
Another look passed from Borden to Jazz, Jazz to Borden. Lucia was still fuzzy, the world still indistinct, but even so she didn't care for the way they were avoiding her questions.
"Yeah," Jazz said softly. "You left. At least, that's what the security logs say. You entered the code to disable the alarm, and you just—vanished. No sign of how you got out of the apartment."
This wasn't right. Couldn't be right. She hadn't I
well enough to leave. She remembered setting the alarm for instant alert and stumbling off to bed.
There was, of course, another way out of the apartment that wouldn't appear on the security logs—her own Manny-inspired precautions—but why would she run away? And why wouldn't she remember it? "Where did you find me?"
"We didn't," Borden said. "You were missing for four days. And on the fifth day, you were found sleeping in a supposedly unoccupied room at the Raphael."
"What?"
"Yeah," Jazz said grimly. "I'm not a woo-woo girl, but I'm not ruling out alien abduction."
That was impossible.
Lucia didn't remember anything from the moment she'd fallen asleep on her bed, fully clothed, to waking up here.
Nothing. Just dreams, and those were fading fast.
"Where was I?" she asked. Her voice was faint and weak, and Jazz looked at Borden again, this time for support.
"Honest to God, L. — I wish to hell I knew. The only good thing anybody can tell us is that you were being treated for what was wrong with you. IV antibiotics, just like they would have done here, apparently. You're weak now, but you're on the mend. Fever's gone, no sign of infection from the swabs they took, and you're not even going to want to know about any of that swabbing business, believe me." Jazz blew hair off of her forehead and grinned grimly. "Trust you to end up kidnapped by renegade doctors."
"Renegade doctors whose heads I'm going to mount on my trophy wall."
"Yes, bwana. I'll carry the elephant gun."
Four days. Four missing days. Six, if she'd been unconscious here since they'd found her. Almost a week of her life gone into a black hole.
"What about Susannah?" Omar, dead on the floor, hands open, throat cut. "Do the cops still have her?"
"No. They let her go. McCarthy's watching her," Jazz said. "Although believe me, it's been a challenge keeping him from being here twenty-four-seven. Look, I've been thinking…maybe the Cross Society decided they owed you one. Considering that it was their fake red letter that got you in trouble in the first place."
Eerily possible. Gregory Ivanovich had defeated her security once. He could have done it again. And carried me out? If he'd used her emergency exit, he could have done it?”