“Before I finish these, want one?” He sounded better.
She shook her head before she remembered he couldn’t see her. “No, thanks.”
Wulf had been drugged into a coma and then, click, he’d snapped to life, exactly like he’d done after the Black Hawk crash. What the hell could produce both a super kidney function to flush a systemic drug and super healing ability?
She heard crunching. “Those are loud mints when you chew thirty at once.”
“I offered to share. I need calories.”
It felt like an hour passed without either of them speaking, but it was probably only moments. The sound of tearing fabric was audible over the water.
“There are two dead men,” she finally said.
“Two?”
She couldn’t interpret his thoughts from his neutral tone. “I think I shot one.” She’d been in Afghanistan more than six months, but the first time she’d fired a gun at an actual person had turned out to be while on leave in Rome.
“You okay?” His hand and forearm landed on her like a falling branch.
She winced. Should she be okay? “Yeah.” Killing probably wasn’t a big thing to him. “I mean, he was trying to kill us, right?” Her hands felt dirty and crusty, as if splotched with dried blood, like Lady Macbeth. “What’d you do the first time?”
“First time I what?”
“Killed someone.”
A lighter flame in his palms became, within seconds, a ball of light hanging from the catwalk railing. He’d crafted a lantern from the dead man’s pants fabric and wire. The whole conglomerate hadn’t yet caught fire, and he hadn’t answered. “What did you do after?”
“It wasn’t what you’d term politically correct.” He scooted closer to the body, every movement an odd jerk, like his synapses had to fire individually to activate his muscles.
“By definition killing a person isn’t politically correct.” Flickers of light reflected on the corpse’s open eyes. She’d seen death, lost devastating battles in the hospital to it, but this wasn’t remotely the same because she hadn’t lost. She’d won. Here winning meant death.
Wulf stared down at the heavyset man. “Here’s the solution to one of my problems.”
“What?”
“My team’s been looking for this guy.” He turned out the dead man’s pockets. “He was a flight-line manager at Bagram until last month.” He removed the man’s shoes, lifted the innersoles and tried to twist the heels. “Disappeared after a pilot was shot,” he added as he searched inside the man’s belt, waistband, cuffs and collar.
“You’re thorough.” He didn’t fumble over buttons or zippers. He’d regained his physical control, at least in this small way, and it soothed her.
“Ideas?” He handed her a leather case the size of a long wallet. It held another hypodermic and two vials of liquid, one empty, one full.
By turning it toward the flames, she was able to read the label. “Ketamine. A sedative, mostly veterinary, off-label use as a rave drug.” She calculated from the listed amount. “This would work on a Clydesdale. Maybe a whole team.” Her throat closed and she stared at his face. The flaming cloth cast shadows that merged with the dark bloodstains until he resembled a ghoul from a Bosch painting. No miracle-science lab had created him. Her mind asked the question: What are you?
Her mouth opened, but surrounded by death, her lips refused to take the last step.
He reclaimed the drug case, put it and the dead men’s identifications in a pouch fashioned from a jacket, zipped it closed and tied it around his body.
“What are we going to do about them?” Without asking, she knew the police wouldn’t be one of his choices.
“Leave ’em. It’s a time-honored tradition.” After wiping his knife on a man’s pant leg, he replaced it in his ankle sheath. “Emperor Elagabalus was tossed in the sewer at the end of his shelf life, so it’s good enough for these scum.” He hauled himself upright with help from the wall. “You’re fabulous, you know that?”
“Not really.” She shivered and hugged herself with hands as clammy as her wet pants, but she made it to her feet. “I lost it before you regained consciousness.” His opinion shouldn’t have made her feel better, but it warmed her at least as much as the coat she still wore.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen fresh Rangers not stay that cool.”
“You don’t have to be a guy to be...” Tough wasn’t the right word. “Capable. Up to the job.” Sure, she’d been scared. She couldn’t think about the crunch of the first dead man’s rib without her shoulders and neck hunching, but that had nothing to do with being a woman. “I’m a doctor. I deal with unexpected shit every day.”
He untied the cloth ball and dangled it in front of him. The smoldering light swung wildly close to his jeans as he staggered. “Come on.”
“You’ll burn yourself.” She scrambled after him.
“It’ll heal.”
That sounds like the truth, she thought. She followed Wulf’s light downstream. At the moment, she didn’t see another choice.
Theresa knew no self-respecting Roman restaurant opened before six, but Wulf had promised food if she climbed this last hill. After leaving the sewer at the main opening with barely a wave from tourists on the bridge, they’d cleaned up in a church’s dingy basement bathroom and walked backstreets to this spot. On one side of the alley, ramshackle buildings backed into the rising ground. On the other side a screen of trees, brambles and ivy hid the cars honking below. Now that they’d stopped walking, her legs felt odd.
“Fighting makes me hungry.” Wulf knocked on a black-painted door. “This was the meatpacking district in the old days. My friend Cesare’s father was a butcher.”
The ground tilted. Maybe I should sit. The restaurant stoop looked clean.
“Cesare learned to cook from his mother.” Instead of letting her sink to the step, Wulf put a hand under her elbow and knocked again. “Butchers’ wives cooked the scraps. Good stuff.”
Scraps. Behind her closed eyes, she saw the raw, burned face of the man who’d tumbled into the water.
“Hang with me, Theresa.” He shifted her shoulders against his chest and reached around her to rattle the door. “This hill is a former Roman dump. Made of more than fifty million olive oil amphorae. Interesting, isn’t it?”
She struggled to raise her eyelids, prepared to tell him no even as he tucked her deeper under his arm and pounded the wood with the bottom of his fist.
The old man who opened the door barely reached her collarbone. When he saw Wulf, his squint changed to a grin and wide-armed hug. They chattered in Italian, but she didn’t care if they were twins separated at birth, because she’d detected the aromas of her mother’s house—garlic and onions and meat, all simmering and roasting. If these two characters didn’t move out of her path to that food, they might end up more crushed than Wulf’s ancient amphorae.
“Cesare, mi scusi.” Wulf drew her across the threshold. “Permetto introdurre Signorina Theresa Chiesa.”
The cook kissed her cheeks, and Wulf guided her to a chair at the back of the room. He fiddled with a freestanding screen until she wanted to yell, Get on with it! She’d had a long day, no lunch and she’d freaking killed a man today and would do it again—see if she didn’t—if they didn’t bring out that marvelous-smelling food pronto.