And then he threw up.
But he couldn’t leave the body. That would be too temporary.
On his knees at the edge of the mere, he watched until no bubbles broke the black surface of the water. Maybe the chain mail would keep the torso down, and maybe kicking the skull into a tree had doomed the other Viking. Maybe without a companion to put his head back, as Ivar had done for Wulf on the plains of Mongolia, the immortal couldn’t forge himself into a man again. Maybe there was an end.
Cold gelled the blood in Wulf’s veins. Slowed him, now that he didn’t have to fight. Theresa and his friends and his brother would be safe. He could lay in the leaf mold, rest.
His fight had finished.
Chapter Thirty
Theresa’s needle went smoothly through Deavers’s thigh, bringing the skin together as neatly as stitches performed in a clinic. Guleed’s dining room table was a fine substitute, so long as she didn’t let the sweaty, armed bodies stalking from door to window and back to table distract her.
“What can I do?” Cruz loomed at her elbow like an expectant father.
“Don’t block my light.” She tied off the thread. A steady saline drip had brought Chris back to grumpy coherence. Besides stitching, her task was to keep him from seeing his own blood. “If you can’t cough up an X-ray, I’d settle for a shot of lidocaine.”
“Vodka?”
“I was referring to him, not me.” She pushed on her patient’s side, indicating he should roll to his stomach so she could tackle the exit wound.
“So was I, ma’am.”
“You wouldn’t.” She looked up. “Alcohol depresses breathing function.”
Chris’s throat vibrated with the sound of a man trying to transfer a load of pain. No way around it—stitches without anesthetic hurt. “Vodka. With hot sauce.”
“Not a chance.” She slipped the curved needle through his skin. “Only a few more.”
Cruz looked at his captain. “Reindeer?”
Focused on her handiwork, she hadn’t noticed the captain’s goofy underwear until now.
“Married dudes go extreme for attention, don’t you?”
Chris unfisted an appropriate middle finger in response, but before Cruz could reply, a double ding drove the men into ready stances. As his men bounded across the room, Chris automatically tried to roll off the table, but she braced him with both hands. Eyes and weapons swiveled to the door, which Kahananui pantomimed opening.
Guleed reached for the knob with the speed of VA paperwork.
No one breathed as the door swung a foot into the room.
Theresa recognized Ivar in the apartment hall and stretched a hand toward Cruz, who stood behind the door holding a business-size blade. “It’s okay! It’s Wulf’s brother!”
The Americans froze. Guleed was the first to grasp that the man in the hall was a friend, and partly responsible for his successful life in Denmark, so he extended both arms in welcome.
“What’s on your gl—uhhh.” Chris’s eyes weren’t seeing her messy surgical gloves anymore, dammit, and after she’d been so careful to keep them out of his sight.
Unsurprisingly, introductions were curt, given the personalities and weapons stuffing the room. As she whipped through her final stitches with Deavers enjoying his eyelids, she filled the silence. “Glad to see you, Ivar.” She was. He was out in public, moving among strangers, a good sign of recovery. “How’d you know where to find us?”
“I left New York within the hour upon learning of Dr. Haukssen’s murder,” he answered. “We have a long association with Mr. Abdirahman, so I began here at his home.”
“Must be how a chick feels when her boyfriend’s married,” Cruz muttered. “Lone Wolf forgot to mention his freaking pack.”
“My brother and I are not, and never have been, furry.” Ivar stared at Cruz.
Theresa wasn’t certain whether he’d intended to be funny or issue a clarification, but the stink of unused adrenaline rolled through the room. “Guys, we’re all on the same side.”
“Where is my brother?”
Her face must have conveyed the not-here part of the answer, because his good hand wrapped around the black-gloved fingers protruding from his sling.
“He ordered us to leave him at Lejre.” Her voice was low, but carried through the silent room. “It was Unferth, by himself against Wulf, and he made us promise to get out.”
“I see.” He swallowed, and stared at each person in the room.
She was too exhausted to decipher his expression. Maybe it was worry, maybe disgust or anger, or maybe nothing and she was extrapolating her own feelings.
“My jet is being refueled. By the time we reach Kastrup, it will be cleared to depart.” He pivoted to the door. She couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders hunched enough to shift his coat.
He wasn’t going to do anything? Although his inaction was nominally for their protection and part of Wulf’s wishes, Ivar was abandoning his brother. She’d do well to remember that he could walk away that easily.
No one else moved or spoke, so a response, like the explanation, fell to her. Sour as her words were, she knew what Wulf expected. “After I tape this gauze, we can go.”
“We land at Teterboro in forty-five minutes.” Ivar placed a mug of tea in front of her. He wasn’t the warmest guy, but he’d decisively removed them from Denmark before they could be connected to the chaos at Lejre. When the jet refueled in Burlington, Vermont, Kahananui’s Fort Drum friends had had a truck waiting. They were the type of buddies who didn’t ask questions, and by now Wulf’s teammates were in the shelter of the army. Deavers would be running laps in a week, although she imagined it would be far longer before the team stopped rolling their eyes and swooning in front of him.
“We didn’t clear immigration in Burlington, merely refueled. Here’s your passport.” He handed her a dark blue pamphlet that miraculously held her photo and several stamps, as if the person inside was well traveled.
“Where’d you get this? It looks real.”
“You are my assistant.” He ignored her question. “We’ve been in Venice for a long weekend and we had a fuel stop in Copenhagen, then Vermont, that’s all.”
“I’ve never been to Venice.”
“If the immigration officer asks, blush. Imply you didn’t leave the hotel.”
“Oh.” She squinted at him, but she couldn’t imagine Ivar in the clutch of passion.
“Think of my brother if it helps.” The iceman raised one eyebrow.
“Oh.” Warmth crept from her neck to her ears.
Personal immigration service for executive-jet passengers was as customer-oriented as ordering at a café. To Wulf, she would have whispered, May I have a regular skinny with my suitcase, please, and he would have snorted and bought her one at the first coffee drive-through. His brother would have pinned her to the spot with a glare if she’d opened her mouth during the process.
Of course Ivar had a limo waiting. They were on the road to Manhattan within fifteen minutes of landing. “Where are we going?”
He ignored her to thumb through data on his phone. “He has not contacted me.”
“Would he?” The glow from his small screen illuminated Ivar’s frozen face, and she wondered whether he worried more or less than she did. She loved Wulf, but Ivar was the one who’d been imprisoned. “Normally?”
“I regret this waste of resources,” Ivar said.
“What?” They hadn’t hit traffic into the city, so she didn’t understand what had been wasted.
“The additional losses without gain.” His voice sounded as dark and faraway as the water below the bridge.