I felt dizzy. I patted the door pillar of the passenger seat as Quinton drove. “This . . . ? How?”
“Stole it.”
“Hidden depths . . .”
“Not so hidden. You always knew I was shady.”
I nodded and my head felt wobbly on my neck.
After a half hour or so, he pulled the car over and loosened the tourniquet for a few minutes before tying it back down and driving on. “You’re in bad shape, but I don’t want you to lose the hand to gangrene. There’s no medical kit in this car or I’d do more.”
“Superglue?” I suggested.
“Not on a bleeder like that—the glue won’t hold in that volume of liquid with no flesh to pull over it—the whole tip’s gone. The vein needs a couple of stitches first. Then glue. Jesus . . . You did that to yourself?”
“Had to. Later.” I faded out and fell asleep, uncomfortably close to not waking up.
I did come to again in lamp-lit night, curled in a white bed that smelled like bleach. My hand throbbed and felt swollen, but I couldn’t see much because someone had bandaged it up. Quinton was snoozing in a chair nearby and woke with a start when I moved in the bed. We weren’t in a hospital, but the room had a feel of medical competence and I wondered where we were. Then I wondered why I was feeling a lot less muzzy than I’d been when I fell asleep. Just getting some rest and a clean bed wouldn’t have had that strong an effect in the face of the damage I’d taken.
“Hey,” Quinton murmured, pulling his chair up to the side of the bed so he could lean closer to me. His eyes were bloodshot, his face puffy, and his hair was a disarrayed mess that stuck out in dirty spikes.
I tried to reply, but all that came out was a breathy echo. “Hey.”
He put his head near mine and picked up my uninjured right hand, holding it loosely in his as if he thought he would hurt me with any greater pressure. I tried to squeeze his hand in reassurance, but mine ached and felt bloated, resisting closing much farther.
“Don’t try,” he said. “Everything’s a little swollen and you’ll feel like you’ve got arthritis all over for a while. So, right now, here’s the situation: We’re in a little city called Borba about halfway between Évora and the Spanish border. Me, I’d call it a town, but they say it’s a city and the locals are a pretty fierce bunch. It’s a wine-making area and this week they’re swearing in a bunch of newly elected municipal officials before the crush starts. It’s pretty busy here this time of year with the wine business and the marble quarries, so we don’t really stand out much. Even your injury doesn’t look too weird to a doctor who patches up vineyard workers and quarrymen all the time. He was a little annoyed we didn’t have the fingertip, but he didn’t have to remove any more of the finger, so once it heals up, you’ll be pretty normal. Though it’s going to be a bitch to relearn how to type.”
I tried to laugh and it came out sounding more like a steam radiator with a bad pressure valve.
“Medically, the doctor says the rest of the injuries almost look like a case of the bends or an industrial accident. He’s kind of curious how you got them and not completely satisfied with my bullshit explanations about falling into a quarry, but it’s not like you’ve got a bullet hole in you, so he’s not pushing. I think he kind of wants us gone before whatever trouble we’re obviously in comes knocking on his door. And he gave you a couple of pints of blood—lucky for you I’m a good donor. Also a whole lot of other fun stuff like antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and pain meds—not to be taken with wine, he was careful to tell me. Apparently that can be a problem around here.”
I nodded some more.
“The estate is about an hour’s drive from here, but it would take most of a day to walk it. I had to ditch the car, so we’re going to have to find alternate transportation to meet Carlos. So . . . how are you feeling?”
“Tired,” I whispered.
“Too tired to move?”
“Not if it puts more distance between us and your dad’s monstrous friends.” The length of my speech dried my throat to a rough soreness. I coughed a little and Quinton played nursemaid with a glass of water.
When I finally pushed the water away, Quinton closed his eyes and shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t stopped me. I wish I’d shot him dead last year.”
“No, you don’t.”
“None of this would have happened if he were dead.”
I tried to shrug and ended up wincing instead. “Maybe.”
“I don’t see any way to end this without killing him. And if I have the opportunity, I’ll take it this time.”
“OK.”
He gave me a sardonic look. “Oh, now you’re all right with it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“How?”
I shook my head since my throat was too sore for me to want to make long explanations. “Later.” I shifted in the bed, trying to find a way out of it. I didn’t have any great desire to leave the comfortable nest of blankets, except that something Rui had said nagged at me. “We have four days. Three.”
“What?” Quinton asked, frowning as he helped me out of the bed.
“Rui . . . said four days.” I had to pause and drink again. “Don’t know when that clock started running.”
“We’d better assume today was Day One.”
“Still . . . ?”
He glanced at his wristwatch. “Barely, but yes.” He put his hand up as I sat on the edge of the bed. “Hang on. . . . Let me get you some clothes.”
I made a face, imagining the condition my dress must have been in by now and wondering if I’d bled on it. Quinton fetched his pack and pulled out a slightly wrinkled button-down shirt and a pair of cotton trousers. He offered them to me, saying, “Your stuff was pretty trashed. I saved everything from your pockets, but I’m a little short on lingerie.”
I sighed—which hurt but still felt better than not breathing—and took the clothes. “I can go commando.”
Quinton is shorter than I, but he’s broader in the shoulders and men’s shirts are always longer in the arms and torso than a woman’s shirt of the same chest size, so the top wasn’t a problem—especially since I’m small-breasted, so there was no chance of inappropriate “barn door” syndrome with the buttons. The pants were a bit of a strange fit, but the biggest problem was their length. I rolled them up to midcalf and figured the heat would account for my lack of fashionable style. I looked at my bare feet and dreaded having to go very far without shoes. Mine were probably still on the floor of Rui’s charnel house and I wasn’t going back for them.
“Just a minute,” Quinton said, and slipped out of the room while I restored the contents of my pockets. He came back quickly with a pair of sandals with insoles that looked like an aerial view of clear-cutting.
“One of the nurses gave them to me,” Quinton said, seeing the look on my face. “They’re cheap, but they’ll get us out of here. We can’t afford to sit and wait for the shops to open.”
We didn’t have the luxury of being picky, so I put them on and we slipped out of the clinic.
The clinic was housed in a long, low two-story building that was faced in white marble. Most of the buildings I could see along the narrow street were white or pale pink. Even those that weren’t faced in marble were painted similar colors so the whole town glowed in the moonlight reflected off the pale buildings. Sounds of revelry came from several of the taverns and restaurants open farther down the road.
It was Friday—Saturday now—and I’d lost track of the days completely since I’d arrived. There’d been no chance to rest or be bored. I’d hit the ground running, and the sound of people having a good time reminded me of all the dinners I hadn’t had with Quinton in the past eight months or more before we’d gone to rescue Soraia. It seemed like a week had already passed since I’d arrived in Portugal, but it was only three days and I was as hungry as if I hadn’t eaten the whole time. There really was no time to stop to see whether any of the bars had food available. We needed to get to Amélia’s estate as quickly as possible.