Gérard suddenly groaned in pain and rolled away as the mugger jumped to his feet, holding a blade.
“Stay back,” he told Alex, adjusting the mask that had come askew. “Stay the fuck back!”
Alex glanced at Gérard, who was still moving but clutching his side.
“Thomas? Are you okay?”
He groaned again. “…I’m cut.”
Alex looked up sharply, the anger she’d stifled earlier coming back full force. The mugger must have recognized the threat, because the eyes behind his ski mask went wide.
“Stay back!” he said, his voice wavering. “Or I’ll cut him again!”
If Gérard was hurt, she didn’t have room to argue, but she didn’t have to let the mugger know that.
She took a step forward, keeping her voice level. “You’d better run, you son of a bitch, or I’ll tear your head off.”
The mugger stood there for a moment, the hand with the blade trembling. Then, without warning, he heeded her advice and took off running, disappearing into the darkness down shore. Alex briefly considered chasing after him, but knew she couldn’t. Instead, she moved to Gérard and pulled him away from the water.
“…Is okay,” he grunted, the stress of the moment bringing out more of an accent. “I will be okay.”
She pushed him against the sand, checked his shirt, and spotted a tear in the fabric near the upper right rib cage. She ripped open the shirt and checked the wound. It was a fairly long slice but didn’t look deep, thank God. A couple minutes with a medic and he’d be fine.
“I think you’ll live,” she said. “But we need to notify the police and get you some medical attention.”
“No…no police.”
“But— “
“He was an amateur. He was scared. I don’t think he’ll be trying this again.”
“I can see you haven’t been around too many perps.”
Gérard shook his head. “The police will never catch him and will only make our lives miserable for the next few hours.”
He was right about that, even more so where Alex was concerned. As soon as they found out what she did for a living, the questions would likely change in both character and tone. Alex had a decent relationship with the cops in Baltimore, but there was no telling how local law enforcement felt about bounty hunters.
Looking at the wound, Gérard said, “It doesn’t seem too bad. Leave me and I’ll be fine. I have a first-aid kit in my room.”
He sat up, groaning again as blood seeped from the wound.
“At least let me patch you up,” she said. “I’ve had a little experience in the field.”
He shook his head. “I almost got you shot and I’ve already taken up too much of your night with my drunken foolishness.”
“I insist.”
He looked down at the blood on his hand and relented. “All right. You might have to help me up.”
“Hold on for a second.”
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, switched it to flashlight mode, and made a quick sweep of the beach until she found the discarded gun. There were children staying at the hotel, and she didn’t want them to find it.
“All right,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
Twenty minutes later, she was in his bed.
CHAPTER 7
It was nearly three in the morning when Alex abruptly came awake.
She had been dreaming of her mother, twenty years old, wearing that veil and wedding dress. Alex sat on her lap, admiring the turquoise stone on her finger, saying, “I don’t want you to die, Mommy.” But when she looked up again, she was sitting alone.
Or so she thought.
To her surprise, she saw a Persian wedding rug spread out before her, covered with the traditional bowls of bread and nuts and coins and incense and two burning candelabra with a mirror between them.
But the face reflected in the mirror was not hers.
It was the groom from her mother’s wedding video.
Alex sucked in a sharp breath and opened her eyes and found herself lying in the dark of Gérard’s hotel suite. Gérard was on his back beside her, chest rising and falling but making no sound as he slept. And as the dream receded, regret kicked in, and she could only ask herself why?
Why had she decided to sleep with this man? He was a virtual stranger.
Alex had always been impulsive. For as long as she could remember. But she had never been reckless about her choice of bed partners, which, for better or worse, were few and far between.
So what was it about this one that had made her cave?
Hell, cave wasn’t even the word. If anything, she had been the aggressor.
After they had found the mugger’s gun, she had helped Gérard — wet and bleeding and smelling of the ocean — through the hotel lobby and up to his one-bedroom suite.
She’d sat him on his bed and told him to strip off his shirt. “Where’s your first-aid kit?”
He winced and gestured toward the closet. “In the suitcase.”
She retrieved it and checked inside, happy to see it contained some cotton swabs and several butterfly bandages. She then crossed to the bathroom and found a towel and two washcloths. After soaping one of the cloths, she filled a glass with water, and carried everything back to the bed.
She said, “Lift yourself up a little.”
He did as he was told and she scooted the towel underneath him and flattened it out. When he lay back down, she inspected the wound under the nightstand light and found a lot of sand, but was relieved to see it was even shallower than she had first thought.
“A couple butterflies should do the trick,” she said. She poured water on the cut to wash away the sand, then swabbed it with soap and rinsed again.
He winced. “You’ve done this before.”
She nodded. “Combat training.”
“Combat training?”
“Army. Two-year stint.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I have to tell you, Alex, the more I know of you, the more fascinating you become. Whatever possessed you to join the military?”
“It’s a long, boring story.”
“Nothing about you is boring. Tell me.”
She shrugged. “I could say it was a family tradition, but the truth is I wasn’t ready for college, and figured a two-year stint would do me good. I could always use the GI Bill to help get me an education later.”
She left out the part where she had heard rumors that her father had fled to the Middle East, and how she had naively believed she might somehow be able to contact him once she got over there. She had been so young and stupid then.
“So did you?”
She dried the wound and applied some ointment. “Did I what?”
“Get an education.”
She nodded again. “I had thoughts about joining the FBI,”—another naive notion that it might help her gather information about her father—“so I majored in Legal Studies, with a minor in Anthropology. I figured since I had a military background and I’m fluent in Farsi, getting in would be a slam dunk.”
“You speak Farsi, too?”
“My mother was Iranian. She made sure to teach me.”
He studied her carefully. “Yes, I see it now. She must have been very beautiful.”
Alex wasn’t sure why his gaze made her uncomfortable, but it did, though not in a bad way.
“And did the FBI accept you?”
“Not even close. They rejected me outright.”
He frowned. “Why?”
She took out one of the butterfly bandages and ripped open the wrapper. “That’s another long and boring part,” she said, the edge creeping back into her voice, “and I’d rather not get into it, if you don’t mind.”
“We can stop talking altogether, if you prefer.” He gestured to the wound. “You have my life in your hands.”