Catherine Coulter - The Edge

"Mac, enough. I'm beat for the moment. Spread out those blankets and let's lay our patients on them.

Shush, Sherlock, it's okay."

Sherlock opened her eyes and looked over at me, at the AK-47s I was laying next to Savich. The only thing was, Sherlock wasn't behind those eyes. I looked away, I just couldn't stand it. I wished I'd killed Molinas.

I leaned Laura against a tree, unwrapped the blankets from around her, and spread them out. I eased her down onto her back. Her eyes were nearly black with pain.

I leaned down and kissed her dry mouth. "Now, you just lie here, make Savich give you some water." I unfolded the other two blankets that I'd been carrying over my shoulder and spread them out over her. I said to Savich, "We've been using the machete, but maybe there's something I can do to lessen their chances of tracking us." Before I left I gave Laura another pain pill.

When I returned some five minutes later, I heard Laura whisper, "I'm sorry, really sorry. I should have dodged better. Maybe I'll be demoted to the FBI."

"You'd have to do something a lot worse than dodge the wrong way to be consigned with the likes of us," Savich said. "Rest now, Laura."

"And hold still," I said. I flipped up the metal clip on the first-aid kit. "I'm going to play doctor now." I looked through the medical supplies. Alcohol, an oral antibiotic, aspirin, gauze, bandages, tape, needles, matches, thread, the pain pills-thank God the helicopter hadn't exploded. I had a feeling this was the luckiest find I'd ever make in my life. After Laura.

Laura focused her eyes on my face. "We could be in Thailand right now. Any place there's a jungle."

"Not with a town called Dos Brazos," I said. "Hold still and swallow these pills. It's an antibiotic and just one more pain pill." I waited a couple of minutes for the meds to start taking hold, then stripped her shoulder down and examined the wound. It was just a small hole in the front, sluggishly oozing blood.

"Hold still," I said again. I wet one of the bandages with alcohol and pressed it against the wound.

Laura didn't make a sound. Her eyes were tightly closed. She was biting her lower lip. "It's all right. I'm not in shock, at least not now. You don't have to look at me like that. I was shot two years ago. I know what shock feels like. Really, it isn't bad this time."

"Where were you shot?" I asked her.

"In my right thigh."

I could only shake my head. "You're doing really good. Don't move." I lifted her up and looked at the exit wound. It was raw and big and covered with shredded, bloody flesh and material from her fatigue shirt.

I said, "I can't put stitches in to close the wound, Laura. There's just no way to get the wound sterile. The chances are the wound would get infected and that would be worse. So I'll just clean it and lay a bandage over it. We'll change the bandage every day. Okay?"

"Yes. I hate needles."

I laid a cloth soaked with alcohol over the wound in her back and gently cleaned the area as best I could.

There was an antibiotic ointment, and I smoothed it on. Savich unwrapped a sterilized square of gauze and handed it to me. I gently removed the alcohol pad and pressed the gauze over the wound and pressed strips of adhesive bandage over it.

I repeated the procedure on the small entry wound. I washed the blood off her breast. The dried blood was dark red, nearly black now against her white flesh. I hated it.

I wrapped her shoulder, tying the thick bandage beneath her breasts. I'd done all I could think of. I'd done the best I could.

"Hey, Sherlock, you still there, sweetheart?"

"I'm here, Dillon."

"Do you think we're doing things okay here? Concentrate, Sherlock. You wanted to do it, and it's time.

Talk to me."

"I'm here," she said in a thin, nearly transparent voice. "I'm concentrating really hard."

After a few minutes, I asked Laura if it still hurt.

"Just a bit," she said, and I believed her. She sounded vague and pleasantly surprised. "Isn't it wonderful how that stuff works? No, it isn't too bad."

I had to keep her warm. I got her back into her shirt and covered her with blankets. "You just hunker down and take it easy now." Since she'd taken a bullet in the leg, she knew what that sort of pain felt like.

I had no doubt she could deal with it. The thing was to keep her alive in this damned rain forest with more possible ways to die than the L.A. freeways.

Savich had turned back to his wife. "What do you say, Sherlock? Were we efficient enough for you?"

"I don't know, Dillon. I'm sorry, but I can't seem to concentrate, I-" She was gone from us.

"She'll dream of that lunatic now," Savich said. "Jesus, Mac, it isn't fair."

"She was with us longer this time," I said.

Laura said, "Maybe this time she'll kill Marlin Jones. That would be best for her."

"I hadn't really believed that such a thing was possible, but maybe, just maybe," Savich said thoughtfully.

He leaned close to his wife's face. "Did you hear that, Sherlock? Kill the bastard if he dares to come again. Just shoot him right between the eyes. Try really hard to do that, okay?"

He stopped talking and looked up. We listened to the distant sound of an Apache. Not hovering or firing down, just cruising, it seemed to me. Since there was no way they could ever see us through the thick canopy of green, there was no reason to fire.

I told them what I thought had happened to make Jilly drive off that cliff. "There's no doubt in my mind that Jilly was on that drug. I think the night she went over the cliff she was trying to get away from Laura.

Laura was in her head, just like Marlin Jones is in Sherlock's head, just like when I relived being in Tunisia. But there's a big difference here. Sherlock will come out of this, like I did. Maybe Jilly took too much of the drug, maybe she was really hooked, because she was still obsessed with Laura when she woke up in the hospital.

"Did she run out of the hospital herself because she didn't want to see me again? I don't know. Maybe.

When we find her, we'll get the answer."

"The truth is," Savich said, "we don't have a clue about what the long-term effects of the drug are."

"I'm afraid that even Paul doesn't know that," I said. I saw a beetle, black and orange and green, pause a moment, wiggle its antennae at me, then hurry behind some small orange leaves. I saw several other leaves move. Critters everywhere, I thought, all of them hungry. Everything was alive in this place, everything was hungry, everything was hunted by something else, that or dead and instantly rotting or eaten.

I turned to Laura and lightly stroked my fingers over her mouth. "Since you've been cooperative, I'll give you some more water."

She drank down a good bit. I looked at the half-dozen bottles. Should we conserve? I wondered how long we'd have to survive in this place. Laura was shivering. I started to take off my shirt, but she stopped me. "Not here, Mac. You've got to keep as much of you covered as possible. There are lots of nasty things around here to bite you. And there are leeches too."

Leeches. Good lord. She was right. I doubled one sex-scented blanket and tucked it around her chest and neck.

"We've got to be very careful," she said. She paused, then frowned. I knew she was trying to get her thoughts together.

"It's okay, Laura. Take your time. We're not going anywhere."

"I was just thinking about my boss, Richard Atherton, wondering if the DBA is all over Edgerton." She stopped then. I knew she was in pain. I couldn't stand it. I gave her another pain pill.

After a few minutes, she opened her eyes, smiled at me, but her face was flushed. From fever or the heat or the tremendous weight of the humidity, I didn't know. "Breathe deeply, Laura," I said. "Think about that mar-garita I'm going to make for you. Think of me rubbing oil on your back, massaging your shoulders until all the knots are out. Now won't that feel good?" I lightly stroked my fingers over her cheek.