David Morrell - The Protector

She sat him on the toilet lid and used the last towel, a big one, to dry his arms, chest, head, and back, avoiding the area of the wound, the thick bandage on it now pink with blood.

"I'm going to pull you up," Jamie said.

Off balance, Cavanaugh felt her move the towel over his legs, privates, and hips. Apart from the pain in his shoulder, his sensations came from a distance, as if his body didn't belong to him.

"Hang on." Jamie hooked his arm around her neck and guided him into the shadowy bedroom, easing him onto the nearer of the two beds. "You feel hot. Do you think you have a fever?"

Before he could answer, he started shivering.

As his chills became more violent, Jamie took off her slacks, got under the covers, and held him. "You need a…"

"No," Cavanaugh managed to say between shivers.

His eyelids felt heavier. The shadows in the room darkened.

She held him closer.

A tug at Cavanaugh's shoulder woke him. Blinking from faint light filtering through curtains, he managed not to wince when Jamie removed the bandage from his shoulder. Her green eyes narrowed, assessing the wound.

"How does it…"

"As red as last night," she said.

He felt something inside him tighten.

"But at least you don't feel as hot."

"That's encouraging, don't you think?"

"The wound crusted over."

"See what I mean? Encouraging."

She applied more antibiotic cream, covered it with another wad of gauze, and taped the wound securely.

"What's the time?" Reflexively, Cavanaugh looked at the bedside clock and frowned at red numbers that told him 4:22. More troubled, he pointed toward the curtains. "How can it be light this early in the morning?"

"It's afternoon."

"What?"

"You slept all night and most of the day. Don't you remember I fed you more of the pastrami sandwich and some of the potato salad from the cooler?"

"No."

"This morning."

"No."

"A couple of times, I helped you into the bathroom."

Cavanaugh looked blankly at her.

"When the maid came to clean the room, I went outside to talk with her," Jamie said. "I told her you were sick from eating sandwiches that had spoiled in the car. I said I didn't want to leave you alone. Then I gave her money to give to the desk clerk to rent this room for another night. I called the front desk, and she did pass the money along. 'No problem,' the clerk said."

"Yes, you've definitely got the instincts of an operator."

"You need to eat again."

"Not hungry."

"That doesn't matter. You won't heal if you don't eat."

"Can't stand the thought of pastrami and potato salad."

"They've probably gone bad by now anyhow. Name something. Pizza? We can have it delivered."

He started to object.

She made him proud by anticipating. "I take that back. No deliveries. Lousy security, right?"

"Right."

"Then I'll have to go out and get something. There's no alternative. Tell me what sounds good. Fried chicken? A milk shake? Anything."

Cavanaugh had to make her think he had an appetite. Otherwise, she might be more tempted to get a doctor. "The chicken. Help me to the bathroom."

Afterward, she handed him shaving soap and a new razor. Scraping off his three days of beard stubble made him feel cleaner. Nonetheless, he was exhausted by the time he got back in bed.

"Will you be all right while I go out?" Jamie asked.

"If the assault team knew where we were, they'd have broken in by now." A sheet and blanket over him, Cavanaugh propped himself up on pillows. "Put the do not disturb sign on the knob outside, and hand me my pistol."

"You wouldn't think you needed the gun if you didn't suspect there might still be a threat."

"Force of habit."

"Right," she said skeptically.

"I can't wait for that chicken."

"Right," she added more skeptically, then left.

Hearing her test the door to make sure it was locked, Cavanaugh glanced at the bedside clock, which read 4:58. There was something he needed to know. He reached stiffly for the television's remote control on the bedside table and pointed it beyond the foot of the bed, switching on the television and looking for a local station.

On Channel 6, the Live at 5 news was starting. As Cavanaugh had expected, the fire was one of the initial stories. He concentrated on what the reporter said while watching shots of exhausted-looking firefighters working with chain saws, shovels, and hoses to keep flames away from the first town he'd reached the previous afternoon. Swooping through smoke, a helicopter dropped fire-retardant chemicals on the blaze.

"The fire was ninety percent contained by midafternoon," one of the local news anchors assured her audience, and then switched to a story about a political scandal in Albany involving a state senator who'd been arrested for driving drunk and hitting a teenaged bicyclist, breaking her legs.

Baffled, Cavanaugh stared at the television and then moved up through the channels, stopping at Channel 10, where a story about the fire was just ending. Stunned, he listened to a male reporter tell him that by late afternoon the fire had been fully contained. He went back to Channel 6, so troubled that he barely paid attention to the images on the screen. At 5:30, another edition of the local news came on, and now the story about the allegedly drunk-driving senator got most of the attention. The fire-"fully contained"-got only a half minute of attention. He switched to Channel 10, where the story about the contained fire came on just before the weather report.

He frowned.

At six o'clock, as yet another edition of the local news started, Cavanaugh heard a rap on the door, then a triple rap, followed by a key in the lock. Just in case Jamie had an unwelcome companion, Cavanaugh put his handgun under the covers and aimed it toward the door.

Jamie entered, carrying paper bags marked kentucky fried chicken.

Cavanaugh loosened his grip on his pistol.

"Any trouble?" she asked.

"Just something I saw on television."

Jamie locked the door and removed cardboard cartons from the bags. "What did you see that bothered you?"

"It's what I didn't see."

She shook her head, puzzled.

"Take a look," Cavanaugh said.

She sat next to him while the local news continued.

The political scandal was again the top story, followed by a report about a series of gas-station holdups. As on Channel 10, the story about the contained fire came just before the weather report; there were just a few shots of firefighters.

"See what I mean?" Cavanaugh asked.

"I hardly saw anything. If I'd blinked, I'd have missed the story." Jamie turned from the television and frowned at him.

"Four people killed? A secret bunker? Helicopters with rockets? And all we see on the news are some firefighters with axes in their hands and dirt on their faces?"

"The earlier reports were longer but basically the same," Ca-vanaugh said.

"Maybe the fire crews haven't been able to get to where it started, so they haven't found the bodies."

"Maybe," he said. "But the area where the fire started would have been the first to stop burning, due to the lack of fuel. Spotter planes would be able to see the destroyed helicopter and the two destroyed Jeeps. Chad and Tracy were blown apart." Anger made his voice hoarse. "But Roberto's body was intact. Even burned, it would still look like a body. And surely somebody in a nearby town heard the three helicopters and the explosions."

"I bought the Albany Times Union." Jamie went over to the bureau. "It's this morning's newspaper, so it won't have up-to-the-minute developments. But maybe it'll tell us something."

She took the paper from next to the bags and brought it to the bed.