Ann Aguirre - Shady Lady

In the hall, Shannon’s soft tread said she was coming down the hall to watch, so I closed the door. Outside, she muttered in annoyance, and I heard her retreating. Given Kel’s broad chest, powerful shoulders, artful tats, and incredible delts—along with a mass of old scars from fighting evil, or so he claimed—that seemed like a bad idea. I didn’t want her romanticizing him. As long as I remembered how scary I’d found him in that orange prison jumpsuit, my hormones wouldn’t overwhelm me, making me forget that he was, no matter how you spun it, first and foremost a killer.

He’d assembled the supplies on the edge of the sink, everything I needed to dig a bullet out of him. The knife was bigger than I felt comfortable using; nonetheless I picked it up, and my hands were steady. I took a few deep breaths to prepare myself for the coming ordeal. There was a reason I didn’t go into health care, after all.

“Brace yourself, Bridget.” He didn’t tense or otherwise react, so I went in.

Shit. His skin had already started to seal over the wound. No wonder he’d given me the big knife; I had to cut him. Dammit. I don’t know if I can—

“I’ll be fine,” he said with a touch of impatience. “Just do it.”

“How much will it hurt?”

“Would it make you feel better if I told you I feel no pain?”

God, could that be true? Maybe you could blast him down to bone and he’d never know the difference, just continue with his assigned task until the flesh repaired itself.

“Yeah.”

“Pity I can’t claim that, then.”

Yes, it certainly was. I wished he’d lied. But that wasn’t going to happen. God’s Hand was nothing if not scrupulously honest, even when the truth was weird, unwelcome, and terrifying.

The tattoos didn’t extend to his back, so there was no fear of the scars marring the designs. He had angelic script on his chest, arms, shoulders, and head. For a fleeting instant, I wondered what the writing said. Eva had said he had angel names on his skull, but she hadn’t seen the rest of him.

This isn’t helping. Each second I stand here, the wound heals a little more.

Another deep breath, and I sank the knife into his back. The blade was sharp and silvered; his flesh gave way with sickening ease. Rich red blood spilled from the wound, darker against his scarred skin. He braced an arm on the sink, muscles bunched. The other he wrapped around his midriff in a protective gesture. When I glanced around him, I saw agony on his tense features reflected in the mirror.

Hurry. You don’t want to make him mad.

By the time I finished, I felt nauseated and shaky, but I dropped a twisted lead pellet in the trash beside the toilet. Mechanically, I blotted away the blood and started to tape a bandage over it, but by the time I got the gauze and tape ready, the injury had already scabbed over. I stared at that for a moment, unblinking.

This was indisputable truth, as I’d first glimpsed in Laredo. He might be crazy, but he had unnatural powers. I didn’t want to contemplate where those abilities might come from. At least he possessed none of the aromatic tells to suggest he’d made some infernal pact.

“You’re all set,” I said quietly. “Feel any better?”

In answer, he rotated his shoulders, testing. “Yes. Thank you.”

He turned then, and I saw why he’d been covering his abdomen. There was an angry red scar there, a new one. While Shannon and I stood outside, wondering what he was doing, he had literally been holding his guts in and mopping up his own blood.

Sickened, I stared at the evidence of my own cruelty. Neither of us had wondered if he’d been hurt. We’d been confident he could handle whomever Montoya had sent to kill me—and so he had, but not without cost.

“Why didn’t you let me help you?”

He reacted as if I had proposed something shocking and inappropriate; his whole body stiffened, and he took a step back. “Because I could handle it myself. I cannot dig a bullet out of my back.”

“So you accept aid only if you can’t perform the task yourself?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

I didn’t understand him at all, and now the bathroom seemed too small. I took a step back and flung the door open. “Then I’ll let you finish up in here. Shannon and I are ready to go anytime.”

Out in the living room, I made a call. This time Señor Alvarez didn’t seem surprised that I needed him to watch my shop for a while, but he sounded more resigned than pleased. In fact, I had to offer him a higher commission on daily sales to get him to agree.

By the time Kel came out, Shannon and I had our stuff lined up at the door, along with my purse, which contained a slightly unsettled Chihuahua. Shannon carried our dinner in one hand and a laptop bag in the other. Since her arrival, I’d sprung for wireless Internet—growing up in Kilmer had left her starved for the normal accoutrements of modern life.

“We can eat in the car,” she said. “And I washed up the dishes so we don’t get bugs. I also found a place for us to stay once we get there. I wrote down the address.”

She was a good kid. I knew better than to put it that way, however, because I could still see residual interest in him simmering in her eyes, no matter what she’d said about him not being her type. Kel was fascinating, whether I liked it or not.

“Thanks, that’s great. But you proved yourself in Kilmer, so I already knew you’re kick-ass in a crisis.”

Shannon flushed with pleasure at my comment, but she shrugged it off. “So we’re set?”

“Let’s move,” he said.

As we went down the stairs, I studied him. There were faint lines of weariness and pain about his eyes, though nothing I would’ve noticed before. He led the way to a vehicle parked on the street a few houses down. Kel had been smart enough not to cover their gate, which caused a lot of trouble here. It was so annoying to back out, only to find some asshole had blocked you in.

His ride wasn’t a macho SUV. Instead, it was a nondescript sedan in black or midnight blue—hard to tell in the dark. He loaded our bags into the trunk with an ease that belied the fact that he’d nearly been eviscerated; that injury suggested an opponent who had some skill with knives. I had a particular horror of blades. Over the years I’d handled a number of them, and they never told a happy tale.

“Shotgun,” Shannon said, and climbed into the passenger seat.

The back was fine with me. It had been a long-ass day, and I wouldn’t mind taking a nap. Butch whined, so I put him down to do his business. We’d given him dinner and a drink before leaving the apartment, so he should be good for a while yet. Afterward, I picked him up and tucked him back in my purse, where he snuggled in.

When I opened the right rear door, Kel put his hand on my arm to stop me from climbing in. “Why don’t you drive?”

I couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Really?”

He pitched his voice low, so Shannon—who was already in the car and fiddling with the radio—wouldn’t hear. “The healing takes a lot out of me. We need to get to Catemaco, but I don’t know how much longer I can stay alert.”

I remembered how he’d practically gone catatonic after the fight with the warlock. Yeah, it wouldn’t be good if that occurred with him behind the wheel of the car, especially one that contained Shannon, Butch, and me. While Kel might be able to recover from anything, the rest of us were all too human and fragile.

“Okay,” I said. “Will you have something to eat before you pass out?” I glanced at Shannon’s dyed-dark hair. “She wanted to impress you.”

“That’s absurd.” In the half-light, I could almost swear his mouth pulled into the hint of a weary smile. “But yes, I’ll eat the spaghetti if it will make the girl happy.”