“Drink,” the rough voice ordered again. “So you don’t die.”
Let me. Let me die.
“No. No way, Ms. Sm—Angel.”
Everything was fever-wrong. Clammy-hot, shaky-cold, and heavy. So heavy. Was someone sitting on her?
“’swrongwithmyhans?” Her tongue wouldn’t work.
“Drink.”
Something pressed against her mouth. Fighting the need to gag, she gave in, opened up, let it flow into her. Warm and sweet, sunshine coated her insides. No, not sunshine, but…
Good.
“More.”
“Okay.” Prying open her eyes was like pulling apart thick, cooling caramel. Finally, she got one, then the other. She immediately shut them again, hard. “’stoobright.”
Something landed on her face. Sunglasses. “Try again.”
This time, things were slightly darker, no blazing shaft of agony.
“More.” That rough voice cut in and out, as if it couldn’t quite find a note to cling to. As if part of its register had been ripped out, leaving swiss cheese holes.
Something about it irritated her. She shook her head—or tried to. It ended up as more of a side nudge. And her head was big and cotton-filled.
“You want to die?”
No. No she didn’t want that. Her lids weighed a ton. They shut again.
More sweetness trickled down her throat, followed by a bigger mouthful, then a gulp.
“Wha’s going on?”
“You tell me.” The bed shifted beneath her. Bed. What bed? “Sit up.”
Turning to face the seesawing mattress, she pushed hard on hands that felt like lead, shifted up and back, away from this incredible, firm warmth, and managed to crack her eyes open one more time, focusing on—
Holy mother of God in Heaven above.
She’d have done the sign of the cross if her hand had worked, because the sight of the Ice Man half-naked and right there was too much for her poor, overwhelmed senses to handle.
She could only slam her eyes shut, but that did nothing to obliterate the image, burned into the inside of her eyelids.
He had one of those thick, wide, flat-planed male bodies that she’d only ever seen in movies, his pecs slabs of squared-off stone, with a light fan of dark blond, almost reddish hair, leading down to…
She swallowed and squeezed her eyes tighter to clear away the hallucination.
I must be dead. And this is what Dead Me wants: the dude who rejected me with his shirt off.
But common sense followed right on that thought’s heels. No. No way would Dead Me settle for that. She’d want the bottom half, too.
She leaned back and cracked an eye open to see thighs covered in tight merino wool.
Oh well.
Besides that, the mean expression he wore, too intense and hard to be anything but the real Ice Man, confirmed that she wasn’t dead. He’d be much nicer in the afterlife. Besides, the sun-, wind-, and ice-burned red of his face wasn’t something she’d ever conjure up on her own, nor were those hard brackets around his mouth.
Almost angrily, he put one of those muscle-packed arms around her and pulled her back into his heat. She was about to protest when he asked, “What the hell happened here today?”
She blinked. It all came back in a three-second flash that sent her careening into hell again.
“Gonna throw up.” She lurched to side and just made it into the trash can Ford Cooper held up for her.
The memories hurt, scraped her insides and tightened her stomach, reminding her of how indelible those deaths were. Of how she’d done nothing to stop them.
Alex. Oh God. Poor Alex. And Jamie Cortez.
The tunnels. Even now, they were closing in, darkness crowding the edges of her vision. Those footsteps, slowly approaching.
“Angel.”
“I ran.” He bent close to hear her whisper. “They killed him and I just…ran.”
“Cortez?”
“Alex.” She blinked at him. “Cortez…” She couldn’t think of that bloody mess and the sweet, silly Jamie Cortez she’d known. Her body tried heaving again and she held it back, breathed through it until she could talk. “He was already in the tunnel when I got there.” Deep-frozen. Blood everywhere. She put a hand to her face. Her nose was swollen and hot where she’d hit it on the door.
Ford swiped something warm and wet over her mouth, her cheeks, then tightened his hold on her, pulled her into his body.
“You’re safe now. Safe.”
Slowly, she loosened a bit, let him take a little more weight.
At least Ford was alive. At least she wasn’t alone. Or frozen through, like Sampson had threatened.
“I’ve got you.”
Nodding seemed like a good idea, particularly since it rubbed her damp cheek—when did I cry?—against that wide, solid expanse.
“Where is everyone else? Did you find any more…” She wouldn’t say bodies. Just the idea that there could be more made her ache.
“No one else.” With something like relief, her gaze shifted to the five o’clock shadow over his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. With a curse, he tried again. “Gone.”
The shaking started again, although this time it wasn’t from hypothermia—it was an overdose of pure, raw emotion.
I know you’re around here somewhere, Angel, darlin’. Wanna know how? Her heart thumped in her chest, too fast, too heavy, and so loud he had to hear it. That trapped feeling rushed out of the recent past to smack her in the face. My God, that was just this morning.
“He planned this,” she finally said.
“Who?”
“Bradley Sampson was the leader, I think, though he mentioned higher-ups or the powers that be or something. Kept talking about some payload they were after.” And then, because she couldn’t be the only one to know this, she said, “I watched him shoot…” Air. Breathe. “Alex. In the head.”
Beneath her ear, Ford’s heartbeat picked up speed, but he didn’t respond.
And, honestly, what was there to say?
Her nose, pressed into him, couldn’t help but take him in. And it was good. Everything about him was more human than she’d have guessed from a man who’d seemed stone cold: the smell, the heat, the give of his flesh.
“Bastard didn’t get me.”
“Good,” he whispered, arms tightening, head low, voice terrible in its intensity. “Good.”