He narrows his eyes. “And alcohol.”
“To clean the wound?”
“No, to drink. This is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”
Not a joke. Not a joke at all. This has passed a new threshold for serious situations in my life. A man is literally dying on my couch. I’m the only one here to save him.
“Now,” prompts Adam, and up and moving again. Tweezers are in the bathroom. All of my clean towels are shoved into one rickety closet, and the closet won’t give them up. It’s like the closet wants him to die. Fuck the closet. That’s not happening tonight, not if I can help it. And I’m going to have to help it. There’s nobody else.
In the kitchen I pull down a single fifth of vodka from the cupboard over the fridge. It’s never been opened. The top refuses to give, my fingers slippery around the ridges, until I take a deep breath and force it.
Back in the living room, Adam has dropped the t-shirt and has one hand pressed next to the wound. Not on top of it, but close, as if he can’t bear to touch it. He takes the vodka with his free hand and drinks and drinks and drinks until I’m forced to think about stopping him. How much alcohol is too much when you’re trying to save yourself from a gunshot wound?
The bottle’s half gone when he puts it down on the floor and holds his hand out for the tweezers.
I take a deep breath. “Are you sure—”
He snaps his fingers, and I drop them into his open palm.
Adam doesn’t hesitate. For a guy who’s just downed too much vodka, he’s surprisingly deft as he flips them into his fingers and digs them into the wound. My entire body freezes, watching this. Watching the serious lines in his face get overtaken by the pain. His teeth catch his lower lip and press down hard. My heart goes wild with how useless I am, with how raw this is, and I’m going to explode. I’m on the verge of begging him to stop when he gives the tweezers a sharp yank.
A bullet dangles from the end of them. Adam holds it up in front of his face. Inspecting it? Reassuring himself that it’s out? His eyes roll back in his head and he’s out before I can ask.
I put a hand on his shoulder and rub. “Adam.”
No answer.
I check his pulse. It’s still there.
“This is really not funny,” I tell him, and he doesn’t respond with so much as a twitch of his eyelids. Because now I do have to Google how to wash and bandage the wound. What the fuck was he going to do with the towels? I can’t just dry off the blood and hope it seals itself up.
I open up a private browser on my phone and type in the search.
Keep the wound clean and dry. Wash with clean water twice per day.
Apply Vaseline to the wound. Cover with clean bandage or other cloth.
Jesus. I have Vaseline, I think, but if I need bandages I’ll have to run down to the store. And I should do it soon, before the wound bleeds anymore or gets infected because all I could come up with was a ratty t-shirt ripped into strips.
I take my last bottle of water out of the fridge and use it to wash out the bullet hole while he’s still unconscious. It seems like the smart thing to do, even if the Google search result didn’t explicitly say so.
And then I check the living room window.
Nothing looks too suspicious down on the street. No lurking figures or white vans. Still, my heartbeat gets faster, louder. “The NSA definitely tracked that search,” I murmur to my reflection in the window. “I hope this was worth it.” I hope you were worth it, Adam.
My reflection has no answer for that.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elijah
Muffled keystrokes on the other end of the phone line punctuate a distracted silence.
“Howie.”
Silence. I shift in a pew five rows back from the front and watch the last of the sunset fade through the last of the stained glass. Not all of the original windows have survived over the years. I’ve had them replaced with plain, clear glass. Now that I have time to look at them, I’m regretting the decision. It would at least be more interesting to look at while I wait for Howie to come out of his trance.
He is probably the last person on earth named Howard. The nickname might be a joke, come to think of it. You never know with hackers.
“I don’t believe your name is Howard,” I say.
There’s a sharp rustle, like plastic wrap up against his speaker. “What?”
“Are you going to update me or not?”
“I was checking up on our happy couple. They’re all settled in at the resort. Nothing new to report there. The rental car was checked in a couple of hours ago, and I’m still waiting to see—”
He takes me through the list of red herrings. Sooner or later, the Army’s going to realize they’re all false leads, but for now they’ll be busy. We sent a couple matching our description on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. We paid another guy to rent a car with a planted alias and drive it across the country. Three separate women have checked into mid-tier roadside motels at various locations. There are others. There will be more if necessary.
For now, Holly is safe with me in the abandoned church.
Howie has started typing again, and his words tumble out with increasing speed until he reaches the end of his updates. “Gotta go.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he ends the call.
I stand up from the pew and stretch, my ass aching from the unforgiving curve of the wood. I should’ve ripped out all of these cursed benches when I bought the church. It makes a kind of poetic sense, though, that the pews are straight out of hell.
Worship should be uncomfortable. At least the kind that was done here.
Eventually the Army will break through the paper trail obscured by the shell corporations, but for now this place is safe. Holly needs to rest if she has any hope of recovering.
I take the stairs back down to the basement. Being here with her has attuned me to every small sound in the building, which is how I know she’s already awake. I hear her movement before it should be possible and pick up the pace. Go through the door.
Find her sitting up on one of the cots, rubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand. I’m across in a matter of steps, one arm around her, easing her back down to the pillow.
Holly glares at me all the way down, her protest lighting her face, but I can see from the tightness around her eyes that it cost her. That little show of strength, sitting up in bed, it cost her.
I stroke her hair away from her face. “You need to rest.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for the past year.” Her voice is sweet gravel laced in pain. It’s hard to stay awake with painkillers like she’s on. The stubborn set of her jaw is proof that lying around is not Holly’s favorite thing. “Lying down. Staying low. Hiding.”
“It’s been three days since you were shot.”
“Well, it feels like longer. Especially with no windows.” Holly turns her head into the palm of my hand. It’s a fleeting closeness. It hurts her to turn over, so she doesn’t. She stops herself, except when she’s dreaming. The glancing touch of her warm skin on mine is enough to set me on fire. No, I’m not a good man. I’m definitely not, if I’m lusting after an injured woman.
A narrow table, more of a cart on legs, holds all the supplies I need to change the dressing on her wound. This is all I do. I bring Holly glasses of water. I press pills onto her tongue and make her swallow. I come back again and again with soup and clean blankets and more bandages and gauze. It’s as painful as sitting on the goddamn pew upstairs. More painful.