A groan escaped as he bent to retrieve her handbag from the floorboard by his feet, prompting her to cast him a worried look. He fished out his phone, swiped his thumbprint across the screen to unlock it, and handed it over.
She accepted without a word, hit the button for his recent calls, found Sean’s name, and pressed the call button.
“Hope he’s still up. It’s two hours later there.”
“He’ll answer even if he’s in bed,” Carter assured her, dropping his head against the seat and closing his eyes. Man, he was tired. Probably the blood loss and medication. Ellie seemed to have things well in hand, at the moment. Quite a change from the terrified young woman he’d once had to hide in a crappy motel. The tables had definitely turned as she was doing the same for him. Where had that girl gone? She’d matured greatly in the past few months, and he couldn’t deny that he was impressed.
“Hello?”
Carter heard his boss’s voice, slightly muffled but still strong.
“Mr. Costas? This is Ellie. Ellie St. James. I don’t know if you remember me, but—”
“Ellie? Of course I remember you.” A beat, then, warily, “Where’s Carter?”
“He’s okay, but he’s…well—” She hesitated as if wondering how much to say, then plunged into the whole tale.
“Joab Blake attacked him in his hotel room a couple hours ago. I’d gone there to give him something and arrived as it was happening. Carter will live, and I think he’ll be okay with proper medical attention, but he was wounded. Blake got away. I took Carter to the hospital where they stitched him up, but then a woman came in pretending to be a nurse. She was going to give him something in a syringe. Said it was medication. When I wouldn’t let her, she tried to attack me. She was a shifter too. Carter thinks she was working with Blake. Anyway, I got him out of the hospital. I’m taking him to a motel for the night, and I was calling to see if you could send a plane out here to get him home as soon as possible. If Blake finds us and attacks again…”
She let the sentence dangle.
“I understand,” Carter heard his boss reply. “I’ll have one there before morning.”
“There’s more. He needs medical attention. On the flight, I mean. He reopened his wound by shifting when the nurse-shifter attacked. I’m not trained to stitch something like that. He needs someone on the flight with the capability of re-stitching him if necessary. Will you be able to send someone like that?”
A brief silence. Carter figured his boss’s mind was whirring, running through options.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
He sounded grim. When Carter had told him a couple of days ago he was flying to Washington to see Ellie and inform her of what they needed to do to change their marital status, neither of them had foreseen this.
Damn Blake.
“Thank you, Mr. Costas. I’ll stay with him. Hopefully we’ll be okay for the next few hours. I am armed. Oh, let me give you my number in case he’s asleep and I can’t unlock his phone.”
She rattled off a string of numbers Carter didn’t catch. He did hear his boss say, “Got it. Thank you, Ellie. Is Carter able to talk?”
She threw him a sideways look.
“Carter? He wants to speak with you. Are you up to it?”
He held out his hand for the phone.
“Yes, just a second. I will warn you he’s on painkillers, though.”
Sean chuckled. “Noted.”
Carter felt the phone passed into his hand. He put it to his ear, the ear furthest from Ellie to keep their conversation as silent as possible.
“Carter.”
“I’m here.”
“Are you going to survive this?”
Carter slid a glance towards Ellie, whose attention kept swiveling back and forth between the road, the rearview mirrors, and him.
“As long as Blake doesn’t find us before you get me out of here.”
“What about her?”
“She’s hanging tough.”
Sean grunted acknowledgment. “She’s a tough girl.”
“She is. But her family,” Carter added. “I want them moved. Now. Yesterday. Can you put James on it?”
“You think Blake will go after them?”
His fatigue was growing as the adrenaline wore off. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to open his eyes again.
“I don’t know, but I don’t trust him right now and I don’t want to risk it.”
“Understood. We’ll get on it. We’ll make it happen.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Stay safe, Carter. I’ll call Ellie when the plane leaves.”
With that, his boss hung up. Carter dropped his phone in his lap, relieved to be done talking.
“Is he—are they—going to move my family? Again?”
He could hear the notes of both dread and hope in Ellie’s voice. She didn’t want it to happen, but she wanted her folks safe. She knew it needed to happen. Especially now that they knew for a fact Joab had allies up here. Not that that was a surprise, but, having been confirmed, it wasn’t something they could ignore.
“They are.”
She heaved a little sigh.
“I was afraid of that. Guess there’s nothing for it, is there?”
He didn’t bother replying, because sleep was overtaking him. The last thing that crossed his mind was wondering if Ellie was given the opportunity to do it all over again, to let Jackson Costas take his chances with that bus so she wouldn’t be pulled into his world, would she take it?
No. Maybe he didn’t know her inside and out, but he knew her well enough by now to know that. No way would she have let that kid be hit by a bus, not even to spare herself and her family involvement in a dangerous world of shapeshifters where they didn’t belong.
It is what it is. No changing the past, Carter thought, and passed out.
Chapter Twelve
“Carter? C’mon, it’s time to wake up. Carter?”
Slowly, he roused to Ellie jiggling his shoulder, leaning over him. The room was dark, except for the one lamp glowing behind her. Her hair fell over one shoulder. Her glasses slipped, and she used a knuckle to urge them back into place.
“What’s going on?” he muttered, pushing himself up on his elbows. Again, he blinked, looking around, trying to orientate himself to where they were. Nowhere that he recognized. Looked like a dumpster motel room.
“Your plane will be landing in a half-hour and we need to get out to the airfield.”
Again, her words took a beat to sink in. The painkillers must have been wearing off, because a haze of hurt clouded his senses.
“Can you do this?” she asked. Worry was clear in her eyes.
He cleared his throat roughly against the sleep, fighting the haze.
“Yeah…yeah, I think so. I’ll do anything to get out of this rat trap. Pretty sure I’ll be bringing home bedbugs,” he grumbled.
“You will not, and you’re welcome for saving your life and hiding you out.” She took a step back. “I’ve got everything packed up and ready to go. I hated to leave you while you were out, but I was pretty sure Joab hadn’t followed us here and I had to go pack up your other hotel room and check out for you. The police called, by the way. They didn’t find anything but they said they’d keep the case open.”