Читать книгу Let Me In - Donna Kauffman - Страница 7

Derek fought the haze. He was in a fairly significant amount of pain, but that was secondary. That he could compartmentalize. It was just basic mechanics. What worked, what didn’t, and how long it would take to repair. The haze…that was different. He couldn’t divorce himself from it, he couldn’t ignore it, he couldn’t bend it to his will. Which was why drugs were often so much more effective than physical torture.

Controlling his thoughts was still a slippery endeavor. Staying focused could last several minutes, or mere seconds, before his mind would wander off down some path that could be fact, could be hallucination, or some devilish combination of the two. In the past twelve hours, he’d gotten better at distinguishing which was which, but he still couldn’t control the slide in and out. He didn’t know what they’d pumped into him, or how long the effects would last.

Worse, he had no idea what he’d told them. Had his years-long, intense training, which included subliminal subterfuge, even under duress and drug induced confessionals, held up? Or did they know everything he knew? Which was admittedly damn little, but more than anyone else knew at the moment.

He didn’t even know who the hell “they” were.

“Derek?”

Her voice. Tate’s voice. He felt his thoughts begin to slip away from him again and fought like hell to keep them in check, under his control. He’d missed that voice. Always so crisp, so businesslike, so succinct. He’d fantasized about that voice, about making it break, making it tremble. No…no, that was the drug talking. He’d never allowed himself to think of his best agent as anything more than just that. Only she wasn’t his anymore. In any capacity. Never would be. More’s the pity. But what other choice did he have? What other choice would someone like him ever have?

“Derek! Do you hear me?”

Yes. And he wanted it to stop. It was torture, that voice. So close, and yet so far. He’d watched her. For days now. So close, and yet farther away than ever. Torture, indeed.

“Don’t slip out on me,” she commanded. “You need to hold on. Wake up. Tell me what you’ve done.”

Done. What had he done? Bits of the past two days floated in and out of the pain-fogged haze that was his brain. He’d failed, that’s what he’d done.

He grimaced, trying to separate the pain from the haze. Focus past the haze, latch on to something, anything, that was real and solid, then build on that. But all he heard was Tate’s voice. All he saw was her cabin. With her safely in it. And him, forever on the outside, looking in. Keep her safe. But how? How to do his job, and keep her safe? He had to. He’d given his word. He never made promises. Yet, he’d made one to her.

And then darkness. And pain. And…limbo. No boundaries, infuriatingly elastic limbo. If this was purgatory, he’d rather just go to hell.

“Derek.”

“Right.” His voice…had that croak been his voice? Had he spoken, or just wished he had?

“Stay with me,” Tate’s voice implored.

“Want to,” he managed. Hadn’t that been the fantasy he’d never allowed himself to indulge in? Striding up to her door, announcing he was out, and would she please, for the love of God, take him in? Fantasy. Hallucination. He would never do that. Never ask that. He had a job to do. Always a job. Always…something.

“You can’t just come in here and die on my cabin floor without telling me what the hell you’ve dragged me into.”

Cabin floor. Tate’s voice. The drug, he was hallucinating again. He’d come inside. She’d let him in. Sanctuary. Hers. Now his.

Someone gripped his chin, shook his head a little. It had the effect of tossing his thoughts like mental salad with a side of pain, and it took him another moment to sort through the jumble. “Don’t,” he grunted. It was hard enough, fighting this battle.

“What did they do? Is it just physical? Mental? Internal? I don’t want to call anyone in, but if you need extreme medical care—”

“No.” It was an automatic response, one that was as much an intrinsic response due to his training, as it was an actual accurate assessment of his current situation.

“I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m up against.”

Derek gritted his teeth, and worked hard to open his eyes, to swallow against the gritty sandpaper that was his throat, to find some way to surface long enough to figure out where he was. Who was prodding him. Separate fact from drug-induced fantasy. He’d already gotten himself in this much trouble, no need to extend the streak any further.

He thought he’d managed to blink his eyes open briefly, but it was just as dark as before. Blind? No. No, he’d seen her face. Felt her touch. Not a dream. Not a hallucination. Which meant…“Tate?”

“Right here,” she said, matter-of-factly. “What did they do to you?”

She was here. He wasn’t going to make contact unless absolutely necessary. He groaned as she began working on the cords binding his wrists. Pain shot up through his elbows, then screamed when his shoulder moved.

The pain had a clarifying effect that was costly, but one he hung on to. He was with Tate. She was here. Talking to him. So, he’d made contact. He’d…fuck.

“I’m going to cut the cords on your wrists, but I don’t want you to move until we figure out if anything is broken.”

“Not,” he managed. Dislocated, but not broken. “Fine.”

She laughed. It was a short, harsh sound. And it made him want to smile. Which was proof right there how fucked up he really was.

“Hardly. But maybe you won’t die. Maybe you’ll live long enough so I can have the pleasure of killing you myself.”

He closed his eyes and stopped trying to roll his head so he could see her. “Please…do.” Then he could blessedly stop worrying. He hated worrying. It was a completely foreign concept to him. Worry was a luxury he simply did not allow himself. Focused, emotionless clarity. That was how he functioned. It was the only way someone in their profession could function and be successful. And survive.

No worries. Only the job. And how to get it done. Sometimes you won. Sometimes you lost. Sometimes people died either way. Cost of doing business. It wasn’t something you could lose sleep over.

But tell that to the sap of a conscience he’d suddenly developed. At least where Tate Winslow was concerned. Or Tara Wingate. Shit.

He’d apparently blown that all to hell anyway, considering his current location.

He’d never been good at that sort of thing anyway, having a conscience. It’s what made him good at what he did. Now he had to pray that Tate was still good at what she did. It was the only hope either of them had. For him, to get the job done. For her…to stay alive.

A long groan escaped him without his consent when the bonds slid free and gravity pulled at his arms as his hands relaxed against the floor. He wanted to move, to blessedly find a different position, one that would allow him at least a shred of control. But he wasn’t truly capable of assessing his injuries and, for Tate’s sake, if not for his own, he needed to at least relay to her what it was he’d dragged her into. Why he’d come.

“Don’t move.”

“Don’t worry.”

He felt her hands at his ankles, and then the pressure there eased as the cords slid away from them, too. He wanted, so badly, to just flex his legs, get the blood flowing back to the muscles, feel what the damage was. Pain was an incredible clarifier. It was excruciating, but this was the longest he’d held any real thought pattern in what felt like an eternity.

“Let me do a check.”

“Check,” he repeated, moving just enough to jolt himself alert, as the haze began to seep in around the fringes again.

“Don’t,” she warned, holding his legs still.

“Have to.”

“You have to do what I tell you to do. And only what I tell you to do.”

He smiled, then grimaced as the action pulled at abused, blood encrusted skin on his face and mouth. “Bossy.”

“I’m about to be your worst nightmare if you don’t lie still.”

“Can’t.” He’d already spent the past two days doing that.

“Will,” she said. “Since you can’t string more than two words together, let me do triage and try to catalogue the numerous sources of the pain you’re presently in.”

The haze was battling valiantly for a return, but while he was reasonably sure of his situation, he managed to tell her one critical detail. “Drugged.”

Her hands paused on their journey up his thigh. A journey that actually made him glad he was in the diminished physical capacity that he was at the moment. Because the drugs in his system wanted to have a field day with the hallucinatory scenarios her mere touch brought to mind. At least, he was going to blame it on the drugs. Easier than admitting he was human.

“How long ago?”

“Days. Think…two.”

“Two days?” She moved back up near his head, then gently prodded his eyes open.

She was nothing more than a vague, wavery image to him, zooming in and out of focus as she tried to see his pupils. It made him nauseous.

“Too dark, I can’t see. What did they use?”

She’d shifted back and he mercifully closed his eyes again. “Don’t know,” he croaked, fighting to stay above the pain, above the fog.

She leaned closer again, putting her hand on his cheek. It felt almost…comforting. He focused on that. “What do they know?” she demanded. “What did you tell them? And who the hell are they?”

So much for comforting.

He would have smiled if he had it left in him. He was sliding away, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop the void, or the vivid hallucinations that were sure to follow. For how long, he didn’t know. Frustration made him instinctively curl his fingers into fists. The renewed blood flow to his fingers now that his hands were unbound caused needle-pricking pain to shoot straight through to the pads of each finger. Even his fingernails felt like they were on fire. Several of his fingers weren’t right at all. It wasn’t enough to jerk him back.

The void claimed him again.

The next lucid, or semi-lucid, thought he had was about the light. It was piercing, blinding, painful, and he was pretty sure his eyes were still closed. Had he finally ascended from purgatory? Was this the white light that signified the end of the road? Surely he wasn’t destined for that finale. But at this point he was simply thankful to get out of limbo.

He tried to move toward the light, tried to open his eyes.

“Derek?”

The voice of angels?

“Derek. Open your eyes.”

The voice of Tate Winslow. Which, as it happened, was the preferable option. It meant he was still alive.

“Try—” His voice stuck on one syllable. His throat was dry to the bone and swallowing didn’t help much.

He felt the plastic tip of a straw press against his bottom lip, and he instinctively sucked on it.

“Whoa, not too much. Sip,” Angel Tate instructed.

He choked a little, coughed, which reunited him with the pain that had been his constant companion now for what felt like an eternity. He tried to be thankful for the jolt of awareness that always accompanied the shock of pain, but he had things he had to accomplish, and these brief moments of pain-induced lucidity weren’t going to get the job done.

“Must…talk,” he finally managed, though the words came out more like a hoarse croak.

“I’m in full agreement on that,” Tate replied. “But you taking off to la-la land every five minutes isn’t making that an easy proposition. I have to know that what you’re telling me is what’s actually going on, and not some drug-induced hallucination.”

“Not…hallucinating now.”

“Right. And five minutes ago when you grunted something about snakes, you weren’t hallucinating then, either?”

Snakes? He’d always hated snakes, ever since he was a kid. Every nightmare he’d had until the age of ten had generally featured the slithery devils. He’d stopped being afraid of them a long time ago, but he still hated them. So it shouldn’t be any surprise they’d popped up again, given his current state. Especially given the nature of the situation. Snakes abounded, only they were in human form.

“I thought you were trying to tell me you’d been bitten by one, and that was why you were delirious out of your mind, but someone has delivered quite a beating, and that was no snake. Well, not the reptile version, anyway.”

He wanted to smile at their parallel thoughts, but the simple act used way too many parts of his face that had no interest in cooperating without making him pay, so he just tried to corral his thoughts and focus his awareness—such as it was—on assessing himself, his situation, his current specific location. He was no longer on the floor. He was on something soft. He didn’t bother trying to determine how she’d moved him from where he’d collapsed to wherever the hell he was now. Tate had been one of the most resourceful agents he’d ever had.

Then another thought occurred to him. “Where?” he said. “Hosp—?” He didn’t think she’d have made that kind of mistake, but then from what bits and pieces he could recall of their initial conversation, she hadn’t been too happy to see him. Of course, if she had dumped him in the authorities’ laps, he doubted she’d have stuck around to see how he fared.

In response to his attempt to speak, she pressed the straw to his lips again. He sipped slowly this time, and was grateful when she left the straw positioned there for a bit longer, giving him the chance to take several life-giving sips. It could have been the finest champagne, and it couldn’t have tasted any better. “Thank you,” he managed.

To which she replied, her tone as dry as his throat, “Well, well, a please and a thank-you, all in the span of four hours. You must really be in trouble.”

“Trouble,” he repeated. “Yes.” Trouble he’d brought right to her door, and in possibly the worst way he could have. “Sorry.”

“The miracles continue.”

“Tate—”

She pressed the straw to his lips again, effectively shutting him up if he didn’t want to choke. “Right now, the only miracle I need, barring all of this being a really bad nightmare from which I would love to wake up any time now, is for you to get better as fast as possible so you can tell me what the hell you’ve done, and why the hell you’ve dragged me into it.”

“CJ.”

She didn’t say anything immediately, so he tried to open his eyes again. He realized that the blinding light was actually the sun coming in through the window. He squinted against the brilliance of it, and just the act of squinting pulled at enough tight spots on his face to tell him that she hadn’t been kidding about the beating he’d taken. He’d only had to squint his right eye, as it seemed his left was somewhat permanently squinted at the moment, being as it was swollen half shut.

He started to lift his hand to do a cursory touch test, but Tate put a quick stop to that.

“No moving. I haven’t inventoried all of your injuries yet, but I think we can safely say you suffered a dislocation of your left shoulder and a few of your fingers weren’t looking too hot, either.”

He carefully tried to curl fingers in both hands, wanting to gauge her assessment personally.

“Honestly, what part of no moving didn’t you understand?” She trapped his wrists with the palms of her hands, her touch gentle, but restraining nonetheless. “You’re in my cabin. You’re on my bed. I haven’t alerted anyone to your presence here. All three of those things will change if you don’t do as I say.”

He closed his eyes again, mercifully escaping the piercing light. “Bossy.”

“I learned from the bossiest.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest without his permission. “True,” he managed, even as he winced through the renewed daggers of pain.

She pressed the straw against his lips. “Drink.”

He sipped, but this time the taste was bitter. He immediately clamped his lips and tried to pull back.

“I’m not poisoning you,” she told him, sounding more weary than pissed. “Trust me, if I was going to do something to you, it would be direct and unadulterated. I’m trying to give you something to ease the pain. You can’t swallow pills, so I crushed up some pain reliever. Just sip as much as you can. I’d give you something stronger, but I don’t know what they pumped into your system.”

“Don’t…want that.”

“You can handle some ibuprofen. That’s all this is. I won’t give you anything stronger.”

He relaxed again. “Okay.” He sipped. A little pain reliever probably wouldn’t begin to touch the problems he was currently dealing with, but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt.

“I’m going to make some soup. We’ll see if you can get a little of that down.”

He nodded once, but he was starting to slip away again, and that was all he could manage. As sleep claimed him, he was faintly aware that this time it was just that, sleep. The room didn’t feel like it was spinning. And he still had control of his thoughts. Maybe the fog was finally starting to lift.

“I’ll check back in on you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

He didn’t smile at that. He’d already done something so monumentally stupid, he couldn’t possibly do anything worse.

He’d told her he was sorry, but that didn’t begin to cover the depth of his remorse. She still had no idea how badly he’d fucked things up.

But she was going to.

He just had to hurry the hell up and heal enough so he’d be the one to tell her what lay in store. And not the guys with the tranquilizer guns and the happy juice.