Chapter 18
He drove around to the back of the store where the pickup couldn’t be seen from the road. First, he pulled away the wrap he’d taken from Dylan, which had stanched the blood flow by absorbing a lot of it. Looking at her apologetically, he tossed it onto the floorboard.
Next, he awkwardly took off the jacket and another two layers of garments he used for his homeless disguise. Under them he’d worn one of his own T-shirts. The left side of it was solid red now, but the blood was already drying and sticking the cloth to his skin.
“Well, doc, you’ll be glad to know that I’m not gonna bleed out on you. It’s congealing.”
After gingerly peeling away the T-shirt, he pulled it over his head and assessed the wound more closely. The cut was deepest just beneath the left side of his rib cage, tapering off as it arced across his abdomen toward his navel.
With more relief than he would ever admit to, he said, “It is only a scratch.”
“A big, bad, deep one.” Dylan was giving the wound a lingering appraisal, and when he caught her at it, she, in an annoyed manner, began taking items out of the shopping bag.
“What all did you get?”
“Alcohol, gauze pads, antiseptic salve, self-adhesive bandages of various sizes, butterfly closures, Motrin, and a bottle of water to wash down the capsules. None of which is sufficient. That gash needs stitching.”
“Naw.”
With resignation, she handed him one of the gauze pads she’d already saturated with alcohol.
He took a deep breath and applied it to the cut.
He hissed, cursed, and gasped as he dabbed at the gaping wound.
When that one was blood-soaked, she had another ready.
They worked methodically until he felt he had sanitized the entire wound.
“Burns like bloody hell,” he said.
“It’s supposed to.”
“You could help by blowing on it.”
He flashed her a cheeky grin, which she responded to with a drop-dead look as she extended him the tube of antiseptic cream. He shook his head. “Just one of those bandages, please.”
“You need the salve first. Then use the clips to pull the skin together.”
“All I need for now is a bandage.” He reached across the console, grabbed the box of bandages, opened it, and shook the contents into her lap.
He selected the largest, ripped it open with his teeth, and placed it over the deepest segment of the cut, then applied two smaller ones where it wasn’t as bad.
He made sure the adhesive was sticking, then looked across at her. “Nothing to it. All patched up.”
But she wasn’t looking at the bandage on his abdomen. She was looking at the tattoo on his right deltoid. “That’s one,” he said. “If you’re curious about the other, I’ll have to get more comfortable.”
Rather than reacting to his innuendo, she looked up from the tattoo to meet his eyes. In her professional/therapist tone, she asked, “What does that represent to you?”
He was on the brink of spontaneously telling her, but caught himself and said instead, “A drunken impulse. That’s all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
That cool voice and the knowing look she’d fixed on him made him feel more exposed than being shirtless. “Can I have my windbreaker back?”
She retrieved it from her footwell where she’d dropped it after taking it off. He pulled it on and zipped it up, restarted the truck, and drove them back to the road.
Dylan replaced the first aid supplies in the shopping bag, shook two of the pain relievers into her palm, and passed them to him. He asked for a third and swallowed them with a long drink from the water bottle before placing it in the cup holder.
She said, “You could use what’s left of the water to sponge that stuff off your face.”
“It can wait. I’m used to looking dirty. Part of the disguise.”
“You’re no longer with the DEA,” she said, “but you were working undercover in New Orleans, which isn’t even your jurisdiction. Why there? Did Bowie send you?”
“That’s classified.”
“And that’s avoidance,” she snapped. “Who cut you, Mitch? Who was he?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“Did he recognize you as a law officer?”
“He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. I think he took me for a homeless person.”
“Then what provoked him?”
“I’d like to know that myself. I didn’t do anything. Didn’t even look him in the eye. He strutted up to me. Cool like. Arrogant. With attitude.”
“You would recognize those traits.”
He nodded. “Many a time, I’ve played that type.”
“You are that type.”
He cast her a sideways glance but didn’t argue with her, because she was right.
“Anyway, next thing I know, he’s all over me.
Kicking, punching, cursing, and calling me names.
I believe he expected me as a down-and-outer to take the abuse.
And I would have so as not to give myself away.
But then he flipped that blade. I counterattacked.
He didn’t expect that, and it startled him.
That and the lady’s screaming. He was already on the run when he swiped me. ”
“It was vicious enough to cut through all those layers of clothing.”
“Vicious and expert. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry to get away, I very well could have been gutted.”
Innate reflexes, plus military training, had prompted him to defend himself without pausing to consider the risk.
But in retrospect, it sobered him to think that he’d been in mortal danger.
The little thug could have fatally stabbed him, even accidentally.
Andrew would have been left without either parent.
The thought made him slightly nauseated.
During his contemplation, Dylan had sat silently by, nervously twisting the button on the cuff of her blouse, which was the color and texture of heavy cream. He’d have to be a blind eunuch not to have noticed that it delineated her breasts as though it had been poured over them.
Sounding hesitant, she quietly asked, “Why were you so frantic to get away from the scene?”
“I told you. If I’d hung around, been questioned by first responders, my cover would have been blown.” He waited, then added with what nonchalance he could muster, “Plus, just about the time I was attacked, I spotted you coming out of the restaurant.”
Ever since he’d taken her elbow and hustled her away, they’d been waltzing around that elephant. He felt it was time to address it, and he didn’t want to do it while driving.
By now, the city was miles behind them. To avoid being ensnared in a major freeway interchange, he whipped into the right lane, took the next exit ramp, and drove half a mile before finding a road with little commerce and negligible traffic.
He pulled onto the shoulder of it, turned off the headlights, and cut the engine.
He turned in his seat to face her. She hadn’t asked about the sudden rerouting maneuver, but she was regarding him warily. She’d pressed herself against the passenger door as though trying to force it open.
She said, “Did you follow me there tonight, Mitch?”
“No. But I came back for you. I could have made a clean getaway and you never would have known I’d been one of the men fighting in that median. Instead, I circled back around.”
“For me.”
“That’s right.”
She assimilated that, then asked, “If you didn’t follow me, how did you know I would be there?”
“I didn’t. Shocked the hell out of me to see you there. I’d been in the median for a little over an hour when you came out. I hadn’t seen you arrive.” Watching closely for her reaction, he asked, “Did you enter through a private door?”
“Private door?” If her mystified look was faked, she faked it well. “I went in the same way I came out.”
“What time did you get there?”
She frowned. “A better question would be why that’s any of your business.”
“Because it is, Dylan. Literally speaking, it is my business.” Across the short distance separating them, he could feel her apprehension growing.
She said, “If you weren’t spying on me, it’s awfully coincidental that your ‘undercover work’ was in a large city where neither of us live, and that you were in direct line of sight of the restaurant where I was having dinner.”
“Do you go there often?” He asked that in a quasi-friendly way, as though they were at a cocktail party getting acquainted.
Under that creamy, dreamy blouse, her breasts were rising and falling with agitation.
And agitated was exactly what he wanted her to be.
He didn’t want her calm, cool, professional, detached, and discreet.
So he pressed by asking the same question but phrased it differently. “Are you a regular there?”
“Tonight was my first time.”
“Huh.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You just up and chose tonight of all nights to hire a car—I saw you had one waiting on you—and come to New Orleans to have dinner in a restaurant you’d never tried before? I find that very coincidental.”
“Why would I lie about it?”
“You tell me, Dylan. Why would you lie?”
She sat up straighter, more defensively. “I’ve never been there before tonight. And I’d like to know what difference it makes to you where I ate dinner?”
“It makes a difference because it was that particular restaurant, and because you were in the company of and looking chummy with its owner, Roland Malone.”
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. “You know Roland?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said, deadpan. “But you know him, don’t you? Pretty good, too, from the looks of it.”
He waited, but she remained silent.
Though it pained his injury, he leaned forward across the console, moving closer to her. “I’ll save you the trouble of answering from behind the shield of professional privilege with a lie, or a half-truth, or an evasion.
“I don’t know what else Roland Malone is to you. Bosom buddy. Dutch uncle. Money lender. Sugar daddy,” he said tightly. “But I know that he’s your patient. He’s sat on that comfy sofa with all the throw pillows and has shared with you his deepest, darkest secrets.”
He reached into a self-fashioned pocket he’d added to the inside of the baggy trousers. From it, he took his badge, palmed it, and held it up close to her face. “And, Dr. Reede, what I want to know from you is what Roland Malone has confided.”