Chapter 18 #2
“Oh Jesus,” Michael muttered. “It’s all of you. Carl is not gonna be okay with all three of you bleeding!”
“Head,” Chuck admitted, the blood smearing on his hand now that it had stopped mixing with the water sopping from his hair. “Fuck. Ouch. That makes sense. I keep seeing two of everybody.”
“Bicep,” Hunter grunted, lifting his own blanket to check. “Nasty. Anybody have gauze?”
Liam grunted, and now that they were out of the cold and nobody was trying to kill them, he let his endorphins flow back a little and took stock.
“Ribs,” he said, suddenly worried. “Oh dear.”
“Fuck,” Hunter said. “Liam, stand up. Michael, do we have gauze, or am I ripping T-shirts? This is bad. You can actually see his rib!”
Liam hadn’t been the only thug with a knife, but thanks to growing up poof in a rough neighborhood, he was the toughest thug with a knife in every fight he’d been in.
But that didn’t mean someone else hadn’t gotten one in.
As though someone had touched a live match on latent gasoline, pain swept up his side, obliterating the ache he’d been suppressing, and his vision dimmed.
“Oh, hey,” he muttered. “There we go.” For a moment he fought nausea and thought dimly that this must be what Josh felt like after chemo or before a wave of weakness took him out at the knees.
The thought of Josh shored him up. They could not afford to give in to their injuries now.
“Where is everybody?” he asked. “Are we the only ones back at the dock?”
“I’ll explain,” Michael said, “but we’ve got to get going. Stirling said he’d leave a map for you. Liam, you can manage comms, right?”
Liam grunted. He was proficient, but thanks to the dyslexia that had plagued him since childhood, nowhere near Josh or Stirling’s speed.
Josh isn’t the only one who hates having his weakness paraded about, he thought, hating himself for only getting it now.
“I’ll need Hunter’s help,” he admitted. “I’m slow on the read, mate. If somebody’s typing, you need to read it out loud. Everything on the keyboard I can do by touch.”
“Sure,” Hunter said. “I’ll get your ribs while you boot up. Chuck, get behind the wheel and aim for the road between the two that you see, and Michael, I would love to know where my boyfriend is, but then, I’m pretty sure we’re all in the same exploding yacht there.”
“Well,” Michael said, “for starters, Josh and Grace are both in the back of the town car now, and Danny’s in the front with Kadjic… wait, wait, wait… let me back up.”
They all groaned as Chuck slid on the dry clothes closest to his size (too small!) and then got behind the wheel.
And then he started putting events together in a way that seemed to make less sense the more he spoke.
“So let me get this straight,” Hunter said, after Michael had wrapped things up to a stunned and puzzled silence. As he spoke, Chuck was racing through a curvy mountain road, and Liam had to keep willfully forgetting that the man had admitted to not being able to see straight.
Aim for the road in the middle, indeed.
“Josh was in the back of the town car. Kadjic grabbed Grace at the museum, and Josh jumped in the back to follow him. Right?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “Josh was going to put trackers on the vehicle, but the thing with Grace happened instead.”
“Got it,” Hunter said. “So Kadjic pulls up to the upper lot, and Danny’s waiting for him because Stirling tracked the car.”
“Yes,” Michael said.
“Danny buys time and tries to exchange himself for Grace—it’s working, and Grace tries to sneak Josh out of the back of the town car when the ship goes boom and all hell breaks loose.”
“You’re doin’ fine,” Michael said soberly. “Woohee, Chuck, you ain’t getting’ any slower.”
“That middle road thing seems to be working,” Chuck confessed. “Is it just me, or is there a hideous drop off on the right of the other two roads?”
“Ain’t small,” Michael said, taking a deep breath, and Hunter ignored them and continued.
Liam, following the directions Stirling had left on the laptop for him, logged in and started pulling up various screens.
Julia, Carl, and Kadjic all specified a different dot that seemed to be on the same curving path that they were on, moving through the same mountain range.
Liam wanted to ask Hunter if he saw the words Greater Bohemian Mountain Range anywhere on the screen, because between the movement of the van—not inconsiderable—and his own jumpy vision, he could not fucking get a bead on anything longer than those names.
But Hunter was still getting the story. “Okay, so that’s the town car. Tell me about Carl’s van here?” he continued, still looking over Liam’s shoulder.
“Okay, then,” Michael said. “Leon had grabbed me, Lucius, and Molly by this time, and we were hauling ass for the upper parking lot. As we passed the comms van, he told Molly and Stirling to meet him by the SUV in the lower lot. Stirling stayed a minute to fix up the laptop for Liam, I stayed to tell you all what was going on, and Lucius followed Leon, and together they got up to the hill by the upper lot in time to keep Felix from going ballistic. At least that’s what was happening on comms—Stirling relayed it to me as we were running.
We were still running, ’cause there’s, like, an extra quarter-fucking-mile coming from our side of the dock when Carl, Julia, and Tienne show up in the comms van from the museum.
Carl throws open the door, shouts, ‘Get in losers, we’re gonna fight,’ and Felix, Lucius, and Leon jump in and take off. ”
“He did not say that,” Hunter said, and if Liam hadn’t been so busy tracking the three dots and trying to figure out how to call up people’s earbuds on comms, he might have joined him in his disbelief.
“Swear to fuckin’ God,” Michael said. “We heard him as we got near the lot.”
“Good line,” Chuck conceded, and Liam let out a pained chuckle, then a yelp.
“Fuck! Hunter!”
“You are bleeding all over the goddamned van,” Hunter snapped. “Soldier up and let me dress this. Are we heading in the right direction?”
“Yes,” Liam grudgingly admitted.
“Then stop staring at the screen. You can’t magic him here with your brain power, so fucking chill. We’re all worried. Have faith.”
Liam was about to snap at him that he couldn’t possibly know how worried Liam was, but then Liam remembered whom it was Hunter was worried about.
Hunter had resigned himself to feeling like this every minute of every damned day.
The least Liam could do was not give himself a massive migraine and let the man bandage his ribs.
“Fine,” Liam said. “So, ‘Get in losers, we’re going shopping—’”
“Gonna fight!” Michael corrected. “Anyway, yes. They must be squished like sardines because there’s seven of them in that comms van and we’re a tight squeeze in this one.”
“Given their proximity,” Liam murmured, “I’m thinking Carl stopped to switch a few people into the SUV.” Probably thinking, like Hunter had, that they knew where the vehicle was and which way it was heading, and they needed to collect themselves before they kept going.
“Yup,” Michael said. His voice fell. “None of us are with our person. I mean, it don’t matter, but….”
Liam gave a small smile. “It matters,” he said. “But we’ll all fight for each other anyway.”
“Speaking of which,” Hunter murmured, and Liam had to close his eyes and breathe through Hunter’s ministrations.
He was an able medic, but playing with the flap of skin just made everything hurt in living color.
“You, sir, are a street fighter if I ever saw one. I mean, Chuck’s a freight train, Carl’s a brawler, but you’re a fucking menace. That was impressive.”
“Seconded,” Chuck said from the front. “Man, you’re a fucking danger. I feel like if we had Carl with us, we could take over small countries.”
Michael chuckled. “Carl would do fine—but he wouldn’t be around art, and that’s his favorite.”
“Better on the street than on comms,” Liam said grimly. He took a breath and then another, and Hunter put another strip of plaster across his ribs. “Will I live?”
“I wouldn’t get hit there if you can help it,” Hunter said. “Now there’s a beeping on the screen—it says Stirling. Put on the headset and mouse click the light. I think we can connect to the others now.”
“Bloody fantastic,” Liam said. “Could you get me a jumper or a tee or something? I’m freezing here, mate.”
“Can do.”
Liam worked the screen and put on the headset, and he was good to go.
“Liam?” Stirling said. “How you doing? Everybody okay?”
“We’ll live,” Liam told him. “Our earbuds are blown out, so good call on leaving Michael here and a headset. We’re apparently following everybody through the….” He glanced at Hunter.
“Greater Bohemian Mountain Range,” Hunter said.
“Greater Bohemian Mountain Range,” Liam echoed. “Do we have any idea how far we’re going?”
“Well, we figure past ?esky Krumlov,” Stirling said.
“That’s a little town at the base of the mountains—it’s where Kadjic’s going to stop for petrol, probably.
We need to hold back. We’re all gassed to go, everything was filled this morning.
We figure Kadjic’s heading for his hideout, so this is our chance. You guys down with that?”
Liam wanted to say he goddamned was not, but as he glanced from Chuck, who was nodding, to Michael, who was doing the same, and Hunter, who gave him a grim nod, he realized that everybody here—everybody—had the same reasons to scream, “Stop this now!” But they weren’t letting go of the main objective.
“Everybody here is a go,” he said. “What’s the plan?”
“Well, first,” Stirling said, “we need to wait until Kadjic stops, and then Felix apparently has an idea. Something about the one thing Kadjic ever let drop about the place that Danny passed on to him. But we’ve got to see it first.”
“So, driving blindly through the mountains?” Liam asked.
“Julia’s at our wheel,” Stirling said, confirming Liam’s suspicions about people shifting in the vehicles. “Apparently she’s been taking lessons from Chuck.”