Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Haz
The throbbing in my head was still raging when awareness rolled over me like a heavy fog in the early morning after a heavy storm. It was accompanied by unfamiliar aches and a pinching sensation in my arm.
Pungent panic cut through the hazy recognition, seizing my muscles with the urge to run.
They caught me! I was a goner, about to become fish food in the river.
Gasping, I sat up, survival mode overruling the way my body screamed in protest. Blind to my surroundings, I focused only on one thing: escape.
Something forced me back, trying to hold me down.
“No!” I roared, kicking and bucking.
A grunt. A growl. The weight on me increased.
A strangled howl ripped out of me, the strength of it powering my arm as I swung my fist. Agony exploded in my hand when it connected, and a sinister curse rolled through the room like thunder.
“Hazard.” The powerful voice cut through the panic, the name slamming me with recognition.
My shaking limbs collapsed, eyes finally able to focus. “Kieran?”
He huffed, the sound draping me in relief.
“He’s got a hell of a right hook for such a half-pint,” a voice I didn’t know interjected and spiked my anxiety all over again.
“Easy,” Kieran soothed. “You’re safe.”
“Kieran,” I whimpered as if the only word my brain remembered was his name.
“Yeah, baby doll. I got you. Just relax.” Gently, he pushed me back, his wide frame looming over me like armor.
Even though I couldn’t see past him, I knew I was in his bed. The sheets were soft and smelled like him. The pillow at my back was practically a cloud.
“How’d I get here?” I asked. My eyes widened. “Did you find me on the boat?”
His brows pinched. “What boat?”
“I ran for miles until I couldn’t anymore. So I hid on a boat at the marina.” Gasping, I grabbed his forearm and squeezed. “They tried to kill me.”
“Who?” The quiet, ominous tone paralyzed everything. The clock, my panic, even the thundering of my heart. For one suspended moment, all that existed was an unspoken promise to destroy.
In a sense, it was more frightening than the bullets I’d dodged. Because this kind of menace vowed to never miss its mark.
Perversely, I was not afraid but comforted.
The world only restarted when his fingers grasped my chin, a gesture he repeated so much it was almost expected. “I want names.”
Swallowing, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know their names or why they came after you?”
“Both.”
“Kinda sus,” someone sang from across the room.
Kieran’s body tensed, the muscle in his jaw knotting. Over his shoulder, he said, “I told you to get out.”
“And miss seeing you all up in a tizzy? Pfffffft.”
Leaning around Kieran’s body, which was perched on the side of the bed, I peered through the shadowy room in the direction of the heckling.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to make out the man standing there.
“No one,” Kieran replied instantly, moving to block my view.
Rude.
The shadow scoffed. “Yeah, the no one who brought you a doctor for a late-night house call.”
“A doctor,” I repeated, suddenly reminded of the way my body hurt. Glancing down at myself, I took in the white button-up covering my body and the large cutout in the left sleeve to make room for the IV line that was stabbed into the inner flesh of my elbow.
That explains the pinching.
Groaning, I lifted the tubing distastefully. “Not again.” Pinning Kieran with a look, I said, “I don’t need this.”
He glowered. “You nearly ripped it out again.”
“Good.”
“It stays in until the doctor comes back later tonight,” he commanded.
“What time is it?” I asked, my brain full of a thousand questions and all of them fighting to come out first.
“Almost noon.”
That meant nothing to me. “I don’t remember getting here.”
Kieran’s blue eyes glittered intensely. “Not surprising considering the shape you were in when I found you on the street.”
“You found me on the street?”
“Last night. About a block over. You passed out in my arms.”
The shadows sighed. “How romantic.”
“Go home,” Kieran snapped.
“Some days, I really do think you don’t like me.”
My midsection ached when I leaned to look around Kieran again. Hissing, I pressed my arm to my side.
Kieran stood and slid his arm around me while using the other to push me back. “What hurts?”
“Everything,” I murmured.
“You have cuts all over you.” Kieran’s face twisted like he was smelling a fart.
“Your hand reopened and had to be stitched this time. That asinine doctor at the hospital thought glue would hold together a little hazard like you,” he grumped.
“The stitches in your head were uncovered and starting to get infected. The gash in your knee needed stitches too.”
“Oooh,” I said, remembering everything now.
“What’s oooh?” the man across the room asked.
“Who are you?” I wondered.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s leaving,” Kieran replied. Then, “You will finish that IV because you’re dehydrated. Again. And you’re also now on antibiotics and got a tetanus shot.”
“I crawled through my window. All the glass was broken.”
Kieran’s face darkened. “And your knee?”
“Fell on a spring from my couch.”
“Aren’t those supposed to be on the inside?” asked the man I was supposed to ignore.
“They trashed my apartment before trying to kill me,” I explained. Then I wondered why I was explaining anything to someone I didn’t even know. “It’s pretty rude you’re asking all these questions and I haven’t even seen your face,” I snapped.
Laughing, the man stirred from the shadows and walked toward the bed.
He wasn’t what I expected, not that I really expected anything.
Maybe I assumed he would be like Kieran, a broody grump with control issues.
But the wide smile stretching across the lower half of his face obliterated those assumptions.
I wasn’t even sure Kieran could smile that big.
He was maybe around six feet tall with muscular shoulders that tapered into a narrow waist. His inky hair fell over his ears but was pushed off his forehead. His deep-brown almond-shaped eyes glittered with amusement when Kieran stopped him from coming too close with a hand pressed to his chest.
Chuckling, he tucked his hands into the black leather pants he wore. “I’d shake your hand, but I’d like to keep mine.”
“You got me a doctor?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t answer for me,” Kieran grumbled.
“Because he’s scared of you,” the man heckled. “It pays to have friends.”
“You are friends?” I asked, looking between the two.
“No,” Kieran said at the same time the other said, “Besties.”
Kieran sighed. “Haz, this is Ghost. Ghost, this is Haz.”
“Your name is Ghost?”
“That’s me,” he confirmed. “Silent, stealthy, and can be in and out of a place before you even know I was there.”
“How do you know each other?” I asked.
“We work together,” Kieran replied.
I glanced at Ghost. “Oh, you own real estate too?”
Out of the corner of his mouth, he spoke to Kieran. “Is that what you’re telling people?”
“What do you mean?” I questioned.
Kieran looked as though the top of his head might explode. His whole body slowly rotated toward Ghost, his not bestie who may or may not work in real estate.
Having a name like Ghost can’t be good for that though, right? Who would want to buy a house from someone named Ghost? I’d be afraid he’d haunt the place.
“Aaaaand that’s my cue to leave,” Ghost announced. Glancing at me, he said, “Nice meeting you, half-pint.”
“I was going to thank you for the doctor, but a half-pint like me has to conserve energy and being thankful is draining.”
Ghost hooted a laugh. “Short and spicy. I dig it.”
“Digging your own grave,” Kieran told him.
Ghost slid me a sly wink. “Don’t let his bad attitude hurt your feelings. He’s just extra grumpy because he thought you were gonna bite it.”
My stare flew to Kieran who looked like a self-contained thunderstorm as he grabbed Ghost by the back of the neck and hauled him from the bedroom.
Silence blanketed the room, and I glanced over at the window coverings I didn’t know how to work and the sliver of daylight coming in around them.
Without the distraction of Kieran and Ghost, I was able to fully take stock of my body and the way I was feeling.
Noting the bandage covering my hand, I peeled it up, finding the new stitches in the fleshy part and the reddened skin around them.
Next, I fingered my forehead, realizing those stitches were covered up too. Lifting the blankets, I studied my knee, which was wrapped with a tan-colored bandage, but I was too tired to bother undoing it to take a look at the sutures Kieran said were there.
The only thing I was wearing was one of his button-up shirts, not even any boxers.
Bunching the hem with my good hand, I pulled it up, but there was too much excess fabric for me to see my midsection.
Dropping it, I reached for the buttons instead, fumbling with the small things because my fingers were sore.
Kieran walked into the bedroom, attention zeroing in on what I was doing. “Is there something wrong with the shirt?”
“I want to see the cuts,” I said, biting my lip in concentration.
“I already looked at them.”
Did he think because he saw them, I didn’t need to? They were on my body.
Reaching my side, he leaned in, gently pulling my hands from the shirt. “You need to rest.”
“They hurt,” I admitted. “I want to see them so my brain will know they’re just cuts and I’m not going to die.”
There was a heavy beat of silence that his roughened voice cut through. “You will not die.”
Surprised, I looked up. His nostrils were flared, teeth clenched, and eyes bloodshot. I recalled what Ghost said just a moment ago. “You really thought I was going to die?”
“No,” the single word was harsh. Then in a much more hostile tone, he added, “I’m not very good at keeping things alive.”