What is Bruce Lee’s Vegetarian Brother’s Name? #2
He grinned as he began to clean the area around the wound with a sterilizing wipe. “Nicknames. Protection so bad guys can’t trace us to anyone. How’s your pain tolerance?” Demon asked.
“Well, I cry if I get a paper cut, so it’s not good.”
A grunt was all he emitted as he pulled some materials out of his bag, including a syringe kit, a medical bottle, and a pair of forceps.
“Well, this is quite a bit worse than a paper cut.” Eyes back on her, he began to clean the area.
“I’m going to give you a shot to numb you a bit.
We’re going to do a little extra anesthesia of the nontraditional kind, wait twenty minutes, and then I’m going to have to poke around for the bullet.
” Finished cleaning the area around her wound, he loaded the syringe and met her eyes again. “Okay. Here comes the anesthetic.”
He poked the needle into the skin near the wound, and she cried out.
“Sorry. Has to be close in order to numb the area. I promise you’ll be blessedly numb shortly.”
Reaching into his bag again, he pulled out an airplane bottle of whiskey and a mint tin. After extracting two white tablets from the container, he handed them to her.
“What are these?” she asked.
“Oxycodone. They won’t hurt you. You’re gonna feel loopy for a while though.”
She tried to hand them back. “I don’t want them.”
Triumph stepped closer to the bed on the other side. Again, he used the permission tone, an instruction to be followed, but relaying that it was acceptable to give in. That it wasn’t a weakness. “Take them, G. You’re going to need them.”
With a sigh, she popped them into her mouth.
“Slam this.” Demon was about to crack the seal on the whiskey bottle.
“I hate whiskey.”
He rustled around in his bag and pulled out another bottle. “Tequila better?”
“Definitely.”
He grinned. “Yeah, you’d definitely fit in with my Cherry. Triumph, give her a hand with this, yeah?”
Demon unscrewed the cap and handed the bottle to her as Triumph sat on the edge of the bed and put an arm under her head to help her lean up so she didn’t choke when she drank. She shot the bottle, then handed it back to the medic.
The tequila stung her taste buds, burned her mouth and throat, and finally settled in her belly. Warmth radiated from the inside out.
Demon slapped his hands on his thighs, then stood. “All right. We’ll let those meds take effect, and I’m going to go see if Steel needs my help. In about twenty minutes, we’ll extract the bullet and be good to go.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Grimacing, she asked, “I don’t want to know what they’re going to do to that body, do I?”
“Probably not,” Triumph admitted as he helped her resettle against the mattress.
“My stalker’s too tall for that ski equipment bag.”
Triumph shrugged. “Depends on whether rigor mortis has started to let up or not. That takes about two days, but I’m guessing if we hear any cracking noises, they’re improvising.”
She looked at the ceiling. “That’s… yuck.” She felt the bed dip as he shifted closer to her side, and then a finger reached out to push a long lock of hair back from her face. “Gross. It hasn’t been washed in a few days.”
“You’re fine,” he assured her. “Once he’s got you patched up, he can probably help you get cleaned up a bit.” He brushed back another strand. “I like the ombre look on you better than the solid color. Is that new?”
She turned her head to look at him, one eyebrow quirked. “You really want to talk about my hair right now?”
“I’d rather talk about what happened that got you into this mess, but I wasn’t sure how fast the meds would kick in.”
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes, and her thoughts swam, all out of focus. Lighter than a minute or two ago. A little bit swirly, not nauseously so. At least the spin was to the right and gentle. “I think they’re starting already.”
“It’s because you haven’t eaten, and he gave you alcohol. Want to give me the abbreviated version while you can?”
“Pretty basic. Guillermo confronted me with the fact that he knew I had, at the very least, once worked for the CIA. One of his goons clocked me, and I woke up in a room near Cerro Aconcagua. Likely one of his safe houses. Managed to get myself free, snuck out, and headed toward Puente del Inca. You know the rest.”
“Any idea who ratted you out?”
“I don’t think I tripped myself up. I was embedded so deep and for so long that, to be honest, the lifestyle didn’t even faze me anymore. Some days, I didn’t even think about who I was before I became Guillermo’s woman. As soon as that started happening, I should have had them pull me out.”
“Knowing the alphabet agencies like I do, they probably would have resisted.”
“Yeah.” She expelled a breath through a wave of sensation. She knew she hurt, but she didn’t care. The meds were definitely working. “I honestly believed I could control it, and I had so much more I could find out if I just stayed a little longer.”
“Could you have been outed by your NSA contact? Who took over after I left?”
“Guy who went by the initial T. Then there was a woman who called herself Pi, like the number.”
Triumph nodded absently. “First one was Thomas, my boss. Wasn’t him. Guy was as straight as an arrow. Plus, he died of a heart attack about a year later. Pi was a newbie when I left. Woman named Paisley.”
“She was my contact until about five months ago when her number went dead.”
Frowning, he cataloged the information away. “What about your handler at the CIA?”
“Brayden Latrec. I doubt it was him. He was with me all the way. Then again, his number went dead about the same time as Pi’s, so who knows.”
“You were running solo the last five months? Why didn’t you get the hell out as soon as your contacts disappeared?”