She tried to smile, though it came out shakily. “Nice to meet you, finally.”
Lauren was clutching her hand, almost visibly trying to infuse strength into her. She nodded, eyes wet.
Oh God, don’t cry, Felicity thought. Because she’d start bawling too. She didn’t want to die, not after having just found a friend. Not just a virtual friend, either. A real friend, in meatspace.
To stave off the tears she sketched another shaky smile. “You know,” she said weakly, “I’ve always wanted to say this.” She held out her hand, Princess Leia in the hologram. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”
And she blacked out.
Chapter Two
Sean “Metal” O’Brien took over.
Lauren was shocked and his teammate Jacko put his arms around her. Lauren was Jacko’s priority but that was okay. Jacko wasn’t a trained medic and he was.
The woman had fallen into his arms, like a wounded comrade. She was his.
Her eyes fluttered shut, then she forced herself to open them. She didn’t want to let go, was afraid to.
She needed care but she needed reassurance more. He peeled back the coat, pulled up the sweater and examined the wound.
Thank God it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. She’d lost a lot of blood. God only knew when she’d been knifed and the wound hadn’t been dressed. But though the wound was about an inch deep and was going to require a lot of stitches, it hadn’t nicked any arteries or organs.
He stopped for a second, overwhelmed with rage, willing his hands to stillness. The wound itself wasn’t that serious—the main danger was blood loss. With a blood transfusion and antibiotics it was just a question of healing time.
He’d seen far, far worse in battle. Teammates who had been blown up, who’d been gut shot. This was nothing like that.
But they had been warriors, trained for battle, ready and willing to inflict worse on the enemy. Not this.
He looked at the slice, gaping slightly open, sullenly bleeding. It was an abomination on the smooth pale skin of this beautiful young woman. She was lovely, delicately built, scared at what had happened to her.
What had happened was some fucker took a knife to her. Sliced her open. Probably willing to do even more to her if she hadn’t managed to get away. He didn’t know the story but if she managed to get away from a man with a knife she must be smart and resourceful. What the fuck? In the world as it should be, she shouldn’t have to worry about men with knives.
Metal was all about making the world a safer place, a place where beautiful young women didn’t have to dodge knife-wielding fuckheads.
“Metal?”
Jacko’s low voice jerked him back to reality. He wrestled his emotions back into his combat box. No place and no time for emotion when dealing with wounds.
His kit was well organized and he got what he needed without looking.
Felicity’s eyes hadn’t left his face. He was her lifeline and he wasn’t going to let her down.
“Okay, honey,” he said. “I’m going to disinfect the wound and bind it up, then we’re going to a place where we can reinfuse you and stitch that slice up. Okay?”
She grasped his wrist with both hands. Her hands were ice-cold. He kept a frown off his face as he held her hand, surreptitiously putting a thumb on her pulse. A thready fifty beats per minute. Blood pressure very low. They had to get going.
“No...hospitals,” she gasped. “Can’t...leave a trace.”
“No hospitals,” he agreed, pulling on latex gloves. She’d already made that clear and he’d already factored in that whoever had sliced her was still out there, looking. The fucker would never get his hands on her again. “No trace. Now hold still just a second, this might sting.”
Her face scrunched when he disinfected the wound, but she didn’t make a sound. Good girl.
“So, Felicity,” he said calmly, “it is Felicity, isn’t it? That’s what Lauren called you.”
Try to keep the patient engaged, try to ask simple yes or no questions.
She nodded.
“That’s a pretty name. Felicity. Sort of means happiness, doesn’t it?”
She nodded again, huge sky blue eyes unblinking.
“Well here’s the deal, Felicity. I’m going to apply some coagulating powder on the wound and then bind it up. I understand you don’t want to go to a hospital, you’re afraid the guy who attacked you might find you. He will not find you. And even if he does, Jacko—that’s the mean-looking guy over there—and I have your back. You’re safe with us, I promise. But we need to take you somewhere where you can get a blood transfusion because you’ve lost blood. Do you know your blood type?”
“A positive,” she whispered.
“Good girl,” he said. “If we know your blood type we don’t need to use plasma, we can use blood directly. And you know what? I happen to be A positive too, so if where we’re going is low on your blood type I can donate. I’m really healthy, don’t worry about anything.”
She was watching him so very carefully. Listening hard with every organ she had, it seemed. Not just her ears but through her skin and eyes. She nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. “Gotcha. No worries.” Then she rolled her eyes and tried to grin at him.
Oh God. Beautiful and brave. With a sense of humor.
He taped gauze over the wound then wrapped it, the best he could do if she didn’t want to go to an official hospital. It would hold until they got to where they were going.
“I’m going to carry you to my vehicle, is that okay?”
She nodded, blue eyes big with fear.
Metal slid his arms under her and rose easily. She weighed nothing, certainly less than the heavy rucksack plus heavy medic bag he carried into battle.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Promise. You’re safe now.”
“No such thing as safe.” She closed her eyes.
Lauren had her coat on. “Where are you taking her?” she asked.
This was tricky. Jacko knew, but nobody else in the company did. Manuel’s clinic was a secret. Manuel wasn’t going to appreciate having outsiders brought along. However, Felicity would be reassured by Lauren’s presence so Lauren was coming.
Metal made his voice hard. He liked Lauren, but this was serious. “We’re going to a place you are going to forget about as soon as we leave. Am I clear?”
Jacko narrowed his eyes at the tone Metal took with Lauren, but tough shit. This was important.
Lauren merely nodded. “Yes, of course. If they can help Felicity without notifying the authorities, which is what she’s frightened of, then great. But I want to stay with her.”
Metal nodded, walking out the door with Felicity in his arms. She was conscious but kept her eyes closed. Her energy was draining minute by minute.
On the ground were traces of blood. He cut a glance at Jacko, who nodded. He’d clean up the trail later.
“We’ll go in separate vehicles,” he told Jacko, who immediately steered Lauren to his SUV.
Metal put Felicity in the backseat, lying down.
“Okay,” he said softly. She’d opened her eyes again and looked at him. It was dark outside, the only light coming from the streetlight and the lamp over Lauren’s porch. Felicity’s sky-blue eyes reflected the little light there was, making it look like her eyes glowed in the dark. “I’ll drive as fast as I can but without any sudden stops or fast curves. I can’t put the seat belt on you, but you should hold on to it. Okay?”
She nodded silently. In the dim light he could barely make out her features, the streetlight illuminating only the pale blade of her nose and outlining high cheekbones. The urge to kiss her on the forehead was so great that he scrambled out fast and climbed into the driver’s seat.
The weather was really bad but Metal was
a good driver. Rain or shine, he could get just about any vehicle smaller than a tank to where he wanted to go. It was tricky driving as fast as he could while making the ride as comfortable for her as possible, but he managed.
Pity she couldn’t go to St. Vincent’s, which wasn’t far. Instead they were going to La Clìnica.
It was a clinic for illegal aliens who didn’t dare go to the hospital for medical care because they had no documentation. No health insurance, either. It was run by Manuel Gomez, a former marine Metal had bonded with on a cross-training exercise in Somalia. Gomez had had an illustrious career in the military and no one had known that he was illegal. His parents had crossed the border, desperate to flee from the first of the cartel drug wars, when Manuel was eight. He’d enlisted with fake documents but he’d been such an outstanding soldier that even if someone suspected, they’d turned a blind eye. He’d trained as a medic and had gone on to medical school afterward. Manuel was one of the best doctors Metal had ever seen.
He’d set up the clinic that ran with volunteer doctors on the basis of donations, which were generous. Many legal immigrants had relatives who were undocumented but needed care. The clinic saved lives daily.
Metal had phoned ahead and Manuel was waiting for them. Metal carried Felicity in, careful not to jostle her. Jacko and Lauren trailed behind.
The clinic was in a warehouse carefully disguised from the outside to look abandoned. Lucky thing Felicity was unconscious as he carried her in because she might have balked. Lauren and Jacko followed him in, Lauren muttering darkly until Jacko shushed her.
They went through two rooms, dusty and dark, with broken machinery and rusted parts scattered over the bare concrete flooring before they came to big double doors. When Jacko reached past him and opened them, Metal heard Lauren gasp.
It was a small, immaculate clinic, capable of dealing with everything from broken bones to minor surgery. Jacko contributed money to the clinic and Metal contributed money and time.
No one asked for documentation or insurance papers.
When Metal got Felicity on a gurney, Manuel wheeled her into a side room and started infusing her. Metal stayed with her while Jacko and Lauren remained in the small entrance that served as a waiting room. There was a row of chairs and they sat, Jacko’s arm around a pale Lauren.
Felicity regained consciousness while being infused. After about twenty minutes, Metal gently took Felicity’s hand and pinched the nail of her right index finger, hard. The nail bed turned white then immediately turned pink as blood pressure reinfused the nail. Metal looked at Manuel, who nodded.
He’d injected a local anesthetic and had started stitching her up. Metal stayed by his side. They’d worked together often, but here Metal wasn’t assisting. He was holding Felicity’s hand. She clutched his, silently asking him not to leave her.
No, he wasn’t going to leave her. You wouldn’t be able to pull him from her side with bolt cutters and a crane.
Manuel had a delicate hand with stitches, which Metal didn’t. It was the reason he was happy to have Manuel do the honors. Metal was used to battlefield stitches and nobody gave a shit what kind of scar they’d leave. Manuel’s stitches were small, precise, delicate. They’d leave a scar that in time would fade to a thin white line. It would barely mar that smooth, pale, perfect skin. Metal would have left a big Frankensteinian ladder-back scar.
When Manuel finished stitching her up, Metal checked her out. Her hand in his was warmer, not cold and clammy like before. His thumb at her wrist revealed a faster, stronger pulse. Manuel would measure her blood pressure but Metal could measure BP without instrumentation. He pegged it at 120 over 70 and he was never wrong.
Manuel pumped up the cuff and looked at the dial. “120 over 70,” he announced. “Pretty good.”
Felicity’s face had more color in it, lips no longer with a bluish cast. Her eyes were losing that bruised look.
She was on her way to recovery.
Her eyes had never left his as Manuel stitched her up. He started dressing the wound. “So, Miss—”
“Felicity,” Metal answered at the same time Felicity did.
Manuel laughed. A patient who didn’t want their last name known was nothing new to him. “So, Felicity, then.” He had a pleasant voice, with the faintest of Hispanic accents. “I’m leaving you in Metal’s care. He’s good, he knows what he’s doing. I’m going to give you a course of antibiotics and Metal knows how to change your dressing. You’re good to go.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, rolling her head on the gurney to smile faintly at Manuel.
Manuel laughed. “I don’t want to say ‘anytime’ because I sincerely hope never to see you here again. But in any case—you’re welcome. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a gunshot wound to see to. Bad guys are busy tonight.”
With a cheery wave, he disappeared.
No mention of money had been made but Metal made a note to up his monthly contribution and to donate a few extra hours.
An hour after carrying Felicity in, Metal wheeled her back out again. Lauren jumped up and ran to Felicity’s side. Lauren blinked and smiled. “Oh my gosh, you look so much better!” Lauren shuddered. “I’ve been—we’ve been so worried!”
“Nah.” Jacko placed a heavy arm around around Lauren’s shoulders and smiled down at Felicity. “I wasn’t.”
It was so fucking weird to see Jacko smiling. Metal had been Jacko’s teammate for eight years and they’d both worked together at Alpha Security International for the past couple of years and he’d seen Jacko smile more in the past weeks than in the past decade. Smiles looked strange on his face. “I wasn’t worried. I knew you were in good hands.”
Lauren gave him a sharp look but then smiled back down at Felicity. “So, let’s get you back home and—”
“No.” Metal and Jacko spoke at the same time. Lauren looked at them, confused.
“Whoever this guy is who is after her, we can’t know if he is aware that she was coming to you.” Metal gave the logical explanation because he couldn’t give the illogical one. Which was that he wasn’t letting Felicity out of his sight.
Lauren blinked. “I didn’t know she was coming to me. How could anyone else possibly know?”
Felicity opened her mouth to talk, but coughed instead. It pulled her stitches and she grimaced.
“Look,” Metal said reasonably, though he was perfectly prepared to be unreasonable. Felicity was going home with him. No question. “She’s slightly sedated and in no condition to give us a rundown on what people could know about her movements. If she came here for you, there is probably some trace of that somewhere. It’s not likely, but you have Jacko to protect you and he will, but he can’t protect two people. So we’re splitting it up. Not to mention the fact that my house is more secure than yours. Speaking of which, I’d recommend you spend the next few days at Jacko’s. At least until we find this asshole.”
“Yeah,” Jacko growled.
Lauren bit her lip. Everything Metal said was true. Jacko hadn’t had time to make Lauren’s house secure, certainly not as secure as his own and Jacko’s. The two of them had security built into their DNA and Lauren sure as hell didn’t. She was an artist and a good one. But clueless in terms of securing her safety.
He and Jacko weren’t clueless. In fact, they were fucking good. Good luck to anyone trying to attack them in their homes. So yeah, Lauren was going to stay with Jacko for a while.
And Felicity was going to stay with him.
Because his home was secure and he was one farther step away from Lauren.
Because he was a trained medic and could take care of her medically.
Because...because.
Metal bent over Felicity so all she’d see was his face.
“Felicity?” She licked her lips and nodded. Her beautiful eyes shifted left to r
ight as she watched his eyes. She opened her mouth and closed it. Talking took too much energy. That was okay. She didn’t have to talk. She just needed to be informed. “I’m taking you home with me. If the guy after you somehow knew where you were headed, he won’t find anyone at Lauren’s. But we’ll have cameras running so if he stops by we’ll catch him on film. Lauren will be staying with Jacko and you’ll be staying with me. My home is secure and I can look after you. You’ll be just fine. I’ll be there if infection sets in or you need anything. Nod if you understand me.”
She nodded, eyes huge.
“Nod again if this is okay with you.”
She hesitated a second and his heart sank. Because the hard truth was she was coming home with him whether she liked it or not. Someone was after her and was not going to get a second crack at it. After a second or two she nodded her head.
“Good girl. I’m going to carry you to my vehicle. Is that okay?”
That earned him a small smile and a nod and something in his chest gave a hard thump.
She was staying with him.
Yeah.
Chapter Three
Manhattan
Borodin sipped his after-dinner Armagnac and thought of lost worlds and worlds to come.
A generation ago, he and a group of other young KGB officers had seen the handwriting on the wall, though none of them in that long-ago summer and fall of 1989 could ever have imagined how great the loss would actually be. No one imagined that the Soviet Union could actually fall.
At the time, all their hopes had been pinned on the great closed city of Chelyabinsk, one of an archipelago of naukograd, science cities. The rest of the Soviet Union was going to hell, the situation even worse than the idiots of the Politburo realized, but in the naukograd, things held. Orderly and wealthy and elite, great things were coming if only the country could hold out.
The greatest invention, what was going to change the world forever, was being slowly pieced together by a genius-level nuclear physicist named Nikolai Darin in Chelyabinsk, a naukograd specializing in nuclear weaponry. Darin was working on man-portable nuclear weapons, called Deti, Little Ones, and they were going to change Russian history. World history.