Protect Me (27 page)

Iseul
held out the taser and was biting down into her lip to stop tears, obviously
ashamed of herself. Hope wanted to tell her that it was fine, this was normal,
she wasn’t weak, but she was barely able to even get enough air in to breathe.
Later, she could do those things later. They’d all have a talk about realistic
civilian expectations later. Hope reached out a hand for the taser.

Iseul
turned her head the smallest amount, looked over Hope’s shoulder, and screamed.

Without
a single pause for thought Hope’s body started moving as if of its own
volition. She completely abandoned the taser, yanked herself around, and flung
herself the other way. There was no time for thought or finesse; she was
operating in milliseconds. She pushed off of the ball of one foot with all her
strength, felt the other foot impact the ground a moment later, and then -

Pain
pain
chest rammed up against the object,
twisted her back
,
Rick’s horrified face staring down at her,
pain pain more pain where?,
the
goon’s weaker than he looks because he barely has the strength to twist his
arm,
how did she know that
, the body behind her back making some strange
movement - vibrating?,
oh pain pain even worse pain oh shit.

There
was a loud thud as the goon fell to the floor behind Hope and all the pieces of
the puzzle fell into place with him.

“Good
job,” Hope told Iseul, who was clenching the taser in a white-knuckle grip, and
was white through her naturally darker complexion. “Don’t let me fall on the -
”

There
was a split second of disconnect where words and colors stopped working, and
Hope knew that she was going to pass out and she knew that Rick was already
opening his mouth to beg her to come back, and she wanted to tell him
everything would be okay but - 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When
she looked back on it, Hope was sort of impressed with her own confidence. The
first thing she said when she woke up to hospital lights was, “I love you.”

“Oh
God, she has amnesia,” a very familiar voice groaned.

Hope
wasn’t quite stupid enough to attempt sitting up, but she did gingerly start to
tense all her muscle groups, to get an idea of the damages. It turned out that
her body’s unanimous vote was “lots of pain” and that she was an asshole for
doing this to herself. She couldn’t disagree.

“I
don’t,” Hope argued. “I know that Elizabeth I is the Queen of America.”

“You
went into surgery and woke up with a sense of humor,” Rick said, and Hope
couldn’t suppress a smile when he leaned over the bed into her field of vision.
Based on stubble, she calculated that she’d been out for around a day and a
half. “Is that normal?”

Hope
reached out a hand with a modicum of wincing and started to grope for the bed
remote. “I don’t know, ask me next time I get stabbed.”

Something
warm and solid suddenly collided with her fingers and wrapped around them
gently.

“No
next time,” Rick said in a wry voice that couldn’t hide the strained note
underneath.

Hope
dragged their tangled hands up to her mouth and ran a kiss along Rick’s bruised
knuckles. “I’ll try,” she offered.

Without
pulling his hand away from her grasp, Rick reached his other hand up and ran it
frenetically through his hair.

“The
horrible thing about this is that you’re serious,” he said. His eyes rested on
Hope for a long moment and then just for a second Rick’s face crumbled. She
thought he was about to cry and her throat seized up, but the expression passed
so quickly from his face that Hope wondered if she’d just imagined it.

“I’m
sorry,” she said, without disagreeing.

Rick
blew out a long sigh and squeezed her hand before disentangling and pulling up
a chair from somewhere out of Hope’s range of vision. His shoulders slumped as
he slouched into the hard plastic. For a little while he stared down at the
floor in uncharacteristic silence. She wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion or
horror catching up to him, but Hope sat in patience silence until Rick was
ready to speak again.

“You
have other visitors outside, but I have more money than them, and I cried at
them until they went away,” he eventually informed her.

Hope
perked up. “You don’t have more money than Iseul. Do you?” she asked, instead
of inquiring as to how much exactly she was never going to see Iseul again.

“I do,
actually.” The corner of Rick’s mouth pulled up in a shadow of a grin. “But
I’ve got old money, so that’s not really playing fair. Anyway, she’s so guilty
that she’s actually listening to me for once in ever.”

“What?”
Hope frowned and tried to tilt her head up. She could see the edge of what she
thought was a door over at the corner of the room. Everything was frustratingly
bland and poorly lit.

“You
have very expressive eyebrows, did you know that?” Hope flicked her gaze back
over to see Rick staring at her with something more than just his customary
curiosity. He looked desperate; hungry. His fingers were twisting together in
his lap.

Hope
sighed and gave up the pretense.

“Is
everyone alive and reasonably well, including Boran, not including the two
hired thugs?”

“Other
than you,” Rick nodded. His gaze immediately dropped to the floor. “The cops
showed up about five minutes after you - after - after you were… stabbed.” He
bit out the word sharply, like it made him nauseous, and he wanted it out of
his mouth.

Hope
didn’t know what to do with that, so she left it alone. “Trinity,” she said
appreciatively. Rick nodded.

“She
followed our instructions to the letter for about forty-five minutes, and then
she decided to go ahead and call the cops anyway.”

Hope
grinned. “You have good taste in housekeepers.”

Rick
glanced up at her. The small, electric shock that ran through her body when
their eyes met was surprising.

“You
have good taste in friends,” he said, his voice serious.

She
nodded, and then forcibly kept any tells off her face when she asked, “And the
knife wound? What’s the word on that?”

Rick’s
eyes narrowed, like he saw right through her game, but it only took him a
moment to gather himself up to say, “You got lucky. You were wearing Kevlar on
your back - which you didn’t tell me, by the way, so I had no idea for about
two hours - and that took a lot of the damage. Still, you got rusty bits in your
stomach, and came a less than ideal distance from puncturing some stuff you
need.” As he spoke he stood up and walked back to the side of the bed, though
he was hardly much closer like this. Hope still liked it better.

She
stared up at Rick - scared and brave and nothing she could have imagined.

“Does
that mean I can roll over on my side, and you can fit in here with me?” she
asked.

Probably
the no-doubt substantial dose of painkillers she was hooked up to was helping
with the distance as Hope wondered idly what she’d do if Rick refused her. If
he looked repelled - or worse, if he looked pitying, like Hope was too slow on
the uptake to realize that window was long gone after everything that had
happened, after the reality of what Hope’s life looked like sometimes and what
she was capable of and what she looked like hooked up to a zillion tubes.

He
didn’t do either of those things - thank the Lord, Hope thought, her heart
belatedly beating faster - but he didn’t hop into bed, either.

Instead,
he frowned. “What if I hurt you?” he asked.

“You’ll
hurt me worse if you don’t get into bed with me,” Hope said truthfully.

Something
cleared from Rick’s face, and there were no more protests. He motioned for Hope
to move and hovered his hands around as she made undoubtedly attractive faces.
He didn’t help, but there were worse ways not to help.

When
Hope was comfortably situated on her side, Rick carefully climbed into bed and
lay down by her side, touching but not crowding her. This involved mashing his
side into the bars at the edge of the bed, but he seemed okay with it. For a
second their faces were very close together. Their noses brushed and Hope
tilted her head, but Rick shifted and put his chin on top of her head. Hope
made a face into his neck.

“I
should probably tell you that your kgosi called,” Rick said quietly. It took a
moment for Hope to understand the words muffled in her hair.

Realization
hit. “Thabo? What did he want? What did you tell him?”

“He
wanted to tell you that Gouws has gone AWOL.” Rick’s arm tightened around her
upper back, where it didn’t hurt. Much. “And I told him the threat is gone.”

Hope
frowned and pulled back to see Rick’s face. “Why did you tell him that? It’s
not true. Gouws might go underground and wait out the storm after losing his
minions, but he’s not going to just give up.”

Rick’s
dark eyes seemed close to black when he blinked slowly and said, “It’s true
about this particular threat. The formula is gone.”

The
words jammed in her head. They didn’t make sense. “But… but you were going to…”

He was
already shaking his head, stubble scratching against the thin hospital pillow.
His normally bright eyes were sad, and for once Hope didn’t resist the urge to
reach out and cup his cheek with her hand.

“I was
being selfish,” he said. “The formula wasn’t ready. When I thought Boran might
really get it, I was terrified. It was too dangerous; too easy to twist into
something lethal. Everything was too tied up in my pride and… I’m not a very
good scientist after all. I’m just a CEO.”

Probably
the nice thing to do would be to focus on Rick’s pain. But Hope had always been
better with facts than feelings, so she asked, “What happened to Boran, then?
Is he in custody?”

To her
surprise, the pain cleared from Rick’s face and he looked almost… sheepish.

When he
didn’t talk, she poked him in the stomach.

“Ack!
Alright, listen, Boran’s… Um. He’s… gone.”

Hope
didn’t open her mouth. She looked away from Rick’s face and around the room.
The door was in an inconvenient place, but…

“Hey.”
Gentle fingers on her chin brought her gaze back around. “It’s not like that.
I… well, I let him get away.”

Hope
felt her eyebrows fly up into her hairline. “Sorry, you what?” She ignored the
tiny piece of herself that insisted upon feeling relieved.

Rick
didn’t let go of her face entirely. Instead, he slid his hand down to rest
against her throat and stroked a thumb along her jawline.

“He
woke up just as I had the idea to use the vial of formula I had hidden on me.
Iseul was helping to hold you, and by the time I realized he’d woken up, there
wasn’t anything I could do. He just stood there and watched us.” Rick’s
forehead creased into a frown. “He could’ve grabbed it off me, but he didn’t.
He wanted you to live. So I couldn’t… I just let him go. I’m sorry if you think
it was stupid – I guess it was – but I don’t regret it.”

Her
throat was suddenly tight. “Oh,” she managed to say. She didn’t know what else
to add. She wasn’t sure what she thought about it. Maybe one day she’d take the
time to think it over. Or maybe she’d repress it forever. Either one could
work.

The
line running across Rick’s forehead deepened. He pulled back his hand. Hope
immediately missed the warmth.

“There’s
one other thing,” he said, seeming to struggle with himself. Rick drew in a
deep breath and said, “Thabo wanted me to say that he’d like to extend to you
an invitation to come back. As a consultant, or bodyguard, or whatever you
want. He – he appreciated your loyalty. He said he could use a woman like you
around.” Rick looked thoroughly miserable when he added, “And you should know,
I won’t resent it if you do.”

Memories,
still recent enough that Hope could feel them against her skin, filled her mind
with images of the wild, beautiful land that had felt like home for a little
while. She remembered lazy evenings watching the sun go down for what felt like
hours, and the sharp pleasure of besting danger.

“No. I
want to stay,” Hope said. For once in her life when a smile rose to her lips
she didn’t fight it down, she let it stay there, though it felt a little wobbly
and unnatural. She thought maybe she’d get used to it. “I want to stay with
you, I mean. We’ll figure out the next thing for me to do and - well. I just
want to be with you. So. Now you know.”

To her
surprise, Rick didn’t break out in a beaming grin. He didn’t even smile. He
pushed himself up on his elbows and got off the bed altogether. Hope didn’t reach
out to grab him back, but it was a close thing.

“Hope,”
he said, voice low and serious, “you don’t have to do this, okay? I just want
you to know that I’ve talked to your doctor, and I hired this other doctor, and
I got a couple physical therapists in here, and what I’m saying is, all of them
say you’ll recover. You’ll be fine. You don’t have to… Stay.”