Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (33 page)

Lily swung the rifle like a club.

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The man tumbled off the machine, falling like a rock. The snowmobile kept going. Down the hill,
bump,
bump, bump
, and then skated with a hideous screech across the river on its side.

Lily jumped down off her low perch and ran over to where the man lay on his back.

He wasn't moving, but she approached with caution, rifle raised so she could give him another solid whack if he looked dangerous and tried to move.

Oh, hell… "Derek?"

His eyes were closed, his face dead white. But it was the bright red blood welling from the cut over his eye that made Lily drop to her knees in the snow beside him. "Oh my God, Derek. I'm so sorry. Wake up. Please, wake up."

He was out cold. "Wake up and yell at me, would you?"

After a few minutes she realized he wasn't going to be chatting with her anytime soon. Lily ran back to camp and unharnessed Arrow and Melba.

With the help of the dogs, she managed to roll Derek's long body onto a tarp, and then the three of them dragged him back to the fire.

Sweating, she rummaged around in Derek's gear for a first aid kit and the sleeping bag roll she'd just packed. Damn it. She wished the tent were still up as snow blew wildly around them.

She unzipped the bag. With much huffing and puffing and cursing, she eventually rolled all two hundred pounds of solid muscle onto the bag, and then zipped it to his chin.

He still hadn't moved. Not good.

She carefully removed his shattered goggles and winced at the sight of his face. Fortunately the bleeding had almost stopped. But his eyebrow and eyelid were already discoloring and swelling. He was going to have one hell of a shiner, and a monstrous headache, Lily thought, feeling sick to her stomach as she cleaned the wound and then got out a butterfly bandage.

She heard a soft buzzing sound and paused to listen, heart in her throat. What—

Band-Aid stuck on the tip of her finger, she looked around, searching for the cause of the incongruous sound.

A phone? Out here? No way. It buzzed again.

She looked down at her patient. Reaching inside the bag, she patted him down until her fingers encountered a small black phone in Derek's top pocket. "Well, I'll be d—"

biiiizzz.

"Hello?"

Silence. Then, "Who the hell is this?"

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"Dr. Lily Munroe."

"Put Wright on."

"He's, ah, sleeping. Can I take a message?"

"Wake him."

"I'm sorry. As much as I'd like to, I can't. Leave a message and I'll te—"

"Is he alive?"

"Yes. God, yes."

"Then wake him the hell up. This is an emergency."

An emergency? Hell. Is everyone having emergencies these days
? "He's unconscious," Lily told him flatly.

"Uncon—What happened?"

"I hit him rather hard."

"You hit him?"

"Yes," Lily told the anonymous man with asperity. "
I
hit him. Hard enough to knock him out cold. Would you like to hear the gory details, or do you want to leave him a message, which he'll receive as soon as he wakes up?"

"Wake him now," the man told her urgently. "Even if you have to dunk his dumb ass in the snow. Get him conscious and on his feet, pronto. Then have him call me. You've got two minutes." He clicked out.

He didn't bother telling her who to say called.

Hey, Derek? A guy just called, said it was an emergency. Call him right back. Who? I have no
clue. About what? Ditto
. Lily shook her head. She frowned as she put the phone down on the bag by Derek's head.

Probably his stockbroker. Yeah. Microsoft or IBM dropping a few points was cause enough to call Derek in the wilds of Alaska in the middle of a race. It would be nice if Lily even remotely believed her own interpretation of the call.

"Why don't I believe that for a minute?" she asked aloud. "I feel as though I've fallen down the damn rabbit hole."

She checked his wound. Still seeping. Lily used another disinfected swab, then closed the gash with several butterfly bandages. He'd have a scar there to remind him of today. But knowing Derek, it would look rakish rather than gruesome. "It won't spoil your looks a bit, cowboy. But you're probably going to be a little cranky with me when you wake up. So what's new?"

"Jesus. What hit me?" Derek grumbled, raising a hand to feel his forehead. Lily grabbed his fingers before he could poke at the wound.

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"Unfortunately,
I
did." She checked his pupils. "God, I'm sorry. You were on the snowmobile, and coming so fast—"

" 'S okay. Would've done the same thing. What in God's name did you hit me with? A two-by-four?"

"The stock of my rifle. Why are you sitting up? You probably have a concussion."

"I don't."

"I'm the doctor," she told him firmly, taking his face between her hands. "Look into my eyes."

"Beautiful."

His pupils looked normal. But she'd keep an eye on him for several hours anyway. Not hard to do. He was easy on the eyes, this lover of hers. "You're delirious."

"And that makes you smile?"

"The fact that I didn't break open your head like a melon is cause for celebration," Lily told him, leaning forward to give him a brief peck on the lips. "Lie down, I'll get water for you to take some aspiri—" The phone buzzed.

Derek patted his chest pocket. She pointed to the phone on the sleeping bag. He ran his hand over the creases searching for it, then picked it up and barked, "What?"

"Feel the warmth. Nice of you to join the land of the living," Darius said sarcastically. "I'm filled with confidence that you, and you alone, are now responsible for getting the bad guys and saving the world.

Especially knowing you were flattened and vanquished by a girl."

"I've got a headache, and I already have my own pain in the ass right here." Derek grinned at Lily and touched her cheek. "Do you have a point?"

"How bad's the head?"

"Since I just woke up, I'm not sure yet, but I'm anticipating a lollapalooza of a headache. Thanks for asking."

"Be sure," Darius said, all humor gone. "Because you're the only game in town, and we are seriously in the crapper here. I have good news and bad news."

Darius's pause had Derek's full attention. "Start with the good news," he told him dryly, taking the ibuprofen Lily handed him and chugging it down with water. "I could use some."

She frowned and mouthed silently, "What's going on? Is it about your dad's wedding?"

He'd almost forgotten his father was getting married at his place in a couple of weeks. He frowned and shook his head, which caused his vision to dance. Then made a hand gesture, silently asking for a cup of coffee. The pot steamed gently several yards away on the fire.

Lily grumbled a bit at having her question ignored, but went off to get the coffee. The view of her

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spectacular ass would've been much better if Derek could have observed it through both eyes.

Unfortunately his left eye was not only throbbing annoyingly, it was swollen shut.

"Sat pictures indicate large vessels where they shouldn't be on Norton Sound," Darius told him. "And in case you didn't study your geography before your trip, like a good little Eagle Scout, the sound would be the big blue blob on the left of your trusty map, indicating an inlet off the Bering Sea. The location of our fan for the shit to hit, as it were, is north latitude sixty-four degrees, west longitude one hundred sixty-three degrees.

"Nome, the place you were heading eventually anyway, is on the north shore and the Yukon River flows into the sound from the south. Following me so far?"

"Loud and clear."
Thanks
, he mouthed to Lily, who'd brought two mugs back with her, handed one to him and then folded her long legs tailor fashion to sit on the foot of the sleeping bag.

Since she looked so damn cute sitting there, a scowl between her pretty eyes, he blew her a kiss. The frown eased a little and she reluctantly smiled back.

"Is a geography lesson my good news?" he asked Dare. "I was much better at biology."

"I'm sure you were. No. The good news is those coordinates are our target."

"North latitude sixty-four degrees, west longitude one hundred sixty-three degrees. Got it. And our friends are doing what to whom?"

"Our friends are planning to detonate a dirty bomb. A
very
large,
very
dirty bomb. Which will not only seriously compromise the river and inlet, but will effectively take out Uncle Sam's ultrasecret DEW

installation south of Nome. Not that we know anything
about
a top-secret facility there, but if we
did

—which we don't—it would be toast."

"As would the people living there," Derek pointed out reasonably. "Doesn't sound like terribly good news to me."

"Hell, Derek, the good news is we've got the intel. The bad news is a front has moved in," Darius continued. "Impossible to mobilize aircraft for the next twelve to sixteen hours. You, my fine dog-loving friend, are
it
."

"Jesus." A prayer.

Sixteen

Lily had absolutely no idea who Derek was talking to, but he looked grim, his mouth taut as he listened and responded. She was done being mystified by the calls. Now she wanted answers. Real answers.

She winced as he touched a finger to the side of his face, distracting her for a moment from the
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mysterious conversation. Oh, God, she'd
hit
him. Just because it was unintentional didn't make her feel any better. Her stomach hurt just looking at his poor face. His left eye was completely swollen shut, and his face was black and blue, not to mention several other painful colors, from his eyebrow to his cheekbone.

Feeling absolutely horrible, she pulled the clean sock that she'd dug out of her bag out of her pocket, set her steaming mug down and filled the heavy wool with snow.

"Have arrangements made for my cargo pickup at the next checkpoint," Derek demanded, then paused to listen. "The most precious cargo I've ever ordered transported. Pack and ship accordingly." Derek closed his eyes—
eye
—in pain.

"Shit. That's right. No flights of any kind… Yeah. Yeah. I do." Pause. Frown. Glare. "I know you will."

Lily handed him the snow-filled sock. He stared at it as though he'd never seen a sock before. She held it up to her face. He ignored her.

She refused to be ignored. Leaning in close, she laid the freezing sock alongside his face and Derek hissed in a breath as he instinctively tried to escape her. She moved with him, holding the ice pack firmly in place.

Shooting her a glare, he asked, "Do we have an educated guess when our friend's little party is scheduled to start?" He tilted his mug, tossing scalding coffee down his throat as if it were an antidote to the ice nestled close to his face.