Dylan (Bowen Boys) (2 page)

“I won’t hurt you.” He nodded at the
woman sitting on his swing when she spoke softly. “I just need a minute. Then
I’ll be on my way.”

Dylan set the boxes down and raised his
hands. He looked at her and wondered if she thought that a minute was going to
do her any good. The pool of blood beneath her and the swing was considerable. And
the blood on her face looked like she’d gone a few rounds with someone who
didn’t care for her overly much. When she spoke again he asked her to repeat
herself.

“Do you think I can have a glass of
water?” Dylan nodded and moved to the door, only to have her booted foot come
out to stop the movement. “You call the police or any other type of law and
you’ll never hear them crunch across your drive. Understand me?”

“Yes. I won’t call the police. I’ll
simply get you some water.” When her foot moved back, he could see what it had
cost her to do even that small gesture. Blood didn’t just drip now. It was a
constant stream. He moved into this house and reached for his brother.

“Come to my house now. And have Walker
bring his bag of tricks.”
Khan asked him what happened.
“I don’t know for
sure right now, but there is a woman on my deck bleeding to death. Oh, and she
has a gun, so come through the woods. I don’t need any more blood on my swing.”

Khan said he’d be there shortly, and
Dylan grabbed a glass from the dish drainer and filled it with water and ice. He
was about to leave his kitchen when he reached out to the windowsill and took
down the bottle of pain reliever, only to put it back. Walker would want to
work on her, and he didn’t know what those would do to her if he had to
operate.

When he came back out to the deck she
was slumped over, but when he shut the door, she straightened up and looked at
him. He could hear her heart beating slower than when he’d left her.

“I don’t know where I am.” Dylan told
her his address. “That’s pretty far, I guess.” She looked out toward the
driveway and then back at him. She was fading quickly now, and he was about to
go to her when she looked at him again.

“Do you know me?” He thought she was
asking if she had previously met him, but before he could tell her no, she continued.
“I don’t either. Know me, I mean. I can’t remember how I got here, either, or
why I’m bleeding. I mean, I’ve figured out that I was shot, but I don’t know by
who or why. I don’t suppose you do either, do you?”

“No. I’ve never seen you before. And as
for someone shooting you, I don’t know about that, either. You have lost a
great deal of blood, and you’re probably going to die if you don’t get some
help soon.”

She nodded and then held her head, using
the hand with the gun in it. He was so focused on it he nearly missed what she said
next.

“I don’t know why, but I would prefer
that you let me simply die, then bury me in the backyard.” She fell back
against the seat and he knew that she’d lost whatever battle she’d been working
on to stay awake.

Dylan had to sit and slid down the post that
was holding up the roof of his deck. He realized as he sat down that he’d been
relieved that she hadn’t shot him. When Khan entered his yard as his cat, Dylan
couldn’t even stand, but instead pointed to her.

“She’s passed out. I don’t think she’s
going to live.” Khan went to her and touched his fingers to her throat. Dylan
knew she wasn’t dead but asked Khan anyway. He watched as his brother took her
gun from her.

“It’s slow. Walker was at my house when
you called to me. He’s coming in the truck. Should be here soon.” He looked at
the girl. “You think we should move her into the house or let him see to her
when he gets here?”

“I don’t know where she’s bleeding from,
and if we move her it might make it worst. Her head must really be hurting.” Dylan
shut up. It wasn’t like him to babble, and he was afraid that she’d shaken him
more than he knew.

“Did she tell you who she was?” Dylan
shook his head and told him what she’d said. “Probably because of the crease in
her head. She’s going to have one hell of a headache when she wakes…
if
she wakes.”

Walker pulled into his drive a few
minutes later. Dylan was feeling better, so he stood up and greeted him. His
dad and mom poured out of the next vehicle that pulled up. Dylan glared at his
brother.

“They were coming up the drive when I
left. I told them I was coming here, and she took one look at my bag and
followed. What would you have had me do, tell them no? Well, good luck with
that.”

Walker came up to the girl slowly. Dylan
didn’t blame him; even unarmed she still looked dangerous. Walker asked to have
help moving her to the floor so he could look at her to see if he could have
her moved to the hospital.

“We can’t take her there.” Everyone
looked at him. “She said that if she died she wanted me to bury her in the
backyard. I’m pretty sure she knew she was dying.”

Walker nodded once and started cutting
away her clothing. Her moans made him want to go and tear Walker away from her,
and that surprised him more than anything. Instead, he went into the house to
get a pail of water and some towels for him. His mother came in behind him.

“Do you know her?” He shook his head. “Poor
girl looks all done in. I wonder how we’d contact her family. Did she ask you
to do that for her?”

“No. She said she didn’t know who she
was or how she’d even gotten here. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t
want me to call the police and that she wanted to be buried out back.” Dylan
picked up the pail and handed his mother the towels. “She’s probably some hit
man for the mob and her target fought back.”

He’d had time to watch her when he and
Khan had been waiting. She had on heavy boots with a thick tread. He could see
there were knives in both of them, in pockets he’d bet were made for them. Her
pants were black, as were the boots. The tight material molded to her legs like
skin. The shirt, too, was black and long-sleeved, with small hooks on them to
hang over her thumbs. He knew, too, that those were specially made for her. The
black cap she had on covered her head so that all he could see was the blood
that had dried on her, and the fairness of her skin. He knew that her eyes were
gray, as gray as the sky when it stormed, and that the gun she carried was a
Glock, just like the one he had in his own house.

“She has been shot. Five times it looks
like, and the one that hit her head is more than likely why she can’t remember
anything. The one in her forearm is a clean shot, and I’ll just have to stitch
it closed. The one here, in her arm, is bad, and the bullet is still in there.
I’ll have to operate to dig it out. But it’s the two in her back that worry me.
One entered here….” Walker pointed to her left side high on her body. “This one
hit a rib or two, and I won’t know until I go in whether or not the rib has penetrated
her lung. But this one in her back is the worst. It looks like someone shot her
in a downward angle, like she was well below them. If the shooter had better
aim, he would have killed her. I honestly don’t know how she’s made it this
far.”

“Can you save her?” Dylan’s dad asked. “And
if you do, will her memory return?” Dylan shot him a glance, as he was
wondering the same thing.

“I don’t know, Dad. I honestly don’t
know.” Walker stood up and picked up his bag. “We’re going to have to have a table
set up so I can operate. I would like it to be in the kitchen, but I know that
you’ve only just started remodeling the rest of the house and I can’t have saw
dust—”

“It’s done. The cabinets were hung
yesterday. I had a crew clean it up last night. We can use a few of the old
doors for a longer table in there. I have them on the back deck still.” Dylan
moved through the house, glad for something to do. When he brought the door in
through the kitchen, his mother was standing there with clean sheets and a few
of his older blankets. Together they made a makeshift operating table, then
went out to help bring her in.

As soon as Dylan leaned down to help
roll her to her back so they could get a sheet under her to carry her in, he
knew what she was to him and it frightened him just a little. He tried not to
stumble with her when they picked her up, but he tripped anyway. He looked at
his dad when he tripped up as well.

“Watch it, son. You don’t want to drop
her this close to getting her all fixed up.” Dylan nodded blindly and helped
lay her on the table. He looked at his brother Walker and realized he’d been
speaking to him.

“Dylan? Are you all right?” He nodded.
“You’ll have to leave. I need all the room I can get to—”

“I can’t. I can’t leave you in here
alone with her.” He tried to look away from him, but he was like a deer in
headlights. “I can’t do it.”

Walker looked at the woman, then up at
him. He nodded once and didn’t ask him why. “You’ll have to have a mask on and
wash up. I don’t think you’ll touch her, but if you try to hurt me, I’ll sedate
you. Understand?”

Dylan nodded and went to the sink. When
his mom came in to be Walker’s assistant, Walker told her that they had it
under control and that Dylan was helping. When they began, Dylan had to fight
his beast for several minutes before he could see that Walker wasn’t hurting
her but helping. Walker looked at him.

“I won’t hurt you. We won’t. He
understands that you’re only here to save her.” Walker helped him put on a pair
of gloves and Dylan returned the favor, but grabbed his hands at the last
second. “I don’t want her to die. I know there’s a good possibility that she’s
in trouble, but I can’t let her die.”

“I won’t let her.” And when he pulled
out his knife to cut into her, Dylan looked away. He was going to stay with her
if it killed him.

Chapter Two

“Anything yet?” Kirby sat behind his
desk and waited for the man in front of him to answer. He didn’t have a clue
what his fucking name was, just some ass that worked for him. “She can’t have
gotten far. Hell, she was shot nearly a dozen times from what I saw.”

“Nothing, sir. We’ve checked with all
the hospitals in the area, as well as all the clinics and veterinaries. She’s
not shown up at any of them.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe she found a hole
and died in it. There was a lot of blood over that fence.”

Kirby didn’t answer but dismissed the
man with orders to keep looking. The fucking bitch couldn’t have simply done
what he’d told her to do and entered the house from the front, where they’d
been waiting for her. And she’d been nearly two hours early. The fucking cunt
couldn’t follow orders, and that’s why he wanted her dead.

And now he had five people dead,
including two of his own, plus he had lost his eye because of her. He picked up
the handheld mirror he’d been looking in when his agent knocked. She was going
to pay for this, too.

The knife had entered his socket and
pierced his eyeball. The doctor who had treated him told him that he was lucky
that he’d only lost an eye. The robber could have done a bit more damage than
that had he pressed a little harder on the blade. Kirby had thanked him for his
help, refused to stay overnight, and trashed the prescription on his way out. He
had his own form of medication, and it wasn’t anything this jerk would prescribe
to him. Reaching into his top desk drawer, Kirby pulled out his coke and did
two more lines of it. He was leaning back and feeling nothing when his phone
rang.

“You want to tell me why there are
nineteen agents pissing off about two dozen of my citizens right now?” said
Marshall David, right hand man to the president of the United States, on the
other end of the line. It took Kirby a few seconds to try and figure out what
he was talking about.

“I’m sorry, what? You mean with the
Crosby murder?” He knew almost immediately he’d made a mistake.

“I’m talking about the murder of Mr. and
Mrs. Vern Clements and their lovely daughter Ruby. What is this about Crosby? Was
that another family murdered?”

Kirby shook his head, then felt stupid
as he realized that Marshall David couldn’t see him.

“No, sir,” Kirby said. “What I meant to
say was that we’re looking to connect a person by the name of Crosby to the
murders.” He hadn’t meant to tell that yet, but he’d been too stoned to
remember, and now it was out. “She worked for some underground hit crew until
recently. But up until then we’d had her pegged as someone who we would watch
but not be overly concerned with. Then last night she turned up in a house
where one of my men was, and she killed him and the entire Clements family.”

“Why?” Good question, Kirby thought, and
was glad when he wasn’t able to answer him. “I want what you have on her and
this underground crew as soon as possible. Bring it to me yourself.”

Kirby picked up the file to do as he’d
been ordered when he realized that, as stoned as he was, he’d fuck up. He sat
back down and tried to think how to get out of it. A glance in the mirror gave
him what he needed.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t. I was hurt
pretty badly last night in an attempted robbery. I only came in today to see
what I could do to expedite this and find the murderer. I’ve been restricted to
bed rest, but, sir…I knew that you’d want answers. Walking too much makes me
dizzy and extremely ill.” Kirby explained to his boss what he’d told his wife and
the company doctor the night before.