Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (9 page)

“You’re unbelievable. I bet none of the girls
you invite ever show up.” Echo flipped on the radio. “Wildfire
Base, this is Echo. Mission accomplished. Prisoner is alive and
conscious, but in need of medical attention for heat stroke, shock,
and a laceration to his wrist.”

She clicked off the radio and added to DJ,
“And a terminal inability to know when to quit.” Turning the radio
back on, she continued, “I’ve administered first aid. ETA is
forty-five minutes. Over and out.”

“Still not too late,” DJ suggested. “If you
turned around now, you’d have a good long lead before they even
realized anything was wrong.”

She started driving, determinedly watching
the sands rather than him. If she didn’t reply at all, he’d
eventually give up.

“If you tell me exactly how and where they’re
holding your sister, I could come up with a plan to rescue her. Or,
actually, this might be better— we rescue my buddy first, then
he
comes up with a plan. He’s more of a strategist than I
am.”

DJ paused to catch his breath. “You know I’m
a born wolf, right? My family knows every born wolf in the
Philippines, and a whole lot of the wolves in the US. And you know
how wolves are— do you know how wolves are? They’re clannish.
Loyal. If a wolf they trust asks them for a favor, they’ll move
heaven and earth to do it. Just let me get in touch with my family.
I’ll get together a strike force of badass wolves and take this
place down. Without your sister getting hurt. I’m sure…”

The pause stretched out until Echo looked
over. He’d passed out in mid-sentence.

While he’d been going on and on, making
demands she couldn’t fulfill and offering happy endings he couldn’t
deliver, she’d wished he’d shut up. But it was eerie to see him so
silent and still, his bright eyes closed, his expressive features
slack.

Echo floored it back to the base. She was met
in the underground parking lot by a handful of nervous medics, a
crowd of wary security guards, and Mr. Dowling.

Mr. Dowling stepped up as she got out of the
Humvee. “Good job, Echo. I knew I could count on you.”

“Of course,” she replied absently, watching
the medics load DJ on to a gurney.

As they strapped him in, DJ woke up and
started to struggle, shouting hoarsely, “Roy! Suppressive fire, ten
o’clock! Weiss, get down! Get down!”

A medic circled him with a syringe, but
couldn’t find a still target. Blood began to soak through the
bandage around DJ’s wrist as he threw himself against the
straps.

“DJ!” Echo grabbed his hand. He was burning
up again. “Stop fighting!”

He whipped his head around, angry and
confused. “Get Suarez! We need the radio.”

“You’re not in combat. You have a fever.
You’re delirious.”

“No— Really? Are you sure?” DJ started to
relax. Then he spotted the medic trying to creep up on him, and
began thrashing around again, yelling, “I’m a US Marine! Drop your
weapon!”

“Back off!” Echo snapped at the medic, who
obeyed. Then she turned back to DJ. “You’re sick. Let the medics
help you.”

“But Roy— He’s out of ammo—”

She squeezed his hand harder, so he’d be sure
to feel it. “You’re hurting yourself. Lie still.”

To her surprise, he did. She nodded at the
medic, who edged forward and jabbed the syringe into the bulging
muscle of his shoulder.

DJ didn’t seem to notice. Urgently, he said,
“My buddy needs help.”

“He’s already in the hospital,” Echo assured
him.

He calmed as the sedative began to take
effect. “Oh. Good. Make sure someone stays with him, will you? He
doesn’t like to be alone.”

Echo didn’t want to make any lying promises,
so she tried to distract him. “What about you? Should someone stay
with you?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “Me? Oh,
you don’t need to do that. But… If you’re off-duty anyway… It’d be
nice.”

Echo hadn’t meant it as an offer. But since
he’d taken it as one, she supposed it wouldn’t be too much of a
hardship to visit him. If he started harassing her to let him go
again, she could just walk out. “All right. I’ll come by
later.”

He didn’t seem reassured, but eyed her with
growing incredulity. Finally, he said, “This is a
dance
club
. No Christmas carols!”

As Echo laughed, his eyes closed and his hand
relaxed in her grip.

She watched as the medics took him away. Both
times he’d been delirious, he’d worried and worried about his
friend. And now he’d revealed how much he cared about his buddy in
front of Mr. Dowling. Echo’s stomach clenched unpleasantly at the
knowledge of how that would play out. But, to her confusion, her
handler was eyeing her as if he’d just learned something important
about
her.

“What?” Echo demanded.

Mr. Dowling gave her a bland shrug. “Nothing.
Let me take your mission report now. Then you can visit Torres in
the hospital, if you like.”

“Thanks.” Occasionally, just occasionally,
Mr. Dowling managed to not be a
complete
asshole. Echo
decided that she ought to encourage those moments, so she added,
“Really. I appreciate it. Maybe he’ll be awake by the time we’re
done. There’s no point sitting with him if he doesn’t know I’m
there.”

Mr. Dowling smiled.

Chapter Five: DJ

Marine Wolf

DJ fought his way through an onslaught of
fever dreams.

His pack had turned on him and was tearing
him apart. He was trapped in a web of sticky strands, desperately
trying to reach a sword that lay just out of reach, with a spider
the size of his Harley approaching him. Marco was dead, Alec lay
dying with a bullet in his head, Roy was down on the sand with
blood pouring out of his mouth, and DJ was trapped in a burning
Humvee with his body on fire.

When he woke at last, reality wasn’t much of
an improvement. He was in a small hospital room, right back where
he’d started, with the addition of a needle in his arm, tubes
snaking out from under the sheet, a wire running from his chest to
a humming machine monitoring his heartbeat, straps around his chest
and wrists and ankles, and Echo guarding him.

He’d given everything he had in his effort to
escape, he’d nearly killed himself trying, and he’d accomplished
absolutely nothing.

His head throbbed, his back ached, and the
sheet that covered him felt like red-hot metal molded to his skin.
Forgetting the straps, he tried to turn over in the hope of finding
a less painful position. He barely moved, but even that slight
friction was excruciating. He couldn’t suppress a groan.

Echo looked down at him from her seat beside
his bed. “About time you woke up. I was just about to leave.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” DJ muttered.

“
Now
I may as well stay.” Her eyes
narrowed as she frowned. “You said you wanted me to.”

“Wanted you to what?” DJ asked, confused.

“Oh. You don’t remember. You must not have
really wanted it. That’ll teach me to make promises to delirious
people.”

Echo stood up.

“Hang on.” It was ridiculous to think of any
encounter with an enemy as getting off on the wrong foot— what
would the right foot be?— but DJ couldn’t help feeling like he’d
done so with Echo. Repeatedly. “The last thing I remember, we were
driving in the Humvee. I felt like hell.”

“You looked like hell.” Echo sat back down
and examined him critically. “You still do.”

“Then I got delirious, huh? I wish I
remembered it. I’ve always wondered what that would feel like. It’s
never happened before, unless you count the time I overdosed on
No-Doz. That was last year and my platoon is probably still
laughing about it. Did I say anything funny?”

“You thought I’d requested a Christmas carol
at a dance club.”

DJ smiled, feeling a little better. “Anything
else?”

“This isn’t funny, but you were worried about
your buddy. You said he doesn’t like to be alone and asked to have
someone stay with him—” Echo broke off. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” DJ tried to keep his face blank
while his mind was screaming,
How could you let that slip? They
could use that against him
.
What the fuck is wrong with
you?

“Nothing.” Echo clearly didn’t believe
him.

“I’m in pain,” DJ said hastily. “When you
change shifts, tell the doctors to up my morphine.”

“They don’t give you morphine for a sunburn,
you baby.”

DJ moved as much as he could, wincing as the
restraints rubbed against his chest and the mattress rubbed against
his back and the sheet rubbed against everything. “They should if
it’s this bad. Tell them to up whatever they’re giving me. It hurts
like a son of a bitch.”

“All right.” She paused. “What do you mean,
‘change shifts?’”

“You know, when you go and the next guard
takes over.”

Her upswept eyebrows rose even higher. “I’m
not guarding you.”

“You’re not? Wait, are you a medic? I thought
you were in black ops.” As soon as he said it, he remembered the
context in which he’d learned it. “Shit, sorry. You don’t like to
talk about that.”

“I don’t care. I’m not some delicate flower.”
A flash of the mischief DJ had seen so briefly in the Humvee
returned as she added, “Unlike you, you little rosebud. You were
right the first time. I’m an assassin. Your guards are
outside.”

Maybe it was the lingering effects of the
heat stroke, but DJ was completely lost. “If you’re not my guard
and you’re not a medic, then what are you doing here?”

Echo spoke as if she was confessing to some
embarrassing crime, like spying on people while they undressed.
“You said you wanted me to stay with you. My handler didn’t mind.
So I did.”

DJ stared at Echo, seeing her anew with this
new information. She looked as impossibly flawless as ever, in
form-fitting black jeans that showed off her long legs and a green
tank top that clung to her slim waist and small (but, of course,
perfect) breasts. Her ivory skin was unmarked by weary smudges
under her eyes, though she had bruises around her wrists and upper
arms that he was pretty sure he’d left in their struggle. Her eyes,
blue without a trace of red, reminded him of arctic ice, of ocean
depths, of a swimming pool on a summer day.

He had a flash of longing to have her lay her
hands down on his body, and cool his burning skin.

But her posture lacked the catlike grace he’d
seen before, and she’d risen as stiffly as if she’d slept in that
uncomfortable-looking chair. Surely she wouldn’t have…

“How long have you been here?” DJ asked.

Looking away, she muttered, “All night.”

“Doing what?”

“Just staying with you.” Defensively, she
said, “You said you wanted me to.”

DJ found this nearly impossible to process.
“I did? And you did?”

She rolled her eyes as if he was an idiot.
Just as he was starting to think that he’d somehow misunderstood
the entire conversation, she said, “Yes.”

DJ was struck dumb, which didn’t happen
often. He was the enemy. He’d fought her, stomped on her ankle,
gotten her shot with a tranquilizer dart, thrown water in her face,
tried to stun her, and informed her that he’d intended to tie her
up, dump her in the back of a Humvee, and then ditch her. In
return, she’d sat by his side all night, just because he’d asked
her to while he was in some pathetic feverish state that he was now
glad he didn’t remember.

“I left the medical stuff to the doctors, of
course,” Echo said. “Once they took off, all I did was cool you off
whenever you started moaning about being on fire.” She jerked her
head at a side table with a basin and some wash cloths.

Even more defensively, she added, “They said
I should. Since I was here anyway. It wasn’t something that just
spontaneously occurred to me.”

DJ was torn between being embarrassed and
wishing she’d do it again. Maybe she would if he asked her nicely.
Then he decided that she couldn’t possibly be telling the truth,
but was playing good cop to Dr. Semple’s bad cop. But surely if
that was the game, she’d be more friendly.

However he turned it over in his mind, he
kept coming back to the same conclusion: he’d deliriously begged
her to stay with him, and she had. All night.

His pack would have done that for him, of
course, and so would his fire team. He supposed a serious
girlfriend would too, though given the rarity of him being that
sick and the rarity of him having a serious girlfriend, the two had
never overlapped. But this strange, fierce woman, who had only ever
sounded warm when she’d spoken of her hostage sister? He didn’t
understand it. But it touched him.

“Thanks,” DJ finally managed. “I mean, thanks
a lot. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, sounding
distinctly doubtful.

“But why? We’re enemies. You weren’t under
orders. And it couldn’t have been any fun.”

Her blue gaze met his, so clear and deep that
he felt like he was falling into it. “Temporary insanity. Don’t get
used to it.”

“That’d be pretty stupid of me, considering
that it’s
temporary.
” He contemplated her eyes. Tide pools.
Wishing wells. Lagoons. “Okay, I have another guess about you.
You’re some kind of water-shifter. That’s why I haven’t seen you
change yet. It must be miserable to be a were-otter in Death
Valley. Did they at least give you a tank to swim around in?”

She made another “you idiot” face at him, but
her lips twitched as if she was trying to suppress a smile. “Yes.
It has kelp and everything.”

“And abalone?”

“Of course.”

“Sea anemones?”

“Anemones, starfish, little transparent
shrimp. The works.”

“Would you let me have a swim in it?”

She smiled, for real this time. “I don’t
know. Your fur might clog up the circulation vents.”