Protect Me (17 page)

When
she reached the bottom of the stairs she crouched down beneath the banister,
forced her breathing quiet, and listened for all she was worth. Yes, she could
still hear those men, but they were at the opposite end of the hall and if she
wasn’t mistaken…

A small
smile curved over her lips as the stairway vibrated next to her leg. Excellent.
They had figured out her path well enough to be headed up the stairs; not well
enough to be still at her heels.

Hope
got to her feet and trotted down the hall, still cautious and swinging her head
from side to side to make sure there were no unpleasant surprises lurking around
the corridor. She half expected to see more men in black crouched in the
corners. But the hallway was silent and still except for her shadow flitting
along the wall.

Outside
of her room Hope paused just a second to yank the chain of her necklace over her
head. She fitted the key in the lock and blessed the high front neckline of
this dress; nobody would have any cause to think of the two keys hung around
her neck.

She
slipped in the door, locked it behind her just for good measure, and rapped on
the door between her and Rick’s room. “It’s me,” she said in a low voice.

Before
she could do more than hold up the second key, the door was yanked open from
the other end and Rick’s bright, anxious eyes stared out at her. His hair was a
riot standing on end like he’d dragged his fingers through it over and over
during the wait. Hope had to fight down the wave of happiness that threatened
to swamp her good sense.

“You
shouldn’t have opened the door,” she said sternly. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“Um,”
Rick said. He glanced over his shoulder.

“I
mean,” Hope moved forward to cross over the threshold into the other room,
relief and something warmer loosening her tongue, “this isn’t mad science, you
know? I told you not to talk to anyone or trust anyone. Good Lord, Stone, you’d
think you could handle that.” She smiled at Rick to soften the words. He smiled
back, looking unaccountably… wary? Hope was confused. She would admit to being
scary at times, but surely not that scary?

“Then I
really don’t think you’re about to enjoy this,” Rick muttered, and stepped away
from the door.

Hope
walked into the other room and shut the door carefully behind her and… yeah.
She really, really wasn’t.

The
only motion that gave away her tension was a convulsive jerk of her neck
muscles.

“You’re
right,” Hope said. “I’m really not enjoying this.”

Rick
gave her a rueful smile and shrugged; beyond the movement of his shoulder,
three men looked at her in a varying array of stoicism, nerves, and outright
fear.

The
nerves belonged to Javier, who was bouncing up and down on the balls of his
feet and kept opening his mouth and closing it again. Boran was as stoic as
Hope herself, of course, and his client looked like he would have started
screaming at them all to get a move on if he wasn’t too frightened to speak at
all.

“I’m
sorry,” Rick said, but when she glanced at his face he didn’t look sorry at
all. He looked fearless; his expression as steady as her hands wrapped around
her gun. “But I found them outside, and I knew you’d want - I couldn’t just
leave them.”

You
could have
, Hope thought despairingly.

But
even though she knew that Boran was a more than capable bodyguard, and that
Javier really could take care of himself, she couldn’t find it in herself to be
really angry at Rick. He was standing there in front of his three stragglers,
his posture defiant. And he’d saved them for her, because he thought she would
be upset if anything happened to them - and more than that, just because that
was the sort of man Rick was.

She
blew out a sigh and let the anger slide away. They didn’t have time for it
anyway.

“Come
on, if we’re going to hide, we should get down there now.” Rick’s face
brightened. He flashed her a brilliant smile before he turned away and pulled
the trapdoor open.

“Wow,
that’s awesome!” Javier’s customary enthusiasm had returned, and far too
loudly. Hope hushed him and grabbed the back of his collar to point Rick down
the ladder first. She grabbed Boran’s client with the other hand and let him go
second; as she corralled the men she noticed Boran standing there staring with
an odd expression on his face.

“Everything
alright?” she asked when Javier’s spiky hair had vanished down the ladder and
it was just the two of them left.

Boran’s
eyes darted to her face. He looked big and out of place in the bedroom where
Hope was used to seeing only Rick. Used to - God, it was still weird to feel at
home. She’d gone years at a stretch without ever feeling at home before, and
yet in this place she felt like she belonged after only a handful of weeks.

“Yes,
of course.” Boran smiled, but it looked forced. “Just surprised. And…” He
started to move to the ladder and swung his foot down onto the first rung. “I
thought you were going to cut off the attachment? He doesn’t seem aware.”

Hope
raised her eyebrows and fixed him with a level stare. She appreciated advice.
She didn’t appreciate orders.

“My
business,” she said shortly and made a gesture. “Down, quick, I need to come
too.”

Boran’s
head jerked back like she’d slapped him; his eyes gave away nothing, but Hope
was surprised by his reaction nonetheless. Had it been this way in Africa?

When
she wracked her brains for an answer, her memories were a dusty blur of rough
shouts and sharp hand signals. There was no time for anything so subtle as
intentions in Hope’s memory. Or maybe they’d been there and she’d only missed
it.
Rick wouldn’t have missed it,
she thought, feeling an absurd
yearning in her memories for a man who had never actually been there.

The top
of Boran’s head disappeared into the tunnel. Hope jumped down in one go,
letting the impact of the fall shudder up her legs and distract her as she
pulled the trapdoor carefully down over them.

She
hurried down the tunnel to meet the three men standing in the back room behind
the glass lab, though Rick had one foot on either side of the doorway and was
casting anxious eyes around his laboratory like he wanted to start fiddling
with his equipment but knew Hope would bodily harm him if he tried (he was right).

“What
do we do now?” Boran’s charge practically snarled at her. The man hunched his
shoulders and turned a napkin he’d forgotten to let go of over and over in his
hands.

Hope
bit back a growl of her own and swept her eyes over the scene in front of her,
a perfect representation of all the ways her life had changed since she’d
gotten back to the States. The past had found her through Boran, but then
Javier was there by nothing but grace of her stumbling across Steve Winters.

And
there was Rick, always Rick, closer and more welcome than anyone else, not
afraid to be near enough that she could mark the pulse thudding hard in his
throat, not worried what she’d make of it.

“Half
the city police were at the party tonight, and I put a call in to the other half.
And the state police. And the highway patrol,” Hope said. The eyes of Boran’s
client lit up. Javier looked thoughtful. Boran just nodded appreciatively, his
gaze trained on her. Oddly, she found that she couldn’t look at Rick.

When
Rick said, “Brilliant,” in a fond voice and reached out, Hope shied away
without turning to him. She gritted her teeth. She hated the fact that Boran’s
warnings had any real influence over her, especially when she was going to quit
and make it all a moot point anyway. But all of her training and background was
screaming out that she was doing the wrong thing; that she was violating every
rule in the book. If Boran hadn’t been echoing the worries in her own head, it
wouldn’t have been so hard.

Rick
looked confused and - damn - hurt, but before Hope had a chance to decide what
to do about anything, his expression shifted into concern. On other people,
concern usually looked soft. Rick expressed concern with a tight jaw and steely
gaze. You knew that he wasn’t going to let you get a step further without fixing
whatever he deemed needed fixed.

It was
hugely annoying but also weirdly endearing.

“Your
arm,” Rick said. He stepped up to Hope and ignored it when she tried to pull
away, just caught at her elbow and held up her bicep in evidence.

“What?
Oh.” There was a long jagged line of blood slipping down her upper arm. It
looked painful, but it didn’t feel like much. Either the advantage of
adrenaline, or it looked worse than it was. Probably both. “Must have got it
while I was running. Didn’t even notice.”

Rick
tutted and moved closer, not seeming to notice he was curving his shoulders
around like he wanted to shield Hope. Or maybe he was just pretending not to
notice - he was some kind of genius, after all.

“Come
on,” Rick said, and tugged her through the doorway into the glass lab. Hope was
trying to run down a list of things in her mind as she watched him mess with
bits of glassware on the counter. Was there anything else she needed to do? Any
chance of the bad guys finding them down here? Could she trust that nobody else
would mention this lab once they were out? Would the police be able to catch…

Her
thoughts cut off abruptly when Rick walked over to her with a glass eyedropper
half full of clear liquid.

“Is
that - ” Hope began, eyeing it sidelong but not moving away. Rick gave her a
pleading glance.

“You
got hurt because of me, just let me fix it, okay?” He sounded more injured than
she felt. Hope thought that she should tell him no, but she couldn’t actually
think of a good reason why, and honestly, she just kind of wanted to see Rick
smile again. So she nodded and offered up her arm.

She was
immediately rewarded with a brilliant, grateful smile from Rick. He drew up the
vial quickly, like he was afraid she’d change her mind, and dribbled a few spare
drops of the liquid down her arm. Hope knew what to expect from the last time.
She watched with detached interest as her skin knitted together neatly, leaving
nothing behind but the smears of blood trailing down her arm.

For a
moment she forgot that anyone else was there. She was too preoccupied with
Rick’s smile, curving deep and satisfied. She watched his hand as he brought it
up to rub a thumb down her newly healed arm.

“That
can’t be sanitary,” she muttered. Rick just chuckled and wiped his hand off on
his God-knew-how-expensive suit.

A gasp
from the other room snapped Hope’s head up and her attention back to the other
men. They were all crowded in the doorway staring, looking variations of
disbelieving and stunned.

What
caught Hope’s attention was Boran, though she couldn’t have said exactly why.
He just looked so
intent
, his eyes wide and his body leaned forward like
he might spring into action any second. It made her uncomfortable, though maybe
it shouldn’t have: after all, Rick was the one with the alchemy. It probably
made sense for mere mortals to be uncomfortable with it. Hell, Hope wasn’t
entirely comfortable with it herself. She rolled her shoulder a couple times,
waiting for some kind of tingling or other indicator of doom to start settling
in.

Rick
looked at her reproachfully and stepped back to put the vial away. “It’s
perfectly safe, you know.”

“What
was
that?” Javier demanded. It should have been annoying and intrusive, but in a
way his honest curiosity was easier to handle than Boran’s unnerving gaze and
his client’s obvious distrust.

“It’s
nothing,” Hope said, at the same time Rick said, “It’s a formula that seals
flesh wounds. It’s a secret.”

Hope
swung around and stared at Rick. “Do you ever have a thought and
not
say
it out loud? I mean, it’s either that or you just aren’t entirely clear on the
definition of the word secret.”

Rick
smiled sheepishly and she gave him a stony look. She wasn’t having this. She
was not. This was ridiculous.

“Awesome!”
Javier said. The kid darted forward, staring eagerly and utterly without
comprehension at the menagerie of glassware in front of him. “You did this
yourself? That is so cool, man!”

Hope
pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Rick looked extremely
pleased. Off to the side Boran’s client scowled fiercely and muttered, “I know
that I help to fund these little ventures, Stone, but is now really the time to
be showing off?!”

She
stared over at the two younger men, dark heads bowed together as Rick’s words
tripped over themselves in his hurry to explain his brilliant invention to an
interested party. Javier clearly didn’t understand a word, but he looked
suitably impressed and nodded and exclaimed at what seemed to be the right
points.

A hand
closed around Hope’s bicep. She’d been paying such close attention to Rick’s
delighted smile and the way his hand flung out in sweeping gestures of
explanation that she wasn’t paying enough attention to the two men behind her.
Instead of tensing up or jerking away, Hope went very still and purposefully
relaxed, the result of years of experience.