Bone Rider (29 page)

There was a knock on the window next to his head, cautious, a familiar quick rhythm. Andrej. Misha turned his head reluctantly, met the worried gaze through the glass. Andrej jerked his chin at the house and Misha nodded, knowing they couldn’t stay in the car, yet not looking forward to moving Riley. Andrej opened the door for him and Misha slid out first, never relinquishing his hold, pulling Riley along with him until Andrej was there to grab Riley’s legs. Riley’s head lolled back, exposing his throat, and the sight drove the point home once again that right now, stubborn, self-sufficient Riley Cooper was completely dependent on Misha. Awake and aware, Riley would’ve never allowed anybody to take care of him like this. It was terrifying… and it felt good, deep down, though Misha refused to acknowledge it. He didn’t want Riley hurt or helpless. He just—he wanted to have Riley depend on him. He wanted Riley to need Misha as badly as Misha needed Riley.

“Whoa,” Andrej huffed, eyes wide. “He’s heavier than he looks.”

“I can take him,” Misha said immediately, heart jumping nervously at the thought of Andrej dropping Riley. Didn’t matter how solid the man felt, to Misha he seemed painfully fragile right then, unable to catch or protect himself.

“I got him.” Andrej smiled tightly. “Stop fretting.”

“Fuck you,” Misha muttered. “Where to?”

“Follow me,” J.C.’s bass cut in from a respectable distance. He was a tall man in his late forties with dark bedroom eyes and a peppered beard, calm and commanding. He didn’t appear particularly crazy, but he did live in the middle of the desert in a militia stronghold and was leading a band of survivalists, which made him eccentric even by syndicate standards. Misha didn’t give a damn. He wanted Riley in a bed, checked over by a doctor, safe, and preferably awake. He followed J.C. without a word of protest, up the stairs, into the house, then up another flight of stairs. Andrej cursed under his breath by the time they filed through a narrow doorway into a bedroom, but his hold was steady and gentle when they lowered Riley onto the mattress.

J.C. helped them undress the insensible man and pulled up the thin cotton cover while Misha smoothed the pillow for the third time. Riley hadn’t so much as twitched, but at least he was still breathing, his pulse slow and steady, his skin warm to the touch. Still alive. Still with Misha, at least physically.

“I’ll send up Cortez,” J.C. promised as he stepped back. “She’s our medic. You need anything else?”

“Water, please.” Misha took in the sparsely furnished room and added, “A chair.”

“Done. Bathroom’s through this door,” J.C. pointed to the side. “Kitchen is downstairs. You need anything, go outside and holler; the walls are pretty thick. In case of emergency, press this button and someone will be up STAT. They’ll be armed. Don’t shoot them.”

“I’ll bring up Riley’s stuff,” Andrej added. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, eyes drawn to the still form on the bed. “He’ll be all right.”

“Yeah,” Misha said, tonelessly.

On the bed, Riley lay breathing.

T
HE
doctor was a middle-aged woman with short, graying dark hair and shuttered eyes. She checked Riley’s pupils and then the rest of him with deft hands, not overly gentle, but with a confidence that spoke of experience. Misha hovered at the head of the bed, observing her every move. He felt helpless, anxious, and irritated, and he hated it. Hated to be so totally out of control, not qualified to take charge, unable to do anything but stand there like an idiot and pray that whatever had protected Riley at the diner wouldn’t forsake him now. He found himself grateful for the doctor’s professionalism and vaguely bothered at the same time by her apparent lack of emotional attachment. Part of him wanted to grab her and shake her, tell her to stop looking at Riley like he was just another patient, just some guy who meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. He wanted to drive it home that she was touching someone infinitely precious to Misha, someone unique and amazing who deserved to be treated with utmost care.

He didn’t say a word. There wasn’t anything he could say. He could plead with her or scare her, but it wouldn’t make her work any better. It might break her concentration, though; make her overlook something because she was splitting her attention between her patient and Misha. So he kept his mouth shut and his hands away from his weapon. Stood and watched, fists clenched so hard they started to bleed again, stomach hurting. He’d never seen Riley so still under a stranger’s hands, so defenseless, and an unfamiliar, protective tenderness kindled in his belly, burning ever higher, licking at his insides until he could barely stand it. Or maybe it was stomach acid; maybe he had finally grown that apparently inevitable, stress-induced ulcer Andrej had warned him about.

Thankfully, Cortez didn’t take long. She finished checking on her patient, then insisted on cleaning Misha’s wounded hands. It was probably a good thing; he couldn’t afford an infection, it would render him useless. He never looked away from Riley as she worked; barely felt the sting of whatever antiseptic she applied. Told her, “No” when she tried to bandage his hands, but allowed her to apply butterfly bandages to the worst of the cuts. Eventually, Cortez straightened up and slipped her gear back into her bag, calm and methodical, before she turned back to Misha.

“
Él será bien. Dale tiempo
.”

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Misha admitted, not reassured in the least.

“He will be okay,” Cortez repeated in heavily accented English. “Give it time.”

Misha looked down at Riley, who was doing an alarmingly good impression of a deeply comatose body. “You sure he doesn’t need a CAT scan or something?” he asked, dubious.

She shrugged. “We don’t have CAT scan.”

“So we just wait for him to wake up on his own? What if he’s got some kind of—” He stopped, clenched his jaws, swallowed to steady his voice. His bones itched with the need for violence. “What if he’s bleeding in his head?”

Something of his desperation must’ve slipped through, because her stern features softened marginally. “No signs of bleeding. You want certain, go to a hospital. But people will know.” Cortez nodded at a small wooden cross nailed to the wall over the bed. “Pray.
Tenga fe
. Have faith.”

Misha grimaced. “I don’t think God listens to men like me.”

Cortez snorted out a laugh at that, surprising him with a grin. “That’s why you need faith,
sicario
{12}
.”

Misha’s mouth twitched a little, not quite a smile, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances and she seemed to get it.

“He gets worse, hit the button,” she told him, and then she was gone and Misha was alone with Riley for the first time since he’d found him in the diner.

H
E
HAD
no idea how much time passed as he sat and watched Riley, waiting for a sign of waking. His body felt as though it was still vibrating slightly with the ghost of tires rolling under him, a steady, dull echo of a hum everywhere except for where his skin tingled with the phantom warmth of Riley’s breath. Misha sank into it, welcoming both the numbness and the painful sensitivity. The harsh midday sun mellowed as it drifted across the sky and flooded the canyon and the room with long fingers of light. Dust motes drifted in the air, floating back and forth in a dreamy dance without rhyme or reason. It was quiet. The only sounds were the two men’s synchronized breathing and the occasional rumble of machinery outside. The whole tableau was so damn peaceful it made Misha feel dizzy.

Andrej came in to check on him once, but Misha barely acknowledged him. It was too hard to turn his head, to shake off the inertia weighing down his limbs. He felt trapped in limbo with Riley, his entire existence on hold. Andrej must’ve picked up on it because Misha could feel his friend’s hand hover over his shoulder for a long moment and then pull back without making contact.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Andrej murmured, hushed as though he was a kid again, doing his best not to disturb the quiet of the church lest God strike him down like Father Pyotr had threatened.

Misha might’ve nodded slightly, or not; even he couldn’t tell. Andrej went away. He returned some time later to set a tray with a sweating pitcher of water and two glasses on the dresser, but didn’t talk to Misha again. The door clicked shut behind him.

Misha for his part sat and stared down at the motionless form laid out before him, oblivious to all that was going on around him. His mind was empty and buzzing at the same time. He knew his life was about to change irrevocably. He had Riley back, sort of, but Riley would not stay with a syndicate enforcer. Misha had no idea how to be something else, and anyway, his family wasn’t going to let him go with a pat on the back and a “good luck.” Also, there was still the matter of the military having some kind of beef with Riley, serious enough to have them blow up an eatery in a major city in broad daylight in order to kill him.

Something had to be done about that. All of it.

These were dangerous waters, though, and Misha couldn’t make concrete plans while his future with Riley was still so uncertain. Riley wasn’t an easy man to love, which was part of his appeal. He was prickly and guarded, had no trouble fighting about small shit, but was almost as bad at handling serious emotional conflicts as Misha. It was going to be difficult to convince him to trust Misha again, because Riley wasn’t the type to give second chances. If you fucked up with him, he wrote you off and walked away, and he might grieve for a while, but he never went back. Misha could only hope he’d gotten so deep under Riley’s skin Riley hadn’t been able to distance himself yet. He thought he’d be able to tell, but not while Riley was unconscious. The wait was nerve-wracking.

“Come on, man,” he muttered, rougher than intended after the long silence. “Wake up. You’re giving me an ulcer here.”

Riley didn’t answer, stubborn bastard that he was, but Misha could’ve sworn he looked healthier than before. The paleness had faded from his cheeks and his breathing was calm and regular, definitely deeper than it had been in the car. He looked like he was sleeping, relaxed and peaceful, and Misha edged forward again, his fingers twitching with the need to touch.

“You scared the crap outta me,” he admitted quietly, moving from the chair to the edge of the bed, Riley’s body tilting subtly toward Misha when the mattress dipped. “For a minute there, I thought you—”

He didn’t say it, swallowed it down with the sudden lump in his throat.

“You could’ve come to me, Riley,” he whispered. “You asshole. Did you really believe I’d hurt you? Did you think I could?”

Of course he had. Riley had no reason to put his faith in a man who’d sneaked into his affections using lies and deception, and then had kept on lying until he’d gotten caught. A man who murdered people for a living. For someone with Riley’s background, this wasn’t a gray area. Misha was a liar and a killer. A very bad guy working for a very powerful crime syndicate and Riley had barged into the wrong room at the wrong time and become a witness. No, Misha couldn’t blame him for running. He understood why Riley had taken on overwhelming odds with an empty gun rather than call Misha.

And yet, stupidly, it still hurt.

Misha sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. He was a mess: tired, gritty, and headachy; hollowed-out with worry and apprehension. The movies always made love look so easy, differences and misunderstandings a minor glitch brushed off after a short, dramatic interlude that set the course for happily ever after. What a crock of shit.

“Wake up, Rye,” he muttered. “We gotta talk. Just open your eyes, okay?”

He reached out, needing contact, the reassurance of Riley’s warm skin against his. It had been his privilege, once, to be allowed this kind of intimacy. To reach out and have Riley move into his touch, no matter when or where. To indulge in breaching Riley’s personal space and be welcomed where everybody else was denied. Misha had missed this freedom to connect more than he liked to admit. He’d loved to caress Riley’s face above all else, completely hooked on the sensuality of exploring those gorgeously masculine features with his fingertips, warm skin with the faintest hint of stubble, the satiny curve of Riley’s mouth right there, addictive.

Only when his fingers brushed Riley’s cheek this time, there was only smoothness, sleek and unyielding. Misha blinked and realized the honeyed sunlight that had been kissing Riley’s relaxed countenance was glinting off metal now. The flutter of dark eyelashes distracted him for a second. He raised his gaze to Riley’s eyes just in time to glimpse a sliver of dazed gray changing into bright silver. Instinct twitched his hand away.

The unthinking reaction saved his fingers.

Spikes shot up from the metal covering Riley’s skin, thin and viciously pointed. Misha jumped to his feet, away from the bed, and that saved more than his hand. Riley damn near levitated into an upright position, metal flowing over him like water as he stabbed a foot-long blade into the space where Misha had just been. He hit only empty air, which messed up his balance, but he caught himself neatly on one knee. His head came up, eyes zeroing in on Misha, open wide and unreadable behind a mirror-sheen of silver. He was almost completely covered in metal by this point. It thickened and shifted as Misha watched in disbelief, almost too quickly to follow, formed plates and razor-ridged edges, wrapped the familiar body up in unfamiliar armor.

“What the fuck?” Misha yelled, hand going for his gun reflexively.

On the bed, the armored creature twitched forward aggressively, about to launch itself from the bed at Misha, but it drew up at the last possible moment, jerked to a halt with a discontented snarl. It remained like that, poised on one knee, coiled with tension but frozen still, tracking Misha’s movements yet making no move toward him. Intentionally or not, it had placed itself smack between Misha and the alarm button. Misha had plenty of time to study it while he tried to decide on the best course of action. It looked like a knight out of some geek fantasy, sleek and sexy instead of bulky and uncomfortable, something imaginary become real. Didn’t seem cowed by his gun, either, so Misha assumed it was probably bulletproof. Or it had no idea what a gun was, but he thought that was improbable. Suddenly, the military presence at the diner and their shoot-to-kill attitude made much more sense.