Shiver (22 page)

He set himself to endure.

The marshals were talking quietly among themselves. Danny couldn’t really hear what they were saying, and he didn’t much care. He watched out the window as the flat plains turned into wooded hills and thunderheads rolled in to obscure the mountains to the west. An eighteen-wheeler roared past, shaking the SUV. Beside him, Tyler gave what sounded like a little burp.

At the sound, Sam woke up instantly, straightening away from him like he’d suddenly turned red hot. She stretched a little, glared at Danny in passing—maybe she was pissed because she’d been leaning against his shoulder as she slept? Otherwise, he didn’t have a clue what that was about—then looked anxiously at Tyler.

Tyler was awake, too, ducking out from under Danny’s protective arm, rubbing his hands over his face.

Taking advantage of the moment, Danny leaned forward to grab the plastic bag of pills.

“Mom,” Tyler said in the tiniest voice Danny had yet heard from him. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Sick? As in, upchuck?

After one frozen-in-place instant, during which Tyler made a terrifying gagging sound, Danny had his answer: yep.

Galvanized, desperately thankful that the Lortab had worn off enough for his reflexes to be halfway close to normal, Danny dumped his pills from the plastic bag into his lap. Even as Sam leaned across him, crying, “You need to pull this car over
right now,
” to the unsuspecting chumps up front, Danny took one look at Tyler, snapped the plastic bag open, and held it by its handles in front of the kid’s pale and perspiring face.

Just in time for the kid to fill it up.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
t had been, hands down, the worst twenty-four-hour period of Sam’s life. Mrs. Menifee was definitely dead: that information had been relayed to Sanders right before they had boarded the plane. Sanders had passed it on to the other marshals, who had passed it on to Sam, and she felt by turns heartbroken, horrified, grieving, and guilty. So far she hadn’t told Tyler. She wasn’t sure that she would, certainly not if he didn’t ask. She and Tyler had nearly been killed, too, and were still, she feared, marked for death, so she was in a constant state of low-grade fear. Plus they’d been ripped away from their home and everything they knew, and she had no idea when they would be going home again. In other words, her life been run off the rails straight into the twilight zone, and she didn’t see any way that it was going to improve anytime soon.

Head pounding, so tired that just putting one foot in front of the other was an effort, Sam walked out of the unfamiliar bedroom in which she had just told her son what felt like a million bedtime stories—usually she read to him, but here they had no
books—until he had fallen asleep. What she saw as she stepped into the darkened hall stopped her in her tracks. In the bathroom opposite, wrapped in a white toweling robe, Marco stood balanced on one foot, leaning precariously against the sink, the aluminum crutches he’d switched to upon reaching this house leaning against the sink next to him, his head tilted back and his hand at his mouth as he swallowed. The small brown plastic pill bottle clutched in his other hand told the story: he was downing more pain meds.

Her brows snapped together.

Crabby didn’t even begin to describe how out of sorts she was feeling. It was after 11:00 p.m. mountain time, which meant that it was after midnight back home in East St. Louis. Except for the catnap she’d grabbed in the SUV earlier—annoying to remember that she’d wound up snoozing against Marco’s shoulder—she’d had no sleep for about thirty-six hours. Lunch had been McDonald’s, procured on the fly via a drive-through after Tyler, poor baby, had done what she had feared and succumbed to motion sickness. It happened sometimes, usually when his stomach was empty. She should have insisted that they stop for food, but she hadn’t. She had still been running scared, damn it, and Tyler had been the one to pay the price, which wasn’t going to happen again if she could help it. Supper had been pizza, picked up on their way through the small town of Pocatello, Idaho. That’s where they were currently holed up, in a three-bedroom town house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood near the Portneuf River. Upstairs, which was where she, Tyler, and Marco presently were, there were two full
bathrooms—one connected to the master bedroom—along with the three bedrooms. She had the master, Tyler had the bedroom next to hers, and Marco had the third, on the opposite side of the hall. Downstairs, there was a half bath, plus a great room with a huge fireplace, a kitchen with an eating area, a den, and a screened porch. O’Brien was at that moment standing guard—or, rather, watching TV—in the great room. Having apparently drawn the night’s short straw, Groves was stationed in the SUV, parked strategically in the driveway next door, keeping watch through its tinted windows. Sanders and Abramowitz, meanwhile, were in the town house that belonged to the driveway, one assigned to watch the security cameras that monitored all entrances to the town house where she, Tyler, and Marco were holed up, and the other presumably getting some sleep.

These security arrangements had been explained to Marco when they had first arrived at the town house, while she had listened in. None of the men had bothered to explain anything to her. At the time, with Tyler plopped down beside her on the couch, nibbling on a slice of pizza while watching TV and apparently paying no attention to what was going on around them while she knew perfectly well that he was actually absorbing everything like a little sponge with ears, she hadn’t asked any questions, not wanting to let on to Tyler how worried she was about the situation they were in.

Which didn’t mean, then and now, that she wasn’t bursting with them.

How long would they be there? She had no idea. What were they supposed to do now that they were there? She had no idea
about that, either. What was happening at home? Same answer. She had no idea about anything, and anxiety about it was driving her around the bend. The icing on her particular cake was that she had a splitting headache: the blow she’d taken to the head before she was dumped into the Beemer’s trunk was definitely making itself felt. Or maybe it was a tension headache, because she definitely was experiencing tension. Whatever, she was feeling decidedly subpar. Plus she wouldn’t be surprised if Tyler woke up with screaming nightmares.

Actually, given all that he had just been through, she would be surprised if he
didn’t
wake up with screaming nightmares.

And the cause of all her problems was standing right in front of her, in a robe, barefoot, with a deep vee of tanned and muscular bare chest exposed, giving not the smallest indication that he was concerned with anything except downing way too many pills.

“You’re not supposed to take more than eight of those pills in twenty-four hours, you know,” she snapped, pausing just outside the bathroom door to glare at him because she just couldn’t help herself. Not that she’d been keeping track, but this was the fourth time she’d watched him gulp down pain pills, and every time she’d counted he’d swallowed at least four pills at a time. She was too tired to do the math, but that brought the count to way over eight pills in way less than twenty-four hours. That she knew of. And who knew how many she’d missed? “What, are you a druggie along with everything else?”

Groves and O’Brien had taken what had seemed like a great deal of pleasure in filling her in on exactly what “everything
else” was while Marco had been having his leg operated on. Learning that he was a corrupt federal agent—“used to be one of us” was how Groves had put it—who had turned against his own side and secretly collaborated with the drug traffickers he had supposedly been targeting as part of an ongoing investigation wasn’t a total surprise, because he was fit and smart and she could totally picture him as a former federal agent and clearly he’d been in the custody of U.S. Marshals for a reason. But the knowledge bothered her, much as she hated to admit it. Until then, she’d almost felt like he was someone she could trust. Now she knew better. He was someone
nobody
could trust, and she meant to keep that in the forefront of her mind.

“I’m not a druggie. My leg hurts.” His tone was mild as he set the pill bottle down. Cupping his hand, he took a couple of gulps of water from the sink, shut the faucet off, and turned to eye her appraisingly. Either the bathroom was smaller than she’d thought when she’d helped Tyler take a bath in there earlier, or Marco was bigger than she’d thought. Either way, he seemed to take up a lot of space. The top of his head was almost even with the top of the big mirror that ran along most of the left wall, and his shoulders were broad enough that they seemed to fill most of the space between the tub and the sink. “Anyway, how do you know how many pills I’m supposed to take?”

“Because unlike you, I was listening when the doctor told you.” Her answer was tart.

“Ah.” With his hip braced against the sink cabinet, Marco looked her up and down, his expression way too alert for the kind of day he’d had. His hair was wet and shiny black in
consequence, and slicked back from his face. His nose was still swollen, one eye was still black, purpling bruises marred his forehead and left cheekbone and the left side of his jaw, and a small cut was visible at the corner of his mouth. But he’d been applying ice to his face off and on for much of the day, and in consequence looked much better. Handsome, even, just as she had suspected. From the dampness of his hair, his bare feet and calves, and his apparent lack of clothing apart from the robe, she surmised that he had just gotten out of the shower. Since she had recently showered and was wearing a white toweling robe herself, over too-large white granny panties and a man’s white T-shirt—the furnished house had come complete with a small selection of brand-new, still-with-the-price-tags-on clothing in the dresser drawers, which had been presented to them as theirs to use as they saw fit as part of their temporary new identities as a married couple, Greg and Laura James, and their son Tyler—she couldn’t fault him for that. But she could—and did—fault him for everything else. The whole damned mess, in fact.

“Tyler get to sleep?” he asked.

She didn’t want to talk about Tyler with him. “Yes.”

She started to move away.

“Hang on, I need to ask you something. Okay, so I was kind of out of it when the medic was explaining about my medication. I’ve got the pain pills and the antibiotic pills pretty much down, I think. But what am I supposed to do with the lube tube?”

“Lube tube?” Sam had hesitated and glanced around at him when he’d started talking, but she had been just about to shut
him down with the astringent observation that his meds were his problem and then once more head off for bed when that semirevolting description caught her attention.

“This.” Glancing down, he picked up what looked like a family size toothpaste tube and held it up for her viewing pleasure (or not). It was black and yellow, with a screw-off lid. “You have any idea what I’m supposed to do with this?”

It was quite possible that she didn’t want to know, but curiosity won out: Sam stepped closer, onto the beige tiled floor—everything in the house seemed to be beige or brown or some other muted earth tone—the better to see the tube. The bathroom was still steamy warm and fragrant from his shower, and a small degree of condensation still clung to the edge of the big mirror behind the sink. The shower curtain was still inside the combination tub/shower, which was beaded with water droplets. Stopping just inside the doorway, she peered at the writing on the tube: Bactroban ointment.

“It’s an antibiotic ointment. Tomorrow—that would be twenty-four hours after they removed the bullet from your leg—you’re supposed to change the bandages and apply it to the wound. Liberally. Then bandage it up again. Repeat once a day.” She couldn’t help it: she glanced down at his damaged leg, currently not visible because of the sheltering robe, which reached just past his knees. On her, what seemed to be the identical robe went clear down to her ankles, and was big enough to wrap around her twice. Probably, she thought, they were one size fits all, which served as a pretty good indication of just
how large he was. “And you’re supposed to keep the bandages clean and
dry.”

“I am keeping them clean and dry. See?” Before Sam realized what he meant to do, he twitched the edges of his robe apart to give her a look at his thigh. For a hideous moment she feared he might be flashing her. Then she saw the barely visible pale blue hem of what she assumed was a pair of boxers, and felt a little spurt of relief. A black plastic garbage bag swathed his leg from just below the boxers to the top of his knee. While she watched, he pulled the bag off so she could see what looked like acres of white gauze wrapped around and around his thigh beneath. “Not even damp.”