Butch O'Neal was not the kind of guy to leave a lady in distress.
It was the old-school in him ... the cop in him ... the devout, practicing Catholic in him. That being said, in the case of the phone call he'd just had with the lovely and talented Dr. Jane Whitcomb, chivalry didn't play into his get-up-and-go. Not in the slightest.
As he beat feet out of the Pit, and all but ran through the underground tunnel to the Brotherhood's training center, his interests and hers were totally aligned even without regard to the whole "be a gentleman" thing: They were both terrified that V was going to spin out of control again.
The earmarks were already there: All you had to do was look at him and you could see that the lid on his Crock-Pot was bolting down hard over the heat and turmoil underneath. All that pressure? Had to get let out somehow, and in the past, it had been in the very messiest of ways.
Stepping through the hidden door and emerging into the office, Butch hung a right and barreled down the long corridor that led to the medical facilities. The subtle waft of Turkish tobacco in the air told him exactly where to find his target, but it wasn't as if there had been any doubt.
At the examination room's closed door, he snapped the cuffs of his Gucci shirt into place and jacked up his belt.
His knock was soft. His heartbeat was hard.
Vishous didn't answer with a "come in." Instead, the brother slipped out and closed the door behind himself.
Shit, he looked bad. And his hands shook ever so slightly as he rolled one of his coffin nails. While he was licking the thing closed, Butch dug into his pocket and supplied the lighter, flicking up a flame and holding it forward.
When his best friend leaned into the orange flare, he knew every tell in that cruel, impassive face.
Jane was absolutely right. The poor bastard was humming hard and holding it all in.
Vishous inhaled deep and then settled back against the cinderblock wall, eyes trained straight ahead, shitkickers planted solidly.
Eventually, the guy muttered, "You're not asking how I am."
Butch affected the same lean, right next to his boy. "Don't have to."
"Mind reader?"
"Yup. That's me."
V leaned to the side and tapped his ashes into the bin. "So tell me what I'm thinking, true?"
"You sure you want me to cuss this close to your sister?" When that got a short laugh, Butch stared at V's profile. The tattoos around the guy's eye were especially sinister, given the cloud of control that surrounded him like a nuclear winter.
"You don't want me to guess out loud, V," he said softly.
"Nah. Give it a shot."
This meant V needed to talk but, in characteristic fashion, was wrapped too tight to squeeze it out: The male had always put the shut it in relating, but at least he was better than he'd been. Before? He wouldn't have even cracked this door at all.
"She asked you to take care of her if this doesn't work, didn't she," Butch said, voicing what he feared most. "And not in terms of palliative nursing."
V's response was an exhale that lasted abooooooout fifteen minutes past infinity.
"What are you going to do," Butch said, even though he knew the answer.
"I won't hesitate." The even though it will kill me went unspoken.
Fucking life. Sometimes the situations it put people in were just too cruel.
Butch closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. Family was everything to vampires. Your mate, the brothers you fought with, your blood ... that was your whole world.
And along that theory, as V suffered so did he. And Jane. And the rest of the Brotherhood.
"Hopefully, it won't come to that." Butch glanced at the closed door. "Doc Jane is going to find the guy. She's a bulldog - "
"You know what dawned on me about ten minutes ago?"
"What."
"Even if it hadn't been daylight, she would have wanted to go alone to find the guy."
As the male's bonding scent wafted over, Butch thought, Well, duh. Jane and the surgeon had been tight for years, so if there was persuading to do, she'd have better luck on her own - assuming she could get past the whole back-from-the-dead thing. Plus V was a vampire. Hello. Like anyone needed another layer added to this mess?
And on that note, all things considered, it would be great if the surgeon were five feet tall, walleyed, and had bear hair on his back. Fugly was their only friend if V's bonded male side was being triggered.
"No offense," Butch murmured, "but can you blame her?"
"It's my twin." The guy raked a hand through his black hair. "Goddamn it, Butch ... my sister."
Butch knew more than a little something about how losing one felt, so yeah, he could feel the male on that front. And man, he was so not leaving the brother's side: He and Jane were the only ones who had a prayer of derailing Vishous when he got like this. And Jane was going to have her hands full with that surgeon and her patient -
The sound of V's cell phone going off made them both jump, but the Brother recovered fast and there wasn't a second ring before he got it up to his ear.
"Yeah? You did? Thank ... fuck ... yeah. Yeah. I'll meet you in the parking garage here. Okay." There was a slight pause and V glanced over like he wished he were alone.
Desperate to make like thin air, Butch looked down at his Dior Homme loafers. The brother was never really into the PDA or talking personal stuff to Jane if there was an audience. But given that Butch was a half-breed, he couldn't dematerialize and where the hell could he run to?
After V muttered a quick "bye," he inhaled deep on his cig and muttered on the exhale, "You can stop pretending not to be next to me."
"What a relief. I suck at it."
"Not your fault you take up space."
"So she got him?" As Vishous nodded, Butch got dead serious. "Promise me something."
"What."
"You won't kill that surgeon." Butch knew exactly what it was like to trip on the outside world and fall into this vampire rabbit hole. In his case, it had worked out, but when it came to Manello? "This is not the guy's fault and not his problem."
V flicked his butt into the bin and glanced over, his diamond eyes cold as an arctic night. "We'll see how it goes, cop."
With that, he pivoted and punched through into where his sister was.
Well, at least the SOB was honest, Butch thought with a curse.
Manny really didn't like other people driving his Porsche 911 Turbo. In fact, short of his mechanic, no one else ever did.
Tonight, however, he'd allowed Jane to get behind the wheel because, one, she was competent and could shift without grinding his transmission into a stump; two, she'd maintained that the only way she could take him where they were going was if she were doing the ten-and-two routine; and three, he was still reeling from seeing someone he'd buried pop out of the bushes to hi-how're-ya him.
So maybe operating heavy machinery going seventy miles an hour was not a good idea.
He could not believe he was sitting next to her, heading north, in his car.
But of course he'd said yes to her request. He was a sap for women in distress ... and he was also a surgeon who was an OR junkie.
Duh.
There were a lot of questions, though. And a lot of pissed off. Yeah, sure, he was hoping to get to a place of peace and light and sunshine and all that namby-pamby bullshit, but he wasn't holding his breath for the kumbaya-all-cools. Which was ironic. How many times had he stared up at his ceiling at night, all nestled in his beddy-bye with his new Lagavulin habit, praying that by some miracle his former chief of trauma would come back to him?
Manny glanced over at her profile. Illuminated in the glow of the dash, she was still smart. Still strong.
Still his kind of woman.
But that was never happening now. Aside from the whole liar-liarpants-on-fire about her death, there was a gunmetal gray ring on her left hand.
"You got married," he said.
She didn't look at him, just kept driving. "Yes. I did."
That headache that had sprouted the instant she'd made her appearance instantly went from grouchy to gruesome. And meanwhile, shadowy memories Loch Nessed below the surface of his conscious mind, tantalizing him, and making him want to work for the full reveal.
He had to cut that cognitive search-and-rescue off, though, before he popped an aneurysm from the strain. Besides, he wasn't getting anywhere with it - no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reach what he sensed was there, and he had a feeling he could do permanent damage if he kept struggling.
As he looked out the car window, fluffy pine trees and budding oaks stood tall in the moonlight, the forest that ran around Caldwell's edges growing thicker as they traveled away from the city proper and its choking knot of population and buildings.
"You died out here," he said grimly. "Or at least pretended you did."
A biker had found her Audi in and among the trees on a stretch of road not far from here, the car having careened off the shoulder. No body, though - and not because of the fire, as it had turned out.
Jane cleared her throat. "I feel like all I've got is 'I'm sorry.' And that just sucks."
"Not a party on my end, either."
Silence. Lots of silence. But he wasn't one to keep asking when all he got in return was I'm sorry.
"I wish I could have told you," she said abruptly. "You were the hardest to leave."
"You didn't dump your job, though, did you. Because you're still working as a surgeon."
"Yes, I am."
"What's your husband like?"
Now she winced. "You're going to meet him."
Great. Joy.
Slowing down, she took a right-hand turn off onto ... a dirt road? What the hell?
"FYI," he muttered, "this car was built for racetracks, not roughing it."
"This is the only way in."
To where? he wondered. "You're so going to owe me for this."
"I know. And you're the only one who can save her."
Manny flashed his eyes over. "You didn't say it was a 'her.'"
"Should it matter?"
"Given how much I don't get about all of this, everything matters."
A mere ten yards in and they went through the first of countless puddles that were as deep as frickin' lakes. As the Porsche splashed through, he felt the scrape on its tender belly, and gritted out, "Screw this patient. I want payback for what you're doing to my undercarriage."
Jane let out a little laugh, and that made the center of his chest ache - but get real. It wasn't like the pair of them had ever been together. Sure, there had been attraction on his part. Big attraction. And, like, one kiss. That was it, however.
And now she was Mrs. Someone Else.
As well as back from the goddamn dead.
Christ, what kind of life was he in? Then again, maybe this was a dream ... which kind of cheered him up, because maybe Glory hadn't gone down, either.
"You haven't told me what kind of injury," he said.
"Spinal break. Between T6 and T7. No sensation below the waist."
"Shit, Jane - that's a tall order."
"Now you know why I need you so badly."
About five minutes later, they came up to a gate that looked like it had been erected during the Punic Wars - the thing was hanging at Alice in Wonderland angles, the chain link rusted to shit and broken in places. And the fence it bisected? That POS was hardly worth the effort, nothing more than six feet of barbed cattle wire that had seen better days.
The damn thing opened smoothly, however. And as they went past it, he saw the first of the video cameras.
While they progressed at a snail's pace, a strange fog rolled in from nowhere in particular, the landscape blurring until he couldn't see more than twelve inches ahead of the car's grille. For chrissakes, it was like they were in a Scooby-Doo episode out here.
And then there was a curious progression: The next gate was in slightly better condition, and the one after that was even newer, and number four looked only a year old, tops.
The last gate they came to was spit-and-shine sparkling, and all about the Alcatraz: Fucker reached twenty-five feet off the ground and had high-voltage warnings all over it. And that wall it cut into? It was nothing for cattle, more like velociraptors; and what do you want to bet that its concrete face fronted a solid twelve or even twenty-four inches of horizontal stone.
Manny swiveled his head around to Jane as they passed through and began a descent into a tunnel that could have had a "Holland" or "Lincoln" sign tacked on it for its fortification. The farther down they went, the more that big question that had been plaguing him since he'd first seen her loomed: Why fake her death? Why cause the kind of chaos she had in his life and the lives of the other people she'd worked with at St. Francis? She'd never been cruel, never been a liar, and had no financial problems and nothing to run from.
Now he knew without her saying a word:
U.S. government.
This kind of setup, with this sort of security ... hidden on the outskirts of what was a big enough city, but nothing so huge as New York, LA, or Chicago? Had to be the government. Who else could afford this shit?
And who the hell was this woman he was treating?
The tunnel terminated in an underground parking garage that was standard-issue, with its pylons and little yellow-painted squares - and yet as large as it appeared to be, the place was empty except for a couple of nondescript vans with darkened windows and a small bus that also had blackouts for glass.
Before she even had his Porsche in park, a steel door was thrown open and -
One look at the huge guy who stepped out and Manny's head exploded, the pain behind his eyes getting so intense he went limp in the bucket seat, his arms falling to the sides, his face twitching from the agony.
Jane said something to him. A car door was opened. Then his own was cracked.
The air that hit him smelled dry and vaguely like earth ... but there was something else. Cologne. A very woody spice that was at once expensive and pleasing, but also something he had a curious urge to get the fuck away from.
Manny forced his lids to open. His vision was wonky as hell, but it was amazing what you could pull out of your ass if you had to - and as the man in front of him came into focus, he found himself staring up at the goateed motherfucker who had ...
On a fresh wave of fucking-OW, his eyes rolled back and he nearly threw up.
"You've got to release the memories," he heard Jane say.
There was some conversating at that point, his former colleague's voice mixing with the deep tones of that man with the tattoos at his temple.
"It's killing him - "
"There's too much risk - "
"How the hell is he going to operate like this?"
There was a long silence. And then all of a sudden, the pain lifted as if it were a veil drawn back, all that pressure gone within the blink of an eye. In its place, memories flooded his mind.
Jane's patient. From back at St. Francis. The man with the goatee and ... the six-chambered heart. Who had shown up in Manny's office and taken the files on that cardiac anomaly of his.
Manny popped open his lids and lasered in on that nasty-looking face. "I know you."
"You get him out of the car," was the only response from Goatee. "I don't trust myself to touch him."
Hell of a welcome wagon.
And there was someone else behind the big bastard. A man Manny was one hundred percent sure he'd seen before ... Must have been only in passing, though, because he couldn't call up a name or remember where they'd met.
"Let's go," Jane said.
Yeah. Great idea. At this point, he needed something to focus on other than all this say-what?.
As Manny's brain struggled to process what was happening, at least his feet and legs got with the program. After Jane helped him out of the car and onto the vertical, he followed her and the Goateed Hater into a facility that was as nondescript and clean as any hospital: Corridors were uncluttered, fluorescent lights were in panels on the ceiling, everything smelled like Lysol.
And there were also the bubbled fixtures of security cameras at regular intervals, like the building was a monster with many eyes.
While they walked along, he knew better than to ask any questions. Well, that and his head was so scrambled, he was pretty fucking sure ambulation was the extent of his capabilities at this point. And then there was Goatee and his death stare - not exactly an opening for chitchat.
Doors. They passed many doors. All of which were closed and no doubt locked.
Happy little words like undisclosed location and national security hopscotched through his cranial park, and that helped a lot, making him think maybe he could forgive Jane for ghosting out on him - eventually.
When she stopped outside a pair of double flappers, her hands fidgeted with the lapels of her white coat and then the stethoscope in her pocket. And didn't that make him feel like he had a gun to his head: In the OR, in countless trauma messes, she'd always kept her cool. It was her trademark.
This was personal, though, he thought. Somehow, whatever was on the other side of these doors hit close to home for her.
"I've got good equipment here," she said, "but not everything. No MRI. Just CAT scans and X-rays. The OR should be adequate, however, and not only can I assist, but I've got an excellent nurse."
Manny took a breath and reached down deep, pulling himself together. By force of will, he shut off all the questions and the lingering ow-ow-ow in his head and the strangeness of this descent into 007-land.
First thing on his to-do list? Ditch the pissed-off peanut gallery.
He glanced over his shoulder at Goatee. "You need to back off, my man. I want you out in the hall."
The response he got in return was ... just fang-tastic: The bastard bared a pair of canines as long as his arm and growled, natch, like a dog.
"Fine," Jane said, getting in between them. "That's fine. Vishous will wait out here."
Vishous? Had he heard that right?
Then again, this boy's baby mama sure hit the nail on the head, considering that little dental show. But whatever. Manny had a job to do, and maybe the bastard could go chew on a rawhide or something.
Pushing into the examination room, he -
Oh ... dear God.
Oh ... Lord above.
The patient on the table was lying still as water and ... she was probably the most beautiful anything he'd ever seen: Hair was jetblack and braided into a thick rope that hung free next to her head. Skin was a golden brown, as if she were of Italian descent and had recently been in the sun. Eyes ... her eyes were like diamonds, both colorless and brilliant, with nothing but a dark rim around the iris.
"Manny?"
Jane's voice was right behind him, but he felt as if she were miles away. In fact, the whole world was somewhere else, nothing existing except for the stare of his patient as she looked up at him from out of her immobilized head.
It finally happened, he thought as he burrowed under his shirt and took hold of his heavy cross. All his life he'd wondered why he'd never fallen in love, and now he knew: He'd been waiting for this moment, this woman, this time.
The female is mine, he thought.
And even though that made no sense at all, the conviction was so strong, he couldn't question it.
"Are you the healer?" she said in a low voice that stopped his heart. "Are you ... here for me?"
Her words were heavily accented, gorgeously so, and also a little surprised.
"Yeah. I am." He wrenched off his suit's coat and threw it into a corner, not giving a shit where the thing landed. "I'm here for you."
As he approached, her stunning icy eyes slicked with tears. "My legs ... they feel as though they are moving, but I suspect they do not."
"Do they hurt?"
"Yes."
Phantom pain. Not a surprise.
Manny stopped by her side and glanced at her body, which was covered with a sheet. She was tall. Had to be at least six feet. And she was built with sleek power.
This was a soldier, he thought, measuring the strength in her bare upper arms. This was a fighter.
And, God, the loss of mobility in someone like her took his breath away. Even if you were a couch potato, life in a wheelchair was a bitch and a half, but to somebody like this, it would be a death sentence.
Manny reached out and gathered her hand into his own - and the instant he made contact, his whole body went wakey-wakey on him, as if she were the socket to his inner plug.
"I'm going to take care of you," he said as he looked her right in the eye. "I want you to trust me."
She swallowed hard as one crystal tear slipped out to trail down her temple. On instinct, he reached forward and caught it on his fingertip -
The growl that percolated up from the doorway was the countdown to an ass-kicking if he'd ever heard it. Except as he glanced over at Goatee, he felt like snarling right back at the son of a bitch. Which, yet again, made no sense.
Still holding his patient's hand, he barked at Jane, "Get that miserable bastard out of my operating room. And I want to see the goddamn scans and X-rays. Now."
He was going to save this woman even if it killed him.
And as Goatee's eyes flashed with pure hatred, Manny thought, Well, shit, it might just come down to that....
