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Below me, the man let out a groan.
The contents of the cellar didn’t belong to us. They were a mix-match of old furniture, boxes, and a few garden tools. My eyes alit on one of the old dining room chairs stacked in the corner.
That would have to do.
I trotted down the steps and went to the stack of furniture. I fought to pull one apart from the others, and then when I managed it, placed it upright in the middle of the floor.
The man moaned and tried to buck beneath the bodies, serving to make them jiggle grotesquely, as though they were trying to come back to life. Even though I hadn’t been the one to kill them, the thought sent a shudder down my spine. From this angle, I could see the face of one of the dead men, and his eyes were open, staring up sightlessly at the ceiling. I wasn’t a squeamish person, and I’d seen enough dead bodies, but that didn’t mean I particularly liked being stuck in a cellar with a couple of them. I would have to figure out what I would do with them soon enough. I couldn’t risk them being found. What would happen to us if the U.S. Marshals discovered that people knew our location? And not only that, that I had stabbed and then later killed a man—which I had no doubt was what I would end up doing.
The man’s muffled shouts came again, and though I couldn’t understand him, I knew exactly what he was saying.
Get me out of here.
With an exasperated sigh, I stalked over to the tangle of limbs. I caught sight of the man’s upper arm and bent to grab it with both hands. His bicep felt solid beneath my fingers, and I tried not to experience the little rush of excitement at having hold of a real life male. With everything that happened, it had been a while since I’d had so much as a date, and currently my only recent propositions had been from guys like the one back at Johnny’s bar.
Planting my feet, slightly spread, onto the concrete floor, I bent at the waist and heaved. The man gave a muffled yell of pain, I guessed, but he didn’t move far. The weight of the bodies pressing on top of him made him too heavy. I didn’t like the idea of having to touch the dead men again, but it didn’t look like I had too much choice. I’d have to move them again at some point soon anyway, so I might as well get over it.
Starting with the guy on top, I grabbed his arm and pulled. He slid off the pile of limbs and torsos and tumbled to the floor. From there, I dragged him away to one side, where a pile of old dust sheets had been stacked. Hauling him as best I could, I deposited him against the wall and went back to get his friend. I was thankful I was strong—partly the result of lifting crates of beer every night at the bar—but even so, I thought I’d be feeling the result of all the heavy lifting in the next day or two.
I repeated the process with the other guy, dumping him on top of the first, and I covered them both with a couple of the dust sheets. I was thankful to not have to look at them anymore.
The other man had started making more noise—grunts of anger against the tape across his mouth. He rolled back and forth, trying to flip himself up onto his knees. I bent to help him up, the muscles in my back clenching in protest, but I managed to get him to his feet. With my hand still around his bicep, he half hopped, half fell, into the chair I’d positioned in the room.
I picked up the gun from where I’d left it on the stairs in order to have my hands free to move the men, and then approached him again. I took in the sight of him. I hated to admit it, but he was dangerously good looking. Cheekbones you could grate cheese on, short, light brown hair, and strikingly blue eyes fringed with lashes. I guessed him to be in his late twenties.
“So, asshole,” I said, reaching out and snagging a corner of the tape covering his mouth. “How about you start talking?”
I yanked the tape off, the gumminess making a satisfying sound as it tore from skin and about twenty-four hours’ worth of stubble growth. He sucked air in over his teeth at the pain I assumed had ripped across his lower face. I took distinct satisfaction from that, and tried not to let the piercing blue eyes or sharp cheekbones distract me.
Those blue eyes rolled in his head.
“Hey,” I snapped, grabbing his jaw and yanking his face to look into mine. “You’re not passing out. I need answers.”
But his eyes rolled again and the lids fluttered shut.
“Crap.”
I looked down at his injuries—the ones I’d given him.
Blood was soaked through both the arm of his shirt and his pant leg. It was hard to see the color against the black of the material, but I could tell from the way the material was wet and clung against the thick muscle of his thigh.
Something stirred through me.
Nope, I was not that fucked up. I did not get off on a guy I’d just stabbed and who’d been out to kill me, no matter how muscular his thigh appeared. I was clearly desperate.
Using my knife, I cut away the material of the pants to reveal the cut below. It was clean, just as I’d meant it to be, but deep. Blood still ebbed from the hole, but it didn’t spurt, so I hadn’t hit a major artery. Tough, if he was going to live, I needed to close it up.
I didn’t have anything more than some antiseptic ointment and a handful of Band-Aids in the house. I didn’t think they’d cut it, somehow. Would it matter if he got an infection? It wasn’t as though I actually cared if he lived or died, but then I reasoned that I needed him to at least get well enough to be able to answer my questions.
Leaving him unconscious on the chair, I ran back up the stairs and into the bathroom where I kept the tiny first aid kit. I grabbed the whole thing and took it back down to the cellar where he still hadn’t regained consciousness.
I applied some of the cream to his wounds, wincing at the depth of them, and then pressed a folded bandage firmly to the cut. With nothing else available, I used my teeth to pull another length of the tape out, and used that to strap the bandage to his thigh.
That would have to do.
I moved onto his arm, repeating the process.
“Hey,” I told him again. “You’re all fixed up, so it’s time to wake up and speak to me.”
I didn’t get so much as an eyelid flutter as a response.
It would only be a few more hours until morning.
Remembering the amount of blood left in the hallway, I made my way back upstairs to clean up. I worked as quietly as possible, using a damp sponge to blot away the worst of the blood, and then scrubbing the rest with some soap and water. For once, I was thankful for the threadbare carpet, with it hideous dark pattern. It would make the remaining stain less noticeable.
With the job done, I went back down to the cellar to find the man still unconscious. I pulled up one of the old dining room chairs to sit in front of my captive and waited for him to wake.
