Paige stood with her back to him in a large, clean kitchen. She was behind a counter, so he could only see her from the waist up. When she turned around, she looked at him with sharp eyes that weren’t exactly cold, but were a long way from warm. In her hand was a small syringe. “Were you hurt in the attack?” she asked.
The concern in her voice was genuine, which shifted Cole’s focus away from his anger. He reflexively reached for his ribs and took a shallow breath, but only got a slight pinch in return. “It could have been worse. I was wearing a lot of layers when I got knocked around. Brad and Gerald drew that thing away from me before it could…” That night at the cabin screamed back into his thoughts, and he did his best to shove those memories back into the spot they’d been hiding.
“So you’re feeling all right?”
“Yeah. More or less. I mean, I might have broken something, but it’s better now.”
Paige nodded and raised an eyebrow to put the icing upon a cute, sympathetic frown. “Or maybe you weren’t hurt as badly as it seemed at the time.”
“No. I was hurt. I was slammed up against a freakin’ wall!”
Keeping her eyes locked upon him, Paige walked around the counter. Until that moment, Cole could say that he’d rarely ever seen a woman saunter. There was no mistaking it this time, however. Whether she meant to do it or not, Paige’s walk was most definitely a saunter. Considering the slow shifting of her hips and the grip her eyes had upon him, he discovered he liked sauntering very much.
Once she got within arm’s reach of him, she snapped out one hand to flick her fingers against his ribs.
“What the hell?” he said as he was abruptly pulled from his happy place.
“If your ribs were broken, you’d be in tears right now. Or close to it, anyway. Seems like you’re just bruised up. If you’re still hurting, though,” she added while holding up the syringe, “I can help.”
“You can help, huh? Oh no. I’m not letting you give me any drugs.”
Paige held out the syringe to show that it was only slightly bigger than the pencils handed out at miniature golf courses. “If you must know, it’s a vitamin serum,” she explained. “It’ll make it a whole lot easier to breathe and it might even give you a bit more energy after all the traveling you’ve done.”
“You sound like you’re talking from experience.”
“I am. Are you going to let me give you this or not? I promise you’ll feel better.” When she saw the uncertainty in his eyes, she added, “It’s the least I can do for everything you’ve done so far.”
Cole placed his hands on the cool metallic surface of the countertop and let his head hang down. “If I can have some ice water, that would be just fine.”
The moment those words were out of his mouth, Paige leaned forward and slapped her hand down on top of his. She moved so quickly that he couldn’t even think about reacting before she dropped her other hand and stuck the needle into his arm.
“Fuck!” he said reflexively.
She pushed down on the little plunger and then removed the syringe. “Don’t be such a baby. It’s already over.”
“I’m not being a baby.”
“Yes you are. These are the same needles I use to give insulin to my diabetic cat, and you’re pitching a bigger fit than he ever did.”
Cole stared her dead in the eyes and lowered his voice to an intense growl. “What did you put in me?”
Rather than reply, she placed the needle on the counter, showed him her empty hands, then jabbed him in the ribs.
Cole tensed and let out the first half of a pained scream. The second half didn’t come out because no pain followed the punch. Looking down at himself, he patted his chest and tentatively pressed down on what had so recently been the sore spots. “What in the hell?” he asked while patting his torso harder and harder. “What the hell?”
“You swear a lot, you know that?”
“Yeah? Well here’s some more for ya. What the fuck is going on here?”
Paige looked at him with the slightest trace of sympathy in her eyes. “Would you like something other than water to drink?” she asked through her laughter.
“I could use a beer.”
“How about some whiskey?”
“Even better.”
Walking farther into the kitchen, she made her way to a large cabinet. It wasn’t the saunter she’d used before, but her body naturally moved well enough to hold Cole’s attention. She reached inside the cabinet and came out with a bottle in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. After setting the bottle down on the middle of the counter next to the empty syringe, she placed one glass in front of her and the other in front of him.
“If you’d like to sit down at one of the tables in the next room, we can talk like civilized people,” she said.
“I just hope you don’t spike my drink or force me to fly to another part of the country in some milk crate of an airplane.”
“Or,” Paige added in a cool, level tone, “you could always leave.”
“Just walk out of here and try to buy a cheap ticket to Seattle with whatever’s left in my wallet, huh? I don’t even have my own luggage. I’ve been wearing your friend’s clothes since I bolted from that cabin.” Suddenly he winced, and added, “I’m sorry. I just meant that…”
“I know what you’re saying,” Paige said with a sigh. “I could arrange for another plane ticket.”
Cole nodded while she filled his glass with whiskey. As much as he wanted to down the liquor, he waited for her to sip from her own glass first. Only then did he allow himself to drink. He wasn’t normally a whiskey sort of guy, but the stuff did a hell of a good job loosening the knot that had been tied in his chest.
“You’re dying to ask questions. Where do you want to start?” Paige asked.
“What did you inject me with?”
“Vitamins…mostly. Also,” she added, “it was an immunization. After getting into a fight with the thing in that cabin, there was a chance of you…catching something.”
Cole’s eyes widened and he straightened up. “Like a disease?”
“Sort of.”
“How will I know if I have it or not?”
“Since you haven’t keeled over yet, I’d say you should be fine. Apparently, that thing didn’t tear you up too badly or draw too much blood.”
“I could’ve told you that much,” he grumbled.
Paige shrugged and topped off their drinks. “Better safe than sorry. Do you have another question?”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Paige Strobel, just like I told you before. Gerald and I worked together for a while. In fact, he was supposed to be the one moving into this place instead of me.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
Paige kept her eyes down. She reached for the whiskey, but didn’t pick it up. “That’s a little harder to explain.”
“What about Brad? Was he in the same line of work?”
She nodded. “All three of us work for the same cause.”
“Oh Lord,” Cole moaned, “Is this a religious thing? I was going to guess a drug ring, with all the syringes and smuggling contacts, but…I honestly don’t know which would be worse at this point.”
“It’s not either of those. Why don’t I approach this another way?” Paige placed her hands flat on the counter, straightened her arms and then shook her head as if silently agreeing to an unpopular decision. Finally, she asked, “Why did you come here?”
The scowl on Cole’s face dissolved the moment he heard that question. He let out a breath and then looked up to watch Paige’s face as he said, “Gerald’s dead. So is Brad. Gerald wanted me to come here and tell you about what happened personally, before you got the news from…well…I guess you may have already talked to the cops since it took so damn long for me to get here.”
After a brief pause, Paige said, “Go on.”
He recounted what had brought him to Canada, and Paige listened to every word. When he got to the part of his story involving that night at the cabin, he reflexively picked up his shot glass.