“I’ll stay right here beside you,” he said, willing his teeth not to chatter, his hands not to shake. “I promise.”
The wind kicked up from the north, and the drizzle turned into heavy snow.
Beaudine’s mouth hung open. Her eyes grew wide and stricken as the gravity of the girl’s injuries dawned on her.
“I’m… sorry, Quinn,” Lovita whispered. She tried to cough but couldn’t summon the energy. “I guess that Russian gussaq… he did knock me out… long enough… to mess with my airplane…”
The wind stiffened, and snow began to fall in earnest.
Snowflakes landed on Beaudine’s hollow face and stayed there, her skin too chilly to melt them quickly. A tear creased the grime on her bloody cheek.
Lovita’s lips drew back with another wave of pain. Slowly, the grimace fell away and she relaxed, grinning. She looked up, seeming to focus on the falling snow. It was her old grin, the one she’d give Quinn when she joked and called him names or tried to feed him her strange Native foods. “You know what I always wished, Jericho Quinn?” Her gaze fell back to him. She sounded amazingly calm — her normal self.
“What’s that?” he said, forcing words from a throat so tight he could hardly breathe.
“I… wish… you woulda been about ten years younger…” Her tiny hand gave him a final squeeze and then fell away.
Quinn felt for a pulse again. He collapsed back, slouching in the wet gravel when he found none and stared up at the falling snow.
He knelt there beside his frail little friend for some time, letting the silent rage close in around him with the cold that seeped through his soaking wet clothes. Soon, even anger was not enough keep him warm, and he began to tremble from grief and exposure. At length, he folded Lovita’s hands across her chest and climbed to his feet with a low groan.
Beaudine looked up at him with drowsy, unfocused eyes, chin against her knees. Her hair was covered with a cap of fresh snow.
Quinn’s feet crunched in the gravel as he slogged over to her. Her lips and the backs of her hands were blue.
“Hey,” he asked, reaching to touch her forehead. “Can you remember what happened?”
“Do what?” Beaudine jerked her head away. “Of course I remember what happened. What kind of dumbass question is that?”
“Hypothermia,” he said, struggling to stay on his feet. “Your skin is cool and clammy… and you’re even more irritable than normal. You are still… shivering, so it’s not as bad as it could be.” He turned toward the river.
“Where… are you… going?” Beaudine gasped through ragged, shaky breaths.
“Back… to the plane… to get my pack.” Quinn’s chattering teeth were now so out of control that any conversation was difficult. Physically and emotionally spent, instinct alone carried him forward.
He’d just reached the water’s edge when he heard a sickening moan behind him, like a beached fish croaking for air. He turned in time to see Beaudine topple over.
Mechanically, he staggered back up the gravel incline and dropped to his knees beside her. He made certain she was still breathing, then got his jacket from where he’d left it over Lovita’s body. Dragging it across the snow and gravel by one sleeve, he made it back to Beaudine and draped it over her shoulders. She stirred at his touch. Her eyes blinked half open and then flicked back and forth, confused.
“Hang on… a… couple… minutes,” Quinn said, trying desperately not to crack a tooth. He knew he should probably say something more, something to try to rally her hopes, but he had little hope left himself. Any time now his core temperature would fall so low his body would lose the ability to warm itself. One thing was sure; if he hoped to save Beaudine, he had to save himself first.
Struggling to his feet, he slogged back down to the bank. His arms dangled and flopped at his sides, far too heavy to lift. His legs barely obeyed his orders to move. Memories of the crash, his mission, even Lovita’s death, slipped from his mind. A single truth drew him forward, through the cold water and into the darkness of the mangled plane — without a fire, both he and Beaudine would be dead by nightfall.
Chapter 28
Ronnie Garcia found a bottle of aspirin in the first-aid kit mounted to the wall in Gug’s kitchen and marveled that even a skanky strip club like Cheekie’s was subject to OSHA rules. Bowen talked on the phone with his people, securing babysitters to keep Nikka and Gug under wraps and ensure that no one tipped off Petyr about their new lead to the MMA gym. Thibodaux sat in Gug’s booth, a cell phone pressed to his ear, trying to get in touch with Palmer. Elbow on the table, he rested his chin in his hand, still brooding over letting Petyr slip away.
Garcia rubbed her aching temples and washed down the aspirin with a glass of water — knowing it might calm her headache, but wouldn’t even dent the pain in her shoulder. Attempting an erotic dance on a strip club stage in front of your friends was about as exhausting as running a marathon. It was no wonder the poor girl dancing naked had such a desiccated look to her soul.
Ronnie had seen the way Jericho hobbled around early in the morning as the wounds on his body woke up one at a time. He often joked that the injuries he got in China stayed on Beijing time and took a while longer to loosen up than the ones he obtained in the good old U.S. of A.
Ronnie smiled, remembering how she’d take a Sharpie and threaten to label the geographic location of each place he’d earned a scar. Since so many were from growing up in Alaska, she made it a point to work in reverse alphabetical order, beginning with a knife wound on his right bicep from a short stint he’d done in Yemen. She’d pretend to label a bite wound on his forearm from the UK, a gash from a broken bottle in Turkey, before moving to an interesting half moon arc an inch above his bellybutton from a mission in Thailand. It took him a year to tell her about that one.
Garcia closed her eyes, imagining she wasn’t in this stinking strip club but back with Jericho when he’d held the Sharpie. He always started with the scar she’d earned in Afghanistan, and when he started there, the game moved away from the marker in short order…
“Hello, Boss.” Thibodaux’s deep Cajun drawl jostled Garcia out of the pleasant memory and back to the sad reality of the strip club. Thibodaux flicked his fingers to motion her closer. The President’s national security advisor was a bombastic man in word and action, so she had no trouble hearing both sides of the conversation when she plopped down in the booth next to Thibodaux.
“Situation report?” Palmer said. He was never one to chitchat, but his tone was even more brusque than usual. The tap of his computer keyboard was clearly audible in the background.
“Sounds like you’re busy,” Thibodaux said. “I’ll call back.” The big Cajun had a pet peeve against people typing or scrolling the Internet while he talked to them — on the phone or in person. Ronnie gave a silent chuckle, surprised he’d enforce such a notion on a man who was the right hand of the President of the United States.
The tapping stopped.
“As a matter of fact I am extremely busy, Gunny,” Palmer said, giving an exasperated sigh. “We have five chemical weapons experts in custody — two Russians, a Pakistani, a Kuwaiti, and a card-carrying member from the Sword of God’s Chosen from some place in Idaho. Every one of them is capable of manufacturing the stuff behind these attacks. I’ve got six more chemists who have dropped off the radar, not including your guy’s father. So how about you tell me some good news?”
“Well,” Thibodaux said, “it looks like Petyr Volodin is in the grease with the Russian mob so we’re not the only ones lookin’ for him. You want us to come in and help follow up any of those other leads?”