Capture the Night Page 8

  Daniel knew he was in full view now. As soon as Johnny looked past Lex, he would see him. Lex would glance up and—hell, he felt stupid just standing there… but the sight of him was going to be startling, no matter what.

  He was right.

  Johnny cursed and tried to sit up, reached for his gun, and fell short. He grabbed for it again, coming up with it, aiming it. Lex looked at Johnny in confusion. His pain-glazed eyes stared past her. She turned quickly to see what he was looking at.

  Daniel stood very still.

  “What the hell—” Johnny said.

  Daniel’s throat worked. He didn’t talk much; just to Ronnie. Sometimes his throat felt dry and rocky—like if he talked, little pieces of gravel would come rolling out.

  “You’re in my place,” Daniel said quietly. “We got to move you.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the door. “They’ll be comin’ soon.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Alexa steadied her breathing and started to stand, but Johnny’s grip was like iron around her wrist in silent warning.

  She looked at him. Let me talk to him.

  After a tense moment, she could see the reluctant agreement in Johnny’s eyes. He wasn’t in shape for any kind of drawn-out conversation right now, and they both knew it.

  Alexa rose as Johnny released her. She smiled, though her stomach was twisted into a ball of raw nerves. She wiped her hands on her pants, cleaning off the remaining blood as best she could before putting out her right hand—the cleanest one—toward the man.

  “How do you do?” She felt a crazy urge to laugh as she spoke the polite greeting. Like they were getting ready to sit down for tea, or something. “My name’s Alexa Bailey—” she looked toward Johnny, “—and this is Johnny Logan.”

  “I know.” Daniel took Alexa’s hand hesitantly, his own rough paw enveloping hers completely. There was an awkward silence as Alexa waited for him to introduce himself. When he didn’t, Alexa gently moved her hand within his. He let go of her fingers quickly. “My—uh—brother, Ronnie—do you know him?”

  Alexa shook her head, and he went on.

  “Well, anyhow, Ronnie, he got me this place to live. I can’t have visitors, he says. He always says, ‘Daniel, you know that wouldn’t be safe.’ But y’all bein’ here—that’s different.”

  “It’s…very nice.” Alexa glanced back at Johnny. He didn’t trust this man.

  She returned her attention to the stranger. “Thank you for letting us use your things. And for the shoebox, too,” she added quickly. “That was—thoughtful of you.”

  He colored and looked at his feet. “We—got to move him. They’re comin’.”

  “Who, Daniel—the terrorists?”

  “Uh-huh.” He came forward a step, his fingers plucking nervously at his shirt. “I heard ’em talkin’ earlier. One of them men, he told the girl that he was gonna come up here and have a look-see once it all quieted down some. So,” he nodded at Johnny, “we got to move you.”

  Alexa’s smile disappeared. She glanced back at Johnny again. His eyes were shut this time. Where? Where could they go? Fear seeped through her, threatening to melt her bones like acid. They were not going to make it out of this alive.

  “I know a place.”

  The compressors kicked on with a deafening roar. There would be no more talking for at least five minutes. They didn’t have five minutes to spare. Something told Alexa this odd vagrant wouldn’t have come forward if he hadn’t had to. And this place he was talking about—She sighed. It had to be safer than here—out in the open like they were.

  Daniel was watching her; waiting, she realized, for her permission. They had no choice. She nodded quickly, then turned to begin collecting the medical supplies and put them back into the box, anxious to be somewhere else. She opened the refrigerator and reached for the beers and a couple of bottled waters.

  Daniel moved to help Johnny sit up. He seemed to know what he was doing, she thought, but even so, Johnny was in agony. She couldn’t make out the words, but Daniel was speaking to him, Johnny muttering in response. She concentrated on what she needed to take from the refrigerator, torn between what she had to have and what she should leave for Daniel. The compressors powered down, then shut off completely.

  “Take what you need,” Daniel said, seeing her hesitation. “I can get water out of the bathroom sink.” He nodded toward Johnny. “He’ll need it to survive.” He held his hand out for the gun. “Wanna let the lady carry that, Officer?”

  Alexa turned to face them. It was easy for her to see, even through the pain in Johnny’s dark eyes, his unwillingness to give his gun to this stranger. Smoothly, she stepped forward, and put her hand on his, her fingers tightening quickly in a gesture of reassurance. I’ll keep it safe. I won’t let him have it.

  “I’ll put it with our things,” she murmured. She reached for it awkwardly, and Daniel made a move as if to help her, but she put both hands on the barrel of the gun.

  Johnny nodded, then released his hold, allowing her to lift it from his hand.

  Alexa shoved the pistol into the waistband of her pants and returned to the refrigerator, ignoring Daniel’s sudden silence. She hurriedly pushed the cans and bottles into her purse. Her hand stopped, hovering over the package of ham. There was no way of dividing that—or the cheese.

  “Ready?”

  She turned at Daniel’s question, just in time to see him grasp Johnny firmly around the waist, drag Johnny’s arm around his shoulders, and pull him up as he stood—almost in the same motion.

  Johnny’s skin went pale beneath the olive complexion, his face twisting. Alexa started for him, but Daniel shook his head.

  “I got ’im, Lex.” The nickname rolled from his tongue as if he called her that every day, a mark, she thought, of just how long he’d been observing them.

  She flinched. Don’t call me that, she wanted to say. Please don’t call me that. Only Johnny calls me that—No one but Johnny, a man she’d met only hours earlier.

  She knew she was being ridiculous. Without Daniel’s help, they would be sitting ducks whenever the terrorists did decide to come up here and check things over. They would come, too. And soon.

  That thought forced her back to what she knew she had to do to keep them alive—gather food and water for later.

  Daniel nodded at her. “I’ll take care of ’im, Lex. You just gather up what you can.”

  She gritted her teeth and gave a faint smile, all she could manage, under the circumstances, then turned back to the refrigerator.

  Daniel had his hands full with Johnny, but he glanced her way after he and Johnny managed to take a couple of steps. “Take it all. Take everything you can carry. Get some o’ them pillows and blankets, too.”

  “But what about you?” She loaded the ham into her bag.

  He shook his shaggy head. “It don’t matter. I’m a survivor. Leastways, that’s what Ronnie always says.” He guided Johnny another couple of steps. “You can wrap everythin’ up in that blanket to carry it easier. The shoebox and whatnot.”

  The shoebox. She’d almost forgotten it. She put the groceries in the middle of the blanket and laid the box on top of the crackers she’d found beside the microwave. Then she wadded up the sheet and bandaging strips and put them over the cheese and bread. Looking around quickly for anything else they might need, she grabbed a pillow, then gathered up the four corners of the thin blanket and slung it across her back.

  Daniel and Johnny had not gotten far. She skirted several lengths of tubing fastened to the floor and ducked beneath a section of elephant hose. “Where are we going?” she asked breathlessly, catching up to them.

  Daniel was all but carrying Johnny now. Alexa’s eyes rested worriedly on Johnny for a moment. Daniel’s lips quirked. “He’ll be all right—once we get there. Just needs some sit-down time. You got that bullet out of him. Did a fine job, too.”

  The blood rushed to Alexa’s face. Even though this man meant his words as a compliment, to
think of him watching her—standing in the shadows…Digging that slug out of Johnny Logan had been intimate in a way she had never imagined it would be. To think of someone observing her every move covertly, from behind the maze of twisted pipes and tubes and connectors gave her a funny, unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Johnny groaned, his jaws clamping tightly. His eyes were heavy, half-lidded, and though he seemed to try not to lean so heavily on Daniel, there was no other way to get them to safety. If not for Daniel—Johnny would never make it. She noted the ashen color in his face, the taut lines around his mouth and eyes, the sweat beading his forehead and trickling down his cheek.

  “How much farther?” she asked, alarmed.

  “Not far.” Daniel nodded straight ahead. “Up yonder.”

  Up yonder could only mean one thing. There was a wall ahead of them, and a bright red staircase. At the top of the staircase was the entrance to Daniel’s world, the huge maze of ductwork that ran throughout the walls of the hotel.

  Alexa stopped, memorizing the crimson stairs, counting them over in her mind. She had to count to be sure. In her mind the steps went up, on and on, but in reality, there were only sixteen. Eight facing one way toward the south wall, then a landing. The upper eight faced the west wall at a right angle to the lower staircase, and at the top of them, just past the railed landing, was the portal to the huge tube they were going to seek shelter in. Maybe where they would die…Alexa shook her head.

  Daniel stopped at the foot of the stairs. Johnny gasped sharply as Daniel shifted his weight. Daniel turned to support Johnny, not by laying Johnny’s arm around his neck, but in preparation for carrying him.

  Johnny’s eyes were open, but glazed with fever. The staircase loomed…impossible… He shook his head. “Go…on. You two…get safe. I’ll be…the distraction—tell ’em this’s my place. No one…else—here.”

  “We aren’t leaving you,” Alexa said.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Her eyes caressed him, and he soaked up the warmth in their green depths. She meant it.

  “Alexa,” he began, wanting to tell her it was all right. She didn’t have to stay here—get herself killed—on his account. He’d been left before. He guessed she needed some kind of permission from him—that it was okay to go with Daniel to the safety that waited above in the hiding place. He would do what he could do to protect her and their odd companion—when it came to that. His lips quirked, and he swayed, as Daniel reflexively tightened his grasp. Johnny’s face twisted momentarily as the pain in his side sharpened on his guts. It was all he could do to keep his legs under him. He couldn’t argue anymore. Hurt too damn bad. His knees weren’t going to cooperate.

  The last thing he saw was Alexa’s face, hovering on the verge of the darkness that was fast enfolding him. She looked scared. But there was something else. She cared for him—and she was counting on him. He was going to disappoint her; and that seemed, for an instant, to burn worse than the pain in his side. Then, he could fight the darkness no longer. His knees buckled, but Daniel stooped down gracefully just at the moment, and let Johnny fall across his shoulder, as if he’d practiced that move a hundred times before. He staggered briefly under Johnny’s weight.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Alexa took a quick step forward as if she meant to help somehow, unable to do anything but try to manage the unwieldy bundle she had slung across her back.

  “I won’t let ’im fall,” Daniel assured her, taking the first step. “Damn sure took ’im long enough. Much blood as he’s lost, I figgered I’d a-been carrying him the whole way. He put up a good fight.”

  Alexa nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “He is a fighter; that’s for sure.” The rest of Daniel’s statement worried her, though. The part about Johnny’s loss of blood. Though it seemed to be stanched for the time being, she couldn’t help but remember her first sight of him, the way it drenched his shirt and dyed the beige concrete floor where he had lain just inside the door. Daniel spoke with the surety of someone who had seen this type of thing before.

  She followed him up the first set of stairs. He stopped to catch his breath, and Alexa put her hand out to touch the back of Johnny’s head. Hang on, she wanted to tell him. I’m with you.

  Daniel looked over his shoulder at her, seeing the gesture. “He’ll be all right,” he panted. “You just keep an eye on ’im. Keep them bandages clean as you can, an’ make sure he drinks a lot so’s he don’t get dehydrated.” He gave her a quick smile, then turned to start up the second flight of stairs. “You’ll do all right.”

  Alexa looked back down over the open space they’d just come across so laboriously. She couldn’t help but wonder when the murderers would invade their sanctuary. The stench of fresh death in the kitchen rose up in her mind. She stopped and hitched her bulky bundle a little to the side to make it easier to carry, then began her ascent once more.

  This was rich. A monstrous joke on everyone in this place who had thought to come here, for a getaway, as well as for those who worked here. She remembered the way José Mendez’s dark eyes had sparked excitedly as he’d shared the secret of this place with her, and wondered at her own impulse for actually coming up here. It was not like her to do something so unconventional. Maybe she wouldn’t have thought twice about it, at José’s age, but her years of responsibility as a wife and mother had robbed her of her adventuresome tendencies—what few she’d possessed as a teenager. Now, there was no choice about what she would do—their survival depended on it. She found herself responsible once more, with stakes much higher than she had ever known before—her own life, and that of another human being. A man she was beginning to care for. Her eyes went to the muscular figure resting across Daniel’s broad shoulder. It was only the circumstance they were in. She squelched the urge to reach out and touch him again, feeling foolish. Once this was over, she’d go home—back to Oklahoma City. He’d recover—and his life would go on here, as it had before Fate had introduced them to one another.

  Her musings were cut short as they reached the second landing. Daniel stopped and leaned to the left, wrapping his arm tighter around his slack burden as he thumbed the catch on the security gate with a practiced hand. He swung it open, and motioned Alexa through to the mouth of the huge inner workings of the vent tubing.

  “Go on,” he encouraged her. “Won’t hurt ya. I go in there all the time.”

  She looked at him, then took a tentative step toward the mammoth portal.

  “You can’t go very far inside—not with him.” Daniel spoke in strained bursts as Alexa hoisted her bundle onto the lower edge of the tubing, then pulled herself inside. “If you go on farther down, there’s a cross-section where the compressors blow into it and whatnot.” He leaned forward, carefully supporting Johnny as he laid him down near the edge of the hose. Alexa crawled over to where he lay, and Daniel followed them inside. He grasped Johnny’s wrists and began to drag him farther into the big tunnel.

  “This’ll be good,” Daniel said about ten feet in. His breath came hard and raspy from the exertion.

  Alexa nodded, settling beside Johnny, leaning against the wall of their hiding place.

  Daniel glanced at her, then at Johnny, who was beginning to come around. “Don’t let him get noisy.”

  Alexa touched Johnny’s sweat-damp hair. She looked up, meeting Daniel’s eyes. “I don’t think that would happen in a million years.”

  Daniel nodded in agreement. “No, not on purpose, it wouldn’t. He’s tough. Just try to keep his fever down—”

  “Fever!” Alexa leaned forward, putting a cool hand to Johnny’s brow. It was undeniable. Not a high temperature—not yet. But—she cast a glance at the medicine box, recalling the bottle of ibuprofen. Daniel was closer. He reached for the box and extended it to her, his hand touching hers for a lingering instant. She glanced up at him, then moved her hand away, as if she’d been burned.

  She fumbled through the supplies, coming up with the small bottle and uncapping it. She shook
two of the orange pills into her hand.

  But Daniel wagged his head. “No. Give him three at least—maybe even four. He’s a big guy.” He looked down at Johnny again and saw that his eyes were barely slitted open. “And he’s in a lot of pain. Right, Officer?”

  Johnny moistened his lips. “What do you think?”

  Alexa’s brows drew together at the sharpness of his response. To cover the awkward moment, she reached for one of the water bottles. “Here,” she said, placing a hand under Johnny’s head. “Drink this. The meds will help.”

  Daniel watched as Alexa dropped the pills into Johnny’s mouth, then tilted the bottled water for him again.

  Daniel nodded in satisfaction. “Just try to keep him quiet’s all.” He started to back away, crawling like a crab. The tubing was big enough to accommodate his body, had he stood, yet he remained crouched and furtive.

  Alexa nodded. “Daniel?” He stopped. She could barely see his face in the shadows. “Thank you.” She smiled faintly. “Thanks for everything.”

  His shoulders hunched in a quick shrug. “I’ll be back.”

  When Alexa looked at Johnny, his eyes were open. She felt a surge of guilty relief not to be alone. He didn’t speak, and Alexa instinctively knew something was bothering him—other than the pain.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s not?” He shifted, and Alexa saw him shiver and clamp his lips together. He took a slow breath. “I’m wondering who the enemy is, Lex.”

  Johnny’s words startled her. “What do you mean?”

  He tried to keep from shaking, but the chills were growing stronger. Alexa leaned close and rubbed his arm in silent comfort.

  “Are you talking about Daniel?” she whispered, casting a belated glance over her shoulder.

  “Don’t give him my gun,” Johnny muttered. When Alexa didn’t reply, he looked directly into her eyes. “Understand?”

  She nodded quickly. “He helped us, Johnny,” she reminded him quietly.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Alexa took the revolver and laid it beside him, within his reach, and hers, as well. She didn’t understand Johnny’s obvious distrust of the man who had brought them to safety. She moistened her lips, wishing he would tell her why he was so wary. Daniel seemed as if he meant to help them. Maybe it was Johnny’s years of training as a cop. “Do you trust me?” she asked, after a long moment.