Pulling out the best tools available—antiseptic wipes, antibiotic ointment, sterile gauze pads and some surgical tape—he treated and bandaged the wounds as quickly and efficiently as he could. “The sweater is a loss, I fear.”
“Just lend me a T-shirt.” She slanted an amused look at him as she picked up her weapon and holster. “You do own one, don’t you?”
“Several, actually.” He helped her down from the sink counter, trying to ignore the silky heat of her bare skin beneath his fingers. She wobbled a little, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders, keeping her upright as they left the bathroom and headed down the narrow hall to his bedroom.
As he dug in the large chest of drawers in the corner for a clean shirt for her, she eyed his large bed with a hint of dismay. “Not heart-shaped.”
“Sadly, no.” He handed her a black T-shirt and a long-sleeved fleece jacket. “It’ll get cold in the night.”
“Where are you going to sleep?” She eased the T-shirt over her head with a grimace.
“The sofa in my study is comfortable.”
“I should take it.” She swayed a little, her face paler than usual.
He caught her before she collapsed, easing her down to the bed. “Let’s get you under the covers.” He pulled back the blanket and helped her slide between the sheets. Tucking the blanket up around her, he added, “We need to get some fluids back into you. Think you could handle soup or some broth as well as water?”
She caught his hand as he started to rise. “Wait. First, I need to tell you something.” Her voice faltered, and her eyes began to droop again. “There’s a reason you can’t trust anyone. You can’t let anyone know I’m here. Not even someone you trust.”
“What the hell is going on, Rigsby?” He cradled her face between his palms, not liking the flushed heat rising in her cheeks. “Who is after you?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” she admitted, her eyes fluttering to stay open. “But I know it’s someone I work with.”
He frowned. “Someone you work with?”
Her gaze steadied, locking with his. “Whoever shot me was working with someone in the FBI.”
McKenna could see the wheels in Nick Darcy’s mind turning at turbo speed. Despite his recent clashes with hidebound bureaucracy, she knew there would always be a part of Darcy that tried to play by the rules. He’d grown up in a Foreign Service household, where protocol and diplomacy reigned, and not even the past few months of work as a private security contractor had freed him from those constraints.
“Someone in the FBI?” He dropped his hands away from her face and rose from the bed.
“You say that as if you’d never seen government corruption.” Her whole left side was beginning to ache like a bad tooth, and her throat felt dry and scratchy. “I don’t suppose we could discuss this further over a gallon of water and some ibuprofen?”
“Of course.” He disappeared through the bedroom door as if a horde of rogue FBI agents were after him.
She fell back against the pillows of his bed and stared up at the exposed beams of the ceiling, trying to pretend she didn’t feel like one big bloody wound. She was in a safe place, for now at least, which was a hell of a lot better position than she’d been in just an hour ago.
Only a handful in the FBI knew the dangerous game she’d been playing for the past three months. One of them had put her in the crosshairs of a deadly group of domestic terrorists and given them the go-ahead to pull the trigger. Literally.
But who?
Darcy returned to the bedroom carrying a wicker basket. When he set it on the bed and opened the latch at the top, McKenna saw it was exactly what it looked like—a picnic basket containing a large bottle of water, a metal thermos and a bottle of ibuprofen tablets.
“I didn’t think you’d want anything heavy, so the soup is just chicken broth. I packed a few crackers in there if you want them.” He set the water bottle on the bedside table next to her. “How long since you last ate?”
She rubbed her gritty eyes. “Yesterday. I had a protein bar around dinnertime, I think.”
He went still, his hand closed around the top of the vacuum flask. His dark eyes slanted to meet hers. “How long have you been running, Rigsby?”
“Two days.”
Slowly, he withdrew the thermos and sleeve of crackers from the basket and set them on the night table beside the water. He picked up the bottle of pain-reliever tablets and set the basket on the floor before he sat down beside her.
“You’ve been running for two days.”
She tried to push up to a sitting position, biting her lip at the hard arc of pain that rushed down her side in response.
Darcy leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her upright until they sat in an approximation of an intimate embrace.
Except, it didn’t feel like an approximation. It felt right. So right.
Darcy’s arms fell away too soon, and he sat back, his eyes fathomless. “What sent you on the run?”
“It’s a really long story.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “One you don’t intend to share with me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Here.” He leaned forward, his chest brushing against her shoulder as he picked up the thermos. As he removed the top, the fragrant steam of hot broth drifted past her nose, igniting a storm of hunger in the pit of her empty stomach. “Eat. Then sleep. We can talk when you’re stronger.”
Watching him pour broth into the cap of the thermos, she sighed. “I will tell you everything I know, Darcy.”
His gaze angled to meet hers. “Yes. You will.”
The firmness of his tone should have irritated her. Instead, it sent a flutter of relief rolling through her, as if she’d finally reached the solid shore after an endless battle with a raging sea.
He gave her the thermos lid that doubled as a mug. “Drink.”
She drank a few swallows of the hot broth, trying not to shiver as warmth spread through her insides and started to warm her chilled bones. Darcy picked up the bottle of ibuprofen, shook out a couple of tablets and handed them to her. “Want the water or can you swallow them down with the broth?”
She took the tablets and washed them down with a couple of gulps of broth. “Thank you.”
“You are safe here, Rigsby. You know that, don’t you?” There was a soft tone to Darcy’s voice that she’d rarely heard in all the time she’d known him. She looked up to find him watching her from beneath a furrowed brow.
“As safe as I am anywhere,” she agreed.
His hand moved toward her, just a few inches, before falling back in his lap. She felt an answering tug low in her belly, a sensation so familiar it made her want to cry.
How long had she been fighting against the pull of him? As long as she’d known him?
The siege in Kaziristan had happened almost eight years ago. She’d been a rookie FBI agent, fresh out of law school and the Academy. Her first overseas assignment had landed her in the middle of a brewing civil uprising, working as an assistant in the FBI Legal Attaché Office in Tablis—the legat, in bureau parlance. The legat’s primary missions in Tablis had been to train the local police forces in counterterrorism strategies and to aid in the investigation of crimes against US citizens, especially embassy