Internal Affairs
Autor:in
Jessica Andersen
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Chapter One
The pain speared from his shoulder blade to his spine and down—raw, bloody agony that consumed him and made him want to sink back into unconsciousness. But at the same time, urgency beat through him, not letting him return to oblivion.
The mission, the mission, must complete the mission.
But what was the mission? Where was he? What the hell had happened to him?
Cracking his eyes a fraction, careful not to give away his conscious state if he was being watched, he surveyed his immediate surroundings. Tall pine trees reached up to touch the late summer sky on all sides of him, their bases furred with an underlayer of smaller scrub brush. There was no sign of a cabin or a road, no evidence of anyone else nearby, no tracks in the forest litter but his own, leading to where he’d collapsed.
He was wearing heavy hiking boots, dark jeans and a black T-shirt, all of which were spattered with blood. Something told him not all of it was his, though when he moved his arms, the agony in his right shoulder ripped a groan from his lips. He felt the warm, wet bloom of fresh blood, smelled it on the moist air.
Shot in the back, he knew somehow. Bastards. Cowards. Except that he didn’t know who the bastardly cowards were, or why they’d gone after him. More, he didn’t know who the hell he was. Or what he’d done.
The realization brought a sick chill rattling through him, a spurt of panic. His brain answered with I’ve got to get up, get moving. I can’t let them catch me, or I’m dead.
The words had no sooner whispered in his mind than he heard the sounds of pursuit: the sharp bark of a dog and the terse shouts of men calling to one another.
They weren’t close, but they weren’t far enough away for comfort, either.
He struggled to his feet cursing with pain, staggering with shock and blood loss. He didn’t know who was looking for him, but there was far too much blood for a bar fight, and the pattern was high velocity. Had he killed someone? Been standing nearby when someone was killed? Had he escaped from a bad situation, or had he been the bad situation?
He didn’t know, damn it. Worse, he didn’t know which answer he was hoping for.
The mission. The words seemed to whisper from nowhere and everywhere at once. They came from the trees and the wind high above, and the bark of a second dog, sharper this time, and excited, suggesting that the beast had hit on a scent trail.
One thing was for certain: he needed to get someplace safe. But where? And how?
Knowing he wasn’t going to find the answer standing there, bleeding, he got moving, putting one foot in front of the other, holding his right arm clutched against his chest with his left. The world went gray-brown around the edges and his feet felt very far away, but the scenery moved past him, slow at first, then faster when he hit a downhill slope.
He saw a downed tree with an exposed root ball, thought he recognized it, though he didn’t know from when. His feet carried him away from it at an angle, as though his subconscious knew where the hell he was going when his conscious mind didn’t have a clue. Urgency propelled him—not just from the continued sounds of pursuit, which was drawing nearer by the minute, but also from the sense that he was supposed to be doing something crucial, critical.
His breath rasped in his lungs and the gray-brown closed in around the edges of his vision. He tripped and staggered, tripped again and went down. But he didn’t stay down. He dragged himself up again, levering his body with his good arm and biting his teeth against the pained groans that wanted to rip from his throat.
Instead, staying silent, he forced himself to move faster, until he was running downhill through trees that all looked the same. He saw nothing except forest and more forest. Then, in the distance, there was something else: a rectangular blur that soon resolved itself into the outline of a late-model truck parked in the middle of nowhere.
Excitement slapped through him, driving back some of the gray-brown. He didn’t recognize the truck, but he’d run right to it, hadn’t he? It stood to reason that was because he’d known it was there. More, when he’d climbed into the driver’s seat, he automatically fumbled beneath the dashboard and came up with the keys.
It took him two tries to get the key in the ignition; he was wobbly and weak, and he couldn’t lean back into the seat without his shoulder giving him holy hell. But he had wheels. A hope of escape.
He couldn’t hear the dogs over the engine’s roar, but he knew the searchers were behind him, knew the net was closing fast. More, he knew he didn’t have much more time left before he lapsed unconscious again. He’d lost blood, and God only knew what was going on inside him. Every inhalation was like breathing flames; every exhalation a study in misery. He needed a place to crash and he needed it fast.
After that, he thought, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing piercing green eyes in a stern face, short black hair, and nothing familiar about any of it, I’m going to need some answers.
Knowing he was already on borrowed time, he hit the gas and sent the truck thundering downhill. There wasn’t any road or track, but he got lucky—or else he knew the way—and didn’t hit any big ditches or deadfalls. Within ten minutes, he came to a fire-access road. Instinct—or something more?—had him turning uphill rather than down. A few minutes later, he bypassed a larger road, then took a barely visible dirt trail that paralleled the main access road.
The not-quite-a-road was bumpy, jolting him back against the seat and wringing curses from him every time he hit his injured shoulder. But the pain kept him conscious, kept him moving. And when he hit a paved road, it reminded him he needed to get someplace he could hide, where he’d be safe when he collapsed.
Animalistic instinct had him turning east. He passed street signs he recognized on some level, but it wasn’t until he passed a big billboard that said Welcome to Bear Claw Creek that he knew he was in Colorado, and then only because the sign said so.
His hands were starting to shake, warning him that his body was hitting the end of its reserves. But he still had enough sense to ditch the truck at the back of a commuter lot, where it might not be noticed for a while, and hide the keys in the wheel well. Then he searched the vehicle for anything that might clue him in on what the hell was going on—or, failing that, who the hell he was.
All he came up with was a lightweight waterproof jacket wedged beneath the passenger’s seat, but that was something, anyway. Though the fading day was still warm with late summer sun, he pulled on the navy blue jacket so if anyone saw him, they wouldn’t get a look at his back. A guy wearing dirty jeans and a jacket might be forgotten. A guy bleeding from a bullet wound in his shoulder, not so much.
Cursing under his breath, using the swearwords to let him know he was still up and moving, even as the gray-brown of encroaching unconsciousness narrowed his vision to a tunnel, he stagger-stepped through the commuter car lot and across the main road. Cutting over a couple of streets on legs that were rapidly turning to rubber, he homed in on a corner lot, where a neat stone-faced house sat well back from the road, all but lost behind wild flowering hedges and a rambler-covered picket fence.
It wasn’t the relative concealment offered by the big lot and the landscaping that had him turning up the driveway, though. It was the sense of safety. This wasn’t his house, he knew somehow, but whose ever it was, instinct said they would shelter him, help him.
Without conscious thought, he reached into the brass, wall-mounted mailbox beside the door, found a small latch and toggled the false bottom, which opened to reveal a spare key.
He was too far gone to wonder how he’d known to do that, too out of it to remember whose house this was. It was all he could do to let himself in and relock the door once he was through. Dropping the key into his pocket, he dragged himself through a pin-neat kitchen that was painted cream and moss with sunny yellow accents and soft, feminine curtains. He found a notepad beside the phone and scrawled a quick message.
His hands were shaking; his whole body was shaking, and where it wasn’t shaking it had shut down completely. He couldn’t feel his feet, couldn’t feel much of anything except the pain and the dizziness that warned he was seconds away from passing out.
Finally, unable to hold it off any longer, he let the gray-brown win, let it wash over his vision and suck him down into the blackness. He was barely aware of staggering into the next room and falling, hardly felt the pain of landing face-first on a carpeted floor. He knew only that, for the moment at least, he was safe.
