The whispering spirits returned, numbing me with their chilly touch until I didn’t remember what it felt like to die.
A warm and pleasant weight on my chest distracted me from the presence of the ghosts. A cold, wet nose nudged my throat, accompanied by a soft whine. The distressed sound bothered me, drowning all of my other concerns.
I wasn’t sure why, but I needed to make the crying stop. I dredged up every bit of will and strength I had to flop my arm across my chest.
My fingers encountered warm fur.
“Jackson?” Zachary demanded.
My friend sounded as distressed as the wolf’s whine. I meant to say something to reassure my friend, but it came out as an incomprehensible groan. It took me several tries, but I grabbed a handful of the warm fur. I remembered the soft texture and sound; Evelyn had whined the first time I held her while cutting the silver bullet from her leg.
She quieted, and I sighed my relief.
“How long has he been like this?” Zachary’s tone was sharp with annoyance.
“This time or when he was grabbed?” Brandon asked.
“Both,” was my friend’s curt reply.
“When did he knock the phone off the hook?”
“Six hours ago.”
“I don’t know how long it took her to catch him, but that long minus the thirty or so minutes it took us to get up here,” Brandon reported.
I heard Zachary sigh. “Not long, then. She was a woman.”
Brandon snorted. “It didn’t take her long to take me out either, and I don’t have his scruples.”
Someone chuckled, a deep rumbling sound. “You saw the vid, Zach. He might not have hit her, but I didn’t know hand sanitizer was such an effective weapon until I watched him use it.” I recognized the voice, although the owner’s name eluded me. He sounded amused and pleased.
Brandon sighed before saying, “Frankly, I’m impressed he was able to walk at all, considering his knee.”
“Ouch,” I contributed, pleased I forced the word out, although I was disgusted over how much effort it took me.
“Still with us, Boss?” Zachary asked, and I felt someone touch my throat.
The faint and distant pain reminded me the woman had used her hair to strangle me. While I didn’t feel sarcasm was one of my strengths, even I could manage now and again. “No.”
Someone choked back a laugh.
In typical Zachary fashion, he persisted in annoying me by asking, “How are you feeling?”
I considered his question and replied, “Numb.” In a way, I was relieved. Once my nerves started reporting in, I expected to endure misery of the highest order. “What happened?”
“There was a merry firefight between the Inquisitors and your new friends. Between the Inquisitors and the twenty-odd Fenerec shedding all over my cargo bay, they didn’t stand a chance. We’re about twenty minutes from port, but they’re not rigged for a boat this size, so we’re airlifting the dead and injured to shore.”
Concentrating on Zachary’s words helped clear my head, and as the drugs once again relinquished their hold on me, I managed to crack open an eye. The cargo bay’s ceiling was obscured by my friend’s frowning face. “How many of ours?” I was mumbling, and although I recognized it, I was powerless to force my tongue to behave.
“Two injured, but not badly. You’re number three, and you’re the worst off. Two of the Canadians got knocked around, but they’ll be fine. Four Inquisitors were shot, one critically. She’s already in the air on the way to the ER.”
“No helicopters,” I ordered, wondering if they’d take my slurred command seriously.
Brandon’s laugh was strained. “I told you, Zach.”
“Shut up, Brandon. Look, Boss. No one is asking you for your permission. You’ve been drugged with God-only-knows what. Until I know what you’ve been dosed with and whether or not you’re in any danger, you’re getting onto the next helicopter, and you’re going to like it.”
A whine drew my attention back to the small wolf lying across my chest. Evelyn’s ears were pinned back, her head lowered in submissive misery. I tightened my grip on her. “No. I promised to take her to Canada.”
“Leave that to me,” said the deep-voiced man who knelt at my side. It took me several long moments to recognize the sun-tanned, slim figure.
“Richard, why are you here?” I cursed my thick tongue for mangling my question. Richard was supposed to be in Canada doing whatever it was Alpha Fenerec did. How had I missed him boarding? It was my first time meeting him in person; my preference for the east coast meant I communicated with the Canadian by video conference calls. His body was tense, his muscles showing through his sweat-dampened shirt.
“Paying back a favor to the Inquisition,” was the rueful reply. “Speaking of which, it’s time for me to finish paying up.” Rising to his feet, Richard stood on his toes to peer over one of the crates. “Hey, below! Got a present for you up here.”
“What?” The question, asked in my voice from the lower level of the cargo bay, had me groaning.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” There were two people with my voice: my twin brother and me. My life was about to come to an end, and there was nothing I could do to delay the inevitable. When Elliot found out I was alive, he was going to kill me. When he learned I had destroyed his truck, he’d find some way to bring me back to life so he could kill me again.
“Just get up here,” Richard called back.
Zachary patted my shoulder. “It was bound to happen, all things considered. Better now than later, Boss. He can probably get us another helicopter to get you to proper medical care faster.”
I dug my fingers into Evelyn’s fur, closing my eyes with a sigh.
“What is—” my brother’s voice cut off, accompanied by a strangled cry. “
Jackson?
”
Zachary’s voice cut over the surge of excited voices. “Gentle with him—”
Someone moved me, and I lost a few minutes somewhere. When I was able to open my eyes again, my head was pillowed on my twin’s lap. Zachary was staring down at me with a frown, his fingers pressed against my throat. “Welcome back, Boss,” he said, waving his other hand in front of my eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
My tongue felt thick and unwieldy in my mouth. “More than one.”
My friend sighed. “Just answer me, please.”
“It keeps changing,” I complained. I meant to lift my arm to bat his hand away, but I felt as though I was pinned down by something too heavy to move.
“Are you all right, Jackson?” my twin asked in concern, joining Zachary in pressing his fingers against my throat to determine if I still had a pulse.
It hurt.
“I’ll live. I won’t if you load me onto a helicopter. I can’t swim.” I closed my eyes to lessen the sense of the
Wave Dream
circling around me. “Hello.”
“You’re an idiot.” After grumbling something I couldn’t understand, my twin sighed. “Will someone
please
tell me what exactly is going on?”
Once the worst of the vertigo faded, I cracked open an eye. Elliot draped his arm across my shoulders possessively, and Evelyn growled in response. A single tug of her fur quieted her.
“Before anyone does anything, his little wolf is under my protection,” Richard stated, dropping into a crouch beside me. “At his request, in case that is of importance. I intend to honor his wishes, Mr. Anderson.”
“Consider your intent and his wishes noted,” my twin replied.
“Her name’s Evelyn,” I slurred, annoyed at their lack of respect.
Richard sighed. “Evelyn is under my protection,” he replied, and I suspected he did so to appease me.
“I don’t know how you all pulled this off, but thank you,” my brother whispered.
Zachary chuckled. “Thank the boss once he’s coherent. He did most of the work. From my understanding, he narrowly avoided an ambush. I don’t know why, but they wanted him alive.”
“You helped,” I protested.
“So I did,” was my friend’s amused reply. “I was hiding him in hopes that those who murdered your Inquisitors wouldn’t find him. If it was an inside job, I didn’t want news hitting the wires.”
“I see.” Elliot didn’t sound happy, and I tensed, waiting for the ax to fall. It did when he hissed, “I thought you were dead.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
My brother’s hold on me tightened. “Damned straight you’re going to be sorry.”
Zachary cleared his throat. “He fooled us all, and it’s a good thing, too. If he hadn’t, they likely would’ve kidnapped him without us knowing he wasn’t dead along with the rest of the Inquisitors. I’ve seen the surveillance videos from Oconee. They would’ve been able to disable your truck and take him if that was their goal.”
“Why? Do you think they were after me?” my twin asked, his tone darkening.
With a frown and shake of his head, Zachary replied, “No, I think they were after the boss. My boat doesn’t float for the Inquisition. It moves for him—and while he’s your brother, he operates outside of the Inquisition. It could have just been coincidence, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult to find out the boss comes aboard often enough. Most of them had passage booked about a month ago.”
“That’s when we first heard about the pack in Oconee,” my twin said, his tone chilly.
“Then someone had this planned very, very well, and you and your Inquisitors got played, catching the boss in the middle of it,” Zachary snapped.
Richard cleared his throat, breaking the tense silence between my twin and friend. “Why haven’t you already flown Jackson off, Zach? There have been at least four flights off the ship so far,” the Fenerec asked.
Zachary ran his hands through his hair to scratch at his scalp. “I had the ship’s doc draw a vial of blood. It, along with one of the woman’s filled syringes, was taken on the first flight out. He’s stable enough, and the others needed the trip to the ER more. Our helicopter can handle only one stretcher, the pilot, and the tech. We’re gambling they wanted him alive, which seems to be the case. Why kill him with sedatives?”
“If you think he needs to be at the ER, I can have a helicopter out here within twenty minutes,” my brother replied in a firm tone.
“We still have injured on board; our bird is refueling right now. If you wouldn’t mind sending it, I wouldn’t say no.”
“He’s going to fight you if you try to force him to board. That woman definitely wanted him alive,” Brandon said.
My brother’s fingers left my throat. I heard him dial a number on his cell. “There are injured on board the
Wave Dream
. Send a helicopter,” he ordered. There was a pause before he hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket. “Fifteen minutes.”
“What about you, Brandon?” Zachary asked.
With a sigh, Brandon shook his head. “I think she was planning on using me to ensure his good behavior, from what little I could tell about her. She was off her rocker. No matter what, you’ll definitely want someone looking at his leg. I don’t know if she broke his knee.”
The ringing of a cell put an end to the conversation. Zachary answered, his frown deepening as he listened.
When he hung up, he didn’t look pleased. “The labs came back positive for Ketamine. She’s certain it’s a cocktail of some sort, but doesn’t know what else was used yet. The Ketamine should already have worn off, but it typically makes other sedatives work better. Judging from our descriptions, she thinks it’s a barbiturate. She’s running a lab to confirm it now, and she’ll know for certain within the next ten minutes. If it is a barbiturate, he’ll be like this for at least a few more hours—up to eighteen in total.”
“ER?” my twin asked in concern.
Zachary shook his head. “Dr. Wilson said to keep a close eye on him. We’re to check his heart rate and blood pressure every ten minutes until she can fly in herself. She’s going to catch our helicopter out here once the last lab is in.”
“I’m right here, you know,” I protested, annoyed at their discussions of what to do with me without asking for my input.
Glaring down at me, Zachary prodded my shoulder with a finger. “You are until you fade out again, as you’ve been doing for the past hour. Brandon, call upstairs and find us a vacant cabin nearby. Tell housekeeping I want it opened up for the boss ten minutes ago.”
“Wouldn’t his stateroom be more comfortable?” Brandon replied, taking Zachary’s cell.
“It’ll be bad enough moving him as is, let alone hauling him across the entire ship. We’re already pushing it hiding the fact there was a bloody gunfight down here from the passengers.” Zachary spat a few curses. “On second thought, see if you can find two adjacent cabins. For some reason, I think Mr. Anderson will want to stay in the way.”
“You better believe it,” my twin snapped. “I’ll share with him.”
Evelyn growled and snapped her teeth. I shifted my grip to grab the scruff of her neck, tugging until she subsided.
“No,
she
will share with him,” my friend replied. “Let Evelyn care for him. She’s already agitated enough.”
Wincing at the thought of Evelyn and Elliot going for each other’s throats in their effort to stay with me, I suggested, “Just ask for a double, Zachary, or they’ll never stop fighting.”
Even in my befuddled state, I had a pretty good idea what would happen if Zachary thwarted either one of them. I’d be caught in the middle.
“A double it is,” Brandon announced. I listened to him on the phone, and his soothing voice lulled me back into a drugged stupor.
~~*~~
My brother was next to me when I woke up, sitting beside the bed with his feet propped up next to mine, humming tonelessly as he read on a tablet. Between him and the edge of the bed was an IV drip connected to a catheter inserted near my elbow.
My mouth felt dry, and when I swallowed, my throat reported a significant amount of pain. “Your eyes are going to rot out of your head,” I informed him in a rasp.
Pausing to check his watch, my twin said, “Good evening.”
Without looking over at me, he returned to reading, leaving me to wonder how many times I had woken up to say something only to fall back asleep. I couldn’t remember making it to the cabin, which proved to have two beds. The one next to mine looked untouched. “Where’s Evelyn?”
My brother pointed at my feet, his gaze fixed on his work. Evelyn was curled up beside my feet, half buried beneath the comforter. Her bushy tail covered her nose and eyes, and judging from the even rise and fall of her sides, she was asleep.