Until, through the swooping, spinning effect of near unconsciousness, Trace saw the vent cover pop off the wall.
No.
He saw two little, cowboy-booted feet slide out, and he wanted to shout,
“No! Stay where you are!”
But he couldn’t let these thugs know she was there. Instead, he somehow gathered the strength to sweep the legs out from under Baldy. Again. So what if Baldy kicked him for it. What was another pound to an elephant?
But then the weirdest thing happened, so weird that he must be imagining it. He must be unconscious already.
Because the grace with which little Sibyl landed on the carpeted floor, across from him, was one thing.
But the sight of her suddenly leaping, landing on Baldy’s back, riding him to the carpeted floor and knocking him out with a well-placed heel of her palm to the nose. The sight of her almost levitating off him, spinning like a dancer in time to elbow the second fighter in the ribs, doubling him over before kneeing him in the groin, then the head….
That was another sight entirely.
Another guy Trace had taken down, the one he’d thought of as the lieutenant, had climbed back up the wall until he was standing. He staggered toward Sibyl. She turned toward him, completely outsized and not the least bit cowed. She looked downright belligerent. And Trace finally gave up his fight against the darkness of unconsciousness.
He wasn’t scared for her anymore.
“Come on, Trace.” Sibyl patted his whiskery cheeks, pet back his dark hair. He was breathing—she’d almost lost the ability to breathe herself, until she’d recognized that. He had a strong pulse. But it still terrified her, seeing the big man laid out like this. “Please, Trace. Wake up. I don’t want anyone to find us here like this.”
He groaned. That didn’t encourage her too much. Groaning had kind of replaced exhaling, for him.
Bastards,
she thought—then felt guilty for using that particular epithet. But still.
“Trace? Someone else is going to come soon. Wake up.” She held his head in her lap and stroked his rough cheek, amazed by his vulnerability. Especially after having seen the damage he’d inflicted on the lowlifes she assumed were Dillon Charles’ goons. Not a bad combination. Not something she’d ever considered, in a man.
To her immense relief, Trace’s eyes slid open. He squinted against the overhead lights—good. His pupils contracting, and the same size…she’d read enough to know just how good that was.
“Hey,” he rasped up at her.
“Hey, there,” she whispered back, and kissed him. Right there. Surrounded by five wounded, unconscious men. His lips felt like she’d remembered—strong. Soft. His cheek felt scratchy and familiar against hers. She hated to pull away, but she hadn’t spent a decade hiding behind survival instincts just to ignore them now. So she drew back, holding his big hand in hers as she did.
“Did you just…?” He levered himself up on his elbows, squinting his confusion at the litter of bodies around them.
Damn. She’d hoped he wouldn’t notice. Yes, she’d taken down the last two lowlifes. She’d do it again, if she saw Trace lying there like that, helpless and beaten.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t already hurt them before she even got there.
The question in his dark gaze held undertones of awe…and of uncertainty. While she would have liked to explore the awe, the uncertainty concerned her. Once his friends left the conference room, Trace would learn just how tough a background Sibyl had. She didn’t want him to suspect her. She wanted him to protect her as his own damsel in distress.
So she made a face, as if to say,
What could you possibly mean?
“Wake up,” she insisted. “We have to get out of here now. Can you walk?”
“Um…yeah. Sure.” He needed a few tries to stand. At one point Sibyl almost crumpled under the weight of him using her shoulder as a brace. But he managed it and, with her struggling to help support him under one of his arms, they made it to the elevator together.
Other than a few grunts, and whistling breath through his teeth, Trace stayed silent as she got them off on the second floor, then began moving deeper into the building. Then, probably more from pain than curiosity, he asked, “Where…?”
“There’s another stairway, toward the back. We can take that exit and avoid the security guards asking questions.” Why did she feel like she was somehow insulting her father’s memory every time she found a way around a security guard? She’d done it often enough.
“How’d…?”
“I hacked into the building schematics when I learned the meeting was going to be here, then checked out which room Dillon reserved. That’s how I knew about the vent.”
But he was shaking his head, pulling back from her to brace himself against a glass wall. Even with him hurt, she was no match for his strength. She had to let go, had to endure him staring down at her while he caught his breath.
“How,” he tried again, “did you learn to fight like that?”
Damn. She’d thought he’d been out. “Like what?”
Trace narrowed his eyes. Sibyl widened hers and tried to look especially Faline-esque. She could see when the uncertainty crept into his expression, when he began to doubt his perceptions. Then she felt guilty.
But also relieved.
“Come on,” she urged, again. The momentary rest had done him good; he could hobble with her, instead of using her as a too-small crutch. Somehow they made it down the steps, to the back exit and through the emergency door.
The alarms went off, but one quick corner and they’d joined the crowds in Thanks-Giving Square, well away from the Comitatus’s immediate reach. Let Mitch and Smith deal with the alarm, and with that double-crossing Dillon Charles.
“You really didn’t fight those other two guys?” asked Trace once more, after they’d climbed onto a southward-bound bus.
Three, actually. One of the ones you took out regained consciousness.
“Don’t be silly,” Sibyl chided. But she also leaned—carefully, so as not to hurt him—into his big, warm, solid side. He even made a public bus palatable. When his arm lifted awkwardly around her, she closed her eyes and breathed him in, and fell more deeply into both love and despair.
It wouldn’t be long before Trace learned, from his friends, exactly where Sibyl had learned to fight…and just how badly she’d misrepresented herself, just how tainted she’d become.
She might as well enjoy his simple, honest affection while she could. So she snuggled up against him, watching the city street with its Christmas-decorated cafés and banks flow past.
“I thought I saw you…” He pushed once more, though more gently.
“Maybe you imagined it,” she lied, almost voicelessly.
But she might not have been talking about the fight.
Chapter 10
T
race hadn’t imagined it. The longer he remained conscious—arguing with Sibyl against going to an emergency room, making the exchanges to other buses to get back to Greta’s neighborhood—the surer he became.
Little Sibyl, helpless Sibyl, shy Sibyl, could kick butt.
Damn, that was sexy. But her lying about it worried him. He’d thought he was getting to know her, but maybe he didn’t know her at all. That thought gave him an odd ache that felt different from the physical fallout of his own fight.
“What the hell?” Smith hurried down the tree-lined, litter-strewn block from Greta’s to meet them, as they hiked home from the station, and inserted himself under one of Trace’s arms. That
was
a lot easier than struggling not to put his weight on little Sibyl. “You actually walked away from that? I had Arden calling hospitals!”
“Note to self.” Mitch slid under Trace’s other arm. Sibyl, who hadn’t complained once all the way from downtown Dallas, backed away to make room. “Stay on Trace’s good side, or else.”
“I’ll…” Sibyl kept on backing up toward the train station. “I’ll just…”
“Don’t go.” For once, Trace tried to look his most bedraggled and pitiful. It helped that talking used too much air needed for breathing, so his words came out in grunts.
She hesitated on the chilly sidewalk.
His friends exchanged dark glances he maybe wasn’t supposed to notice.
“I couldn’t…find you before,” Trace insisted, wincing as they started walking again. He noted that Smith’s girlfriend, Arden, waited on the porch, concerned. Public transit really did take longer than driving home. But he pivoted his head to try to hold Sibyl’s gaze. “I didn’t…like it.”
Sibyl shut her eyes—then opened them, decided and nodded.
Thank God for small favors.
Apparently his friends had called in the cavalry—what cavalry they had left, with so little money or influence. Actually, it wasn’t a bad effort. Beautiful Arden Leigh opened the door for them on the porch. Once they made it into Greta’s faded old foyer, Arden’s sturdier, Latina friend, Val, stepped in to take over for Mitch under Trace’s arm.
“We should check him out downstairs,” Val noted. She had to be the most practical, guy-like woman Trace had ever met. “In case we need to take him to an emergency room.”
“Nope,” announced Trace, leaning his considerable weight toward the stairs. “No emergency rooms. Bed.”
“You say that now, but you could be in shock,” Val argued. Trace wondered if maybe she had more experience with beatings than anyone else in the room. Trust fund fellows like Smith and Mitch didn’t exactly rumble or anything.
“I’ve been…in fights…” Damn, he wished he could talk better. Day after tomorrow would be the worst, but he could walk—with effort. He could breathe. He didn’t feel dizzy, and his vision was good. “Sibyl?”
Too many people crowded around him in the too-small space, and he couldn’t see her. He began to tense. “Sib!”
“His pupils are equal and responsive,” she announced from somewhere behind him. Good. She hadn’t left.
“He hasn’t lost consciousness since one point during the fight. He can walk on his own. It just…hurts him. He’s been in fights before. He knows his own body.”
Trace grinned in her general direction—he was pretty sure he hadn’t lost any teeth in the fight to make that scary—and let the others help him up the narrow stairs, get him to his bed, pull his T-shirt up over his head and off his arms.
“Madre de Dios,”
whispered Val.
“Your bruises have been breeding,” explained Mitch in awe, while Trace laid back on the bed with a sigh of relief. That felt better, if not good. “They’ve given birth to new, super-colorful offspring. I don’t want to adopt any.”
Trace shrugged, painful or not. They’d be a lot more colorful tomorrow.
For a while, everything focused on first aid basics: a bag of frozen peas on his black eye and a few more frozen vegetables on his ribs and gut. Ibuprofen would help the pain and swelling—after he’d insisted that he wasn’t bleeding internally, that he’d know if he was bleeding internally. Comfrey poultices from Greta eventually to replace the ice after ten minutes. Trace couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten this kind of care after a fight…especially not after he’d lost this badly.
That, and the thought of the kind of girls who prowled the no-holds-barred competitions, turned on by the damage, made him turn his head on the pillow and look at Sibyl.
She sat beside him on his bed, leaning against the headboard, solemnly watching the others fuss over him. When he couldn’t find her, this last week, he’d considered all kinds of reasons she might have gone. Was she that freaked out by blood? Or had his lovemaking somehow scared her off? Maybe it was disgust over his fighting.
She didn’t look disgusted, now. Considering how well she’d fought, he wasn’t surprised. Worried about why she kept lying about it, yeah. Curious what else he didn’t know about her. But not surprised.
She didn’t look disgusted, but she sure as hell looked upset. In that solemn, private way of hers, anyhow.
“So, Dillon Charles wants the sword,” Mitch relayed, if only to keep Trace’s mind off the pain. “No duh, right? He thinks it might belong to his family, if it’s the sword of Charlemagne.”
Sibyl had named Charlemagne as a possible owner of the ancient blade. She also didn’t seem to like the guy. That should be enough for him to rid himself of the damned thing—he didn’t want anything to do with the Comitatus, damn it! He didn’t want to upset Sibyl further.
So why did the idea of handing over the sword make his gut twist worse than the beating he’d taken? Even now, when he glanced toward where he’d laid it—now safely wrapped in a towel—on the bureau top, his first instinct was the word, the absolute certainty,
mine.
“He found a list once, in the New Orleans archives, of what swords go with what families,” Mitch continued, but Smith warned,
“Mitch.”
“He thinks finding them would give the, er, Schmomitatus a kind of focus to reclaim our—their—position as the Fightin’ Nobles.”
“Mitch!”
Now Smith glared, first at his friend, then at Sibyl and at the other ladies—Greta and Arden and Val—closer to the doorway, where they could go get more ice, or ibuprofen, or bandages. “Ladies, my apologies, but could we have some privacy?”
Smith never had liked Mitch’s habit of calling their old society “the Schmomitatus” as a shortcut to get around their vows of secrecy. Trace went back and forth, himself. On the one hand, screw the Comitatus. On the other hand, a promise was a promise. Right?
Still, he hated to send Sibyl away. He liked her presence beside him. So he felt relieved when she didn’t make a move to leave.
He felt less relieved when, practically vibrating with stress, Sibyl said, “You can let them
all
know.”
“Know what?” asked Trace, suddenly suspicious that he didn’t want to. Know, that is.
Especially when Sibyl looked directly at him and said, “Dillon told them who I am. He told them about the years I spent in prison. He told them I’m a killer.”
There. She’d said it. No going back.
Trace barked out a laugh—but maybe something in her expression smothered it almost immediately. Then he just stared at her.
Say something,
pleaded Sibyl silently.
Please say something.