I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery)

blushed.
    “Can you drive?” Luke asked, picking up Maria and starting back towards the car park. I limped after him, Macbeth following. Harvey stayed with the bodies. Oh Christ, the bodies. This was so surreal.
    “I think so.”
    “I need a definite.”
    “Yes.” I opened up the back of the car, and he placed Maria on the floor between the seats. Macbeth climbed in after her, and I went round to the cab.
    “Are you sure you can drive?” Luke asked me as I started the engine, and I nodded tiredly.
    “I’m sure. I have a licence and all.”
    He nodded. “Drive safe.”
    I have never driven safely and I’m certainly not about to start now. “Luke, are you mad at me?”
    He stared. “Why would I be mad?”
    “I did a lot of things I shouldn’t.”
    “You got the bad guy. Guys. Girl.” He touched the blood on my face. “I’m proud of you.”
    I managed a smile. “Really?”
    “Yeah.” He pulled me towards him and kissed me, and everything stopped hurting.
    “Mmm,” I sighed. “Do that again.”
    “No time. You have to go. I have to get these bodies off the school premises.”
    I nodded reluctantly. “There’s a phrase I never want to hear again.” I shut the door. “I’ll see you later.”
    “Bye.”
    I drove away, and he stood there watching me until I turned the corner out of sight.
     
    The drive up to the hospital was horrible. Horrible. Every gear change was agony, and there are a lot of roundabouts on the way there. I took most of them in the wrong gear because it hurt too much to dip the clutch. Defenders have really hard clutches. Macbeth, sitting behind me, was breathing very shallowly, and when I chanced a look back at him I saw that he was pressing his hand tight against his stomach.
    “I thought it just hit muscle,” I said.
    “Yeah,” he breathed, “muscle bleeds.”
    “I’m going as fast as I can.”
    “Not me I’m worried about.” He glanced at Maria, who he’d pulled onto the seat beside him, her head in his lap. She was bleeding all over.
    I was really glad I had vinyl seats.
    I pulled up on front of the hospital, the car slewed across double yellows. It wasn’t an ambulance bay so I didn’t care. I locked my door, put my warrant card between my teeth and picked Maria up in my arms. She was heavy, but I didn’t see any alternative. I was too tired and too hurt to really think about it.
    “Lock the door,” I said to Macbeth. “If someone nicks my car, I’ll be really pissed off.”
    He could hardly stand. He was covered in blood. He put the keys back in my bag over my shoulder and had to lean on me as we stumbled through the doors, looking horribly out of place in the bright, clean, warm A&E reception.
    Everyone turned and stared at us, and for a few seconds, I was too tired to speak. Then I opened my mouth and started yelling for help.
     
    It was still dark when I got home, driven by a nurse so kindly I nearly cried when she offered me a lift. People had rushed to help Maria and Macbeth, and by extension, me, taking out the splinters of wood from my leg and replacing them with stitches. They put stitches in my head as well, a new cut on my forehead that looked like it might have been made by a bullet whistling by. I hadn’t even really realised I’d been hit. They dosed me up with new painkillers and sent me home, and I took one look at my bed and fell in, fully clothed.
    I woke up several hours later, just as the sky was starting to get light, with the definite feeling that there was someone in my room. I grabbed Macbeth’s gun from my night stand and aimed it groggily.
    “If you shoot me,” came a lovely warm, dry voice, “then I won’t be able to give you your reward.”
    I blinked at Luke. He was standing in the doorway, looking dirty and bloody and exhausted and irresistible.
    “Reward?” I croaked.
    He came in and sat on the bed as I put the gun away. “I spoke to the hospital. Macbeth’s okay. Maria’s in a bad state, but she’s going to be fine.”
    I slumped against the pillows. “Really fine?”
    He nodded. “Really fine. How are you feeling?”
    “I’m—” Luke’s fingers touched the dressing on my forehead, and my voice started to squeak, “I’m okay.”
    “That was some takedown.”
    “Did you…” I didn’t know how to put this. “Did you get rid of the bodies?”
    Luke laughed. “We don't dump them in landfills, Sophie. We took them to the morgue. Both of them.”
    “There were—”
    “Wright and Sven. Both