Shiver

vehicles were few and far between, but each time she saw a pair of headlights Sam’s heart jumped. A motorcycle roared up behind and then zoomed around them, making her tense up as lightning visions of a lone assassin firing through the window as he passed filled her head. An ancient minivan, trundling along behind them for a mile or so, practically gave her palpitations. A late-model, dark-colored Lexus popping out of a side street to purr in their wake madeher breath catch. The longer it stayed behind them the more nervous she grew. Was it . . . ?
    She was just opening her mouth to draw it to Quasimodo’s attention when the Lexus veered off down a side street.
    “You have a first-aid kit in this thing?” They were the first words he’d spoken in several minutes, and she was so focused on what the Lexus was doing that they made her jump. Immediately she pulled her eyes from the rearview mirror to look at him.
    He’d slid down so that his head rested against the seat back. His face was turned toward her; swollen and battered from the beginning, it was now totally covered with a fine sheen of sweat. His hair fluttered in the warm, river-scented air that rushed in through the broken window. His lips were parted as if he were having to work to inhale enough oxygen. His one good eye was ringed with shadows, and there was a tautness around the edges of his mouth that spoke of pain.
    In short, he looked in much worse shape than he had when they’d gotten back into the truck after unloading the Beemer. To her disgust, Sam discovered that her first reaction was to feel worried about him.
    “In the glove compartment,” she replied before she thought. Then she gave herself a mental kick. Helping him was not something that was in her best interest to do. Getting away from him was what she needed to concentrate on. But once the words were out of her mouth, there was no taking them back. He nodded and sat up, which seemed to require a great deal more effort than his previous movements. Leaning forward, heopened the glove compartment—not without some difficulty, because like everything else in the truck the catch was old and temperamental—and pulled out the red plastic box with the white cross on it that had been a staple of the glove compartment forever. It had been put there by the wrecker’s original owner, her uncle-by-affection Wilfred Purvis, who had been better to her than most of her own kin until he had died, and whom she still missed. She had only glanced inside it once when she’d needed a Band-Aid, so she had very little real knowledge of what was in there. Leaning back again as if the effort had drained him, Quasimodo opened it, rifled through the contents, and then looked up, frowning at the road ahead. They were running parallel to the river; Sam could occasionally see the water’s black gleam in the distance. Closer at hand, a concrete drainage ditch flanked by scruffy trees ran along the edge of the flat fields of the floodplain. What few structures they passed were old, empty, and largely commercial in nature. No signs of human habitation to be seen.
    “Pull over behind that building,” he directed after a moment, pointing.
    “That building” was a three-bay cinder-block garage. The doors were closed, the chain-link fence that had once surrounded it was broken down to the point where more of it was missing than standing, and its nearest neighbor was a burned-out structure that might once have been a house.
    Sam was immediately suspicious. “Why?”
    “Just do it.”
    Sam gave him a long, mistrustful look, then reluctantly didas he said, easing the truck off the road and onto what was left of the pavement before bumping through the grass as she drove around the building.
    When she was parked behind the garage, with the engine and lights turned off at his direction, he took a deep, shuddering breath. He was obviously in pain, obviously having trouble staying focused. His eyes were overbright in the moonlight as he looked at her. Once again Sam had to battle back the impulse to worry about him.
    “Take off your shirt,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     

     
    “W hat?” She looked startled. Alarmed, even. Her widening eyes fastened on him like she was Little Red Riding Hood and he was the Big Bad Wolf.
    Well, maybe for her, tonight, he was. But not in the way that was clearly worrying her.
    She was definitely pretty enough to make him sit up and take notice under other circumstances. But right