Shiver

That freed his mind enough to consciously not think about the pain.
    By the time they’d transferred out of the plane into a waiting Chevy Suburban, tan instead of black as if to foil the suspicions of any observers that the ride might belong to federal agents, Danny had given up on the whole not-thinking-about-the-pain thing as a lost cause. He felt like he’d been run over by a Mack truck. One that had backed up an extra time over his leg. It was still early morning, not quite 9:00 a.m. according to the clock in the SUV’s dashboard, but the sun was bright in a near cloudlessblue sky and the day gave promise of being a hot one. Mountains in the distance rose with cool purple majesty that contrasted with the flat, arid land through which they were driving. From various landmarks, Danny was pretty sure they were in Nevada, heading north. The only thing Sanders and his little band of unmerry men had said about their ultimate destination was that they were driving, not flying, the rest of the way in because planes were easy to track, while cars were less so. Not that their destination really mattered; the operative principle was to hide, and where was immaterial.
    Before getting him up and into a wheelchair, which was waiting for him upon landing along with a pair of crutches for later, when he was ready to forsake the wheelchair, and then leaving him to Sanders and company’s tender mercies, the medic had handed Danny a plastic bag full of medicine bottles with instructions for what he was to take, and when. The instructions had gone in one ear and out the other—taking pain meds was something that, since he needed his wits about him, he felt that it was probably better that he not do—but now that they were zooming along the expressway, traveling at a steady seven miles over the speed limit to stay with the flow of traffic without getting pulled over and keeping to the middle lane and doing everything else possible to blend with the other vehicles on the road, his leg was hurting worse than it had when he’d first been shot. Giving up—with four armed marshals for protection exactly how sharp did he need to be?—he fished out a bottle, checked the label just to make sure, popped the childproof lock, shook a couple of Lortab into his hand, and swallowed themwithout water. Then, just to be on the safe side, he swallowed two more.
    And choked. And coughed. And choked some more.
    “Here.” Tyler, who’d woken up when they’d landed, offered Danny the battered orange juice box that Sam had procured from somewhere and that he’d been sipping on since they’d gotten into the SUV.
    Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have taken the kid’s OJ. For one thing, the box had a picture of SpongeBob SquarePants on it, which made him think it was some kind of kid concoction that he wasn’t going to like. For another thing, it had kid germs all over it. For a third, the kid was kind of pasty and big-eyed and looked like he needed the OJ way more than Danny did. But the pills were stuck in his throat and he really, really needed the pills.
    His leg felt like something was trying to chew it off.
    “Thanks.” Accepting the juice box, he pulled out the straw and squirted some liquid into his mouth straight out of the little hole. Swallowing the stuff—it wasn’t half bad—then restoring the straw to its rightful place and handing the juice box back to Tyler, he encountered a grim look from Sam.
    “He offered,” Danny replied to that look defensively.
    He was in the very back seat, with his leg stretched out straight in front of him. Bandaged and splinted, it rested on a cooler that had been placed between the bucket seats one row up. He couldn’t see exactly how his leg was trussed, because while he had been unconscious his clothes had disappeared, to be replaced by a set of baggy blue scrubs, but the whole thingfelt way too tight. The bucket seats on either side of the cooler were occupied by Groves and O’Brien. Sam and Tyler, who like him had been relegated to the very back, bench seat—him, because of his need to stretch out his leg, and them, because of their relatively small size, and because they were the only other occupants of the vehicle who felt like getting that friendly with him—sat on either side of him, Tyler to his left and Sam to his right. In front, Sanders was driving and Abramowitz was once again riding shotgun. All of them looked like the morning after the night before. Danny guessed that he and