Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Frankie

Even when I pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor, the RV barely went above sixty. It took me several hours to drive out to the area Gabe had indicated, and I was a wreck the entire time. My hands felt numb on the steering wheel, and it took all my concentration to keep breathing evenly.

The sun had already been down for hours when I crossed over the border of a little one-stoplight town a hundred miles away from our safe house. Gabe's voice had sounded strange on the phone, slurred and difficult to understand. It had taken a lot of back and forth to come up with a basic idea of his location. Neither the RV nor the secure cellphone had GPS, so I'd had to figure it out using a paper map I'd found and Gabe's vague description.

In the end, all that effort turned out to be pointless. Gabe said he was at a bus stop, and the tiny town only had one.

A streetlight flickered with an uneven tattoo of sparking electrics, and barely illuminated the bus stop. The ramshackle structure looked like it was ready to fall down at any moment and was only identifiable as a bus stop by the small sign hanging from a single crooked nail.

I barely remembered to put the RV in park before I flew out of the door.

"Gabe."

A lone figure sat on the bus stop bench, slouching against the awning's support pillar like he was asleep.

Please, let him just be asleep.

The person had a coat draped over them like a blanket, so I couldn't immediately see their face, but they stirred at the sound of my voice.

I collapsed to my knees in front of the bench, crying with relief when the coat fell away to reveal familiar gray eyes.

"Oh my God, Gabe. You're alive." My hands fisted in his shirt and I started shaking him. "Don't scare me like that again. I thought that... I thought you were... Oh, you fucking ridiculous man."

I don't know what possessed me in that moment, but before I realized what I was doing, I pulled Gabe closer and kissed him. Pressure had been building in my chest like a bubble for days as I worried over him. Once I knew he was alive, the bubble popped, and all that tension had to go somewhere.

It was a particularly graceless kiss. Just a smashing of lips together with no art or skill involved at all. I tasted blood from where I'd cut my lip on my own teeth, but I didn't care. Nothing mattered in that moment except the feeling of Gabe's heart still beating under my hand.

As quickly as the moment of madness overcame me it left, and I realized what I was doing. I pulled back and stuttered out an apology.

"Oh, fuck, I'm sorry. What am I doing? That's not... I shouldn't... Sorry."

I expected outrage, or even confusion, but Gabe didn't say a word. Squinting to get a better look at him in the flickering light, I found gray eyes staring at me with an unfocused glassy appearance, like he wasn't really seeing me.

Then, right as I watched, Gabe's eyes slipped shut and he slumped forward so his head landed on my shoulder.

"Gabe? What?" I grabbed the man to steady him, and that was when I felt it. Gabe was burning up. Fever scorched his skin from the inside. It was a wonder I hadn't noticed it during the kiss, but I'd been too caught up in my own relief.

I shook the man, trying to wake him up. He mumbled something, but his head lolled on his shoulders like a broken puppet.

"Ah, shit. Let's... um, let's get you inside the RV. Come on, Gabe. Help me out. You're too heavy for me to carry that far.

Whatever infliction Gabe suffered, he remained just conscious enough to support some of his weight as I dragged him over to the RV parked beside the bus stop. Once inside, with the door locked, I laid Gabe on the bed at the back of the vehicle and started inspecting him.

His clothes were much more ragged than when he left two days ago, torn in many places and covered with splotches of mud.

Because of that, I didn't immediately notice the blood staining his shirt around his right shoulder, which had dried to a similar brown color.

There was no way for me to remove the shirt from Gabe, so I just tore the fabric away. It was already so damaged, the fabric easily gave way under my hand, leaving Gabe naked from the waist up.

I had my answer.

I'd seen enough wounds during my career to recognize the bullet hole in his right shoulder. That alone wouldn't be a problem as the bullet had gone cleanly all the way through, however, the wound was clearly infected.

It looked like Gabe had tried to triage the wound himself using...

Was that dental floss?

Hardly a sanitary material, and if the wound hadn't been properly cleaned before he stitched it closed, then he'd just trapped the bacteria inside so it could fester.

For the infection to become so bad in just two days, it must have been severe. Thankfully, I'd brought some first-aid supplies with me, just in case, so I could cleanse the wound, but it wouldn't be enough. Gabe needed antibiotics to get the infection out of his system and bring down the fever, and I didn't have any medicine that strong.

One thing at a time. I could worry about antibiotics afterward. First, Gabe's wound needed to be treated.

"Sorry, but this is going to hurt," I said to the unconscious man as I laid out my supplies.

He didn't respond, but I swore his brow furrowed for a moment, like he was thinking deeply.

The first step was to cut away the makeshift stitches. I didn't want to know what Gabe had used for a needle, but the stitches were surprisingly even despite being made from dental floss. Gabe's training as a medic in the Army Rangers had paid off.

I quickly snipped the stitches, and a pinkish-yellow mix of blood and puss oozed from the wound. The smell of infection was horrible, but I had trained myself to control my gag reflex years ago. Patients still in the process of healing would not feel comfortable with me if I made a disgusted face every time they came near.

Besides, while Gabe's wound was ugly, it wasn't the worst I had ever seen.

After using a generous amount of gauze and saline to cleanse the wound, I was finally able to get a good look at what I was dealing with. The bullet entry and exit wounds on either side of Gabe's shoulder were straight forward, leaving no ragged edges or excessive damage behind. The bullet had been large, but simple. Not as devastating as something like a hollow-point bullet, which expanded on impact to do as much damage to flesh as possible.

With any luck, Gabe should be able to heal from the wound with minimal consequences.

Assuming I could get the infection under control.

The flesh around the wound was bright red, swollen, and even hotter to the touch than the rest of him. Spidery lines extended outward from the wound, confirming my biggest fear.

The infection had leeched into his bloodstream. He was definitely going to need antibiotics.

I finished cleaning the wound, then packed it with fresh gauze, but didn't stitch it closed again. Stitches could come later, but for now the wound needed a chance to breathe and drain out the remaining infection.

With so much of my focus on his right shoulder, I didn't pay attention to his left side until I'd finished treating the wound and was making him more comfortable on the bed. A series of old scars ran down the length of his left arm, like tiger stripes. Based on their similar pattern, the scars must have all happened at the same time. Such a wound would have been devastating, maybe even career ending for someone in the military.

Once he was well, he could tell me all about it. I had a plan for how to help him. I just didn't like what I would have to do.

Half an hour later, the RV was stashed in an out of the way parking lot and I observed an empty pharmacy from the safety of a dark alley. The building was closed for the night, which was not surprising since it was nearly two in the morning.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," I mumbled to myself as I tied a relatively clean piece of Gabe's ruined shirt over my face.

Sticking to the shadows, and avoiding the spotlight of the nearby streetlamp, I slunk up to the pharmacy's back door and pulled out a set of lock picks. They weren't perfect tools. I'd made them in a hurry by pulling the springs out of one of the RV's chair cushions and bending the wire into the shape I needed. They would never be enough for a more complicated job, but the backdoor of the pharmacy was surprisingly simple.

This place must have been one of those small towns that didn't see a lot of crime for their security to be so lax.

I slipped the wire picks into the lock, and my fingers quickly remembered the familiar movements. Although I hadn't used the skill in years, it was even harder to forget than riding a bike, and barely a minute later the door clicked open.

An ominous beeping on the wall greeted me. The control panel for the alarm wanted a code, and I had sixty seconds to punch in the right numbers before it went off.

Not wasting a second of my countdown, I ran to the back of the pharmacy where the prescription medications were stored. The more dangerous medications, like narcotics, were kept under heavy locks. My paltry lockpicks would never have stood a chance. Luckily, the antibiotics I needed weren't nearly as valuable, and so weren't as protected. A simple padlock, similar to the kind used on high school lockers, was all that stood between me and my bounty. It took me longer to find the right cabinet than it did to get the thing open and grab several bottles.

I'd just shoved the last bottle into my pocket when the alarm went off. I slapped some cash on the counter—to at least ease my conscience about stealing—and ran out of the building.

I kept running until I was a few blocks away from the pharmacy, then ducked behind a dumpster in an alley to wait. My heart pounded in my ears, and I shook from head to toe, making the pill bottles rattle in my pocket.

I'd actually done it. While it wasn't the first time I'd broken into a place—a fact I tried not to think about too much—it was the first time I remembered feeling so nervous.

In the past when I broke into a place, I was usually desperate to feel anything at all. I'd never even stolen anything before. It had all just been for the thrill of doing something I wasn't supposed to.

A few minutes later, several police cars with blue and red flashing lights drove past. I stayed hidden, waiting for the commotion to die down. A basic breaking-and-entering, when the only thing stolen was a few bottles of antibiotics, wasn't a particularly noteworthy crime. The police wouldn't bother with it for long. All I needed to do was wait until the lights and sirens disappeared, and the night was dark and silent once again.

It was four am by the time I returned to the RV. My legs ached from kneeling in such a cramped position behind the dumpster for so long, but I was otherwise unharmed, and Gabe was exactly where I'd left him. He didn't seem to have twitched a muscle while I was gone. Even his hair was in exactly the same position.

"Hey, I'm back. I need you to wake up enough to take these pills. Then we can head back to the safe house."

I didn't know why I bothered to talk to him. The unconscious man couldn't hear me. Even when I managed to rouse him from his sleep, I wasn't sure how aware he was of anything happening around him. I managed to get him to swallow a couple of the antibiotic pills by literally putting them on his tongue and holding a glass of water to his lips.

He choked on the first few sips of water, which dribbled from the corner of his mouth, before he eventually swallowed the pills and almost immediately fell back asleep.

Breathing a sigh of relief, at least for now, I turned the ignition in the RV, the engine roaring to life, and started driving back to the safe house.