Glitter and Gunfire/Bulletproof (Shadow Agents 4)

Hello, fire. Her great escape attempt had almost blown up in her face. If Cale hadn’t been there...

It grated, but she needed the agent. She needed the backing of the EOD.

And Cale had sure gotten them out of the shooter’s range fast enough.

Hot-wiring the car had been a handy trick, a trick that she’d always wanted to learn. Maybe she could convince him to teach her how to do it. Once they were not being chased by gunmen.

But...for the more pressing matter at hand... “I’m trying to stop the blood flow. That’s what I’m doing.”

They were in some rundown house on the edge of town. The place had looked abandoned from the outside, and, yes, it pretty much looked that way on the inside, too. Only Cale had told her that it was a safe house.

She wasn’t exactly feeling safe. And with 0600 ticking closer and closer, she was running out of time in a hurry.

His fingers curled around her wrist, and he lifted her arm so that he could see the wound. When his face tensed, she realized things were worse than she’d realized. “You need stitches.”

Definitely worse. “The blood’s stopping.”

No, it wasn’t.

“There goes that hitch,” he said, sounding distracted as he bent to study her wound. “Every time you lie, it’s a dead giveaway.”

Damn. She would have to be a whole lot more careful. How had she not noticed that slip before? “I don’t need stitches.” Okay, maybe she did. But, more important, “I don’t have time to go to a hospital.”

“Forget the hospital. I’ll give them to you right here.”

Very bad idea. He was kidding, right? She studied his face, met his stare. Not kidding. Cassidy quickly shook her head. “Do you even know how many infections I could get from you doing that? No way, I—”

“The wound is deep, and you need stitches. I’ve got the supplies we need right here.”

Because EOD agents were like Boy Scouts.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, I stitched myself back up before I went to your place.”

“You...you were hurt?” She hadn’t even noticed that. He’d seemed fine as he’d carried her out of the party.

“A graze just deep enough to need a couple of stitches.” He shrugged it off.

She tried to keep her jaw from dropping. “You get shot a lot, don’t you?” How was that normal?

“I try not to.”

That wasn’t the best answer.

“Come on. We need to get you cleaned up.”

He meant stitched up, and though the thought made her queasy, Cassidy sucked in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It had to be done. So she’d do it.

Then he was leading her into the bathroom. She cleaned away the blood and grime on her. And, yes, the guy did have supplies in that little room. Even latex gloves that he put on right before he got ready to sew her up.

Don’t look. Don’t look.

“It’s going to hurt,” he warned her. A second’s warning before he started.

She kept her head turned away and bit her lip when she felt the needle slide into her skin. Mercer never would have made a sound. Heck, once the guy had been shot—twice—in the chest. He’d dug the bullets out himself, then taken out the men who’d been after him. Like Cale, he’d stitched himself back up.

Her wound pricked, pulsed.

She could feel every poke of that needle. A little anesthesia would have been awesome.