Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 13)

She gave me that look again, like she didn't believe me.

"Honest, cross my heart and hope to--well, you know."

She shook her head. "And what is Mr. Graison's job?"

I had to smile. "He's a stripper."

She put her hands on her hips and almost stamped her foot at me. "It can't all be true."

The door opened behind her. It was my men and Special Agent Fox. The nurse threw them both a look, then hurried out.

"What have you been telling the nurses while I've been lying here?"

"The nurses were just trying to be friendly at first," Micah said, "but when we answered their questions truthfully, they didn't believe us."

"No one lives with two men," Nathaniel said, mimicking someone's voice that I didn't remember hearing. "And federal marshals don't live with strippers."

"Once we knew you were going to be all right, Nathaniel teased them a little," Micah said.

Fox laughed. "A little."

I held my left hand out to Nathaniel, and he took it with a smile. "You mad?" he asked.

"No. It was the crack about federal marshals not living with strippers, wasn't it?" I said.

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"The nursing staff seemed more interested in your boyfriends than in you," Fox said.

"Well," I said, "it's hard to compete when the guys are this cute."

Micah came around and took my other hand. He ran his finger over the new scar. "You've finally got one on your right arm."

I sighed. "My only unscarred arm. Damn."

Fox said, "I come all the way down here to tell you what you missed, and I don't think you give a damn."

I smiled at Fox. "Truthfully, I'm just glad to be alive. When I hit that marble, I knew I was hurt."

His face went very serious. "Yeah, you were hurt. We all thought..." He waved it away. "It doesn't matter what we thought. When you went down, the zombie attacked Salvia. We couldn't stop him. Not to mention he had a shooter in the cemetery."

"I remember Salvia saying something about not shooting me now. That the zombie was up and it wouldn't help anything."

"He wasn't delaying to be irritating. He was delaying to give the new hit man time to get to the cemetery. The idea was that with you dead or badly injured, they'd have more time to think of a plan C."

"Plan C? What happened to plan A and B?"

Micah began to rub his thumb over my knuckles in small circles. Nathaniel pressed my hand against his chest. Whatever I was about to hear, I wasn't going to like it.

Fox told me, "After you and Micah went to a different hotel, a salesman checked into the room that we'd reserved for Marshal Kirkland. The salesman was shot in his room. Then the killer put a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door and probably took a plane to a different country. A very clean, very professional hit. Micah wanting a romantic weekend may have saved your lives."

Micah kept stroking my hand, and Nathaniel kept holding on, as if there was more to come.

"Salvia must have gotten the shock of his life when he got word that Marshal Anita Blake was coming to raise the zombie. He scrambled around and hired a not-so-clean, not-so-professional hit."

"But it almost worked," Micah said.

"I finally remembered where I knew Salvia's name from," I said. "He's a lawyer for some old-fashioned mob, real hard-core Italian."

Fox nodded.

"If I understood what Salvia and Rose were arguing about, then Georgie is the son of the head of that family. He's a pedophile, and Salvia and others had helped cover it up."

"Yes."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Fox, didn't you think the son's family would try to stop the testimony?"

"Old-fashioned mob does not attack federal officers. It's bad for business," Fox said.

"Old-fashioned is the operative phrase here, Fox. If what's left of the Italian mob found out one of their own had hidden a violent pedophile, even his own son, the Feds would be the least of Georgie boy's family's worries. The other mobsters would clean house on their own long before subpoenas and trial dates caught up with them."

"In retrospect, you're right," he said.

"In retrospect, you could have gotten Anita killed," Micah said.

Fox took in a lot of air and let it out slow. "You're right, Micah. I almost fucked up your life again."

I frowned at them both. "What are you guys talking about now?"

"When Micah was in a bed like you are now, I told him that I had wanted to put out an alert two days before he and his uncle and cousin went hunting. I wanted to put out an alert to keep the hunters out of the woods, but I wasn't the agent in charge. Hell, I was just the Indian who got lucky, because some of the first kills were on Indian land. I was outvoted, and I liked my career more than I liked the idea of saving lives. I told Micah that I owed him for that." Fox looked at all of us. "And now I owe him again, because we should have taken more precautions for your safety."

I looked at him. "I didn't think the FBI was allowed to admit they were wrong."

He smiled, but not like he was entirely happy. "If you tell anyone, I'll deny it."

I raised Micah's hand to my lips and kissed him. It took some of the anger out of his face. I kissed Nathaniel's hand too, and held them close. "I'm just glad to be alive, Agent Fox."

He nodded. "I'm glad, too." Then he headed for the door.

When the door closed behind him, Micah let out a breath I hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Every time I see that man, something bad happens in my life."

I tugged on his hand so he'd look at me. "What happened to the zombie?"

He gave a frown that showed even around the sunglasses. "I know Salvia tried to kill you, but you ask first about the zombie?"

"Salvia's dead," I said.

He nodded. "I thought you were unconscious by then."

"I was, but once I wasn't there to help with the zombie, it tore him apart, right?"

"Yes," he said.

"He deserved to die," Nathaniel said, and there was a look in his face, so fierce, so pitiless, that it almost scared me. I'd seen a lot of looks on his face, but never one so cold.

"They shot the zombie, they cut at him, but he tore Salvia up."

"Did they get the shooter?"

"They got him," Micah said. "He's dead, too."

"Did they get Rose's testimony?" I asked.

He lowered his glasses enough to give me the full force of his chartreuse eyes. The look was eloquent. Nathaniel laughed.

Micah looked from one to the other of us, then finally back at me. "Do you seriously think that with you dying, Salvia dead, and an assassin gunned down, they were going to question the zombie?"

"Well, why not? They had to wait for the ambulance, right?"

Micah shook his head. Nathaniel laughed again and leaned over to plant a kiss on my forehead. He looked at Micah. "If she'd been there and awake, she'd have questioned the zombie," he said.

"Fine, if they didn't question Rose, what happened to him? Without me they couldn't put him back in the grave."

"Larry flew up."

Nathaniel pointed to the huge bunch of Mylar balloons. "Those are from Larry and Tammy."

I realized then what the death of the salesman would have meant for Larry. It wouldn't have been some salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time; it would have been Marshal Larry Kirkland dead.

"He was really upset, Anita. He blamed himself."

"Not his fault." I squeezed Micah's hand. "Though thanks for the romantic hotel room. Who knew it would be a lifesaver?"

"Let's get you dressed," he said, "and go home."

Nathaniel kissed my hand and started finding my clothes, wherever the nurses had hidden them. Micah went for the door to see if Dr. Nelson needed any help getting me signed out. He stopped in the doorway and said, "You scared the hell out of me. Don't do it again."

"I'll do my best," I said.

He leaned his forehead against the door edge for a moment, then he looked at me. "I love you."

I had a lump in my throat that hadn't been there a second before. "I love you, too."

Nathaniel was suddenly airborne. I had a second to make that little-girl eep sound, and then he landed around me on all fours, perfectly. "Does anything hurt?"

"No," I said, breathless and laughing.

"Good," he said, and he lay down on top of me, pressing his body against me hard enough that I had to either spread my legs for him or risk bruising tender bits on both of us. He lay above the sheets, both of us fully clothed, but he was suddenly above me, and the look in his eyes was more intimate than nakedness could have made it. Because what was in his eyes was emotion too real for lust, too real for anything but a very different four-letter word.

He kissed me. He kissed me as if my mouth were air, food, and water, and he'd been dying without the taste of it. That's when Nurse Debbie and the other members of her betting pool came in. They screamed like freshmen at their first frat party. And I'd thought nurses were jaded.