The blood trails from where she took me down over to where I'm at right now, a long crimson streak that will dry and crust by morning. Sabine Hart is a powerhouse, I'll give her that. I've taken down a lot of men twice her size, but she knows how to fight, and apparently, she knows how to stitch too.
"You could just kill me," I grunt, and I feel weak. No way in hell I could best her right now even if I wanted to. She didn't hit the femoral artery but damn near it, and with the wound deep in my thigh tissue, I'll be lucky if I can walk for the next few days.
"I'm not a killer." Sabine works with focus, ignoring my grumbles of pain and avoiding eye contact too. "Besides, you're better to me alive."
I watch her stick my muscle with the needle and then pull the long thread through. It's not a medical-grade thread, but in a situation like this the most important part is closing the wound. I've had vets do a worse job. Former ranger means combat medic training too, and I'd trust her to do this even if I weren’t so weak.
"I broke into your house to kill you. Self-defense…" My eyes fall shut and I rest my head against her wall. I'm weak. I could pass out at any second from blood loss, and she keeps working on me instead of calling the police. Which means she wants something from me too. Otherwise, she'd just have turned me in with the gun pointed at my head.
"Shut up," she orders.
Her hands work my thigh with my pants around my ankles and the blood puddle I'm sitting in getting worse by the second. I know I fade in and out of consciousness for a moment until I feel her hand slap me across the face.
"Stay with me," she snarls, and I feel the cold press of her weapon on my temple.
"Come on, lady. If you were gonna kill me, you'd have done it when I was bleeding out." I manage to lift my head, unintimidated by her gun on my head, and see that she's finished stitching me. It's rudimentary but it'll hold. "Just tell me why you didn't kill me."
Sabine steps back and stands over me with her weapon hanging at her side. Clearly, she's not worried about anyone seeing in through her sheer curtains, and the way she's covered in blood up to her elbows from stitching me up doesn't faze her, either. I just didn't figure her for the fighting type. I thought she'd go down easy like the others.
"Names… on the list… now…"
My brain hurts. Every drop of blood I lost feels like a day of sleep I didn't get, and it's a struggle to keep my eyes open.
"What do you mean? What list?" Playing stupid may work with some folks, but I can see straightaway that with her it won't work.
"Don't fuck with me!" Her gun is raised again, pointed right back at my head. "Someone is killing us, and I want to know who is on that list."
Looking down the barrel of a gun is one thing. Staring up at a deranged woman who has nothing to lose, whose life is already marked for termination, is another. She could kill me right now and probably knows twenty ways to hide a body. But her background and her current access to government intel make her useful. At least the blood loss hasn't stripped away my ability to think critically.
"Daniel Whitlock, Ryan McAlli?—"
"Not them, you dumb fuck. The rest… After me. Who's next?" Her gun, still pointed at my head, trembles as she uses the back of her hand to wipe sweat from her face and it smears blood on her forehead. For a soldier she's top notch, and as a woman, I'd say she's high up on that list for sure.
She's built like a tank, but it's sexy—hard body, toned muscles. Those skimpy shorts leave nothing to the imagination. Not hard on the eyes at all, but with that gun trained on me, it leaves a lot to be desired.
"Talk," she snarls, and her toes press into the wound on my thigh, but my arms are too weak to pry them off.
"Ethan Caldwell is next… Everett Hamilton?—"
"Shit!" she hisses and then she starts pacing. Her gun hand plants on her hip while her other hand runs through her hairand down across her face. "Mother fucker!" Sabine launches the small alarm off her nightstand across the room where it smashes into the wall and breaks into pieces. This revelation is clearly not news to her, but she's not happy about it.
"You know who's hunting you?"
Sabine turns on me, using her gun to pistol whip the side of my face so hard, my head snaps to the left and jars my entire neck.
"Shut up, just shut the fuck up!"
The bitch is hysterical now, sweating and crying and pacing. I can't hold my eyes open much longer. This is excruciating. I have no fear she's going to kill me, but the idea that she could call one of her army buddies to come clean me up does cross my mind. Then the thought of the police coming makes some adrenaline surge and I'm more awake.
"What? You know who's hunting you or what?"
Sabine paces for a few more seconds then sets the gun down on her nightstand. She hovers over me before crouching in front of me and steepling her fingers.
"I don’t know you… Okay? I don't know anything about you, but I know who hired you. And I know why they hired you…"
This is news. I relax my head and shoulders again, but I don't let my eyes fall shut. It's not often that a victim gets the best of me, but almost every time, the person I'm hunting already knows who sent me. Though, most times, they don't know I'm coming until it's too late.
"And?" I say dryly. I don't give a rat's ass if she knows who sent me and why. I'm here to do a job, one that could be much easierto complete if I had someone like Sabine Hart and her military clearance to bases and government information.
