As he turned and jogged down the alley after Alina, a realization struck him. He’d assumed he was back to square one, but after tonight, maybe it was time to start thinking about them being back to square one.
* * *
Alina reached for her door handle the moment Trevor pulled into a space in front of her apartment complex. She was still annoyed at him for hiding that he’d been shot. She’d only realized it because he’d grabbed a T-shirt from the duffel bag behind the seat and pressed it to his ribs.
“It’s just a scratch,” he’d insisted when she asked how badly he was hurt.
The amount of blood on the T-shirt said otherwise. Ignoring the fact that he was driving, she’d reached across the center console and yanked his jacket open, then pried the makeshift compress away from his ribs so she could see for herself. It was a hell of a lot more than a scratch. His white dress shirt was soaked with dark-red blood. She’d wanted to head for the first hospital they could find, but he’d refused.
“The doctors would immediately recognize it as a bullet wound and call the cops,” Trevor said. “There’s no way I could explain how I ended up this way, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to risk word of it getting back to Dick or Thorn. I promise I’ll be fine. I’ll fix myself up once I get home.”
Then he’d told her that his idea of fixing himself up included pieces of old T-shirts and duct tape.
“No, you’re not,” Alina had said. “We’re going to my place, and I’m going to bandage you up.”
The moment Trevor put the SUV in park, she was out and heading for the driver’s side. She needn’t have bothered. He was already coming around to meet her like he wasn’t injured at all.
“Couldn’t someone at the DCO complex have looked at you?” she asked as they headed upstairs to the second floor. “They have doctors and a medical facility there, right?”
“Yeah, but again, I can’t go there without taking a risk that Dick or Thorn would hear about it.”
Alina shook her head. Trevor had some serious trust issues, bordering on paranoia. But if all this stuff they were learning about Thorn was true, maybe he had good reason to be paranoid. She only hoped she wouldn’t get him upstairs to find out that his injuries were worse than he thought. Then what the heck was she going to do?
They made it upstairs without running into anyone. Once on the second floor, she practically tiptoed passed Kathy’s door, praying Molly didn’t smell her and want to come right over. That was all Alina needed, a curious Kathy asking all kinds of complicated questions while Molly jumped around like a crazy dog, wondering who the hell this new guy in her apartment was.
“Take off your jacket and shirt,” she ordered as soon as they were inside. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”
Trevor headed into the kitchen, shrugging out of his jacket as he went, while she darted into the bathroom. Her supplies weren’t anything a military medic would be impressed with, but there was definitely a lot more stuff than would be found in a typical home first aid kit.
When she hurried into the kitchen a few moments later, she found Trevor over by the table, attempting to wipe the worst of the blood off his torso with the remains of his expensive button-down.
Alina stopped, transfixed by the sight of her partner standing there with his shirt off, blood oozing from a long horizontal gash along his right side. For a second, she flashed back to an image of Fred lying in her arms, blood soaking through his shirt as he bled to death. That visual shook her so hard, she could barely breathe. Cursing under her breath, she got a grip on herself. Her partner was bleeding, and she needed to help him.
“Don’t bother with that,” she said.
Taking the bloody shirt out of his hands, she dropped it in the trash can. It was ruined beyond all possible repair.
She grabbed a hand towel off the hook by the fridge and soaked it under the faucet, then pulled a chair out at the kitchen table and sat.
“Move closer,” she instructed. “Let me get you cleaned up and see how bad this wound is.”
“I’m fine, Alina. The guy barely nicked me,” Trevor protested but obeyed. “Most of this blood is from right after it happened. It’s probably already stopped bleeding.”
“Right,” she muttered as she gently began cleaning the skin around the gash across his ribs with the washcloth.
Damn, it looked more like he’d been torn open with a dull chainsaw blade than hit with a bullet. It must have skipped along the muscles and bones instead of going straight through. She supposed that was a good thing. Still, the slice seemed deep. Any rational person would have been in an emergency room right now, demanding sutures and pain meds.
Trevor was right about one thing, though. The worst of the bleeding had stopped. If anything, it looked like the gash was actually starting to seal itself with new flesh. That was hard to believe, considering how severe the wound had been. She’d never been one to get queasy at the sight of blood, but since her partner was the one bleeding, it got to her a little more than usual.
“Talk to me,” she said as she used the towel to wipe up a fresh dribble of blood running down his lower ribs. “So I don’t have to think about what the hell I’m doing.”
“What would you like to talk about?” he asked. “Other than my inability to avoid getting shot, I mean.”
She couldn’t believe he was cracking jokes. “I don’t care. Anything.”
When he didn’t respond, she decided to ask him about something that had been on her mind ever since she’d seen the way he moved tonight.
“Why don’t you tell me about what else you can do as a shifter? I’m not sure why, but I’d assumed that your abilities were limited to keen senses, claws, and fangs. But after seeing you fight, I’m guessing there’s more to it than that?”
