“Whoa,” Heath said, giving a slow whistle. “Knife wound, looks like.” He balled up the shirt and pressed it against the long wound. “I’ll sew you right up.”
Denver fought a groan and tried to ignore the sharp pain. “They have Noni and Talia. Soldiers took them,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Ryker studied him in the rearview mirror. “We know.”
“We’ll get them back,” Heath said, his hand firm on the wound. “Is that how you got stabbed?”
Denver wanted to hang his head, but he kept staring straight ahead. “No. Cobb stabbed me in the hospital.”
Heath jerked. “Cobb? You fought with Sheriff Cobb?”
Zara gasped quietly.
“Yeah,” Denver said. “I think he was there in defiance of Madison’s wishes. He was there to question and then kill me.”
“Is he dead?” Ryker asked tersely.
Denver flushed, his face heating and then cooling. “God, I’m sorry, but no. We were in the hospital, and there was another cop, and I couldn’t kill them both.” He’d let his brothers down again. Cobb had been there, and Denver had had the opening to end him.
Heath squeezed his good arm. “You did the right thing.”
Ryker drove through the mountain pass to get back to the Coeur d’Alene safe house. “Agreed. You kill a cop, or you kill Cobb with a cop knowing, then we’re on the run for life. When we take the fight to Madison and Cobb, we’ll end them without a trace.”
Denver set his head back on the seat. “I know, but I had him. In my hands. I could’ve ended him.” Finally. He could still see the bastard’s sneering face.
“You did the right thing,” Ryker repeated, speeding up through the snowy forest. He held up the two phones Denver had had with him. “Can I toss these?”
Denver opened his eyes. “Toss the blue one. I stole it.”
Ryker slid down his window and threw the phone into the snowy trees. “What about the other one?”
“It’s Cobb’s. I disabled the GPS already. Maybe I can hook it up to the laptop and somehow find where they’ve been.”
Heath pulled the fabric away from the wound. “Ry? I’m gonna need to stitch this up now. An hour is too long to wait.”
“Want me to pull over?” Ryker asked.
“No.” Heath reached beneath his seat and drew out a bright red first-aid kit. “Keep going. We need to get as far away from that hotel and hospital as possible.” He grasped a bottle. “This is gonna hurt, brother.”
Denver leaned his head back again, shut his eyes, and lifted his arm. “Do it.”
The sound of a bottle being squeezed echoed two seconds before unbelievable fire consumed Denver’s rib cage. Antiseptic was a bitch. He kept perfectly still and didn’t make a sound, holding his breath for a few moments. The pain ebbed, slightly, and he let his lungs relax.
Then a needle pierced his skin.
“You’re doing well,” Heath said, drawing the thread through.
Man, it hurt. Denver kept his body loose and allowed the pain to flow through him. It wasn’t his first injury, and it wouldn’t be his last.
Cobb’s phone suddenly rang.
Denver’s eyelids snapped open. Heath’s shoulders straightened, but he kept sewing.
Ryker pressed a button on the phone. “Yeah.”
A female voice said, “Is this one of my boys?”
Nausea poured through Denver’s gut. Dr. Madison sounded exactly the same as she had when they were kids. God, he hated her.
