As if she had radar pinging, her head turned to find him staring at her.
“Nice shooting,belleza,” he told her.
“‘Nice’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Nemo said with a whistle. “I haven’t seen anyone that good since competing against you on the range.”
“Taught her everything I know. I’d take her in a firefight over any one of you guys,” he replied, his eyes still on hers.
Color rose to her cheeks, and her gaze locked on the windshield between the two front seats. She didn’t blush often. Only when praised for doing something well, mostly because no one had ever praised her before him. A twisted thrill ran through him that his positive reinforcement still worked on her.
He shifted in his seat, and his wife hissed when he bumped her leg. Concerned, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” she answered.
Looking down at her leg, he saw a dark-brown stain developing on her pant leg. “It’s not nothing. You’re bleeding.”
He reached for her leg. They were already cramped in the back seat, and she fought him every step of the way, but he finally managed to secure it in his lap. There was a rip in her jeans, and he reached into his boot to pull out his knife. In less than five seconds, he had the material sliced to the knee and her leg exposed, revealing a bullet graze along her calf.
His face flooded with frustration. Stubborn woman. No sense of self-preservation. Immediately, they began to bicker in Spanish and at increasing volume.
“Madre de Dios, you’ve been shot, woman. What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“We were a little busy, Ildefanso! Besides, it’s just a graze. It’ll clot and heal. Nothing to worry about.”
“You should have at least said something!”
“Why? So we could stop in the middle of a firefight, and you could put a princess bandage on it?”
“No, but then I would have known you needed medical care, and we could have taken care of it quicker.”
“Jesus Christ, Fanso, you knew about it almost immediately. Five seconds faster would have been before I realized it myself.”
A high-pitched whistle went through the vehicle.
“Look, I appreciate the entertainment as much as the next person, but there’s no popcorn, and I don’t speak Spanish, so since there are no subtitles, could you at least argue in English?” Nemo asked.
Demon gave him an incredulous look. “Dude, I’m not sure if that's insensitive or just bizarre. You speak like seven languages. How is Spanish not one of them?”
Nemo popped a piece of gum in his mouth and shrugged. “I speak enough of it to find a restaurant and a bathroom. That’s all I need.”
“And pick up a girl,” TB said with a snort.
“Not anymore,” Nemo corrected. “Besides, that didn’t take words. Just dance moves.”
“How did you survive as a thief?” Demon asked. “Spanish is, like, the number one language spoken in the world.”
“Well, if you want to be technical, English has actually surpassed Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish. But Midas speaks it, so I didn’t need to know it. Besides, I grew up in South Africa, you git. I speak Afrikaans, English by default. Then I learned Xhosa, French, Italian, and Dutch for all the European jobs we pulled, and just enough Balinese to get by in a market.”
“Un-fecking-believable,” the medic said in disbelief.
Steel seethed. “Demon, quit provoking him and look at her leg.”
The medic reached across her lap, gave her calf a half twist, then let go and sat back in his seat. “It’s a graze. I’ll take care of it when we get to the safe house.”
“It could get infected,” he growled.
“You’ve traveled through swamps and sewers with worse and come out okay. She can wait until we’re in a more stable environment,” Demon argued.
“At least clean it up. You barely looked at it. It could be worse than you think.”
