Page 119 of One Last Stand

“Nice outfit.”

“Get me off this mountain.”

“Nice to see you too.”

She looked away, numb, as Axel belted her in and as she watched Boo tend to Shep’s abdominal wound. Blood sopped his shirt. The first bullet had nicked his head, just a flesh wound. She guessed that the second was embedded inside, given the way he grimaced, but even that seemed not critical, the way Boo had put a bandage over it and pressed his hand against it to hold it.

He leaned his head back, his face taut, and looked at her.

She stared out the window, unable to look at him, tracing the plume of the snowmobile as they lifted into the sky.

CHAPTER12

“It could have been worse.”

Moose stood, arms folded, in the ER of the Luciella Medical Center. He appeared tired, not a little stress on his face. And Shep had a feeling it might not be all about scooping his bloodied body off a mountain.

“You okay, Moose? Everything okay in Alaska?”

“Yeah.” Moose ran a hand behind his neck. “It’s complicated. But . . . we’ll sort it out.”

Axel appeared, holding a skinny can of cola. Handed one to Moose. He wore a pair of cargo pants and a thermal shirt, having shucked off his jacket and hat in the tiny ER compartment where a nurse had parked Shep. Luciella didn’t have its own chopper landing, so Moose had put down in a parking lot nearby. Then they’d shoved Shep into a waiting embassy car and trucked him over to the ER lot.

The hospital wasn’t big—a three-story white building with the entrance to the ER under a pull-through at one end. Lime-green ceilings, modern yellow sofas in the lobby, and matching lime-green curtains hanging between ER gurneys.

Now Axel turned to Shep. “Tillie’s house blew up.”

The words didn’t settle. “What?”

“Gas leak,” Moose said and shot a look at Axel. “She and Hazel are with me.”

“And I thought getting shot twice was bad. Poor Tillie.”

“Yeah.” Moose took a drink of soda.

Something seemed off, but Moose moved on with, “You’re lucky this accountant doesn’t have better aim. Could have taken out your kidney or gall bladder or even your liver.”

“Right? Who gets shot without hitting any major organs?” Axel added.

“Skin is a major organ,” Shep said. “And they had to fish out the bullet, so that was uber fun.”

“Even that—the wound is, like, an inch deep,” Axel said. He sat down in one of the molded plastic chairs in the tiny ER berth.

“In mybody,” Shep said. “Let’s trade places, Axe.”

Axel grinned, took a long swig of his soda. Crushed the can. “Nope.”

He had also gotten three stitches in his head, so he felt a little like Frankenstein’s monster. “Any sign of Tomas?”

“No. But Mitch is on it,” Moose said.

“How’s London? Is she done getting checked out?”

Axel glanced at Moose, a definite I-don’t-want-to-tell-him expression on his face.

“What?” Shep sat up but closed an eye at the pinch in his side. Okay, so no sudden movements.

“She never came to the hospital.”

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