Page 38 of The Night Of
He grabbed me as soon as he was close enough, steadying me before I fell out of the SUV. I sagged against the wall of the trunk. I was naked from the waist up and bleeding all over my suit pants from the tear in my side. Between that, the gravel still embedded in my hands, the scorch marks and broken glass in my hair, and the slice across my cheek, I looked like an extra from a disaster movie.
Jonathan took the alcohol-soaked bandage from me and peeled it back, exposing the gash. He studied it, frowning. It was filthy. I’d slid hard on the concrete, collecting glass and dirt and gravel. I couldn’t see bone, but I could see muscle and the yellow droplets of adipose tissue. I jerked when Jonathan prodded the wound. Another trickle of blood oozed out. His eyes flicked up to mine, then back down. He poured more alcohol on the bandage. “This will hurt,” he said softly.
“What—”
He pressed the bandage to my side and scrubbed, getting all the detritus out. I grabbed him, dug my fingers into his shoulder. Buried my face in his collarbone and screamed into the meat of his chest. He let me, even tilted his head and brushed his cheek over my filthy hair.
I shook against him after he’d finished his scouring and had pressed a clean, dry bandage over my wound. I closed my eyes, breathing him in, centering myself on his scent, the solidity of his body, the beat of his heart beneath my cheek. His breath tickled the top of my ear.
“I’ve got to get you taped up.” He helped me sit back and had me hold on to the bandage while he taped the corners down like he was a combat medic working in the field. He took the wide elastic wrap out next and wound it around and around my ribs before securing the ends. “You need to rest.”
“I’ll be fine.” Once the pain ebbed, that was. I tried to sit up. The world went thin, smeared to the left. My vision went gray. I slumped, staring at Jonathan.
He grabbed me, and the world snapped back into place. “You need to rest,” he said again, this time more forcefully. “You have to let that at least start to heal.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Then we’re going home.”
“Jonathan—”
“Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. We’re going home, and you’re going to rest. That’s an order.” He stared, challenging me. His storm-ravaged eyes dug into my heart.
I nodded.We’re going home.As if we belonged together, shared the same space, lived inside each other’s lives. My heart skipped a beat.
He tried to smile, but it came out a grimace. He helped me pull my shirt on, then did up the buttons one by one. His fingers lingered over the center of my chest. One traced the hollow of my throat. “Don’t get yourself killed when we just found each other again.”
I took his hand in mine and kissed his fingers. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“I need to get back. If they figure out I sneaked away, all hell will break loose.”
“Did you use the tunnels I showed you?” Before, when we’d been flirting, I’d taken him on a very secret tour of all the hidden spaces of the White House, the tunnels and access points and hidey holes that were forever giving the Secret Service anxiety. If I’d been a braver man, I would have kissed him then, in the darkness with only my flashlight illuminating his features.
“I did. The basement maintenance one.”
My thoughts went to Nguyen, and the hundred plates he was trying to keep spinning. “None of the alarms have sounded. No one knows you’re missing yet. Hurry, and no one ever will.”
Jonathan harrumphed. “I’m not sure how to take that.” A wry smile teased up the corner of his mouth. His eyes traveled down my body. “I’ll be back. I need to cancel the rest of my afternoon. Stay here, and for God’s sake, don’t get yourself hurt again.”
I chuckled. “Yes, Mr. President.”
I watched him walk away, back into the White House through the maintenance passageways FDR and Truman had built into the walls of the Residence and the West Wing. Jonathan would pop out deep in the warren of the national security offices near the basement stairwell of the West Wing, and other than a potential surprised staffer, no one would be the wiser.
There was one thing I needed to do while I waited for Jonathan to return. I locked up the SUV, taking my jacket but leaving my bloody mess all over the seats. I’d clean it later, when I could move again. There was a completely blacked-out SUV waiting at the basement entrance, parked near the elevators where the president usually came out.Thanks, Nguyen.He’d done me—or more likely, Jonathan—a solid. The keys were waiting for me on the dash.
I sat in the driver’s seat and waited. I closed my eyes, counted my heartbeats, tried to focus on the silence of the garage. The hum of the air conditioning condensers in the corner. Tried to force the pain to subside, to stop trying to peel back layers of my eyeballs.
The elevator dinged. I sat up. That was quick. I hadn’t expected Jonathan back so soon.
It wasn’t Jonathan. I frowned. Chief Usher Wayne Muir was heading for his car, carrying a box that looked like he’d packed up his shit and was leaving for good. But that was impossible. Muir was a legend in the building. He could recite the history of the White House in his sleep, call up every obscure fact and piece of trivia there was. He’d been there for five administrations, and he’d shown no sign of slowing down. What the hell was he doing?
I rolled down the blackout window and called to him. “Wayne, what’s up?”
He turned. His eyes widened when he saw me, and he peered at my torn cheek and the soot and blood on my knuckles. “Avery? That you?”
“I skipped the foundation and mascara today.”
“What happened?”
