Monkey Wrench

  Lima knocked on the inside of the cab’s rear window. “Tarp,” he yelled, pointing.

  Quack spotted the folded tarp bungee-corded in a ball in the corner of the bed. He ripped it free and draped it over them before he pulled her into his arms, rolling so they were then burritoed inside it.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  Lima took off. She heard sirens approaching in the distance.

  Quack’s breath blew over the top of her scalp as he tried to keep her cushioned with his body against the worst of the impacts from their off-roading until Lima finally got them on the street again.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” Quack murmured. “I’m not letting you go, don’t worry.”

  “But you’re exposed, too.”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. We will be okay.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “We were watching the church’s building and saw you come out. We started to follow you but then we saw Marvin come out and waited to see what he did. We followed him. We didn’t see that guy come up at first because our view was blocked by the trees. Who was he? I didn’t get a good look at him before we blew his head off.”

  “Marco.”

  “The monkey wrench guy?”

  She sniffled. “Yeah.”

  “Okay. It’s all right baby, you’re safe, now. We took care of him.”

  “But—”

  “Shh.” He held her even more tightly against him. “It’s gonna be okay. I’ll make this okay, one way or another, I promise. It’s gonna be okay. I’m going to fix this for you. I’ll make it better. It’s okay.”

  Closing her eyes, she cried, wanting to believe that with all her soul.

  It was all she could hold on to. Otherwise, she’d risk losing her sanity.

  Chapter Thirty

  Stacia didn’t know how much time passed, it could have been a few minutes or an hour, before Lima slowed the truck and made a turn. They stopped and she heard a gate rattling open and knew exactly where they were.

  Back at the compound.

  As someone pulled the gate shut behind them, Lima stopped short of the garage. The engine shut off and she heard the cab door open and shut, then his footsteps as he ran from the truck, calling out to the others.

  She started to sit up but Quack held her firmly against him. “No, baby,” he said. “We need to wait until they’re ready.”

  “Ready?”

  “We’re going to need to do decon in a place that won’t expose anyone else.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “Decontamination. It’s just a precaution. We’re going to be fine. But we have to carefully strip and wash all the blood off us. Then we will go and wait for a few hours, together,” he emphasized. “Just me and you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  There was still a little logical part of her brain tapping on the glass, trying to get her attention and fill in the blanks.

  She ignored it. Right now, all she wanted to do was let Quack take care of her.

  Thinking would mean trying to process the fact that Marvin was gone, and never coming back.

  That he’d died trying to save her.

  After what felt like another forever, but was probably only a few minutes under the stifling tarp, they heard people returning, including the two women.

  And another voice, one she’d heard a few times, but rarely saw the owner. Clear, but heavily accented English.

  Q.

  “Everyone stand back. Anyone who does not need to be here, go inside.”

  She heard a discontent rumbling swirl through the men.

  Then Papa spoke up. “You heard him. Clara, Tango, Uncle. You three stay. Anyone else not on watch or with those names, go inside. Now. That’s an order. You, too, Lima.”

  It sounded like he started to protest, but Papa overruled him. “Now. That’s a direct order. You can come back out once they’re in holding and it’s safe.”

  Finally, the tarp was lifted. She opened her eyes and saw that Q wore a lightweight, full-body protective suit and carried a plastic bag. “I apologize, Ak,” he said, “but you both must strip now.” He held the bag open. “All clothes in here, please.”

  She sat up. So did Quack.

  “Be careful not to get blood on your face when you take your shirt off,” Q cautioned. “Hold your breath.”

  Quack helped her there, grabbing and ripping the neck of her shirt down the front so she could shrug it off her arms and drop it into the bag. When they were both standing naked in the truck bed, she finally glanced around.

  They were at the back of the compound, the high concrete wall shielding them from view of their neighbors. She felt a little self-conscious, but the shock of everything that just happened had numbed most of that.

  When they were naked, her blood-soaked shoes in the bag and Quack’s tactical boots sitting in the back of the truck, Clara, also wearing a protective suit, brought Q another plastic bag that he sealed the first one in. Then she passed him a larger plastic bag.

  “The tarp, please,” Q said to Quack. “Fold it up, blood inside, and put it in here. We will burn that. I will use your clothes for samples for testing and sequencing.”

  Quack did it, and Q sealed that bag inside a second bag, too.

  Clara dropped the tailgate for them and Quack helped Stacia out before he grabbed his boots. “Where,” he asked.

  “This way,” Clara said. “I already put towels and sheets out for you, too. There’s soap, everything. When you’re done, you can sit in the far corner of the garage. I had one of the guys put down a bedroll and some water and snacks.”

  “Thanks,” Quack said. He gently caught Stacia’s arm and guided her along behind Clara.

  Stacia wasn’t so out of it that she didn’t realize Quack was keeping them several steps behind Clara.

  They had a hose ready, and soap. He soaked his boots first, spraying them down with disinfectant that would kill any hint of the virus on them. Then he turned them upside down to dry and hosed himself off before he grabbed the bar of soap.

  “You, first,” he told her.

  “You’ve got it on you, too.”

  “You had more,” he gently said. “I’ll help you scrub down.” He scrubbed every inch of her body with the soap before he dumped shampoo in her hair and held the hose for her while she scrubbed.

  Once she’d been soaped up and rinsed twice more, he did himself, only letting Stacia hold the hose for him.

  After they were cleaned and dried off, Quack wrapped her in a sheet, then himself, and tucked her against his side as they walked over to their waiting place.

  “How long?” she asked as they settled onto the bedroll.

  He looked over at Clara, where she stood about twenty feet away. “Did he get the time it happened?” Quack asked.

  She nodded. “First stick in fifty-nine minutes.”

  “What?” Stacia asked.

  He held her tightly in his arms, snuggling with her. “We have to wait a minimum of two hours from exposure to see if we’re blue.”

  “And then?”

  “Every hour until it’s been ten hours. We go ten hours clear, we’ll be okay.”

  “If we’re not?”

  He kissed the top of her head. “We will be.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her, and she knew it.

  “I’ll be back,” Clara said. “I need to bleach the truck bed out.”

  She left.

  A few minutes later, Papa, Alpha, and Lima appeared, stopping about the same place Clara had stood. “Here, and no closer,” Papa said. “Don’t make me have Doc tranq you, and you know I will.”

  “I won’t,” Lima quietly said.

  Lima looked worried sick. She wanted to pull him into her arms and hold him, comfort him. Maybe Quack sensed that, because he tightened his grip on her.

  “You can’t touch him, baby. Not yet. We can’t get close to any of them.”

  Som
eone brought a bedroll down for Lima, who seemed to check his watch every thirty seconds or more. Alpha sat in a chair nearby, close enough, Stacia guessed, that he could grab Lima if he tried to violate the safety zone.

  Finally, after what felt like forever, Clara returned. “Okay,” she said, pointing. “The strips are there.”

  Papa, Alpha, Doc, Q, Sin, Pandora, and several others joined them in the garage. Actually, it looked like all of them had gathered to watch.

  No one spoke.

  Quack sat up and reached for the container of strips and shook two out. Stacia started to reach for one, but he gently caught her hand.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Just close your eyes, baby.”

  “But—”

  “Please,” he said, his voice sounding close to breaking.

  She tucked her head against his chest and closed her eyes.

  He turned her hand, isolating her thumb, and then she felt the stick.

  After what felt like forever, his relieved breath blew past her ear. “See? Like I said, everything’s okay.” She opened her eyes and saw the strip, the blood sample wicking up from the sharps end through the center of it.

  But other than that thin red line, the strip remained clear.

  She closed her eyes again while he did his, and again his relieved breath signified the good news.

  Lima smiled at them from his place. “See? Easy peasy. Now we just have to keep doing it for eight more hours.”

  She worried about Aunt Darla. She couldn’t just call her and drop the bomb on her that Marvin was gone.

  She looked at Lima. “If I don’t—”

  “Stop,” he gently said. “You guys are fine. This is just a precaution.”

  It took every bit of energy she had to make herself say it. “Promise me you’ll talk to Aunt Darla for me if I can’t. Promise me.”

  He nodded. “But I won’t need to.”

  All she could do was wait and hope he was right.

  * * * *

  Long afternoon shadows fell through the high windows in the garage doors. The afternoon light had taken on the deep golden glow it usually possessed not long before sunset. The afternoon drifted into evening, then night. Quack made her eat and drink. The rest of the time, she spent curled in his arms with her eyes closed.

  Every clear test pulled her dangerously toward hope.

  Hope wasn’t something she could afford any longer. Hope broke her heart.

  When thoughts about what had happened to Marvin’s body tried to come to mind, she shoved them away.

  She wouldn’t be able to have a funeral for him.

  Not that she could have afforded one anyway. The county would pay for a basic charity cremation, returning the cremains in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box, and that was it.

  But Kite patients didn’t get even that luxury.

  As the evening dragged on, it seemed like everyone came down to the garage to watch as Quack made the stick tests.

  Every test, he asked her to close her eyes.

  And every time, that relieved breath he released allowed her heart to start beating again.

  She dozed, off and on. She didn’t want to be awake. She’d rather be asleep, nestled in Quack’s arms. If she was awake she’d have to think about Marvin, and about how that tiny dark voice deep inside her had gone silent in a slightly smug way that made her want to hate herself.

  She was aware of the men talking, off and on, about inconsequential things. Deliberately talking about anything and everything except their situation.

  And then at one point, after another stick and relieved breath, she was suddenly being kissed, hard.

  That woke her up.

  She opened her eyes to find Lima grinning ear to ear and leaning in to kiss her a second time.

  “Let’s go to bed, baby.”

  Lima scooped her into his arms and started toward the stairs leading up to the first floor. She looked to see Quack also grinning, holding his sheet around him as he got up and followed them.

  They also had to pass through a gauntlet of everyone, including the women, patting them on the shoulders as they walked past them.

  He carried her straight to their room, where Quack closed and locked the door behind them once they were inside.

  Lima laid her on the bedrolls and quickly stripped while Quack dropped his sheet.

  She thought maybe they’d want to make love, but they curled their bodies around her and settled in, their arms protectively draped over her.

  Exhausted, and too tired and heartbroken to try to think about anything, she chose the easy oblivion of sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Stacia didn’t know how long she slept, but it was still dark out when she awoke. The urge to use the bathroom overwhelmed her, so she carefully slipped out of the men’s grips and grabbed the sheet Quack had dropped.

  After wrapping it around her, she made her way to the bathroom and picked a stall.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Pandora’s voice called out. “Stace?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got some clothes for you. I’ll leave them on the counter.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  It sounded like her footsteps paused at the door. “I can’t say I know exactly what you went through, but I had a scare with Tango back in Australia. He got exposed, and we had to do the waiting game, too. So if you need to talk…” She let the comment drift off.

  Stacia didn’t want to talk right now. About anything.

  Especially not about Marvin.

  “Thanks.”

  The door opened and swung shut on the sound of Pandora’s fading footsteps.

  Stacia flushed, emerged to wash her hands, and found the clothes, including a nice pair of sneakers, on the counter.

  After washing up, she kept the sheet wrapped around her, grabbed the clothes, and headed back to the room.

  Her men were sitting up in bed, waiting for her.

  She left the clothes on a chair and returned to bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you up,” she said.

  Lima leaned in and kissed her. “It’s okay. You’re always great to wake up to.”

  Before she could think about it, she grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him, hard, crushing her lips onto his.

  He didn’t even hesitate, pulling her down onto the bed with him.

  Quack jumped in, stroking her side, kissing along her back. She grabbed his hand and dragged it around to her chest where she put it over her breast and squeezed, hard.

  He, too, got the idea.

  She wanted something, anything, to take away her ability to think right now.

  She didn’t want to think.

  She didn’t want to cry.

  She didn’t want the image of Marvin dying in her arms in her brain.

  She didn’t want to think about the fear that she and Quack had come damn close to having to end their lives, had they tested blue.

  She didn’t want to think about the fear in Lima’s eyes every time he watched Quack do the stick tests on them.

  The fact that she never would have been able to kiss him again had they tested blue.

  She wanted to rage and scream and yell about how unfair this goddamned Kite virus was, and knew that would only get her arrested if she did it out on the street.

  Instead, she poured her energy into the men, hoping they were as tough and unbreakable as they claimed they were.

  Even better, it seemed they were pretty decent mind readers, because they took over. Lima started to work his way down her body. She sat up, viciously clawing at him to stay there, when Quack cupped his hand around her throat and slammed her back down onto the bedroll.

  Inside her, something felt comforted, relieved, even glad, while her body fought back.

  Quack straddled her chest and grabbed her wrists, pinning them down on either side of her before he leaned in and crushed a bruising kiss of his own over her mouth.

  The harder she struggled, no
t wanting to fight him off as much as she just wanted to fight, the more of his weight he settled onto her body until Lima finally buried his face between her legs and nipped her clit.

  She let out a soft howl that earned her a growl in response from Quack. He finally lifted his mouth from hers. “Fight us all you want, baby. Get that bad energy out of you. We can take anything you throw at us and it won’t scare us off.”

  Part of her wanted to break down in tears.

  The rest of her poured her energy into her struggles, kicking at Lima until he laid his body over one of her legs and grabbed her free ankle with one hand and drew her leg up, bent at the knee so she couldn’t get enough leverage to kick anymore.

  Thus immobilized, Quack kissed her again and Lima started licking and sucking on her clit, nothing tender about his technique, designed to do one thing, and that was herd her straight toward the cliff.

  Still, she struggled, fought, even tried biting Quack’s lip until he transferred both her wrists into his right hand and then reached down and started twisting her right nipple, hard, with his left hand.

  That drove her off the cliff. Her body went rigid as she screamed, the sounds muffled by Quack’s mouth, as her orgasm swept through her.

  Now satisfied they had her attention. Lima released her ankle and shoved two fingers into her cunt, adding a third after he’d loosened her up. He didn’t let up either, changing his technique a little, but now with the added feeling of his hand fucking her hard and fast she soon found herself climbing her way up that cliff again.

  After she orgasmed a second time, Quack lifted his mouth from hers, his gaze boring into hers. “You need a good hard fucking, baby?”

  She nodded.

  In what felt like one smooth movement, the men changed position. Quack grabbed a fistful of her hair, and not a gentle one, either, and sat at the end of the bed with his legs spread. Lima flipped her onto her hands and knees and forced her legs apart with his knees.

  She was trying to get her balance but they were now running the show. Lima swiped the head of his cock through her juices before lining up and spearing her pussy.