Up Close and Dangerous Read online

  With everything she needed laid out on one of the trash bags, she was about to wake Justice when she realized that he probably had mouthwash, too. Going to his bag, she unzipped it and found his shaving kit stuffed on top of, as she had expected, a single change of clothing and underwear. The kit had two zippers; the one on the left opened to reveal a hairbrush, a travel-size bottle of shampoo, and about a dozen condoms. Men. The right side held a toothbrush, a tiny tube of toothpaste, a disposable razor, and a travel-size bottle of mouthwash.

  “Damn it,” she said, sighing. He’d already used the mouthwash at least once; about half of it was gone, and there hadn’t been much to start with. Half an ounce wasn’t going to make any real difference, so she left the little bottle in place, zipped up the shaving kit, and replaced it in his bag.

  She’d have to do the job with what she had. She just hoped what she had was sufficient to keep him from developing a raging infection.

  First, though, she needed to get some sugar into his system, and then, well, a couple of preemptive painkillers were probably called for.

  Carefully she removed the shirt that covered his face; even though she knew what he looked like, she almost flinched when confronted by the reality. His entire face was covered with dried blood, caked in his eyes, his ears, his nostrils, the corners of his mouth. Even worse, his forehead was swelling, pulling the edges of the cut wide. She hadn’t anticipated the swelling, and winced at the idea of stitching him now. The swelling would probably get worse, though, so waiting wasn’t an option either.

  “Justice,” she said, reaching under the layers of clothes to touch him. “Wake up. It’s showtime.”

  He inhaled, a quick, deep breath. “I’m awake.”

  His voice was stronger, so maybe she’d made the right choice to get him warm before she tried to do something about that cut.

  “I have a candy bar here. I want you to eat a couple of bites, okay? In a little while, if we’re lucky, we’ll each be able to have a swallow or two of water. Then I want you to take two ibuprofen. Can you swallow them without water? If you can’t, I’ll put some snow in your mouth, but we can’t eat much snow because it’ll lower our body temps. Uh, on second thought, maybe you should take the ibuprofen first, let it get started working.”

  “I’ll try.”

  She opened the sealed square containing two generic ibuprofen tablets, and slipped one between his lips. She saw his jaw working a little as he maneuvered the pill around, worked up some saliva, and swallowed. She gave him the other pill; he repeated the process, then said, “Mission accomplished.”

  “Good. Now for the food.” Tearing open the candy bar wrapper, she pinched off a small piece of the Snickers bar and held it to his lips. Obediently he took it in his mouth and began to chew.

  “Snickers,” he said, identifying the taste.

  “You got it. Normally I take my chocolate straight, but I thought the peanuts were a good idea, for the protein, so I brought Snickers. Smart, don’t you think?”

  “Works for me.”

  She waited a minute, to see if the chocolate made him sick. She was on unfamiliar ground here, so she didn’t know if he was likely to start vomiting or not. She did know that, after donating blood at the Red Cross, the donors were given something to drink to help replace their lost liquid, and some crackers or cookies to stave off shock. With the Snickers, she figured she had half of the bases covered.

  After a few minutes she gave him another bite of candy. “I wish I had something to numb your scalp and forehead,” she murmured. “Even teething gel for babies would be better than nothing, but the first-aid kit doesn’t seem to be geared toward babies.”

  He chewed, swallowed, and said, “Ice.”

  The first-aid kit did have one of those instant ice packs, but she was hesitant to use it. “I don’t know. If you weren’t already a little shocky, if the cold wasn’t already a problem, I wouldn’t worry. But an ice pack on your head will cool you all over, and I don’t want to do that.” She chewed on her lip a moment, thinking. “On the other hand, pain causes a shock to the system, too. If the effect’s going to be the same, why make you go through the pain?”

  “I vote for less pain.”

  She got the ice pack from the kit, read the directions, and began kneading the plastic tube. The pack wasn’t large enough to cover the entire cut, but if she positioned it just right she could get it over most of the swelling, and over the scalp where the laceration was deepest. When the pack was so cold she could barely stand to hold it, she cut some gauze from the roll and covered the cut with a single layer, then gently placed the ice pack on top of the gauze.

  He sucked in his breath at the cold. She imagined it made his head hurt like blue blazes, but he didn’t complain.

  “While that’s doing its thing, I’m going to clean some of this dried blood off you. Bet you’d like to open your eyes, huh?”

  She kept up a running commentary as she opened a pack of her premoistened, aloe-treated wipes, extracted one, and set to work around his eyes. Dried blood, she discovered, wasn’t easy to remove. A washcloth, with its rougher surface, would have worked better. Blood was caked in his eyebrows and eyelashes, two areas where she couldn’t scrub; she didn’t want to cause the cut to begin bleeding again so she had to be gentle around his eyebrows, and she couldn’t scrub around his eyes even if he hadn’t been cut. So she swabbed away, and when the towelette was completely red, she put it aside and got a fresh wipe.

  When she glanced back at him, the new wipe in her hand, his eyes were slitted open and he was watching her. The pale bluish-gray color of his irises was startling in contrast with the darkness of his lashes.

  “Well, hello. Long time no see,” she said.

  Another of those faint smiles quirked his mouth. Slowly, as if moving his eyes hurt, he looked around as much as he could while lying flat on his back and not moving his head at all. When he looked past her and saw the mangled plane, his eyes widened a little and he said, “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She definitely agreed with the sentiment. The fact that they were alive and all in one piece, though not completely without damage, was a bit startling when compared to the structural hit the plane had taken. She handled the shock by not looking at the big picture, instead focusing on the details of survival and the tasks ahead of her. Details, by definition, were little things. She could handle the little things, one by one.

  Gradually she worked her way down his face, behind and in his ears, down his neck, over his shoulders and chest. Even his arms and hands were bloody. She kept him covered as much as possible, uncovering one section at a time and re-covering it as soon as she had it clean. His pants were bloody, too, but they could wait until he could manage for himself, she thought. The first layer of clothes she’d laid over him were already stained; the blood had dried, and there was nothing she could do about that. She did need to get his feet clean and in dry socks, though, to ward off frostbite.

  Moving down to the bottom of the heap, she folded the clothes back, worked his bloody shoes and socks off, and as quickly as possible cleaned and dried his feet. Cleansed of the rusty stains, they were white with cold. Bracing herself against the shock, she raised the hems of her multiple shirts and shifted forward so his feet were against her stomach. They were so cold she shuddered at the contact but didn’t jerk away. She began chafing his toes through the layers of cloth. “Can you feel this?”

  “Oh, yeah.” There was a deep note in his voice, a sort of subtle purr; he sounded like a tiger getting a massage.

  It took her a second, but then she realized his cold toes were tucked against her breasts—her bare breasts. There was no help for it because his feet were big, probably size elevens or even larger, and she couldn’t make her torso any longer, so, logically, his toes were going to be on her breasts. She swatted his leg. “Behave,” she said sharply, “or I’ll let you get frostbite.”

  “You aren’t wearing a bra,” he said, instead of responding