Page 74 of Red Boar's Baby

“Yes, I’d say two or three hours ago, maybe.” She pulled down the loose neck of her coat, similar to how he’d done, to display her shoulder. “They stuck me here. For a while, I couldn’t move my arm.”

There was an angry red circle showing up in a bullseye pattern around a bright, bloody pinprick. Costa touched it cautiously and felt a large welt surrounding the injection site. Diana hissed in pain and he pulled his hand away quickly.

“My head really hurts. It came on suddenly around the time Farley fainted.” She rubbed her temple with her hand. “I can’t believe the SCB’s here. How did they find us?”

“Caine can explain.” Costa put an arm around her, and she slumped on him. “Come on, let’s get you out.”

Farley made a sudden, choking sound, and his entire body jerked. Caine knelt beside him and matter-of-factly felt his pulse. “Going like a freight train.” He looked up at Costa. “We need to get both of them to medical care.”

“You’re telling me! We need to find—” Costa broke off. Feeling Diana shivering against him, overwhelmingly struck by the urgency of the situation, he turned a steady stare on Caine. “Can you take us to the SCB labs? Will you?”

“What am I now, Uber?” Caine sighed, but he rose in a single swift motion, took a few quick steps to the table with the bundled-up lab coat, and deposited the clanking bundle on the floor beside Farley. “Get her over here. It’ll need to be dark.”

Costa lowered Diana gently to sit beside Farley on the floor, then went looking for a light switch. When he found the right one, the room was plunged into near total darkness. Costa stumbled into a table and barked his bare shin. “Ow!”

“Bet you wish you’d taken me up on the offer of finding you some pants, huh?” Caine’s amused voice came out of the dark. “Get over here.”

“I’m trying,” Costa grumbled.

A sudden light speared the dark: Caine using the flashlight on his phone. “Nowcan you get over here?”

Caine crossed the room through the dancing shadows and knelt beside them. He put one arm around Diana and a hand on Caine’s shoulder. Before Caine turned off his phone and darkness swallowed them again, he saw that Caine had one hand on Farley’s jerking chest.

Then there was nothing but dark. Costa felt Diana turn her face against his shoulder, and whispered into her hair, “Hold your breath.”

He felt her inhale and did the same, just before the chill dark of Caine’s particular form of transportation closed around them. The only thing that seemed real in the endless, cold emptiness was Diana, shivering as she leaned into him with a trust he wasn’t sure if even she was aware of.

CHAPTER24

Diana felt wretched,so much so that she barely registered the discomfort of another brief trip through wherever Caine went when he transported people. She raised her head as there was a sudden clatter, and she became aware of a much less profound darkness around them.

“Where are we?” Costa asked out of the dark. Diana reached back and felt a wall behind her.

“Employee bathroom in the residential wing of the SCB headquarters,” Caine said, sounding hoarse. “I’m not used to moving this many people around. Tight fit. Just a minute.”

The lights came on an instant later. They were, indeed, on the bathroom floor. Diana was abruptly aware of her nearly naked state and also that her toes felt halfway to frozen.

“Caine,” Costa said, rubbing his bare legs, “please remind me next time that you are correct. I should have put on pants.”

“Yes, you should have,” Caine said. His face looked pale and pinched. “And remind me next time not to transport this many unfamiliar people this far. We’re gonna need a gurney for this guy, unless you want to carry him.”

“I’ll get Mavis down here,” Costa said. He squeezed Diana’s shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yes,” she told him. “Go, go.”

Costa departed, leaving the bathroom door open. Diana checked on Farley. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and he felt slightly feverish to the touch. She felt as if she was running a fever herself, too hot and too cold at once.

“Agent Caine, do you have any medical training?”

“None whatsoever,” Caine said. “Nor do I want to. My skills lie in a different area.” He put a hand lightly on her shoulder, a respectfully restrained pressure. “There is a small lounge area with some chairs if you’d like to sit somewhere other than the bathroom floor. I’m going back to the fight in a minute, as soon as my head stops exploding.”

Caine helped Diana out into the hall with a light hand under her elbow. She looked at him thoughtfully, pushing past her own weakness and illness to see that he did look shaky and unwell. “Does it always do that to you?” she asked, as he helped her sit down on one of a pair of padded chairs at the end of the short hallway.

For a minute she didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he sat down beside her. “Not for short hops to familiar places. Transporting more than one person is hard. Long distances too.”

Diana laced her fingers together over her bare knees and looked at him sideways. He had his sunglasses over his eyes again, so it was harder to make out his expression. “Can I ask what it is that you do when you—do what you just did?”

He looked faintly amused. “You can ask.”

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