Page 69 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Jack twitched in his sleep and turned his face away, but didn’t wake.

“Sorry,” Avery said quietly. He came into the room with a great deal more stealth than someone with a limp and a cane should be able to manage. Soundless as a cat, he crossed the room to stand beside her. He was carrying a small duffle, which he dropped beside Jack’s bed.

“I didn’t mean ...” Casey began, but she interrupted herself with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“C’mon,” Avery said. He held out a hand to help her up. “You should probably be lying down.”

Navigating the hallway on crutches was more difficult now that she was fighting exhaustion. She was grateful for Avery’s presence, shadowing her like a herd dog shepherding its flock.

“I just wanted to make sure he was all right,” she tried to explain. “Not that I didn’t know he was. You said so. But ... I had tosee.”

“It’s all right,” Avery said, steadying her while she put the crutches aside before sitting down on her own bed. “I understand.”

But that was only half of it, the half that was easy to explain. It was much harder to justify, even to herself, the way that shefelther separation from Jack, like a rope stretching and stretching, threatening at every moment to snap ... or to pull her back to him.

“Will you tell him I was there?” she asked, yawning again as she swung her legs up onto the bed, one at a time. “Or, no, don’t. Don’t tell him. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” Avery told her, pulling the blanket up. She was chilled now and shivering. It seemed that only Jack’s room was warm. Or perhaps she could only be warm when she was near him.

“You should go,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. “Go see Jack.”

“I will.”

But he stayed until she fell asleep.

CHAPTER18

Jack woke with a start,Casey’s name on his lips. She’d been there—or had it been a dream? It seemed so real. He could smell her, feel her, could almost taste her on his lips. And then he’d fallen into dreams again, dreams in which she was torn from him by Fallon and lost to him forever—and dreams in which he’d made her cry out in a thousand different ways, won a thousand kinds of pleasure from her glorious body, the body he’d seen on the island but had never been able to touch as lovers did ...

“Nope,” a dry voice said. “I’m not that small and cute. But I have food.”

Jack squinted. The lamp was on beside the bed, and even that dim light seemed a little too bright. Everything ached. He was starving.

“Youmustbe out of it,” Avery’s blurry shape remarked. “I said the word ‘food’ and you’re still lying there.”

“Food,” Jack rasped, running his tongue over dry lips. “Food sounds great.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s the Jack Ross we all know and love.” Avery leaned forward. “I also picked up the stuff you wanted from your place, including your spare glasses. You didn’t mention it—all I remember is you mumbling something about pants—but I figured you’d want those too.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Jack hooked the frames over his ears and blinked at the world. Everything came into focus for the first time in days. He couldseeagain. He’d never really appreciated 20/20 vision to quite this extent before.

“And there are some clothes in here,” Avery added, patting a duffle bag by his leg. “Assuming you’re still planning on making a break for it, which I’d like to go on record,again, as being against.”

“I heal better at home.” Jack reached for the paper bag on the bedside table, which smelled heavenly. “You know that. Unless I’m at death’s door, which I’m not, there’s nothing being in a hospital can do for me, and I can rest better when I’m not surrounded by strangers and getting woke up every hour to make sure I’m still breathing.”

“What you mean is, you like to crawl off into your den and lick your wounds,” Avery remarked. “I have the urge, too. Just as long as you don’t keel over from internal bleeding halfway out the door.”

“Not planning on it.”

“I don’t think most peopleplanon it, Jack.”

Jack opened the bag to find it full of burgers. “Ah, God,” he groaned in ecstasy. “Are these from that place?—”

“The one out in Ballard you like dragging me to? Yeah, that place. If you’re going to keep trying to get killed in the field, I may as well give you coronary heart disease to slow you down.”

Through a mouthful of bacon double cheeseburger, Jack asked, “Was Casey here?”

“I should’ve placed bets on how long it’d take you to ask about herthistime. Yeah, she was, for just a little while. She’s resting now.”

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