Page 121 of Tell Me Why
She scrunched her face again, then looked at her arms, flexing her fingers, feeling the tendons slide in her wrists, the backs of her arms going tight as she made fists.
She hadn’t taken an anatomy class. Her father had wanted her to, but she’d been a bit squeamish at the idea, and her class load was where she wanted it to be, at the time. She had some background knowledge from working on Tell, ideas of what the pictures looked like, what she’d been able to make out in the scans, but she felt, now, that being able to go through, muscle by muscle, tendon by tendon, she could have worked it out.
That would have been the best way.
Instead, she made it up as she went, starting at the wrist on her right hand and working up her arm, through her shoulder, her neck, across and down the other arm.
Her feet were still foreign.
Tell was patient.
She started at the right wrist again, flexing through her back, now, and around to her abs, testing at the incision there, the organs both inside her ribcage and without. There were gaps, unexpected voids that should have been supporting muscle, and there were… things she couldn’t figure out just by touch, by squeeze. That was all she had was squeeze and pull, but slowly things slid, gumming up behind her as she worked, such that by the time she had her ankles worked loose, her wrist felt distant again, but the second sweep went faster than the first.
Unfortunately, it also exhausted her, and the pain from open surgery that she’d been successfully ignoring for… who even knew how long at this point… became much more intense and personal.
“What is it?” Tell asked as she looked at her stomach, a bit astounded at howmuchthat hurt.
“Ouch,” she answered, and his eyebrows went up.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I’d assumed that your nervous system was out of commission, for as little as you’d been reacting.”
“Ouch,” Tina said.
“Let’s get you moving,” Tell said. “This is probably a very good sign, but… you need bloodnow.”
She nodded.
It hadn’t occurred to her until that instant, but she was ravenous. Ravenous enough to try to bite her own arm, or Tell. She blinked at him, and he gave her an odd, amused look, then laughed.
“You bite me, I will fold you in half and put you in the trunk,” he said.
She nodded.
“Good point,” she said, letting him help her up the stairs and out to the driveway.
Tell’s sexy little sports car was sitting there, and Tina smiled at it, like looking at a happy picture of someone else’s life.
“Ginger had someone bring it over,” he said. “Not going to be the gentlest ride, though.”
“Don’t care,” Tina breathed, and he nodded.
“All right.”
He went to get the door for her, leaving her standing on her own while he did it, then lowered her down into it.
She looked over as he got into the driver’s seat.
“You got away,” she said, and he nodded.
“I did.”
“What then?”
“I went back to Isabella and Daryll,” he said, putting the car into reverse and turning in his seat to back down the long driveway. “I told them that I’d find all of them, but only if Keon went after Silix first, the man running the place in Texas…” He looked at her briefly, then put the car into drive and sat forward. “You were in Texas, for the record. Keon launched his attackthere first so that I could get you out without anyone raising an alarm that we were coming.”
“You got them all?” Tina asked, and Tell nodded.
“Yeah. Isabella pulled a very clever move and tricked Daryll into giving me the list of all of the men he was competing with. He hadn’t even givenherthat list, but from there it was just… legwork. So to speak.”
