Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS Read online

  Untethering the man from the sled, she rolled him belly-down onto the blanket. He grunted. Tuff Stuff gave a low woof.

  "I suspect I'm going to hurt him a lot worse than that before I'm done," she muttered, peeling away the gauze bandage from his back and examining the exit wound. "Good thing the bullet went through him, but it made a big hole coming out. It's going to need stitches."

  She poured hydrogen peroxide into the wound and over the needle and thread from her first-aid kit, and lowered the needled toward the gaping hole. "Here's hoping he doesn't wake up in the middle of this."

  His body bucked slightly with the first prick, a guttural sound escaping him. Tuff Stuff licked the man's cheek and temple.

  "Dog, anybody ever tell you you're a sap? That's not going to ease any pain he feels."

  Still, after covering the sutured area in antibacterial ointment and re-bandaging the wound, she ruffled Tuff's ears. The dog brought to her life the unconditional love—the humanity—that had been missing since her mother had died, leaving her to be the woman of the house at the tender age of ten.

  While her intruder was on his stomach, Andi removed the rest of his shirt, replaced the bloody sleeping bag with her older brother's bag and rolled him into it. She took care of the smaller wound made by the bullet entering his body, and removed his boots, socks, and jeans, checking for additional injuries.

  "He's pretty banged up," she murmured, examining numerous scrapes and bruises on his lightly furred legs and arms and a particularly nasty lump on his head. "Not the sort of injuries a guy being beaten up would get. More like what a body would suffer in a fall."

  Or being dumped. A hit?

  "A hit man with lousy aim," she huffed, eyeing the position of the non-deadly bullet wound. "Doesn't add up."

  The scars of old wounds only added to the man's mystery. A slash on the underside of his left forearm suggested a defensive wound from a knife. He was either left-handed or had raised his left arm in protection while his right hand wielded its own weapon. She sat back on her heels and considered what being in a knife fight said about a man.

  And this scar was thick and jagged, the kind some crude, inmate-made shiv might leave. There was that prison link again.

  The scar under his chin could have come from some childhood scrape…or a nasty fistfight. Bar fight?

  The one that bothered her most, though, was the puckered one in his opposite shoulder. This guy had been shot before. Hell, even her brothers hadn't been shot more than once…unless she counted the buckshot she'd dug out of their backsides in their younger years. And getting shot once was enough to end a life. She had firsthand experience with that kind of death.

  She shook off the memory threatening to take hold of her. She had no time to deal with the past, not when she had the present to deal with. And her present involved a shot-up hunk of a stranger she'd brought into her home.

  Tuff Stuff yawned. Andi eyed her intruder from head to toe, judging him to be a good six feet in length. Close to her baby brother's height. She winced.

  "Have I made another mistake, Tuff?"

  The dog stretched out beside the guy, resting her jaw on his hip, and blinked pale eyes up at her.

  Andi sighed. "What's done is done."

  She pushed the man's shaggy hair back from his ears, checking for frostbite, muttering, "He wasn't even wearing a jacket. Pretty lightly dressed for February, even a mild day like today."

  Maybe his wallet was in the missing jacket. That would account for why she hadn't found any form of identification on him. But why remove his jacket?

  She picked up one hand then the other, likewise checking his fingers for frostbite. They were rough, callused. A working man's hands. What did that say about him?

  The swollen, scraped knuckles suggested a fighter. The result of a struggle or anger—passion?

  If the latter, what would those long, sturdy fingers feel like against her skin?

  Andi shook off the thought, sat back on her heels, and scanned the near naked length of her intruder—her rather nicely put together intruder. The only thing between him and total immodesty was a pair of bloodstained, white jockey shorts. No wonder her mind kept wandering into forbidden territory.

  Tuff Stuff let out a breath that sounded like a sigh.

  Andi gave the dog a chastening look. "Yeah, he needs cleaning up. But he needs fluids more. And a good dosing of these," she added, lifting a prescription bottle of antibiotics from the first-aid kit."

  Tuff Stuff lifted her head and gave a low woof.

  "Yeah, they're old," Andi said. "But better any antibiotic in his system than none."

  Andi flipped the sleeping bag over her guest and fetched a glass of water. Shouldering him into a semi-sit, she pressed the rim of the glass to his lips. His lips parted. She tipped a trickle of water into his mouth. He coughed and sputtered.

  "Easy," she murmured at the man whose eyelids fluttered briefly up at her. "Take it slow."

  #

  There she was again, his dark angel, her body a welcoming warmth against the back of his shoulder. Her supporting arm strong across his back while her soft voice urged him to swallow the sweet water trickling over his tongue and down his throat. He'd have liked to open his eyes further, longer, and really look at her. But his body seemed capable of only one action at a time and, right now, instinct told him he needed to drink. So he gave in to the support of her body and the safeness of her arms.

  #

  While her intruder slept on the floor in front of her blazing fireplace, she parked the snowmobile in the garage and stashed the toboggan in the rafters, swept away any sign of the toboggan's skid marks, and, for extra measure, ran her truck back and forth a few times from road to cabin. Someone had shot this guy and they could very well be looking for him. She wasn't about to leave any trail leading them to her front door.

  She made one more sweep around the cabin, satisfying herself she'd closed the curtains tight enough to prevent anyone from seeing inside. Re-entering her cabin, she set the deadbolt and checked on her guest. He was burning up and he'd sweat through Dal's sleeping bag.

  Andi placed a fresh cool compress across his forehead. Tuff Stuff woofed.

  "I know. Cool compresses aren't enough."

  She unzipped the bag and spread it open, letting the cooler air of the room bathe his overheated body. He moaned and flailed his arms. Sweat beaded his upper lip and plastered that trail of dark, blood-crusted hair running down his belly.

  Tuff Stuff sniffed. Andi wrinkled her nose. "Yeah. He's beginning to smell like a day-old kill. I've got an idea how to clean off that blood and bring down his temperature at the same time."

  Filling a kettle with tepid water, a fever remedy she'd learned from the books her father had always made fun of her for reading, she gathered up towels and rags and knelt beside the feverish man. She gave his face and neck a swipe, mostly to wipe away the sweat. Stuffing a couple towels under him, she concentrated on his torso—his core, leaving the room air to cool his limbs.

  She wiped down his chest, rinsed the rag, and spread it over his abdomen to loosen what dried blood his sweat hadn't already turned fetid as well as to cool his skin. Tuff Stuff plopped her behind down opposite her. Andi cut off her hunky stranger's shorts.

  Tuff Stuff cocked her head.

  Andi looked up at the dog. "He's got nothing either of us hasn't seen before."

  Draping his privates in another damp cloth, she turned her attention back to the rag she'd draped over his abdomen. It'd finished loosening the dried blood, and she set about washing his belly and that primal, downward-angled trail of hair.

  Finished with his abdomen, she rinsed the rag, wrung it out, and eyed his covered groin.

  "Next on the hit parade of clean-up…"

  Tuff Stuff got up, circled, and lay down, resting her head on the man's naked hip.

  Andi scowled at the dog. "You're enjoying this way too much."

  She removed the damp rag from his groin, tosse
d it into the pot of water, and went to work washing away what blood gravity had drawn into the lowest creases of his torso.

  "Swell," she muttered, scrubbing the rag into the thick thatch nestling his…

  It bobbed and Andi cursed. "Men! Even half-dead that part of them still works."

  Tuff Stuff woofed as if in agreement, though Andi didn't think the dog sounded as bothered by the fact as she was. At least their guest wasn't as restless as he'd been when she'd unzipped him from the bag. Andi laid the backs of her fingers on his forehead.

  "He doesn't feel as hot," she murmured.

  Shooing Tuff off him, she rolled him over. The biggest hole being the one coming out of him, he'd bled more down his backside.

  "At least we don't have hair to contend with on this side of him," Andi said, wagging her eyebrows at Tuff before catching herself. It shouldn't matter to her whether the guy had an ugly, hairy butt or a nice, firm one…like the one she now washed.

  Why the hell was her mind even going there? She'd sworn off men by the time she hit her mid-twenties, having finally figured out they were all nothing but trouble for her.

  While she had him facedown, she checked his back wound. No more bleeding. But something struck her about the position of the wound.

  Feeling under him, she found the bandaged entry wound. Just as she thought, the exit wound was lower than the entry wound, which meant he'd been shot at a downward angle. How did that happen?

  If he was running from his assailant, the entry wound would have been in his back. If he'd been forced to kneel, a hit man would have gone for his head. What'd he been doing, running uphill toward someone with a gun?

  Or been in close combat with the gun between him and whoever he fought.

  He shivered. She set aside her cleaning tools and retrieved a fresh sleeping bag for him—her baby brother's sleeping bag. A twinge of guilt twisted through her, distracting her momentarily from her current mystery.

  Let it go. It wasn't your fault, the worn phrase chanted between her ears.

  She spread the bag open on the floor next to her gun-shot intruder and rolled him into it. She stuffed a fresh pillow under his head, sat back on her heels, and looked at him. All that she had done for him—all that she was doing, he could still die. And if he did?

  I'm in a world of trouble for sewing up a gun-shot man and hiding him away rather than calling in the authorities.

  But calling in the authorities didn't always work out well. History had proven that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The angle of his gunshot nagged at Andi as she added the bloody rags to the tub of water in the mudroom by the back door where the sleeping bag and blanket from the camp already soaked. Retrieving the stranger's cut-up shirt from the trash, she found the gunshot hole. There it was in the cloth, evidence of what was bothering her about his wound. The burn—the stippling from a close-range shot…a very close-range shot.

  Briefly, she considered if he might have shot himself. But even a moron would know shooting himself in the side was no way to commit suicide. Too strange an angle for an accident, too, given how close the weapon had been discharged.

  Reaching for a reason, she even considered he might have been trying to set up someone else for shooting him. But that didn't make sense. The woods were way too isolated for him to be found easily. Then there was his trudging through the snow to that camp, losing more blood with every step he took. He had to have been shot by someone else.

  And his shooter was close to him when he—or she fired on him. She thought of the fresh scrapes on the swollen knuckles of his right hand. Had the shooter been defending himself? Or had her shot-up hunk been fighting for his life?

  He groaned. She dropped the ruined clothing into a plastic grocery bag, set it by the trash, and turned to the man on her floor. He was growing restless again.

  She strolled over to him, squatted, and felt his forehead. He was hot again.

  "Trouble," she murmured. "That's what you are. Just like all your sex."

  Yet she opened the insulated sleeping bag to cool his body and placed fresh compresses on his pulse points. And so it went the rest of the day and into the night, her mystery man cycling between fevers and chills, while she monitored the small television set on the fireplace mantel for any broadcasts of a prison break or missing man. At midnight, she tucked him into her father's old bag and fell asleep on the couch next to where he lay on the floor.

  #

  There was something warm and heavy on his chest, something that belonged to the toasty body stretched out beside him. His angel?

  He cracked open his eyes and saw…a huge black nose, furry muzzle, and two piercing pale eyes staring back him.

  He yelped and skidded back from the wolfish-looking creature, whatever was wrapped around him wrenching from his shoulders. The wolf popped to its feet, tongue lolling. Levered up on one elbow, he flattened a hand at the animal, commanding, "Get back."

  That's when a woman appeared at his side. "Tuff Stuff's not going to hurt you."

  "Tuff Stuff?" he managed through a raw throat.

  The woman squatted and pressed the backs of her fingers to his forehead. "Yeah. Gave her the name hoping she'd live up to it. She didn't. She's been snuggled up to you like you were her baby these past twenty-four hours."

  He realized he was staring at the wedge of white tee exposed in the V of the red wool shirt opened three buttons down from the woman's throat. He blinked and croaked, "Twenty-four hours?"

  "Looks like your fever finally broke," she said through shapely lips he seemed to remember seeing before.

  He had. They were the same lips, same voice, same dark hair as the angel who'd rescued him, though her hair was now pulled back in a ponytail.

  But he had no memory of the wolfish monster standing beside her side, its huge head cocked at him. "Is that a wolf?"

  "Tuff's mostly malamute," she said, settling back on her heels and hugging her arms around her knees.

  He slumped between his braced elbows and glanced about, not recognizing a thing from what he remembered of the cabin he'd broken into. "Where am I?"

  "My cabin." Expanding as though she'd read his confusion, she said, "I keep an eye on the seasonal camps around here. You broke into one of them and I went to check out the smoke from its chimney. That's how I found you."

  And when will the cops be here? was the next question surfacing in his groggy mind.

  But he remembered something else she'd said, something about the dog watching over him for twenty-four hours. Translation, she hadn't called the cops…yet. Maybe she didn't have a phone.

  He scanned what surfaces he could see from the floor. "You got a phone?"

  "Yeah," she said. "You got somebody to call?"

  So she hadn't called the cops. Why?

  And why couldn't he think of the name of a single person to call?

  He shook his head and was rewarded with a searing pain that made him wince.

  "Easy," his rescuing angel said, cupping his shoulder with a warm hand. He recognized that warmth—that touch from…somewhere during the past twenty-four hours.

  "Maybe you should lie back down before you pass out," she said. "You're looking a little peaked."

  He started to shake his head but caught himself. "Want to sit up."

  "Okay," she said. "Think you could scoot around so your back is against the couch?"

  "Yeah," he said, pushing against the floor and earning a sharp stab of pain in his side.

  She rose and placed a foot to either side of his hips, hooked her hands under his arms, and helped him slide back against the couch. He couldn't have been more than a foot or two from the piece of furniture. Yet he felt as if he'd just crawled a mile through mud.

  "Stay put," she commanded, stepping over him and heading for the far side of the cabin. "I'm going to get you something to drink while you're upright."

  He dropped his head back against the couch cushions and closed his eyes against another round of jarring p
ain.

  "Hey," she said, jolting him back to consciousness. "You okay there?"

  "Yeah. Just tired."

  She held out a glass to him. He reached for it, his hand shaking.

  "I better help you with that," she said, kneeling beside him and lifting the glass to his lips.

  He took a couple sips, then nudged her hand with his, tipping the glass, drinking greedily. The glass half-empty, she ignored his urging and lowered the glass. He gulped air.

  "Catch your breath and you can have the rest," she said.

  He nodded, panting.

  "I'll heat up some broth and get that into you now that you're able to sit up and drink," she added. "You need fluids, given all the blood you lost."

  Blood. Lost. Stabbing pain in his side.

  A fragment of a memory flashed behind his eyes. He'd been shot. But by whom? And why?

  And how was it he felt her hand on his shoulder so clearly. It was as if…

  He shifted, the flannel lining of the sleeping bag sliding across his skin. "Why am I naked?"

  #

  Of all the questions this guy must have, she didn't expect why am I naked to be in his top five.

  "I had to cut most of your clothes off you," she said.

  Confusion creased his brow and crimped the outer edges of his eyes which, now that she was getting a better look, appeared light brown, almost hazel in hue. Heavy-lidded eyes that gave him a look somewhere between puppy dog and sexy-sleepy.

  "They were bloody," she said, shaking off the distraction of his eyes. "Very bloody. And I had to get to those two big holes you had in you to tend them."

  "I was shot twice?" he asked.

  "No. Once, but the bullet went through creating two holes. That was fortunate, as it saved me from having to dig a slug out of you."

  His hand touched the sleeping bag above where his wound was. Because he could feel its pain or…

  "Do you remember getting shot?"

  He shook his head once, winced, and stilled.

  "That's not unusual," she said, silently debating the merits of giving aspirin to a man who'd already lost too much blood, one who might still have some unknown, inner bleeding issue. Then again, he wouldn't be improving if he had ongoing internal bleeding and she continued with, "The human body tends to block out trauma to it. Add in that nasty bump on your head and there's another reason you don't remember getting shot."