“I barely touched her. The material is stuck to her arm with dried blood.”
“We need to call an ambulance,” Aleki insisted.
“It would seem to be the smart thing to do,” Wolfe added, his voice disinterested.
“Shit. Fuck,” Caleb swore. Things weren’t good if Caleb was unsure of what to do.
“Caleb?” she whispered.
“What is it, jelly bean? Can you tell us what happened?”
She moaned as someone examined her foot.
“Ow. Ow.”
The hand was immediately pulled away. But her ankle still throbbed mercilessly. Damn it. The numbness was preferable to this.
“Wolfe, aim the light down here. Fuck, she’s only got one shoe on. And her foot . . . damn it, it looks like it’s four times its usual size,” Aleki said.
“Fell. Twisted it.” She laughed. It sounded crazy even to her ears. “How did I get to this point? I’m sore. I smell. And I’m sitting in a puddle of dirty water.”
“Pretty sure this isn’t water,” Wolfe drawled.
“What?”
“Wolfe,” Caleb said warningly.
“What? It smells like piss. Might be hers. Maybe she peed herself. We don’t know how long she’s been sitting here.”
“Great. That’s just great. Can things get any worse?”
Aleki was about to lose it. He’d always been slow to anger. But once he lost his temper, then it was hard to rein himself back in.
And right now, he needed to let loose the fury riding him before he did something he might regret.
He couldn’t look at her. Genevieve. His Vivi. Sitting in a puddle of piss, only half-conscious, mumbling things that didn’t make sense, filthy and injured. He turned to the dumpster, and pulling back his fist, punched the metal as hard as he could with a roar of pain.
Vivi let out a startled scream. Then she started to cry.
“Jesus, fuck, man, what the fuck are you doing?” Caleb snapped.
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Fuck. Fuck.
He leaned his good hand on the dumpster then bent over, taking in deep heaving breaths. His hand hurt like a motherfucker. Christ, he hoped he hadn’t broken anything.
But at least the pain was helping clear the fury from his head. Making it easier to think.
“If you’ve fucking broken your hand, I will break you,” Caleb snarled.
“Sorry. Sorry. It’s just . . . fuck, look at her. This is Vivi.”
“Are you upset because she’s injured? Or because she’s sitting in a pool of filth in a dark alleyway?” Wolfe asked curiously.
“Both, motherfucker. All of it. I’m fucking mad that she’s been sitting here for God knows how long while I made us wait for days before coming here. We could have come looking for her last night, but I wanted to go to a hotel to sleep. I’ve gone without sleep for days! I didn’t need fucking sleep.”
“I get that you feel guilty, but you don’t get the right to that emotion,” Caleb snapped.