Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I didn’t know everything there was to know about hypothermia, but I was pretty sure she was in it.
I had to get to her as quickly as possible, get her warmed up.
For a moment, when I saw her on her knees in the snow, I thought I was too late, that she’d fallen, that she was about to face-plant into the snow, unconscious, possibly in cardiac arrest.
My own damn heart stuttered at the very idea.
But as I ran forward, she didn’t fall. She was just frozen, confused, too cold to think straight.
Her bleeding hands were the least of my worries as I forced her to run with me out of the park and duck into the cab.
I needed to get her out of her wet clothes, to get her under dry blankets, maybe skin-to-skin with me.
But I also needed to get her safe.
If my memory served me, I had roughly an hour and a half to two hours to get her warmed up before mild hypothermia became moderate. And if that happened, she would have to get to a hospital if she was going to survive.
The safe house was thirty minutes away. Twenty-five if the driver was aggressive enough.
I passed him another hundred, telling him there’d be another for him if he got us to the location as quickly as possible.
He pressed down on the gas, wove in and out of traffic, and blew through yellow lights.
All the while, I chafed Steph’s arms and legs, held her body close, kept asking her questions to keep her awake.
She grumbled and whined and even cursed at me at times, but I didn’t care how miserable she was so long as she was awake.
Just when I didn’t think I could wait another second, the taxi whipped into a parking spot out front of the building.
“Thanks, man,” I said, passing him the money, then gathering Stephanie in my arms and sliding out of the cab.
The safe house was located in one of the rougher neighborhoods in Brooklyn, in a nondescript walk-up above a bodega.
None of us had keys.
But much like Ant’s construction company, we all had a fingerprint on file for easy access if we were in a dangerous situation. And of course, we would be if we ended up in a safe house.
I jiggled Steph’s body as I pushed the door open, finding the apartment had the scent of a long-held breath—dust, old fabric, and something damp beneath it, like time itself had been shut in for far too long.
I kicked the door closed behind me and reached toward the thermostat, turning the ancient thing all the way up before walking through the empty space, the old wooden floors groaning under my step, until I was in the bedroom.
The bed was stripped, the surface covered in a dozen old dryer sheets.
I swept as many as I could to the side, setting her on the edge, then stripping her out of my jacket and her gown.
Her slippers went next.
Then her bra and panties.
She was still shivering, but looking at me—conscious, but a bit confused.
I moved away, pulling the airtight bags out of the closet, ripping them open, and tossing the fresh-smelling blankets on the bed.
I lowered her back onto them before stripping down to my boxers and climbing on with her, pulling her body close to mine, then wrapping the blankets around us.
Her body was cool against me, and as the heat grew in the cocoon I created, it felt like a thousand knives stabbing at my cold skin.
It was no wonder Steph wriggled and grumbled in my hold. The sensation must have been amplified a thousand times for her.
“You’re gonna be alright,” I assured her, running my hands up and down her back, glad to find her skin didn’t feel downright frigid anymore.
Warming up was good.
And slowly but surely, the shivering eased, then stopped.
Her heart no longer pounded against her ribcage but went slow and steady, almost in time with mine.
The fucking room was intolerably hot as the heat cranked relentlessly.
Sweat pricked my forehead, my head, my back.
But I refused to move away, wanting to trap as much heat as possible now that she was showing signs of improvement.
Stephanie shifted, grumbling, her fingers moving.
Yeah.
I didn’t forget about her hands.
But I had to focus on priorities. Aside from worrying about when her last tetanus booster was, since no ground in the city was exactly clean, I knew her hands could wait. Her core body temperature could not.
“Still with me?” I asked.
Her head nodded.
“Are you feeling warmer?”
“A little.”
A little?
I felt like I was being roasted over a fucking spit.
But it wasn’t me that mattered.
And she was no longer slurring her words. That was another step forward.
“Talk to me. What are you feeling?”
“Pins and needles.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
“That’s gonna pass. Just focus on me instead. What else?”
“Tired.”
“You can’t sleep. Not yet.”