Pack Dynamics Read Online Free Page B

hospitals. Doc Allen will fix me up … right as rain.” Off her dubious look, he said, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” Possibly, the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth was ruining his attempt at reassurance. “You should’ve seen me … the time I had a … kayaking accident.” The rocky rapids had been just a tad much for him, and that little incident had introduced him to the term “flail chest,” which was exactly as terrible as it sounded, especially with as much water as he’d inhaled before the rapid had spit him out into the calm part of the river. “This … is nothing.”
    “It doesn’t look like nothing. Just what the hell have you gotten us involved in?”
    “Tell you … when we get home …” Not enough air, still. His ears were singing. “Phelps … faster …”
    Janni’s alarmed “Mr. Jarrett?” was the last thing he heard.
    O O O
    Janni hung onto Ben as the limo squealed around the driveway that circled Alex’s Beverly Hills mansion and pulled into an oversized garage attached to the house. The back door popped open, and she found herself confronted by a balding, stocky man in his mid-fifties with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He wore rumpled tan slacks, a wrinkled dark blue polo shirt, and running shoes.
    “I’m Doc Allen,” he grunted, unrolling a portable stretcher onto the floor of the Bentley and tucking his cigarette behind his ear. He made short work of examining both Ben and Alex. “Sorry, miss, but it looks like Jarrett’s worse off; I’m going to have to work on him first. This should tide your fella over …”
    He swabbed the inside of Ben’s arm with alcohol and injected something from a syringe—she didn’t know what—too quickly for her to caution him about Ben’s general reaction to any kind of needle in his vicinity. Ben didn’t even twitch, which attested either to the doctor’s skill or Ben’s deep unconsciousness. Janni was afraid of the answer to that particular question. Wounded like this, he looked even more like a vulnerable puppy than he normally did.
    The door on the opposite side opened, and Alex’s driver pulled Alex onto the stretcher while the doctor gave the billionaire a shot in the exit wound with another hypodermic. They trundled him away, with Doc Allen reeling off instructions.
    Janni emitted an “eep!” noise when someone else stuck his head into the car. This man was in his early sixties, she judged, tall, with a full head of wavy white hair, and dressed in a butler uniform, minus the morning coat and tie, and with his sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms.
    “Hello, Miss Janni,” he said. It figured that Alex Jarrett’s butler would be English. “My name is Chambliss. Shall we get Master Ben inside and cleaned up?”
    They used the blanket as a sling and carried Ben into the opulent mansion filled with marble halls, lush wood paneling, thick carpets in the rooms, and art Janni was sure was original as they passed several living spaces and what looked like a ballroom on their way to an elevator big enough to hold twenty people. “This way, miss—we’ll get you settled in a guest room.”
    “He needs a doctor.”
    “Doctor Allen will be with you as soon as he can. He gave him an injection, did he not?” At her nod, he continued. “Master Alex is at the forefront of nanotech pharmaceuticals. The shot will help your young man start healing immediately. In fact—” The butler hadn’t stopped talking while they’d been in the elevator, which stopped four floors up and opened into a hallway decorated with original bronzes in alcoves and paintings on walls—Remingtons and Russells.
    They entered a bedroom the size of her and Ben’s living and dining rooms combined and deposited Ben gently on a California-king-sized bed, which sported a cheerful yellow floral comforter. Matching curtains decorated a pair of enormous windows, and a couple of Georgia O’Keeffe sunflower paintings hung on the