She finally understood what Six had been trying to keep from her. It was this. This feeling, the images she would never get out of her head, the way her stomach flipped at the memory of Six and the assailant fighting. She looked down at her hands and saw Six's blood all over them.
"You did what you had to do to stay alive, and there is no crime or shame in that," Cabe added. "Why don't you go into the locker room and get cleaned up? There are towels on the counter, and I left some shorts and a T-shirt in there. I'll tell Six what you're up to. He'll cope a lot better if he knows you aren't losing your shit."
The sound of a groan came from inside the medical room.
Louisa stood. "I should be with him," she said, and headed toward the door, but Cabe stopped her.
"No, you shouldn't. First, you hurled when you saw what was going on. Doctor or no. Second, that isn't a fully equipped med room. We don't have morphine or those kinds of painkillers. Six is probably only just holding his shit together. Third, let Mac do what he needs to."
Cabe moved between her and the door and folded his arms. Like the guardian at the gate, he wasn't going to let her through.
"Fine," she snapped and turned for the locker room. The shower would give her time to pull her own shit together. There were police to talk to, and new plans to make.
But once she came out, she was going to see Six.
And there was no way Cabe was going to stop her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Six looked down at the gauze that covered his side. The bullet had skimmed through his waist, leaving a wound that hurt like a bitch while Mac stitched it, yet the whole time he'd been worried about Lou. He might possibly have the luckiest freaking torso on the planet, surviving two gunshot wounds, and now he'd have matching scars on either side of his body. Only this time, nobody was going to be lining up to give him a medal. But the way Lou had paled as she'd watched Mac poke him broke his heart. He'd seen the color drain from her face. And it was impossible to miss the way she'd started to sway on her feet. He'd almost been relieved when she'd run out of the room. When he'd told her there where things she'd never be able to unsee, he hadn't imagined she'd be faced with the sight of him banged up on a table. Now, every time she looked at the scar, she'd be reminded of this time in her life.
Cabe had jogged out after her, and Six had wanted to know how she was. But nobody had passed him word. At least not immediately.
He looked across the room now to where Louisa was curled up on the bottom bunk in a pair of shorts that were so long on her that they looked like capris and a T-shirt so large that the neckhole kept slipping off her shoulder. As always, she let go in sleep, and he wondered if she realized just how different her energy was when she was like this.
When Cabe had eventually told him that she'd been sick in the gym, he'd felt like shit that they'd left her that exposed. Their team was still small, with other jobs on the go, and there hadn't been enough men to put an extra patrol on their house that night. Overly confident that there was no way of tracing Lou back to his house and that the key players were locked up, they'd made a bad call. Now all that mattered was figuring out just how the assailants had found her, and later, as a company, they'd have to talk about how to expand or they'd never be able to manage multiple jobs at any one time.
In the meantime, he was going to have to deal with the guilt he felt at letting her down. Had he not been naked with her in her bed, but in his own room across the hall, closer to the garage, maybe he would have heard them sooner. Every time Cabe had said she was a distraction, he'd been right. He should have kept her at arm's distance and waited until it was all over, but his dick, which had nearly been blown off by his own shortcomings, had been doing the thinking for him.
Not that he could go back at this point. His heart hurt at even the thought of it. The thought of leaving her in somebody else's care stung worse than the bullet hole in his side. But in the morning, he was going to find somewhere safe for them to stay while they figured out what to do. If he had to fly her somewhere, he'd do it. Call in a favor with one of his buddies who had their own planes and get her somewhere without any kind of paper trail.
He was embarrassed that he'd let it come to this. He was better than this. More capable. And yet he'd messed up. The sensation didn't sit well.
"She doing okay?" Cabe asked quietly as he walked into the room.
Six drew his eyes from her sleeping form. "Yeah. She's strong," he said, attempting to keep the admiration out of his tone. They'd spent hours dealing with the police, the FBI, and updating their CIA contact. He'd been completely truthful with Officer Meeks and with Detective Pitt who'd been assigned to the case about what had gone down at his house. He'd told Pitt how Louisa had hired his company to figure out what the hell was going on.