Gage had showered and changed.  Bare-chested, he’d carefully bathed Kennedy in Mal’s huge tub, cradling her shocked and shuddering body in his arms like a child as he’d sponged off the dirt and delicately shampooed her hair.  The micropore tape securing the chequerboard of dressings gradually became soggy and limp in the warm, soapy water; detaching from her skin so the pads of wadding peeled off and bobbed around the bath.  The puncture wounds looked surprisingly good considering how much her body had endured in the last few days, the skin around the points of penetration only light pink now rather than deep red, the holes scabbing-over reassuringly.  Her bruises were lightening from purplish-black to yellowish-green, body repairing with encouraging rapidity.

Touching her hair – rubbing the shampoo cautiously into it so as not to disturb the healing wound – reminded him of the night they’d let Joelle home from hospital, and she’d lain in the tub while he’d washed her hair for her, and Ryan had slept soundly on the bathroom floor next to him, swaddled in a blanket his mother had crocheted for her newest grandchild.

Clean for the first time in days, wearing Mal’s bathrobe and wrapped tight in a blanket like a sushi-roll, Kennedy slept long and deep on Mal’s big leather couch, while the two men sat uneasily opposite one another at the dining table.  Eating a hastily assembled meal of cheese, crabsticks, salad, and rice, they drank beer and eyed each other with cautious acceptance.

Mal glanced towards the sleeping woman, “I can see why you think she should be in hospital.”

“Yeah, she’s way too sick to be on the run…but she won’t go back there, and I’m going to jail if I take her back.  She’s made out you’re the Oracle, man.  Get to you, and all our questions are answered.  Is she right?”

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