To the Xtreme (Xtreme Ops #2) - Em Petrova Page 0,2
of the fallen branches.
“What are you doing?” Lipton couldn’t contain his annoyance, and it seeped into his tone.
She shot him a sympathetic look, ticking him off more. “I’m going to make you a crutch. We need to get you to the closest path for the ATV to pick you up and take you to the hospital.”
“My ankle is not broken!”
She went back to stripping the pine branch. “Uh-huh.”
“I’ll show you.” With a determined grunt, he launched to his feet once more. This time he placed his foot flat on the ground and it held his weight. At least until he took a step.
He landed on his ass, seated beside Moon Shadow. She trapped her lower lip in her teeth to hide her smile.
Lipton stared up at the snapped top of the trees, his mind locking in on the situation with the speed of a sniper bullet.
Dammit, he broke his ankle like some frail weakling trekking up a hill he wouldn’t even call steep. And he was at the mercy of a woman calling herself Moon Shadow who was deftly crafting him a crutch from a pine branch…and who wore slim gold hoops in her cute earlobes that he couldn’t quit staring at.
And now he had to figure out how and why the fuck someone had loaded this group of trees, on a hill in a national park, with C-4.
Chapter One
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” Harris Lipton bit each word off between clenched teeth as the doctor finished applying a cast to his ankle.
In the corner of the hospital room, the captain of Xtreme Ops gave him a stoic look, but he saw the amusement in Penn’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if it was you,” Lipton snapped.
“Am I laughing? We’re down a man.”
Lipton bit off another growl that had the female nurse glancing up with worry pinching her brows. Suddenly, he felt like an ass for being a surly grizzly bear of a patient. “Sorry,” he said to her.
She turned her attention back to the cast. “I like your choice of black for the cast.”
In the corner, Penn hid his chuckle behind his hand.
God, could this get any worse? He wasn’t six. He was a grown-ass man, a special operative, and now he’d be laid up for weeks due to his stupid mistake of slipping on that mountainside.
Of course, he had good reason to hit the deck.
Like a treetop loaded with C-4.
The guys were out there right now in Denali National Park investigating, and he couldn’t be there with them. It rankled and irritated him more than he could let on in the confines of a hospital, at least not without getting arrested.
The doctor applied some cotton around his calf and his toes to provide comfort. As if he could ever be comfortable in this fucking thing or sitting around on his ass while his team was out battling threats on the Alaskan landscape.
“When can I walk?”
The doctor glanced up at him but quickly dropped her gaze to his leg again. Was he imagining things or was she blushing? He glanced over at Penn, who had to leave the cubicle, probably to laugh his ass off.
“Well, since the fracture is on the minor side, I would say you can apply weight to it sooner than the six weeks we normally recommend. I’d say three is the minimum rest time before you bear weight.”
Three. Fucking. Weeks. No—just no.
He swiped his fingers through his hair, and both the doctor and nurse looked up to watch him. Then they quickly glanced down at his leg again.
“I can’t be off my leg.”
“If you want it to heal properly, you will. And I’m sure in your line of work, it’s more important to have your body in working order.”
“I’ll make sure he stays off it.” Penn had entered the space partitioned off by curtains and stood a few paces from the hospital bed. The nurse glanced at him, Lipton, and turned their attention back to his cast.
The doctor finished wrapping the material that would harden and stepped back from the bed. “Jill will finish by giving you instructions. Good luck, and if you have any problems, call the hospital or come in.”
A low noise similar to a growl emitted from him. How had shit gone so sideways? He was as sure-footed as a fucking mountain goat. Yet when he heard that crack overhead, he’d moved fast and next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground staring up into a pair of deep green eyes flecked