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it's still in you."
        That news deflated him. "Why?"
        She adjusted her glasses. "Ricin doesn't dissipate. It's absorbed into your system and becomes a part of you, which makes it even more dangerous than other chemical warfare agents. Others wash through your system. If you don't receive a lethal dose, you eventually recover."
        He swallowed. Even that hurt. "Will I?"
        "Oh, you'll recover. But you will always have three hundred micrograms of Ricin in your system. If you so much as get pricked by a needle with Ricin on the end, it could kill you."
        He choked back the dark horror consuming his heart and bared his teeth. How goddamn unfair. He survived being shot all so he could then live in fear of the next act of bioterrorism.
        "Tell me, would I have made it if you hadn't done whatever treatment you did?"
        She lowered her glasses to the end of her nose and locked her gaze with his. He felt the heat from her breath tickle his cheek. It smelled of rich coffee and peppermint breath mints. If he turned his head just right, maybe adjusted his chin, he could just reach her lips. He tried to move, felt a surge of pain and gave in to defeat.
        "Sugar treatment. Active charcoal. The norm. It absorbs the Ricin, but doesn't remove it. Without the treatment, the Ricin would have killed you in a matter of days. That's why we had you in ICU for so long. We had to be certain the treatments worked."
        She pushed her glasses back up and went about redressing his wound. After she'd finished, she paused and looked at him. "You really are lucky to be alive. The bullet entered under your right shoulder blade at just the precise angle needed to hit your collarbone and ricochet back onto your shoulder blade, shattering it before going after some of your organs. Luckily it wasn't after your heart. Another inch to the left and we wouldn't be having this conversation."
        David swallowed. He knew the hazards of the job. Didn't mean he had to like them. "Holy hell. You paint a," he stated and swallowed again, "very vivid picture."
        She smiled then. The darkness of the room disappeared, replaced by a glow that seemed to center around her.
        Just what kind of drugs did they have him on?
        
Chapter 4
        
        "What I can't understand," McKoy started and shook her finger at the air as she paced back and forth. "And believe me, I've tried to figure this out since first meeting you." She stopped and turned to him. "How did you get shot?"
        He threw a look at Weber, wondering if the question sounded as crazy to him as it did to David. "Come again?"
        "What I mean is, the angle of the wound doesn't make any sense. It's almost as if-" She stopped herself with a slight giggle and adjusted her glasses. The noise landed in his chest and he caught what little breath he had in his lungs. "Never mind."
        She had his full attention. "As if what?"
        Licking her lower lip before pulling it between her teeth and pulling a groan out of him as he watched her every move, she shook her head. "It's like you would've had to have been flying through the air in order to have the bullet enter at that angle. Like you flew into the path at that precise moment." She laughed, and it, too, landed in his chest with amazing force. "As good as you NASSD agents are I'm sure flying is not one of your many talents."
        He really did fly. He jumped in front of that bullet milliseconds before it would have taken Weber down. And if his memory served, and to date it has never failed him, his shoulder had been centered directly in front of Weber's chest when the bullet slammed into him.
        Holy shit. If David hadn't jumped in front of him when he did, Weber would have been killed. Dead. As in hasta-la-bye bye. He looked over to Weber. No words were needed. He'd come to the same conclusion.
        "Some shrapnel couldn't be removed," she continued,