An Outlaw in Wonderland by Lori Austin

hers.
     “Neither of you can go on like this.”
    Ethan was so tired and scared and lost, he just blinked.
    “The bullet’s in too deep,” she continued. “Who knows where it’s lodged. If he hasn’t
     died with it in there so far, maybe he won’t.”
    Ethan knew better. “The body rejects foreign objects with suppuration. Infection.”
     Which was often more deadly than the injury itself. Certainly he’d done his best to
     disinfect everything, but here his best was rarely good enough.
    Ethan returned to work with a renewed fervor. He
had
to get the bullet out.
    Minutes, hours, years later, Ethan found what he was searching for. He drew the obscenity
     from his brother’s head and threw it across the room.
    “Enough.” Annabeth removed the scalpel from his hand, which ached almost as much as
     his eyes.
    Mikey’s face was unrecognizable due to the swelling and the wash of blood. Head wounds
     bled fiercely. Digging into them only made them bleed more so. Mikey was ice white,
     his hand, when Ethan touched it, too cool.
    Annabeth held a needle and thread, which was all they had in this hellish place to
     close a wound. As she made tight, tiny stitches in the raw flesh of his brother’s
     forehead, Ethan stood there, feeling helpless again.
    “He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said. “His respiration has increased from far too
     slow to far too fast.”
    Head injuries led to slower breathing. Excessive loss of blood produced something
     akin to a pant. Right now, Mikey’s large chest pumped like a stray dog that had run
     after a rabbit in July.
    “You did all you could,” she murmured. “Let him rest.”
    Ethan wasn’t sure if Annabeth meant
rest
in the sense of eternal, or just for the night. Either way, she was right. Ethan
     had done all he could for the moment. He could barely stay on his feet; his fingers
     had cramped from holding the scalpel for so long; his eyes burned; his head ached.
    “
You
should rest.” Finished with her stitching, Annabeth pushed him toward the storeroom
     where he spent his nights. That small room was the one privilege he’d been given for
     all his hard work.
    “I need . . .” His words drifted off. Ethan stared at his bloody hands, not quite
     sure what to do about them.
    “I’ll finish in here.” She pushed him again. “You wash in there.” He walked in the
     direction she’d urged him. “I may be gone when you come back.”
    Ethan turned. “What?”
    “It’s past the time when they usually put me out.”
    Every night before sundown, the guards escorted Annabeth to the women’s section of
     the prison. Every morning at sunrise, they escorted her back to his. He still wasn’t
     sure why.
    “What time is it?” he asked.
    “Nine? Ten?”
    He should have known that by the flicker of the lanterns. Someone had lit them; it
     hadn’t been him.
    She spread hands as bloody as his. “Either they forgot, or they’re being reprimanded.”
    Ethan laughed—just once, which was all he could manage. “For what?” She glanced at
     Mikey, whose only movement continued to be his puppylike panting. “This is Castle
     Thunder, Beth. One less Yankee prisoner is a good day.”
    She flinched. “I’m sorry.”
    “What do you have to be sorry about?”
    She moved to Mikey’s side. “They’re Confederates. Like me.”
    Ethan thought of all
he
had to be sorry about. When he’d been shoved into Palmer’s Factory, he’d thought
     he would never see her again, and that had bothered him almost as much as being here.
    Ethan’s chest went tight. Words of love trembled on the tip of his tongue. He almost
     allowed them to tumble free.
    But not here.
    His gaze went to his brother and stuck there.
    Not now.

C HAPTER 7
    F or an instant, Annabeth thought Ethan might take her in his arms at last. Then he
     turned away and disappeared into the storeroom where he slept.
    A foolish longing. He was a spy; she was a liar. That didn’t mean she loved him any
     less. That