She looked down at his chest for the first time. There, in the brown leather of his motorcycle jacket, was a perfect hole, right on his shoulder.
"I did shoot you!" she said. She reached out.
He shied away from her touch. "It's a graze."
Narrowly, Harper considered the location of the wound. Yeah, right. "There's no way that's a graze."
Harper kind of felt sorry for him, but he'd had it coming, stealing her Baby. She could hardly believe that she'd actually shot another person-and she really couldn't conceive of how he could have kept coming after she did, much less how he could sit there like nothing had happened. Whatever he said, a .38 had decent stopping power. She examined the bottom edge of his jacket, expecting to see blood flowing down over his pants. But there was nothing.
"I told you, it was a graze."
Harper lunged for the collar of his jacket, and this time, she caught it despite his attempt at a dodge. She pulled the leather open with a single jerk. The heather t-shirt underneath had a matching hole, a blossom of crimson around it, right in the center of his shoulder. That couldn't possibly be a graze, but the blood splotch was far too small for a direct hit. Hell, it was too small even for a graze.
She dragged the collar of the shirt down. There wasn't even a scratch under the smear of blood, just a slight puckered mark, like a very old scar. She prodded the muscle there, and he flinched slightly, making a sharp sound.
"Do you mind?" he snapped. "That hurts."
"There's no entrance wound," she said.
"It still hurts," he said.
"Where's the graze, Levi?" she demanded. "There's nothing here. There's blood, but there's no wound." She looked up into his face.
He seemed to make a decision. "And what if there isn't?"
"Then I'd ask, what the hell are you?" she said.
"And I wouldn't tell you," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because there's no way that you'd believe me."
She snorted. Arguing didn't seem to be worth it. "All right. Fine. Why are you running, then?"
"I have something that somebody wants really bad."
Harper let go of his shirt and sat back. "Hmmm. Twenty questions. Could it be…that you're the real-life Wolverine, complete with insta-healing, and the research lab wants you back?"
That coaxed a grin from him. "Not exactly."
She snorted. "Come on, Wolverine. Out with it. You can at least tell me whether this thing you have is really yours, all legit and everything."
Levi shook his slightly shaggy head. "Fine, then. I stole it. But I wouldn't say that what I stole was legitimately his or anyone else's, either."