A/N I do not own these characters. I am simply borrowing them for my own amusement, and hopefully that of my readers. I mean no harm and am gaining no profit from the use of these characters so please, please don't take me to court! Thanks Ya'll...

Chapter 2

He was still unconscious Natalie noted as she approached the wounded man. He had not moved from the spot he had collapsed on. More worried then she cared to admit she quickly set all her supplies down and peered into his face. He was an attractive man, gorgeous really. His hair was longer then she normally liked, down to his shoulders, and his face was battered and bruised, like some one had worked him over good. But the strong lines of his jaw was clearly evident, even through the shaggy goatee he wore.

His heavy clothes and jacked covered his body fairly well but she suspected under all that cover he was very muscular. She sighed and knelt down next to the bed. "Mister?" she questioned, testing to see if he was awake. He remained silent and she bit back another frustrated sigh. "Guess I'll just have to do this the hard way." Standing back up she reached down and took the arm of his jacket. After somewhat of a struggle she managed to get it off of him along with his button down the front sweater, both were soaked with blood. Once she got him down to his muscle shirt style tank she shook her head. No way was she going to get that up and over his head.

Sighing yet again she took the sheers and cut the bloody fabric away from his wound. It was indeed a bullet hole. She struggled to roll his heavy bulk over slightly to see if there was an exit wound and she saw that there was not. "Damn it!" she groused and rolled him back over. The man moaned in pain and she immediately gentled her hands. "Sorry," she got out before realizing that he probably couldn't hear her.

She moved back to her supplies and grabbed the alcohol and the sheers. She poured some of the alcohol in a glass and put the scissors in it. Then taking the bottle of alcohol she dumped a liberal amount over the wound.

"JESUS CHRIST!" John exclaimed, coming awake as the liquid burned his side. He was freezing and his body ached all over. Looking around he saw he was in a log cabin style bedroom. His side burned and throbbed and he moaned in pain. He thought back to how he had gotten there and he was startled to realize he couldn't remember. His gaze flew to the woman now staring at him with wide eyes.

He looked at her in alarm as he tried to piece together what was going on. He looked down at his bare stomach and saw that he had a gunshot wound. A gun shot wound he didn't remember getting! He grunted loudly as he shifted away from her and her scissors. "How did I get here? Who are you? Why am I here?"

Natalie was shocked that he was awake but recovered quickly. His movements had set his wound to bleeding again and she knew she needed to get the bullet out of him. "I'm Natalie Buchanan. You're at my grandfathers' cabin on Llantano Mountain. You were passed out in my driveway and I brought you inside so you didn't freeze to death." She told him.

John lay there a minute, processing the information. His wound paining him but he ignored it for the moment. He was deeply disturbed over his memory loss.

Natalie saw that he was thinking something over and was troubled by he thoughts. She didn't know how long he was going to ignore the bullet wound in his abdomen but she couldn't ignore it any longer. "Look, whatever your name is, you have been shot. The bullet is still in there and I need to get it out or you'll get an infection and die!"

He heard her curt tone and looked down at his stomach again. She was right and he knew it. "Yeah," he muttered. Then, in a move that almost made Natalie throw up, he reached down dug his fingers in the hole and yanked out the bullet. Hissing as he pulled it out he tossed it aside. "There. Happy?" he asked her.

Natalie was in shock; never in her life had she ever seen anyone do what he just did. He just yanked the bullet out not even bothering to sterilize anything! "You're crazy!" she said to him. She grabbed the alcohol and some cloths and began to clean the wound. Looking up she saw that he was watching her with his pain-glazed eyes. Once she had the wound clean she looked at him again, took a deep, fortifying breath, and said, "I am gonna need to stitch it closed."

John knew she was once again right. Gritting his teeth against the excruciating pain he nodded once, "Do it," he told her through clenched teeth.

Natalie nodded and then, ignoring her rolling stomach and sterilizing the needle and thread, she began to stitch him up. He groaned in pain but didn't move a muscle. After she was done she cut the thread, dumped even more alcohol on the wound, and placed a bandage over it. Taking a roll of gauze she had found in the bathroom she helped him sit up and wrapped the gauze around his stomach, securing the bandage over the wound.

As soon as she finished securing the bandage John fell back to the bed, breathing heavily. "Thanks," he muttered before he fell unconscious again.

Natalie stared at the once again unconscious man and wondered who he was. Why had he been shot? What was he doing on Llantano Mountain? Suddenly a thought came to her. His Wallet! That would not only tell her who he was providing he had a license, but it might also provide some other information on this mystery man.

Natalie checked his pockets but came up with nothing. She covered him up with the heavy blankets and then began to look through his jacket and sweater. "Damn!" she muttered as she once again found nothing. Discouraged she cleaned up the mess that she had made fixing up the stranger and went in to the living room. Then she looked outside, the thought that maybe he dropped his wallet in the drive as he fell occurring to her. She went and grabbed her jacket and headed to the door.

Once outside she was once again struck with a frigid blast of snow and wind. "Uggg!" she said, trudging carefully down the icy drive. Once she got to where he had been laying she began to search the snow. Her hand his something cold and she smiled triumphantly but then was shocked when her hand closed around the butt of a gun. Fear coursed through her veins as she began to wonder what kind of man she had taken into her house. She searched more frantically for his wallet. After several minutes and several yards from where the stranger had been lying she found it.

She opened the wallet quickly and read his name from his license. "John McBain" she read aloud. She scanned the address noting that he was from Atlantic City. "Weird" she muttered. But there was nothing in there that indicated who he worked for or why he was carrying a gun. She sighed, debating whether to call Bo as soon as she got back into the house.

She sighed, Bo would know what to do... Her decision made she walked back up the drive quickly, anxious to know who this man was, this John McBain. Shivering from both cold and nerves she carefully opened the front door and made for her cell phone. Just as she was dialing Bo's number she heard something.

"Caitlyn! No. Don't leave me!"

Natalie knew it was John. There was such pain in his voice but more then that there was guilt. She hung up mid ring and rushed into John's room, some part of her connecting with the pain she heard in his voice. As she neared him on the bed she saw that he had thrown the covers back and she brought a hand up to cover his forehead. Snatching her hand back, alarmed at the heat she felt there, she cursed. He had a fever! She rushed to the bathroom, her call to Bo forgotten in her concern for John. Grabbing some aspirin, knowing that it was used to bring fevers down, and some clean cloths. She turned the water faucet on cold and ran it till it was icy into a basin. Once she had a full basin she dropped in the cloths and grabbed the aspirin and water glass.

Taking her load back into the guest bedroom she set them on the nightstand and opened the bottle of aspirin. Taking out two and praying he wasn't allergic she pressed them into his mouth. Then sitting on the side of the bed she strained to lift his upper torso. Bracing her knee behind his back, holding him upright, she pressed the water glass to his lips, held his nose closed and forced him to take a swallow. He did, coughing as the water and pills slid down his throat.

Once that was done she took a cloth, squeezed it out, and began to bath his brow and upper body with the cold water, hoping it would bring down his fever. Not once during it all did he ever wake up.

To be continued...