And no better support system after the news broke either.
“Wu is being admitted to a private facility.” Miller, who arrived last, took position beside Santiago. “The blade Famine used was coated in a neurotoxin. The paralysis is spreading, and respiration is shutting down. His nervous system is on the brink of collapse.”
“Let me up.” I shoved off Cole’s shoulder. “I have to see him.”
“They’ve already left.” Miller gentled his tone. “There was no time to spare.”
Sinking back against Cole, I wrapped my arms around my middle in a weak attempt to hold myself together. “What will they do with Famine?”
“Contain and isolate.” Santiago kept busy with his hands. “She’s a hostile and will be treated as such. No doubt she’ll end up in some government facility without a name, staffed by people with barcode tattoos on their wrists, who dress for work in hazmat suits.”
“That’s not what I meant.” My fingernails bit into my elbows. “What about… her host?”
Calling what remained of Uncle Harold by his name nauseated me. I couldn’t do it.
“She will remain with her host until they figure out a way to separate the two,” Miller told me. “She has a form she could assume in this terrene, but it would impede her ability to communicate.”
“She killed him because of me,” I murmured. “He’s dead because I loved him.”
Thom stroked the top of my head the same way I often petted him. “You can’t go down that road.”
Too late. I had been set upon that path, and I had no choice but to walk it to its conclusion.
A steady vibration sparked in Cole’s chest and was echoed by the men surrounding me. The reason soon became clear as Special Agent Farhan Kapoor strolled into the room, pinpointed our small gathering, and invited himself to join us.
“I’m sorry about Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Boudreau. He was a good man.” His advance stalled out when Miller placed a warning hand on his shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do for you or your family, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
I’m sorry.
Two little words, morsels really, barely a mouthful, hardly a taste.
I’m sorry.
“There is something you can do for me.” I unlinked my arms and sat upright on Cole’s lap. “You can let me skip to the head of the line for quarantine. I want to enroll in the academy by the end of the week.”
“There’s no need.” He was already shaking his head. “After your meeting with Deland, the brass decided to treat your hiring as a lateral transfer. You won’t be attending the academy. You’re moving straight into OJT under Adam Wu’s supervision.”
That left me with one big question. “What about the testing?”
“With a new specimen in containment, the brass isn’t going to be looking as hard at you. I suggested you be allowed to submit to the required procedures in stages, as an outpatient, and they’ve agreed.” He pointed a finger at me. “Keep your appointments, and I’ll do my damndest to keep you out of a hospital johnny.”
Gratitude tightened my throat. Maybe as far as bosses went, he wasn’t a bad one to have after all. “Thanks.”
“Get her out of here,” he told Cole. “The cleanup crew is about to come in and stage the place.”
Climbing off Cole’s lap, I shoved my feet under me. “What are you going to tell Aunt Nancy?”
“A home invasion gone wrong fits best, and we try to keep it simple.” Experience led him to answer my next question without prompting. “There will be a slip-up at the morgue, and a body will be cremated before anyone can view it. His family will never know the remains aren’t his.”
The Trudeaus had his and her plots in the cemetery behind their church. Would we bury an empty casket? The urn? The ashes? Or would Aunt Nancy sprinkle his ashes at his favorite fishing hole? Would she keep them on the mantle? Save a portion for herself then divvy the rest up among their children? Would she offer me some? Did I want any?
Shaking off the morbid bent to my thoughts, I attempted to zone back in. “What about Dad?”
“He’s been taken to the same private facility as Wu for testing and treatment.” Kapoor raised his voice to drown out my protests. “The Trudeaus have been acting as caretakers for your father. We have no idea what Famine might have done to him or given to him during that time.”
A greasy ball of fear curled in my gut at what he left unsaid, that he might not be human any longer.
“I would have tasted the sickness in him when I bit him, and there was none,” Thom said. “His symptoms worsened after he settled in at the Trudeaus’. Famine must have already been in place at that point. She kept him dazed and compliant. She never let him rise from the healing fugue where I left him.”
“It was never your saliva that made him sick,” I realized.
“It looks that way.” Thom rose from his haunches, his stare fixed on me. “Your father is an intelligent man who spent decades on the force. He was friends with Mr. Trudeau for more than a quarter of a century. He would have homed in on any deviations in his behavioral patterns and questioned them, and Famine couldn’t allow that to happen.”
Yet Aunt Nancy, the person who knew him best, hadn’t been drugged. However, she was in good health. It would have been harder to excuse her sickness, and impossible to explain them sharing symptoms when she had no prior heart condition.
But how had she missed his tells? Or had she? She always kept busy, so I hadn’t given it much thought, but had she been busier than usual lately? The baking, the gardening, the Waxy Wonders. How easy would it have been for her to blame any peculiar behavior from Uncle Harold on Dad’s relapse? On worry over me after Jane vanished and Maggie was kidnapped?
The devil finds work for idle hands.
How often had I heard her utter the phrase? Whatever she had seen in him, whatever she had noticed, she must have coped through overextending herself to keep her mind off those worries and his too.
“We have no idea what’s in his system,” Kapoor agreed. “We have the technology and the specialization to treat him. He couldn’t be in better hands. The facility is secure, and he will be kept isolated from the charun patients.”
“What will you tell him? That he had a third stroke? That the stress of the situation sent him into cardiac arrest?” I rubbed the drying blood caked between my fingers. “He’s a career cop. Hearing he choked when his partner needed him most will kill him.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” The grim set of his jaw implied he’d done this a million times, that he would have spared the man his pride if he were able. No brilliant solution popped out of my mouth, and he nodded as though he hadn’t expected a better fix than the one he had already engineered. “I’ll email you a room number, his private line, and directions to the facility as soon as your dad is through admissions.”
“Come on.” Cole engulfed my hand with his, an unbreakable shackle. “I’ll take you home.”
While I appreciated the sentiment, I didn’t have one of those any longer.
“Hey, Kapoor,” Santiago called after the man had turned to go. “Heads up.” He lobbed a silver ball the size of my fist at the special agent’s chest. “Chain her up again, and see what happens.” Knuckles white from strain, he jabbed his index finger at Kapoor. “Luce bows to no one.”
A tight fist of emotion seized me by the throat, and I blinked away fresh tears as I received his message loud and clear. He and the others had earned the right to chip away at me, but no damn body else was allowed to touch a single brick in my foundation, or he would bring the whole house tumbling down on their heads.
Kapoor wheezed what might have been an agreement, hard to tell with him doubled over like that, but we didn’t wait around to find out if his lungs had worked out how to filter oxygen again.
When we hit the sidewalk, I spotted a black SUV idling at the curb and performed a quick headcount. One, two, three, four. The guys flanked me, their steady presence a comfort, but t
here was no way they would have left Portia at the bunkhouse alone given the intel I had passed on.
Hidden behind the tinted passenger windows, Maggie stared out at me.
The glass was too dark for our gazes to meet, and I was grateful for the barrier that prevented me from reading the expression clouding her heart-shaped face.
“I drove over with Wu.” I patted my jeans but came up empty. “I don’t know what happened to my keys. They’re not in my pockets.” And wild horses couldn’t drag me back into that house. “Looks like my phone is missing too.”
Getting behind the wheel had bad move written all over it anyway. I was not in the right headspace to drive. The only other option, catching a lift in the SUV with Maggie, was out of the question. I would walk before I forced her to endure my company.
“We came in two vehicles.” Cole led me down the street, past gawking pedestrians come to rubberneck at their neighbors’ misfortune. “Do you need to make any stops on the way?”
I shook my head and let him tuck me in the SUV and drive me to the farmhouse for the last time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The covers lifted off my head, static bringing long strands of hair along for the ride, and light spilled over my face. I squinted against the glare, curled in a ball on my side, mumbled profanities, then yanked on the fabric until welcoming darkness once again cocooned me.
The world was less brutal under here, tucked away in my warm bed, in my own home.
Beneath the handstitched, double wedding ring quilt Grandma Boudreau had sewn, I was insulated from the miseries that awaited me once my feet touched the floor.
“You can’t hide under there forever.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t fling the quilt aside fast enough. “Maggie?”
“And Portia,” she allowed, her tone somber. “I’m in control, though.”
I scrambled upright, folded my legs under me, and she accepted the wordless invitation as I patted the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted as she sat. “I’m so sorry. I had no right to give Portia consent without asking you. I wish I could go back and —”
“Let me die?” she finished.
“No.” I churned over my answer. “Yes?”
“I’m not here to say I forgive you, or that we’re cool. Most days I’m not convinced I wouldn’t have rather died in your backyard.” Her fingers wiped under her puffy eyes. “I butted heads with Mom and Dad all the time, over everything, but I miss them. I miss my job, my life, I miss being alone in my own head, in my own body.” More tears flowed onto her cheeks. “I miss Justin. I miss what we had, and I miss what we could have been.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” It came out as weak and as pitiful as I had been in that moment.
“You chose life.” She gave up on keeping her face dry and let the rivulets flow. “You did it because you love me. I get that. I do. I would have done the same for you, no question.” Her watery laugh slayed me. “I’m selfish too. I would have wanted to keep you with me.”
“It all happened so fast.” I ran the sheet between my fingers. “I had a split second to decide, and yeah. I chose life. The alternative… I couldn’t deal. It was all my fault. War, her coterie. You never should have been involved.”
“I always knew you were different, I just had no idea how different.” She wiped her nose with the hem of her shirt. “I can’t blame you for what happened. I saw through Portia’s memories how hard you worked to find me, how shocked you were to learn your identity.” The tide stemmed. “You can’t blame yourself either. This isn’t on you. You didn’t invite any of this to happen. You’re not responsible for what these so-called sisters of yours do any more than I’m responsible for my current predicament.”
“You had no choice,” I reminded her.
“Are you saying you did?” she challenged. “Something tells me no one asked for your opinion either.”
The absolution didn’t stick, and maybe it wasn’t meant to smooth us over so much as make me think.
“I came when Portia explained about Mr. Trudeau.” Maggie dropped her head. “He grilled a mean hamburger, and he never once tattled when he caught us stealing extra cookies from the jar in the kitchen. His fries could have used more salt, and I’m still convinced allowing a marksman to win that laser tag trophy wasn’t legal. But he was a good man, and he loved you.”
A sob broke free in my chest, and I mashed both hands over my heart like that might ease the ache.
Leave it to Maggie. She always knew the exact right thing to say, her eulogy more fitting than any words that would be spoken at his funeral. I didn’t want to hear how sorry people were he was gone. Sorry wouldn’t bring him back. Sorry was a two-syllable copout when you had nothing original to add.
“We handled recon on Mrs. Trudeau last night.” She traced the stitching on the quilt with her fingertip. “There were concerns after the Uptons that they might both be compromised.”
“I didn’t…” A shiver blasted down my arms. “It didn’t cross my mind.”
“She’s still your Aunt Nancy,” Maggie said softly. “She’s one hundred percent human.”
Grateful tears stung the backs of my eyes that I wouldn’t lose her too. “Thanks.”
“That’s what friends are for, right?” A wince tightened her features, and she sucked in a breath that whistled through her teeth. “I can’t stay much longer.” She braced her palms on her thighs. “I don’t have the strength yet.”
“I’m glad you came.” I reached for her, and she let me take her hand. “I want to see you again.”
“Count on it.” A shiver rippled over her, and her posture changed. Her entire bearing altered until I had no doubt she had lost the grip on her body. “Sorry about that.” Portia withdrew her hand. “She’s getting better, but control takes time.”
“Thanks for helping her visit me.” I twisted the sheet around my finger until I lost circulation. “Thanks for everything. I didn’t get a chance to say that earlier, but I owe you big.” I glanced up at her. “I don’t know if I made the right call or the selfish one, if there’s even a difference, but I know you put yourself at great risk to make it happen. You gave me a chance to save my best friend that I never would have had otherwise, so yeah. I’m in your debt.”
“Fair warning, I will be taking that favor and banking it for later. How often does a member of the cadre offer you a blank check?” She patted a breast pocket she didn’t have. “I won’t be cashing this baby until I’m ready to make a big purchase.”
“Stop feeling yourself up and get a move on,” Santiago muttered from the doorway.
Portia smashed Maggie’s small breasts together. “You want to feel me up instead?”
Reflex primed me to slap her hands down, but it was Portia’s body too now.
He lifted his left foot and circled his ankle. “You want me to plant my boot up your ass?”
“He missed me,” she announced. “Cuddled with my stuffed pony every night I was gone.”
The wattage of Santiago’s glower flipped up to full blast. “Thom put that on my bed.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Portia stood with a shade less grace than she once had, the only indication she was still getting used to sharing too. “That’s what Cole told me when I caught him squishing the stuffing out of her.”
Thom had been to blame for Cole waking up with the pony that time, but I wasn’t about to interrupt them.
Issuing threats was how Santiago told the people who annoyed him least that if they were on fire, he might piss on them to put out the flames. And Portia combatted his aggression with snark just to keep him off-balance enough he didn’t notice that maybe she wouldn’t stroll past his flaming corpse either.
Bickering all the way downstairs, they left me alone in my room to formulate my plan of attack.
First things first, I checked my email and located the promised information from Kapoor. Figuring I would cut out the middle man, I called the physician assigned to Dad’s cas
e instead of his room. Dr. Levine fed me the update I was craving then punted me to admissions to make visitation arrangements.
While I had my finger on the pulse of the system, I quizzed the administrative assistant on Wu. At first, she demurred, all polite but firm on the patient confidentiality front, but I pressed hard with what leverage I had as his partner. With a few clicks of her keyboard, she served up the shock of my morning by informing me he had listed me as his emergency contact. The woman, happy now that I had passed muster, patched me through to his room.
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