by L. T. Vargus
A metal rod jutted from his abdomen.
“Owen!”
She put a hand on his chest and then reached up to feel for a pulse. His eyelids fluttered open.
“Oh, thank God,” she said.
“No, ma’am,” he croaked. “I know I have the face of Adonis, but I am just a mortal man.”
She hacked out something between a laugh and a cough.
“Can you help me up?”
Darger figured he must be in shock. She’d heard stories about people not knowing they were gravely injured until they saw the seriousness of their wounds, and then the pain came all at once. She scooted forward and leaned in such a way to hopefully prevent Owen from seeing the rebar impaling him through the belly.
“I think it’s better if you lie still for now.”
“Bad?” he asked.
Tears blurred her vision again, but this time it wasn’t from the dust.
She wasn’t good at lying about this stuff, and he’d probably know anyway.
“Pretty bad.”
“My leg hurts something fierce,” he said, and she turned.
She saw where the denim was torn and bloodied a few inches below his groin. Using her fingers to widen the rip, she found a long gash on his thigh. An alarming amount of blood was pouring from the wound. Too much blood.
She pulled her suit jacket off, glad she wasn’t wearing one of the FBI windbreakers. She couldn’t imagine they were very absorbent. Not wanting to contaminate the wound with all the particulate on the exterior, she turned the jacket inside out first. Something flopped out of the pocket. It was Ethan’s silk tie.
Briefly, she considered a tourniquet but remembered how they’d been warned against them in her first aid class. She rolled up her jacket and pressed it to Owen’s leg. But the wound was so large, she had a hard time applying pressure to the whole thing, even using both hands. Blood continued to seep from the laceration.
Darger scooped the fallen necktie into her hand and began to wrap. She was able to loop it three times around Owen’s thigh and tie it off, just tightly enough to help keep steady pressure on the improvised bandage. That seemed to slow the bleeding enough that the pool of red forming beneath him stopped growing in size.
The ringing in her ears dampened the shriek of the sirens, but they were definitely there. Violet pulled away, intent on grabbing the first paramedic she saw and dragging him back here. But Owen caught her wrist.
“Don’t leave me, Violet. Please.”
Noting the fear in his eyes, she settled back beside him. She waved with her free hand but kept the other fingers entwined with Owen’s.
“I need help over here,” she called.
She was sure she was yelling, but her voice was small and removed in her own hearing. She continued screaming until she saw a silhouette approaching through the haze of smoke.
It was Loshak. A flicker of relief crossed his face when he saw her, and then his gaze fell to Owen. He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. Then he turned and ran back the way he’d come, shouting for a medic.
Violet squeezed Owen’s fingers and wiped a smear of blood from a slash on his cheek.
“Hang on, Owen. Help is coming.”
Chapter 56
Ethan looked much the same as when Violet had visited the first time. Puffy face and bruised-looking eyes. And in the background, the beeps and whooshes and whirring of all of the machines keeping him alive. The only real difference was that he’d been taken off ventilation and was now breathing on his own, which everyone said was a good sign.
“I really fucked the poodle this time,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “Pardon my French.”
Violet had promised to stay with Ethan while Mrs. Baxter went downstairs to monitor Owen’s emergency surgery. She’d gathered by now that Constance had raised the boys alone — their father had taken off when the brothers were young, and he stopped getting in contact for visits by the time they were in high school.
Mrs. Baxter had gotten in touch with her sister, but the flight from Tallahassee wouldn’t arrive for several hours. And so Violet agreed when Constance asked her to keep watch over Ethan.
Violet couldn’t fathom being in her position… to have both sons here in the hospital in critical condition.
It was as they loaded Owen onto a backboard and into the ambulance that she remembered the mumbled tip line call.
My brother has explosives now.
It was him. Levi Foley. It had to be.
And she’d missed it. They both had. Written it off as another drunk. She’d fucked up and now Owen was downstairs with a hole punched through his guts.
They sifted through all those calls only to misunderstand the one that mattered. All that work for nothing.
Her head hurt, ears still ringing. She had about two dozen minor cuts and abrasions from the glass in the explosion. And her face felt strangely hot. Like she’d been at the beach all day and forgot to put on sunblock.
“I never should have let him into that motel room,” Violet whispered.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat, and tears stung her injured eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though her voice was so choked with emotion that she mouthed the words more than spoke them aloud.
One of the monitors seemed to come awake then, the screen flashing, the blipping loud and fast and no longer the two-beat rhythm of a steady heart beat.
It startled her, and she dropped Ethan’s hand, as if her words or her touch had brought on the change.
The beeping stopped for several seconds, and a new alarm started to blare, an unmistakable harbinger of bad things. Darger had the sudden feeling of being trapped in a dream. A nightmare. Two nurses sprinted into the room.
One of them yelled, “V-tach, no pulse.” And then, “He’s not breathing.”
She immediately began compressions on Ethan’s chest.
The other barked at Darger to move and hit a button on the wall over Ethan’s bed.
An automated voice sounded overhead.
“Code blue. Code blue. Room 204.”
A doctor in a white lab coat and five more nurses bustled into the room, one of them pushing a cart.
Someone grasped Violet’s arm, maneuvering her toward the door. She didn’t see who it was. Her eyes never left Ethan’s face. Not until she was in the hallway and the curtains were yanked shut to block the view of his room.
Chapter 57
Violet watched them work through a gap in the curtains, not understanding. He’d been fine five minutes ago.
Eventually, they wheeled him out, no longer doing chest compressions, but there was a nurse holding and squeezing some kind of bag over his nose and mouth. That gave her hope. Violet grabbed one of the nurses.
“Is he going to be OK? Where are they taking him?”
“He’s being taken for an EEG. Are you family?”
“No, I’m… a friend. His mother is downstairs, she—”
“It would really be best if I could talk to a family member. What’s her name? I can page her from here.”
“Constance Baxter,” Violet said.
The nurse walked to the nearest phone and called Constance Baxter to the second floor Pulmonary unit.
Violet paced the hallway until one of the elevators opened its jaws and spit out Ethan’s mother.
“What is it? Did something happen?” she asked, clutching Violet’s arm with surprisingly strong fingers.
Violet shook her head.
“They won’t tell me anything, except that they took him for some kind of test.”
The same nurse from before guided Constance into a private waiting room. The iron grip Constance had on Violet’s arm did not let up, and so she followed obediently.
“Dr. Ogletree will be in to speak with you in a moment,” the nurse said before she closed the door behind them.
Violet tried to remember what EEG stood for, but she couldn’t seem to focus.
She gripped Constance’s should
er and realized the woman was trembling.
“It doesn’t seem real,” the mother said to no one in particular. “I’d give anything for my boys, but there’s nothing to give.”
The door opened and two doctors strode in, one female, the other male. The woman’s name badge read Karina Ogletree. She could not read the man’s badge.
“Has anyone briefed you yet, Mrs. Baxter?” Dr. Ogletree asked.
Constance shook her head.
“No one has told me anything. Please. Please tell me what’s going on.”
“A few minutes ago, Ethan’s heart stopped.”
The hand on Violet’s forearm grasped a little tighter.
“Oh my God.”
“He also stopped breathing. We began CPR and used a defibrillator to get his heart started again, but it took quite a long time.”
“But you did get it started? He is alive?”
“Yes, but Mrs. Baxter, I was concerned with how long he went without a normal heartbeat, and so I sent him for some tests to measure brain function.”
Violet swallowed, sensing where this was headed. She stared at the stretch of carpet between her feet until her vision blurred.
“Ethan is brain dead, Mrs. Baxter. He will not recover.”
There was a very long pause, and then Constance spoke, her voice wavering.
“I don’t understand. You said you got his heart started again.”
“Yes, but when circulation stops for any length of time, there is something called ischemic injury…”
The words all ran together for Violet from there. She wasn’t sure they really meant much to Constance either.
It wasn’t until Violet heard the male doctor say Owen’s name that her conscious mind snapped back to the conversation. Constance was squinting and shaking her head.
“Wait, who are you, now? And what about Owen?”
Dr. Ogletree put a hand on Constance’s knee.
“This is Dr. Nazarian. He’s the head of our transplant team. He’s been consulting with Dr. Arora downstairs in Trauma.”
The man cleared his throat, as if to start over from the beginning.
“I don’t know how much Dr. Arora has told you, but Owen has extensive liver damage. We feel the best course of action is a transplant, as soon as possible. Do you know if Ethan is a registered organ donor?”
“What? I don’t know… I… Are you saying that you could use Ethan’s liver for Owen?”
“I understand Ethan and Owen are identical twins. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then Owen is a very, very lucky man.”
“But Ethan would… I’d have to… I have to choose between them?”
Dr. Nazarian licked his lips.
“Normally we would do what’s called a living-donor transplant. But given Ethan’s condition, it is unlikely that he’d survive the surgery. And the fact remains that he is beyond the scope of recovery as a result of his own injuries. He is brain dead, Mrs. Baxter, and actual clinical death will follow. Probably in a matter of days. The longer we wait to harvest the organs, the more chance they will be rendered unfit for transplant.”
“But you need my permission?”
“If Ethan is not a registered donor, yes, we will need your permission. But if he’s already a donor, you do not have legal cause to override that decision. I know this is difficult, Mrs. Baxter. But I want to be clear: this is a very unique opportunity for Owen. People often wait for months or even years for a suitable transplant. The fact that Ethan is his twin brother means he is a guaranteed match. It also means there is no risk of organ rejection. Unlike other transplant recipients, Owen will not have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of his life. Furthermore, if Owen doesn’t receive a transplant very quickly, he may not recover from his injuries.”
Tears streamed down from Constance’s eyes, and Violet didn’t realize until she shook with a series of choking sobs that she was also crying.
“How long do I have to decide?” Constance choked.
“As long as you need. But for Owen’s sake, the sooner the better.”
Chapter 58
A swarm of nocturnal insects buzzed in circles around the overhead lights in the parking garage stairwell. It was gloomy and smelled of piss.
Violet checked the text from Loshak again, letting her know which section he’d left her car in. 7F.
Her boots scuffed up another flight of stairs, and then she saw the sign marking the seventh floor. Her jaw ached and her tongue felt swollen and sore. She must have bitten down on it during the explosion. Adding to her list of aches and pains was a pulsing headache and the fact that she was so tired she would have gladly curled up in a corner of the funky, urine-soaked stairwell and slept for a thousand years.
Constance Baxter’s sister had arrived only minutes after Owen was wheeled into a surgical suite for transplant surgery. Marylou was an older, big-boned version of her sister, with a matching halo of frothy gray-blonde hair. Violet offered to stay through the surgery, and Constance thanked her but said Violet had been dragged into enough Baxter grief for one night. She promised to call with an update when Owen was out of the operating room.
As for Ethan… Darger swallowed, not even able to think the name without tears welling in her eyes. Ethan had been taken off life support not long ago. He’d been a registered donor after all, sparing his mother the weight of that decision, at least.
Ethan was dead. And the men responsible were still out there, planning some new terror to unleash upon the world.
Darger reached the seventh-floor door and pushed it open with a metallic screech. It clanged shut behind her, and she followed a stencil on the wall that indicated section 7F was to the right. A moment later, she heard the stairwell door squeal and clunk as someone else entered the area.
Another set of footsteps echoed behind Darger, mirroring her own. It occurred to her that there were very few cars on this level at this hour. What were the odds that someone else was parked here and just so happened to be heading to their vehicle at the same time?
Some animal awareness prickled, sending goose bumps over her skin. Forgetting her fatigue, she dodged behind a corner, flattening herself against the wall, and drew her weapon.
When the person rounded the corner, she sprang out, pointing her gun.
It was dark and the man was hooded. She couldn’t see his face in the dim lighting, but the build could have matched either of the Foley brothers. Long and lean.
She hoped for Levi. She’d had a lot of time to think about it over the last day, and she’d come to believe if she’d been there to answer his call, she might have been able to prevent this.
She’d suspected it before, but it was crystal clear to her now that Luke was the mastermind. Levi was the automaton… the good little soldier. The little brother not wanting to let big brother down. If she could only talk to him, she could get through. She could convince him it wasn’t worth it. He knew what they were doing was wrong, but he wasn’t strong enough to resist on his own.
“Who are you?” she asked, gun leveled at the man’s chest.
He reached up, slowly, and pulled the hood down.
Amusement glinted in the coal black eyes. Randall Stokes.
Darger didn’t lower her Glock. In fact, she brought it up a little higher, in line with his forehead.
“Why are you following me?”
“Following you?” he rasped in his odd, hoarse voice. If snakes could talk, it was how she imagined they might sound. “I came down to say thank you.”
“At this hour?”
He shrugged.
“I’m a night owl. Always have been,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “Are you gonna keep pointing your gun at me? I thought we were allies, Agent Darger.”
“You knew it was two gunmen.”
“I did?”
“When you first told me what you were offering, you said, ‘these psychos.’”
Stokes looked away, pretending not to no
tice that she was still sticking a gun in his face. Or maybe he really didn’t care.
“I don’t recall that. The last few days… they’ve been a bit of a blur. Lot of activity, you know?”
He turned back and fixed her with his viper’s stare.
“By the way, I heard what happened at the motel. The big kaboom. I hope your boyfriend’s gonna be alright.”
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she realized what he was suggesting. He was referring to Owen and the explosion. The bastard. She gripped her Glock a little tighter and took a step closer.
“You knew about the explosives, didn’t you?”
He didn’t budge. Didn’t even flinch. Just stared down at her with that piercing predator’s gaze. She pressed the gun to his forehead and still he didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Is that why you came down here? To gloat?”
She jabbed the gun a little harder into his flesh to punctuate her words.
“You can keep poking me with that, but we both know you aren’t gonna shoot. You’re not the killin’ type.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. I’ve pulled the trigger before, and that guy ended up floating face down in a river,” she said.
“So I read,” he said. “Thought about bringing that magazine article down here for you to sign, as a matter of fact.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t, because then I definitely would have shot you,” she said.
He laughed, a dry, scratching sound that brought to mind raking up leaves in the fall. For once his eyes didn’t have that vicious gleam. Darger lowered the gun but did not return it to her holster. She pointed it at the ground, fingers still clenching the grip.
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to make sure the explosion hadn’t messed up that pretty face of yours.”
She scowled but thought he might be telling the truth, at least in part. He was checking up on her. Why he’d want to do that, she didn’t know.
“If you cared about that, why didn’t you warn me about the C4?”
Stokes gestured at his head.
