Adrenaline surged, and the pain faded from me like the edge of the nurse’s hairline from his face.
“Give me a minute,” I whispered, doing my best to go back to the quiet wife I’d pretended to be in public. The orderly’s face softened further and he wiped up the last of the vomit with the mop, offered me a cool rag, and then went out into the hall.
I wiped my face down, but kept the cloth over my mouth, partially hiding my face as I went over my options. I didn’t have much choice but to face whoever was coming in, and the state my body was in didn’t give me much in terms of a hand-to-hand fight. Surprise would be all I would have on my side.
A part of my brain tried to tell me this was crazy, that things like this didn’t happen. But I knew better.
I knew the dark underbelly of the world of normals and abnormals better than anyone.
There was the soft murmur of voices, the quick give and take of words. I had fifteen seconds at best to get ready.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself up straighter and hissed through the pain. I couldn’t stop the tremor in my hands as I put my left hand over the IV that was attached to my right arm. I pulled it out, not even feeling the sting of the needle sliding from under my skin, not caring that the blood dripped down my arm. With my left arm in a cast, it was hard to move fast. I tossed the cloth the nurse had given me over the bleeding wound from the IV, then tucked the needle into the palm of my right hand.
Improvisation. If the man with the gun came back, I wouldn’t have more than a split second to use the needle on him and grab the gun. If he was an abnormal, I would have even less time. Going for the eyes would be best, or the neck if he didn’t bend down far enough.
My heart . . . God, my heart wanted to shatter. It wanted to give up. I wanted to grieve for my boy and husband and lie in bed and cry until there were no tears left in my body. A part of me wanted to lie down and die right there, to let whoever was coming in finish the job they started. I used to think tears and grief were weakness, but already I found a new truth.
Grief was not a weakness. It was fuel for my anger. Grief was a luxury I did not have and that left me nothing but anger to run on.
If I was right—and I was sure I was—the accident wasn’t an accident, and someone was at fault for my two boys’ deaths.
Which meant someone was going to pay for their lives with their own, piece by piece, if I had to.
The door to my room creaked open and I lay back on the raised bed, closing my eyes until they were open a mere slit. A man slipped into the room, the door shutting with a shush behind him. Silent as a shadow, his footsteps didn’t squeak once on the clean floor. The dark pants were the same as those the strange man had been wearing, and I kept my small amount of vision on his legs as he walked toward me, carefully. As if he didn’t want to wake me.
The legs stopped at my bedside, close to where I clutched the hidden needle.
I let a slow breath out, readying myself for the pain it would cost me to sit up fast and jam the needle into one of his eyes.
“You ain’t sleeping, doll face.”
My eyes sprung open. “Zee.”
It was my uncle and not some unnamed hitman. Or at least, everyone knew him as my uncle, and even Justin had believed that for the first few years of our marriage. A necessity to keeping my husband safe. Or so I’d thought. When I’d finally told him about who I truly was—or at least who I was related to—and that Zee was uncle in name only, he’d not only taken it in stride, he said it didn’t matter. That it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been Lucifer’s daughter, he would love me still. At the time, I’d laughed, and cringed because I’d not been able to tell him the rest. That I was about as close to being Lucifer’s daughter, or at least as close as one could get on this side of the grave, in more ways than one.
I looked over Zee, trying to see if he’d been hurt while I’d been away. To see if he’d had to fend off some sort of attack on the ranch. While his neck was scarred from an attempt on his life years ago, and his face was as craggy and rough with a half-grown beard, I couldn’t see any new injuries. Long before I’d met him, he’d been a special ops man overseas, and that was where he’d learned much of his training and skills that he’d passed onto me. One of those skills was the ability to push all your emotions away, to not show a drop of compassion, empathy, or caring, even if you were shattered inside. To keep going, even when you wanted to lie down and die.
To be fair, though, Zee was also the only abnormal I’d met that I trusted. He was a Hider. One who could make things vanish, disappear even though they were right in front of you.
The only reasons I’d ever trusted him to begin with were that I’d known him since I was six years old, and my mother had loved him dearly.
He held out a rough knuckled hand and I took it, holding it as my last lifeline, as a sob slipped out of me, horrifying me. His eyes were shiny with tears, but not one dropped from him.
“Shit, this doesn’t seem real,” he said. Not I’m sorry, he would never say that. Because he knew, like I did, this was not his fault.
I sat up and leaned into his one shoulder no matter that the movement cut through my injuries. “Tell me they’re alive, Zee. Tell me this is a bad dream and that Bear is going to walk through that door. Tell me if he is gone, that you can bring him back. Please.” My voice cracked on the last word, my last attempt at continuing to be the woman with the normal life. The woman who knew nothing of the darkness the world held.
“I never lied to you yet. You think I should start now?” He carefully tightened his hold over my shoulders. “You survived this accident, let’s try and keep it that way.”
I lifted my eyes to his, looking for the confirmation of what I already knew, but didn’t fully want to believe. That the accident was anything but. He gave me the faintest of nods, his eyes incredibly sad, but also hard. Hard and understanding, and . . . angry.
Closing my own eyes, I worked to push the tears away, to cap the grief that would consume me if I let it. I could be a sobbing mess, and I deserved that time. I deserved to grieve for Bear, for Justin . . . but if I let that take me over, as I knew it would, that would leave me unable to do what I had to do. Something I’d trained most of my life for, something I’d run so far and fast from that I thought it would never catch up to me.
How very wrong I’d been.
I bit my lower lip and sucked in a sharp breath. “Get me out of here, Zee. I want to go home.”
“Already done. Have your discharge papers here . . . three broken ribs, cracked pelvic bone, severe bruising across both femurs, broken left wrist, concussion, and then the usual cuts and nicks.” He flipped a file folder at me, open wide. I glanced over it, noting no signature under the discharge section. So, I had not been discharged, but it didn’t matter. I was leaving, and no doctor was going to tell me otherwise.
I had work to do, work that would keep me from thinking about my boys, thinking about Bear reaching for me, crying for me, as he died. Thinking about how much pain he must have been in as he’d died—
My throat tightened and I swallowed hard over the sudden growing lump. Zee crouched in front of me. “You aren’t me, doll face. You’re allowed to let it out.”
I glared at him, letting the anger carry me. “And if I can’t stop letting it out? Then I’m useless, and I won’t be that, Zee. I refuse that option.”