“No, ma’am, debrief means—”
Tom, the other guard, interrupts him. “She knows what it means, Gentian. She’s needling you.”
Silas looks at me, puzzled. “That true, ma’am?”
“I’ll tell you the truth if you tell me what happened.”
They exchange a resigned look and say nothing.
The media circus hasn’t calmed down. Not one bit. Chief Cummings has interviewed me. The DEA interviewed me. Anyone but Mark, he explained by text. It would be a conflict of interest if he were the interviewer.
I get that. I do. But I’m tired of information flowing only one way.
I have so many questions.
Tom and Silas both read their phones at the same time. That means they got a text from Drew. Their heads draw together and they murmur, the words impossible to decipher.
Except for one phrase.
“…on the mend…”
Am I?
That would be nice.
* * *
Mark’s texts come and go, but no phone calls. Secured lines and taps and all that are his excuses. I know he’s also unwinding his own circus out on the other coast.
That doesn’t mean I don’t need him desperately.
Got your stuff out of Elaine and Brian’s trailer, one text reads. In storage.
Abandoning most of my stuff in their cottage, reads another.
Securing a safe post-hospital location, reads the final text he sent an hour ago.
It’s three a.m. Both guards are wide awake, just staring out the window. My sleep cycle is screwed up by the narcotics, which I’m weaning off of. The nurses said it was a good thing I never took much, because this isn’t going to be easy, but easier than if I’d taken a larger dose.
I don’t like feeling loopy. I’ll take pain over disorientation, no matter how nice the warm fuzzies of opiates can be.
I close my eyes and conjure Mark’s face. In the rush of news channels and newspapers and police interrogations and DEA meetings on top of medical care and doctors trying to shield me from the worst of it all, I really haven’t talked to Mark.
We’ve had no real reunion.
I know he’s out there in D.C., managing the victory of killing El Brujo. Allie begged him to keep her out of the mess. Made him promise to lie and tell people she wasn’t the one who killed El Brujo. Galt had reached for her hand, taken the gun out of it, and given her his assurances that he would do his best.
That moment still befuddles me.
Why did Galt kill Frenchie? Why was Loogie there? Who, exactly, are they?
My guards won’t answer questions. My shoulder is starting to just ache these days. No joint damage aside from the shoulder, according to the orthopedic surgeon. My broken arm itches. The nurse says that’s the feeling of the bones knitting together.
Itchiness is a sign I’m getting better.
The tap tap tap on my door is so faint I almost don’t hear it. My two bodyguards jump like an assassin is at the door, guns drawn and faces tight.
“Who is it?” one of them barks. I don’t even know him. The midnight shift comes in while I’m sleeping.
“Minnie. I’m Amy’s mother,” says a trembling voice.
The guard looks at me. I nod. He opens the door and lets poor, freaked out Minnie in.
“You,” she whispers, her eyes filling with shining tears as she takes in my appearance. She walks on unsteady legs, nearly collapsing at my bedside. “Oh, Carrie, you saved her. My God, you did it.”
She’s weeping openly, tears making splotches on her shirt, her face twisted with a kind of strangled gratitude that makes me cry.
Minnie’s long face is so drawn and pale. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help her more,” I say. My own tears fill my throat, the ache so different from my pain-filled body. I haven’t seen Amy since we shoved her in the pipe to escape. I know she’s at a different hospital. The guards finally told me I’m in Los Angeles, med-flighted out of San Diego because Mark considered the area too unsafe.
El Brujo’s henchmen might still be out for me.
Now I understand better why he called Drew in.
Minnie’s arms wrap carefully around me. A pang, deep and sharp, hits me as her warmth envelops my upper body. Elaine. I miss Elaine. She hasn’t come to see me—not once—and Minnie’s motherly hug makes me yearn for the closest person I have to a mother.
“Oh, honey, thank you. I can never, ever thank you enough. Amy’s still sedated. The infection nearly killed her. They’re lowering the sedation and hoping she doesn’t have permanent damage,” Minnie explains. “She’s alive, and that’s what matters. All because of you.”
I want to protest. I want to argue. I want to say that I didn’t do enough. I want to point out that Amy has no arm. El Brujo took it. He took so much from so many people.
He took my dad.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper through thick regret.
“Sorry for what?” Minnie’s voice is filled with a layered indignation. “For saving my daughter? For cracking the biggest drug case in American history? For helping rid the world of a piece of evil? You have nothing to be sorry for, Carrie. Don’t you dare let me hear you say that again!”
I’m stunned into silence. I stop crying and the hiccups start. They hurt. You try hiccuping with a dislocated shoulder and three broken ribs.
“You’re right,” I say with a sniff. Hiccup. “I just wish I could have gotten there before they took her arm.”
“Thank goodness you got there when you did. You and Allie and Chase and Mark and the man no one will talk about all saved the most precious person on earth to me. I am in your debt forever. Ask me to do anything. Anything in the world.”
I laugh, then hiccup. Ouch.
A thought hits me. “What about Wizard? How is poor Wizard?”
She grins and shakes her head. She’s so solemn. “We’ve got poor Wizard taken care of. Animal Control released him back to that…that…that bastard.” Minnie doesn’t curse, so I know she means the dean. El Brujo. “But Marny and Cindy couldn’t stand knowing they were training him to be an attack dog. So they snuck over to the Landau house and stole him in the dead of night.” She frowns, her face going thinner. “Must have been when you and Amy were…you know. Trapped.”
“Cindy and Marny stole Wizard?” I am incredulous.
Hiccup.
“Technically, yes. I prefer to think of it as an ethical rescue that violated the law.”
I snort. It hurts. I stop.
“And where is Wizard?”
“At home. With me. He’s the sweetest thing. I like to think we rescued him from being turned into a damaged version of himself by that sick man.” Minnie gives me a triumphant look and pats my hand. “Just like you did, for Amy.”
Her phone rings. She answers it. Her face tightens, then releases with a flood of joy so intense I start to cry again.
“Oh! Oh!” She squeezes my hand. It hurts, but I don’t say anything.
Hiccup.
“Amy’s coming out of it! I have to get back home.” She looks at the clock and then gets off the phone, fast. “I can’t believe it! The one time I leave her bedside and she rallies.”
A warm happiness fills me. Maybe it’s just relief, but it feels like more. “Tell her I’ll see her soon,” I say.
“I’ll tell her far more than that. When you’re ready, we’ll make sure you can see each other.” And with that, Minnie gives me a fast, but soft, hug. She’s out the door before I can wipe my eyes.
The guard shuts the door behind her.
A wave of utter exhaustion rolls over me.
I’m asleep in seconds, fading out to the inner glow of knowing Amy’s going to be safe.
Safe.
Chapter Seventy-Five
We’re in a field of wildflowers, the Queen Anne’s Lace poking up above the buttercups and the purple blossoms, asserting itself with authority. I’m little, running like the wind, my cotton dress billowing with the wind and the speed
of my freedom.
I am invincible.
Daddy scoops me up and I’m on his shoulders. He’s running, and dandelion seeds float on the wind, brushing against my face like tiny kisses. I’m giggling, the sounds traveling like fairy dust. Daddy’s big hands keep me in place so I can fly.
I’m safe.
I know this because Daddy will keep me safe.
He slows, the field changing, thinning out until we come to a river. The river bed is beautiful, with a waterfall that shines like diamonds. The flow is powerful but also unthreatening. I am barefoot and wade in to the water below, my hands eager to find the right rock.
Daddy sits down behind me and calls out, “Skip one! You can do it!”
I turn to look at him. His blonde hair is like spun gold, his eyes so happy and content.
And then Mommy appears. She looks like me, but all grown up. I run to her and hug her knees, crushing her. She smells like cinnamon.
“Honey,” she says, bending down to kiss my head. Her soft hand strokes my hair. She meets me at eye level, her dress like mine. The wind carries it in a silky ribbon behind her, like a train on a wedding dress.
“Mommy! You’re here!” I say, laughing with delight. “Daddy! Daddy! Come look!”
Mommy lets go of my hand. She lets go because suddenly, Daddy and Mommy are hugging.
And Daddy is laughing, too.
I wake up, my skin covered in goosebumps, my bladder screaming, my mind filled with a bliss that feels permanent. The sound of my own gasps is all I hear at first. The hospital room is quiet. Even the beep beep beep of my heart monitor is off. I’m released to go home in the morning.
Home.
Wherever that is.
I look over to the chairs where my guards normally sit and am astonished to find Mark asleep in one of them.
“Mark!” I rasp, my voice still not back. It’s been over a week since I was admitted, and while parts of me are healing, I’m still pretty fragile.
His eyes open like a soldier on duty and he jumps to his feet, hand on his gun.
“Carrie! What’s wrong?” His eyes shift to and fro as his face stays close to me. He’s scanning the room for danger. I look around. It’s just me and Mark.
No more guards.
Then again, he is my guard.
The only one I really want.
“Nothing,” I rasp.
“A dream?” He holsters his gun, shrugging his shoulders to release tension. He’s wearing a suit, his dress shirt open at the collar, the top two buttons undone. I see a tie on the arm of the chair he was resting in. It’s a sedate burgundy. His suit jacket is wrinkled in the back. His hair is mussed and a day’s growth of beard adorns his face.
He is perfect.
“Yeah.” I burst into tears. Seeing him, finally, is what I need, and yet so many emotions are stirred up by his sudden presence.
“Shhhh. Shhhhh,” he croons. I’m in his arms and he’s so careful with me. He reaches up to stroke my hair and I flinch.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks. “I’m sorry.”
“No. Not pain. It’s just…” I reach up and rub my head. A week’s worth of hair is growing in. I wonder what I look like right now. I must be hideous. One of the day nurses covered the mirrors in my bathroom. When I asked for a hand mirror, she urged me to wait another week. Between the black eye, the long scrape, and my other injuries, I figure I look like a bald Cabbage Patch doll with bruises and casts.
“It’s what?” He pulls back and looks at me with confused eyes. Then he takes me in, really looking at me. Cataloguing my injuries and absorbing the details.
“It’s this. How I must look.”
“Oh, Carrie. No. No. You’re beautiful,” he insists.
I snort. It hurts. I wince and grab my ribs with my casted hand. “I can’t even laugh without sounding stupid. And I am the opposite of beautiful.”
“You don’t sound or look stupid. As for the beautiful part, you’re wrong.”
I rub my head with my casted hand. “Hah. Right.”
He reaches up and lightly brushes his fingertips against the peach fuzz growing on my scalp. His eyes are so full of love and worry, of concern and hope.
“I always said I liked you with short hair.”
I whack him with my cast.
“Hey! That hurts!” he jokes. I know it doesn’t really hurt him, but it actually did hurt me.
I lean back against the pillows, suddenly tired. My body can relax with him here. Maybe that’s why I had my first happy dream in three years.
Because Mark was here, keeping me safe. Loving me.
He leans in for a kiss, feather-light and on my forehead. I tip my head up and catch his eyes.
He smiles and begins to pull back.
I am so weak. I try, pulling him closer. I need a kiss. I want one so desperately.
Mark can tell.
He gives me what I need. Body trembling with some emotion I can’t quite pinpoint, he hovers over me, the kiss a welcome to a new life that neither of us quite expected. As he quivers, his lips gently nudge mine open, tongue saying hello to this new, uncharted love we now share.
Forged by trauma and the unforgettable knowledge that we overcame evil personified, we have a love that is something new. Like alchemy, we’ve taken Mark and Carrie and combined us into a completely separate element. Parts of each other remain, but the whole of our relationship is forever changed.
He pulls back and cups my face. He traces the scrape along my cheek. “I couldn’t stop him from doing that,” he says, his voice brimming with anger. “It fucking killed me to have that fucker plant Eric Horner’s body in my cottage and have me detained by Chief Cummings. Murphy had to tell Cummings about how I treated Horner that day at the side of the road. Made me a prime suspect.”
“How’d you get out?”
“I had to blow my cover,” he says in a voice that sounds like he’s chewing roofing tacks.
“The DEA had to step in? Chief Cummings knows now?” I’m shocked. That makes me more alert, for sure. Four years of being undercover destroyed by El Brujo.
“Right. He’s not exactly thrilled about it, but he had to let me go immediately. I caught up to Drew and Chase and…Jesus. By the time we got there, I thought it was too late. Then Galt stepped up and—” He makes a choking sound of grief. “And all my careful watching couldn’t stop El Brujo from getting his hands on you. I couldn’t stop him.”
“No one could.” I’ve become numb to the memory of my day of prison in the storage spot. The doctors say the terror will hit me later, after the physical injuries heal enough for me to return to a semi-normal life.
“I should have,” Mark says with a sigh. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” He closes his eyes. Fine lines of veins run under the delicate skin. His lashes, a shade darker than his hair, rest against strong cheekbones. Seeing him before me, felled by my own pain, makes me love him a little bit more.
I didn’t think that was possible.
“We did what we could. El Brujo is dead. Frenchie is dead. And,” I say, hardening my voice, “you have some explaining to do.”
He groans and sits up, but doesn’t stop touching me. “Explaining?”
“I have a million questions.”
“Only a million?”
“I’m trying to keep it simple.”
He gives me a look I can’t quite read. In the distance, a machine starts beeping fast. Footsteps pound in the hallway. Someone is in crisis.
For once, it’s not me.
Mark shrugs his way out of his suit jacket and stands. “Can you move over?” he asks. There’s a pleading tone under the surface. He wants to be with me.
Maybe he even needs me.
Very carefully, inch by inch, I make room for him on the bed. The instant heat of his long body pressed against mine makes another layer of muscle in me relax. I cuddle up to him. He loops his arm around me, cautious of the IVs and slings and casts.
“You pretty much have
to be an engineer to give me a hug these days,” I joke.
“Then I’ll become an engineer, Carrie,” he replies, kissing my bald head.
I shiver. It feels weird.
“Now,” I say in a no-nonsense voice. “Explain Galt to me.”
He laughs, the kind of sound that you push out of your nose like you’re in a state of disbelief.
“I’m not sure I can.”
“Try.”
“No, Carrie, I mean I’m not sure I’m allowed.”
“Oh.”
“But here’s what I can tell you. Galt turns out to be, oh, man…” He’s struggling. “Galt’s not a bad guy.”
“I watched him shoot Frenchie dead, Mark. I figured that out. But I thought he was the president of a motorcycle club gang? Wasn’t Frenchie his buddy? And Galt was out to kill Chase. You had Chase and Allie moving all the time, and—”
“Galt’s deep undercover.” Mark’s words ring in the room like a bullet ricocheting off a tin roof.
“What? Like you?”
He shakes his head. “Way deeper than me.”
“So he’s not really the president of a motorcycle club?”
Mark gives me a light squeeze. “No. He is.”
I do not understand. Then, suddenly, I do. “You mean, like, how you’re a ‘cop’?” I use my only functional hand to make finger quotes.
“Right.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“No. Never. I had no idea.”
“He’s a DEA agent and you didn’t know?”
“He’s not a DEA agent.”
I just blink a lot, taking this in. “Then how is he—”
“He works for a different agency.”
“Which one?”
Mark shakes his head.
Ah. I’ve hit the limit of what he can say.
“If I guess, will you tell me?” A jumble of alphabet soup fills my mind. CIA? FBI? NSA? Something else?
Mark tenses.
“S.H.I.E.L.D.?” I ask.
The comic book joke goes over like a lead balloon. Mark just makes a grunting sound.
I sigh. “You don’t have to say a word. So Galt’s been undercover since when?”
“Since a year or so before I was born.”
A cold chill makes my teeth rattle. “Oh, my God. All these years. Thirty years?”
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