by Mari Carr
“I’ve got food and stuff in the truck,” Oscar said, turning and exiting the front door.
Lancelot walked quickly back to the bedroom doorway and nodded to Hugo, who relaxed, moving so Sylvia wasn’t boxed into the corner. He offered her his arm to help her back to the bed, but she bypassed it. Lancelot adjusted his grip on the knife so the blade was flat against his forearm, and hidden from view.
Keeping his eye on the open front door, he stood in the bedroom doorway, more than ready to pick her up and put her back in bed if she was going to be stubborn.
“I’m hungry,” she said softly.
Lancelot’s heart clenched, and Hugo slipped an arm around her waist, steadying her. As much as he might want to put her back on the bed and keep her there, where he could watch her and protect her, he knew she needed to be up and moving around—it would help with the stiffness he could see in the way she walked.
Lancelot moved so they could exit the bedroom, then led the way down the hallway to the front parlor.
Hugo helped her sit down in a chair where the warm late-afternoon light streaming in through the front window fell across her, adding gold highlights to her hair.
Not wanting Sylvia to see the knife—not wanting to scare or hurt her any more than he, they, already had—Lancelot turned his back to them, snatched a gauze pad from the box of medical supplies the clinic in Florida had given them, and started wiping the blade.
Oscar walked into the front room carrying a small black box with two wires hanging off of it. That’s what he’d gone to get? That was probably how he’d gotten in, some sort of code generator he’d used on the keypad lock.
Where was the food or the doctor?
It seemed to Lancelot that the man was looking around the room like he’d never seen it before. Which was odd because Oscar had been the one to dump supplies in here, including the medical kit Lancelot had just raided, after he’d carried Sylvia to the ground-floor master bedroom.
The sound of additional footsteps made Lancelot whip the knife up. His body reacted to the threat before his mind could fully process it. Oscar was still looking around.
A second figure appeared in the open door of the parlor, a dark outline due to the sunlight that filled the foyer through the windows that flanked the front door. Lancelot tensed. It was probably the doctor.
The man—Oscar—stepped into the room.
Wait, what?
The second Oscar had on a heavy-looking backpack and went to stand beside the first Oscar.
“La vache!” Hugo exclaimed.
Lancelot blinked, but when he opened his eyes, there were still two versions of her brother standing there.
And then he heard it—a third set of footsteps, the sound of the front door closing with a boom.
Whatever the hell was going on with Oscar—the Oscars?—didn’t matter. He’d been expecting two people—her brother and the doctor. There was no reason for there to be a third person. And why had the second Oscar left the front door open?
Lancelot’s insides went icy. Clearly, Oscar was a twin. That, or the brilliant, devious man had managed to clone himself, which Lancelot wasn’t completely ruling out.
Regardless, there should only be two people walking into the house at this moment. What mattered was keeping Sylvia safe.
What matters is getting the answers the fleet admiral needs. Sylvia will come to hate you when she finds out who you really are, so focus on your objective.
Lancelot flipped the knife, holding the tip of the blade between his thumb and the middle knuckle of his index finger. He wasn’t an expert knife thrower, but he didn’t need to be an expert. A knife flying through the air made even the most highly trained soldiers curse and duck, even if that knife was just as likely to smack into them handle, rather than blade, first.
Lancelot raised his arm, tense and ready.
The third man stepped into the room.
Oscar.
A third Oscar.
Lancelot checked his knife throw, looking from the two versions of Oscar already standing there, to the man who’d just walked in.
“What the…what the fook?” Lancelot stammered. There were very few things in his life that really shocked him, but this surreal moment was at the top of that short list. “How many of you are there?!”
The third Oscar to enter was carrying two plastic bags that smelled like fried food. He set them on the end table. “I got your favorite, Sylvia.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m hungry. At least, I think I’m hungry.”
“I need to take care of your hand first, then you can eat,” backpack-wearing Oscar said.
“Who owns this place?” black-box-carrying Oscar said.
Hugo was on his feet, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. Lancelot felt exactly the same way, but hoped he didn’t look that stupid. Hugo started speaking in rapid French, pointing at each of the men in turn. Lancelot’s French wasn’t enough to keep up with the rapid-fire words, but he didn’t need to understand what Hugo was saying. His expression said it all.
Time to take control of the situation. Lancelot tossed the knife in the air, high enough so he knew the movement would catch everyone’s attention. He caught it by the handle, flipped it so he was once more holding the blade between thumb and knuckle. He drew back his arm and then let the knife fly.
All three Oscars hit the ground. The knife embedded in the wall behind them. Even if they hadn’t moved, it wouldn’t have hit any of them—Lancelot was about sixty percent sure of that, odds he was okay with at the moment.
Black-box Oscar was the first to his feet. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded.
“Why the fuck are there three of you?” Lancelot shot back. “What are you? Clones?”
Black-box Oscar frowned. “What kind of dumbass question is that?”
Food Oscar was the second one to stand. “I don’t think they know there’s three of us.”
“Lancelot, you cannot throw knives at my brothers!” Sylvia yelled.
“Brothers?” Hugo demanded. He’d run his hands through his hair and it was standing on end.
“You met Oscar and Langston.” She pointed at black-box and food Oscars. “The third of the triplets is Walt.”
“Langston?” Lancelot demanded. “We only met Oscar. We went to his house, and then he came and helped us rescue you.”
Black-box Oscar snorted. “You’re as dumb as you look.”
“I’m the one who rescued Sylvia. Jesus. You two are so dumb, you couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel,” food Oscar said.
Lancelot blinked, staring at each man in turn. They had almost the same haircut, the same builds, but now that he was looking closely, there were small differences in their faces. Not in the structure of them, but in the expressions.
The third Oscar was still sitting on the floor, checking the contents of his backpack. “It’s okay. The PDRS is okay.”
Black-box Oscar crouched, peering into the backpack. “Want me to run a quick diagnostic?”
“No, I want to set her hand first.”
Sylvia groaned. “I don’t want you experimenting on me.”
“You want someone else to fix your hand?” backpack Oscar asked.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “No one is as good as you.”
“Triplets,” Hugo said. “You have identical triplet brothers.”
“Yes?” Sylvia seemed a little confused by how confused they were. “You really thought I only had one brother?”
“We don’t even look that alike,” black-box Oscar said. “I’m taller than them.”
“Which one are you?” Hugo asked, a bit desperately.
“I’m Oscar.”
Lancelot looked at the man who’d entered last and brought in the food. “You’re Langston.” Sylvia had even called him that during their rescue attempt, but Lancelot had thought she was confused.
“Yup.” He picked up the bags. “I’ll put this in the
kitchen until Walt’s done.”
The man still seated on the floor looked up. “Hello. I’m Walt. No, I was not named after Walt Disney. I need someone to clean off a table and put it in the middle of the room so I can set this up.”
Hugo blinked, then started clearing off a side table, muttering to himself all the while.
Lancelot leaned back against the wall and started to laugh. “Three of them. Of course there’s fooking three of them.”
Hugo set the cleared-off end table in front of Sylvia, pushing the low coffee table out of the way.
“Oscar builds things, Langston blows them up, and then Walt patches everyone up afterwards,” Sylvia said.
“An oversimplification,” Oscar grumped. He was helping Walt assemble some sort of machine out of pieces they took from the big backpack. “And while we’re at it, who are you two, really?”
“I don’t have a lead apron,” Walt said. “So everyone get out while this fires.”
Lancelot and Hugo shared a look, and then both stepped closer to Sylvia. “Fires what?” Lancelot asked.
“This is a prototype of the world’s smallest portable, digital radiography system. Backpack-size is the goal. Then soldiers and doctors could carry it with them.” Walt worked methodically as he explained, finishing setting up what looked like a large microscope. He ran a cord from the heavy upper part of the small machine to a socket in the wall.
Oscar had taken the laptop from the bag and was sitting on a chair, frowning as he typed. “You didn’t bring the battery to try?”
“I thought about it,” Walt said. “But didn’t want to make Sylvia wait too long.”
“You just want to experiment on me?” she asked, clearly more resigned than concerned.
“No one is experimenting on her,” Lancelot said. “And what is this thing?”
“I told you already,” Walt said. “Now please, you’ll need to step out of the room while it fires.”
“She’s our kid sister and we’ll experiment on her if we want to,” Oscar said.
“Like hell you will—”
Sylvia touched Lancelot with her good hand. “It’s okay. Walt’s a doctor. He’s actually one of the best battlefield surgeons in the world. He and Oscar team up to develop medical tech.”
“A PDRS is a portable digital radiography system,” Walt said. His voice had taken on that tone that was unique to doctors when they were explaining something. Calm and patient with total authority. “It’s basically a small X-ray machine.”
“You two made it and now…you’re going to test it on your sister?”
“I’m going to use it to check her hand, and then set her fingers properly. Hands are delicate. Tendons, nerves, bones, and lots of small, specialized muscles.” Walt’s expression turned serious. “I know how much being able to write and draw means to you, Sis. I’m going to make sure that hand is perfect.”
Sylvia nodded once. “It got slammed in a car door when I tried to jump out.”
Walt and Oscar both looked grim, and it was a bit startling to see the exact same expression on two different faces. Langston walked back in just in time to hear what she’d said. He looked to his brothers. “I didn’t have time to give y’all all the details.”
“You rescued her, that’s all that matters,” Oscar said.
“Lancelot rescued me,” Sylvia said. “He jumped into the ocean when Alicia pushed me overboard.”
Langston looked a little green. “She was totally out of it. Drugged. I tried to get to her, to get on the boat, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
“We got her back,” Lancelot said. “That’s all that matters.”
The brothers nodded, and Lancelot realized he’d said “we” as if he and her brothers had equal rights to protect her.
He had no right.
Chapter Eighteen
Walt knelt in front of Sylvia and started unwrapping the Ace bandages from around her wrist and hand. The doctor they’d taken her to had used a large plaster pad to form a sort of one-sided cast, molded to the contours of her wrist, palm, and fingers, and held in place by the wraps. Now the reason for this made sense. Langston must have called Walt from the beach, and it was Walt who’d known where to take her, and what to ask for—a temporary cast so he wouldn’t have to worry about cutting it off to x-ray and set her broken fingers.
Once the cast was off, Walt carefully placed her forearm on the table, positioning the upper part of the little X-ray machine over her fingers, which he carefully flattened.
Walt looked up. “Out.”
Lancelot, Hugo, and Langston walked out into the foyer. Walt and Oscar backed up, Oscar still holding the laptop. The machine made several clunking noises. Walt checked the image on the computer on Oscar’s lap, repositioned her hand, then took another X-ray. After ten minutes, they were waved back into the room.
Sylvia looked more awake and aware than she had before, but it wasn’t a good thing. There were bright spots of patchy color high on her cheeks and she was breathing jerkily. He knew that look. He’d caused that look in others.
She was in pain.
Langston and Hugo rushed over to Sylvia. Lancelot wanted to do the same. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and hold her. An utterly ridiculous impulse, and an even more ridiculous feeling. Instead, he went and yanked his knife out of the wall.
“How bad is it?” Hugo asked.
Langston kissed his sister’s head, then went to Oscar’s side, bending to peer at the laptop screen. He whistled.
Walt pulled up a straight-back chair, positioning it in front of Sylvia. He lifted her hand off the table and away from the PDRS, positioning a throw pillow under it before settling it on his lap.
“You have a stable fracture on the proximal third and fourth phalanx, and a comminuted fracture of the proximal fifth phalanx. In addition, you have proximal interphalangeal joint dislocations on all four fingers.”
Grim silence followed.
“Give it to me straight, Doc.” Sylvia’s smile was clearly forced.
“You broke your middle, ring, and pinkie fingers. Of those, only the pinkie finger is a bad break. In this case, that means that the bone didn’t break cleanly in half. When it broke, a few smaller bone fragments broke off. Additionally, you dislocated all four fingers, meaning the bones don’t line up right now.”
“Can you fix it?” Sylvia asked.
“I can. First thing we’re going to do is correct the dislocations.”
“What about the breaks?” Oscar asked, still peering at his laptop screen. “Won’t that put stress on the bones?”
“Maybe, if I wasn’t good at what I do.” There was no arrogance in Walt’s voice. It was a statement of fact. The sky was blue, water was wet, and Walt Hayden was a good doctor.
“Will her hand…” Hugo was still seated beside Sylvia, and as his question trailed off, he put his arm around her.
All three of her brothers looked at Hugo, seeming to assess whether or not they were going to say something about the way he was touching their sister.
Hugo settled his arm more firmly around her shoulders and calmly looked at each brother in turn. Lancelot grinned. Hugo was protecting their woman, making sure her brothers knew that they weren’t intimidated.
“There is always the possibility of nerve damage.” Walt’s voice broke the tense silence. “And in one to two weeks, I’ll start you on physical therapy.”
“But my hand will work?” Sylvia asked.
“Yes, Little Sis. Your hand will work. It’s going to take a while to heal, but it will work.”
Sylvia blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I have to pop your fingers back into place. I’ve got some local anesthetic with me. And some Valium.”
“I don’t want any more drugs,” Sylvia insisted.
“The ketamine is out of your system by now.”
“Why do I still feel so loopy?”
“Shock,” Walt explained. “Langsto
n, can you bring me my kit? Also, we’re going to need a 3D scan of her arm.”
Langston fished around in the backpack and brought over a small zippered case. Walt opened it up on the table, taking out two bottles and several capped needles. Langston peered at Sylvia’s arm. “What am I scanning for?”
Walt grinned. “You ready for this?”
Langston returned his smile. “I’m ready for anything.”
“We’re going to 3D print a custom cast for her.”
Langston whooped and pumped a fist in the air.
Hugo and Lancelot shared a confused look.
“Langston loves to 3D print things. He and Oscar have some patent-pending hardware/software interfaces.” Sylvia sounded both exasperated and affectionate.
“I thought Langston was the one who blows stuff up?” Lancelot asked.
“That’s a massive oversimplification,” Langston said primly. “I like to build things and then blow them up.”
“You have made a cast before?” Hugo asked.
“No, but I’ve been itchin’ to try,” Langston responded.
“And you’re willing to experiment on your sister?”
“Yup,” Langston said.
“Pretty much,” Oscar added.
“It’s the only kind of human experimentation I’m ethically allowed.” Walt put on disposable gloves with a snap.
Hugo settled an arm protectively around Sylvia’s shoulders. “Perhaps we should go to a hospital.”
Walt ignored him. “We’re going to start with some light sedation. Just a little diazepam.”
“I don’t want to be drugged,” Sylvia said stubbornly.
“Well, I don’t want to do a closed reduction without something to take your mind off the feeling of me moving your bones around.”
There was a beat of silence, then Sylvia said, “If I say anything interesting or poetic while I’m drugged, somebody better write it down.”
“On it,” Oscar said.
Walt prepped the first needle and wiped the inside of her elbow with an alcohol pad. Hugo hugged her close—which looked affectionate but probably had more to do with holding her still. The second before Walt slid the needle into her vein, Sylvia turned her face to Hugo, hiding against his neck. Lancelot watched as Langston and Oscar exchanged a look. He tensed, ready for the brothers to do or say something, but they were quiet.