Vic also has both phones out, using one to arrange a flight to Colorado, the other to text Yvonne. They’d been going over the florist results when Priya called; Marlene scolded Vic for working at the breakfast table. “Yes, I’m still here. I need three tickets to Denver, and we need to be there as soon as possible.”
Shaking himself out, Eddison grabs for his phone, pulling the Bureau-issued cell from the clip on his belt. He always thought it moronic to have six phones for three agents, but now he’s grateful for it. He calls Priya back; it goes straight to voice mail. With the other phone, he texts Finney directly.
Ramirez pulls the phone from her ear and glares at it. “They got to the chapel and heard Priya screaming, and the asshole hung up!”
“Would you rather he hold the phone or the gun?” Eddison mutters.
“He should’ve kept the call open with the phone in his pocket so we could hear. Asshole.”
Eddison isn’t sure if she means him or Archer with that last one. He isn’t about to ask.
“We need to get to the airport,” Vic tells them. “Are your go bags at the office?”
“We’ve got backups in our cars,” says Ramirez.
“Then let’s go.”
Marlene watches them leave, tight-lipped with worry.
Through some sorcery of too much experience, Vic gets them on a plane in barely an hour. They get an update from Finney just before boarding: Priya and Joshua—Jameson—are both being taken to the nearest hospital to get airlifted to Denver before the weather makes it impossible, and Finney will meet them at the hospital.
Sterling sends a postscript to Ramirez: the snow is turning into a full storm. It’s possible they’ll have to divert to a different hospital.
Eddison hopes the storm stays well west of Denver. Please, for the love of a God he’s had issues with since Faith disappeared, don’t let it fuck with the flights.
Then they’re on the plane, and the phones are off, and Eddison’s pretty sure time has never been so slow. He wishes, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that the Bureau was even half as well financed as shows and movies make it out to be. Then they’d be on a private jet, able to keep in contact with the folks on the ground, not stuck in economy on a relic of a plane that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.
There also wouldn’t be the incessantly screaming child kicking the back of his seat for four straight hours.
The taxi up to the gate is endless, and he jumps when he feels a hand on his bouncing knee. It’s Vic’s. Eddison flushes at the understanding in his senior partner’s expression. Rather than a lecture, though, or a pointed comment, both of which he probably deserves for his impatience, Vic just pulls a picture from his workbag and hands it to Eddison. “This is why you’ll find the calm as soon as there’s something more you can do.”
This . . . is a picture he did not know existed. It’s taken from behind, at a bit of a distance, as Eddison and Priya look up at the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. They’re side by side, his arm around her shoulders. Or, sort of; he’s hooked over one shoulder, but then his arm is bent so his hand rests atop her scalp, their heads tilted into each other, his cheek against the back of his hand. Her arm is slung around his hips, fingers curled through his belt loop right next to his gun.
He takes a deep breath and stills his knee.
Vic is right. He usually is when it comes to people.
As soon as there’s something he can do, he’ll be doing it.
But goddamn it, can’t this plane taxi any faster?
They get permission to disembark and he’s got his bags and himself off the plane before most of the other passengers are even standing. Ramirez and Vic are right behind him. Near the baggage claim, there’s a young woman holding up a piece of computer paper with QUANTICO written in messy black letters. She straightens when she sees them bearing down on her.
“SSAIC Hanoverian?” she asks.
Vic nods.
“Agent Sterling,” she tells them. “Priya’s alive, and she’s going to be okay. She’s got some injuries, I don’t know how severe, but they got her to a hospital here in Denver, and I’ll take you to her. Her assailant was airlifted to the same hospital; he’s currently in surgery. Docs gave us an extra blood sample from their workup, it’s at the lab and running with a priority rush on it. Fingerprints just confirmed as Jameson Carmichael. Agent Finnegan is at the hospital with Priya.”
Vic gives another nod, slower this time, approving. “Let’s get to the hospital, then. We’ll check in with the Sravastis and Finney.”
“Yes, sir.” She walks briskly, either from her own sense of purpose or their radiating anxiety. A Bureau-issued dark blue sedan waits outside, defiantly straddling a lane of no-parking hashes. An airport security guard scowls at them.
Eddison scowls back. His is more impressive.
Vic shakes his head and mutters something about pissing on parking signs.
It’s amazing, the sense of relief that Priya’s alive.
Agent Sterling doesn’t use the sirens, but she also doesn’t exercise much respect for traffic laws. Eddison fully approves. She pulls up to the emergency entrance and idles, waiting for them to scramble out of the car. “Huntington cops are at Carmichael’s apartment. I’ll be in the garage here; call me when you’re ready to head out.”
“Thanks,” Vic says absently. His attention is already on the ambulance screaming its way up the loop, and all three Quantico agents hurry onto the sidewalk so Sterling can pull away.
Ramirez shudders. “She nearly clipped a hearse.”
Eddison rolls his eyes. “An empty one.”
“How would you know?”
“No escort.”
Vic ignores them. He frequently does whenever, as he says, they remind him more of his kids than his teammates. A harried-looking receptionist directs them to the second floor. Fortunately, they don’t have to ask which room. At the room closest to the nurses’ station, they can see two men leaning on either side of the door, one in the crisp black uniform of DPD, the other in a crumpled suit and off-kilter tie.
The one in the suit straightens when he sees them. “Hello, Quantico.”
“Finney.” Vic reaches out and the two men clasp forearms.
He nods at Ramirez and Eddison. “She got knocked about a bit. Some bruises, some concern with her ribs, her left wrist. She’s got a gash on her throat that took a few stitches, but it wasn’t too deep. She said it, but a nurse confirmed that she was not raped.”
Vic lets out a slow breath. “That’s physically. How’s she actually doing?”
“Hard to say.” Finney frowns and attempts to straighten his tie, but only succeeds in making the back longer than the front. “Aside from the shakes, she’s fairly steady, but her eyes are a bit wild. She settled a little after her mother arrived.”
“Is Deshani in with her now?”
The officer sneezes. Eddison’s fairly certain it’s a laugh. “Yes, sir, she is. Made two interns and a resident cry, until she put her foot down and demanded someone get a nurse so her daughter could be treated by someone who knew what they were doing. Never knew doctors could look so much like cats.”
“Deshani has that effect,” Ramirez and Vic say together, and both smile at the officer’s surprise.
“Okay to go in?” asks Eddison. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, fighting the urge to bury his hands in his pockets. He’s never understood how Vic can go so still when he’s anxious.
“Yeah, go on. We can figure out a game plan after. Reassure yourselves.”
He doesn’t mention that they’re far too close on this one, that they don’t have the distance they should. He already knows they don’t, and whether it’s loyalty to Vic or just an understanding of how things can get, he hasn’t said anything about it.
Eddison knocks on the door. “I come with Oreos,” he announces.
“Then get the hell in here,” Priya calls back. “I’m starving!”
Vic and Ramirez both star
t laughing. Eddison just leans his forehead against the door and takes a deep breath. His hand is still shaking. He can feel Vic’s grip on his shoulder and wants to snarl. Knows he could do it, too, and that his partner would understand the temper, the need to vent, and it’s that more than anything else that keeps him from doing it. When the rage and relief are tamped down a little, he opens the door and leads the way in.
Deshani Sravasti rests against the foot of the bed, straight from the office. Her dark grey skirt and blazer are elegant but tailored severely, softened slightly by the dusky rose silk blouse and sheer, brightly patterned cabbage rose scarf around her neck. Her heels sit on the floor against the far wall with her bag, and she looks almost ridiculous with her nylons ending in bright blue hospital-issue ultra-grip socks, but Eddison’s not brave enough to tell her that. He freely gives Deshani the same respect as the gun at his hip, unsure which is more dangerous.
Priya sits tailor-style on the bed, with a pillow on her lap and a bandage wrapped around her throat, and his heart skips at the amount of blood on the clothing bagged at her side. Seeing her faded hospital gown is not something he thinks he can get over anytime soon. She gives him a weak smile, mostly obscured by the fist that hovers in front of her mouth, the thumb tapping an urgent tattoo against the blue crystal nose stud. There are smears of makeup on her cheeks and around her eyes, left over from tears and sweat and, he guesses, blood and quick cleaning.
She looks like her sister. Christ but it’s another punch to the gut to realize how similar their crime scene photos would have looked. Could have looked, if she hadn’t been lucky.
“Blue,” she says, the smile fading. Her hand drops to the pillow, palms and fingers wrapped in gauze and tape, and Inara’s were like that, when he first met her—stop.
He takes a deep breath. “What?”
“The streaks, the jewelry. They’re blue. Still blue. Hers were red.”
He chuckles weakly and scrubs at his jaw, feeling the stubble he didn’t bother to shave off this morning because he didn’t have the energy. “Thank you.” It helps more than it should—again—but not enough. She studies her hands, then looks up at him through her lashes, and he’s moving before he’s aware of it, thighs thumping against the side of the bed as he comes close enough to wrap his arms around her and just hold on.
She leans into him, her hands curling around his arm, and as she releases a great, shuddering sigh, he can feel her shoulders drop, the muscles in her back easing. He hears a click that’s probably Ramirez taking a picture and he can’t bring himself to care. Priya’s alive. She’s here and alive and he’s more certain than he’s been in twenty years that there might be a God out there after all.
“So do you actually have Oreos or was that just a way to get in the door?”
He reaches into the outer left pocket of his coat and pulls out a snack pack of Oreos, tossing it over her head so it lands on the pillow. He picked it up at the airport just in case, while Vic argued with the gate attendant to get them on the first flight out.
She covers it with one hand, but keeps the other on his arm, not moving away from him. “You got here fast.”
“Next flight out. Vic kicked three people to standby so we could take their seats.”
“Is he allowed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Fortunately no one else did, either.”
“Way to go, Vic.”
The senior agent smiles and moves toward Deshani, hand outstretched. The woman takes it, holds it for a moment before letting it drop. Deshani isn’t the type of woman to allow herself much comforting. “I’m glad you’re all right, Priya,” Vic says warmly.
“Aren’t I always?”
“No. And that’s okay.”
She smiles at him, wry and small but there. Reluctantly, Eddison lets her go so she can sit up properly. He doesn’t step away, though. “How are your girls?” she asks Vic.
“Holly’s intent on having a magazine-worthy dorm room, so she and her mother have been plotting and crafting. I learned what a duvet is.” He gives her a crooked grin, surprisingly young on his weathered face. “At least I’m fairly sure a duvet is made of fabric and goes on a bed.”
Ramirez snickers and adjusts the strap of her messenger bag. “Now that I can see you’re okay—or will be—I’m going to go find out what’s going on. I’ll see you both later.”
“Doesn’t Eddison usually do the scene thing?”
“There’s a baby agent in the car; if I let Eddison ride down to the scene with her, she’ll probably leave the Bureau.”
“Sterling’s tougher than she looks; she might ask him out.”
If he was close enough, he’d be shoving Ramirez out the door right now. As it is, she gives him a mocking little finger wave before leaving.
There are exactly two chairs in the room, one a somewhat padded vinyl monstrosity, the other a faux-wood plastic contraption that looks so fiendishly uncomfortable they must use it to limit visiting time. Vic pushes the terrible one to Eddison, then shifts the armchair to the other side of the bed, near the foot. Neither man offers one to Deshani; they both know she’s at the absolute stretch of her tether. The end of the bed is as far as she can make herself go, to give her daughter some space.
Eddison just spent four hours with the very real possibility that deplaning meant hearing of Priya’s death. Space is not really one of his top priorities at the moment.
“They won’t tell me anything about him,” Priya says quietly.
“He’s in surgery,” Vic answers. “That’s all we know so far.”
She nods at that.
Eddison can’t keep himself from cataloguing her injuries. Her left wrist is in an elastic wrap, the material already fraying around the bite of the metal butterfly clasps. He can see the beginnings of bruises on her arms, around her throat, on her face, especially on her jaw and chin. There’s a deep pink scrape and welt between her eyes, and he wonders if the crystal bindi is on the chapel floor, or if it gave up the ghost in the ambulance. Finney mentioned there was worry about her ribs, but he can’t bring himself to ask. Not yet.
Opening the pack of Oreos, Priya pulls one out, separates one cookie from the crème with a deft twist, and hands that one to her mother. Crumbs flake off against the gauze covering her fingers. After a moment’s thought, she uses her thumb to peel the crème off.
“Really?”
She gives Eddison a sidelong glance. “There’s no milk.”
“If I call someone to fix that, will you stop eating it like a heathen?”
She rolls the crème into a neat, almost perfectly round ball and hands him the naked cookie. “There are more important matters on the table, aren’t there?”
He considers that, then shoves the cookie in his mouth. “No.”
“Children, behave,” murmurs Vic, looking pained.
But Priya gives Eddison a small nod, not quite imperceptible, and he relaxes back into the chair. If she needed the Oreos, she wouldn’t be remotely fussy about the way she eats them. She pops the crème ball in her mouth, brushes her fingers against the worn fabric of the hospital gown, and reaches up to push her hair out of her face. A moment later, it flops forward again, a heavy mass of blue-streaked black. “Mum?”
“I suppose the bandages would make it a bit difficult,” Deshani agrees. She moves around the bed and up to her daughter’s side, opposite Eddison, gently gathering Priya’s hair into her hands. Despite the care, Priya winces once or twice. “There’s some blood caked in there,” her mother tells her, the bleakly practical words offset by the slight crack in her voice. “We’ll wash it when we get home.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Finney pokes his head in. “They’re still operating, but they sent out a resident to give an update, if you want to hear firsthand.”
It should be Eddison getting up to go, but instead it’s Vic hauling himself out of the sucking vinyl monstrosity. “Deshani, did you happen to bring any clothes for Priya?”
She shak
es her head. “I came straight from the office.”
“While I’m out, I’ll see what the gift shop has to offer, and we’ll get your clothes to the lab.” He walks up the bed to get the sealed bag and drops a hand onto Eddison’s shoulder, not squeezing, not gripping, just there for a moment and gone the next. A gift, in its way.
There are times Eddison knows how lucky he is to have Vic for a partner.
He’s not sure he’s ever felt it so keenly before.
“I’m going to get us some coffee,” Deshani announces. “Eddison? If I promise to have them make it extra barbaric?”
“Some of us are strong enough to drink coffee the way the gods intended,” he tells her, and she snorts.
“You’re bitter enough, like calls to like.” She nods to Vic as he holds the door open for her.
In the quiet of the room, Eddison watches Priya scrape the crème off the rest of the Oreos, tucking the cookies back into the packaging. “What happened, Priya?” he asks finally.
“I didn’t think I was going to be able to get down to the chapel before we left,” she says after a minute. “I’d only just learned about it, but it sounded . . . it sounded like something Chavi would have loved. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help but feel like leaving the country is leaving her behind. We’re taking her ashes with us and everything, but it’s just . . .”
“It’s a big move,” he says neutrally. Waiting.
“Archer agreed to drive me down. When I went inside the chapel, he stayed in the car. Joshua said he saw Archer in town.” She takes a slow, shaky breath, her eyes glassy with shock. “Why would he go to town?”
“We’ll get the full account from him soon, but he went to get help. He thought the killer might follow you, so he left you alone as bait. He was looking for backup so he could get back and protect you.”
“How could he protect me from town?”
He shakes his head. Archer may or may not lose his place in the Bureau—he did technically catch the killer, after all—but he’ll be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Eddison’s going to help make sure of that. “You were alone in the chapel, you called me, and Joshua came in.”
The Roses of May Page 25