“It’s why I was kept sedated,” she whispered aloud, more to herself than to Matt or Luke.
“Exactly.” Luke nodded sharply in the big screen on the wall. “They probably took photographs with time stamps on them to show your father.”
“Or videos,” Matt added, watching her carefully.
Of course. Honor felt sick at the thought, but it made sense. She hadn’t been harmed. Certainly nothing that could be seen. She was held shackled in place and drugged. Extremely vulnerable. If that’s what her father saw he would do anything to keep her safe, anything. Whether photos or video, Honor would have been like a living breathing warning.
We can do anything we want, at any time.
The old Mafia warning. Nice daughter you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to her.
A wave of nausea rolled up her gullet which she had to swallow down.
Matt frowned. “You okay?”
She thought about uttering the usual — Yes, I’m fine. But she wasn’t. “No.” She set her jaw. “If what we’re thinking is right, I was used in the most appalling way. Laid out on a bed, shackled and unconscious to torment my father. God only knows how he suffered.”
Honor looked long and hard at Matt first then Luke. Rage was pulsing through her, in every cell of her body. She’d never felt anything like it, didn’t even know she was capable of this intensity of rage. She’d been white hot with anger before but not like this. Nothing like this. It felt almost like a superpower.
“I want them. Whoever is behind this — that CIA man, or anyone else — I want them. I want to find them and kill them but I can’t. But I want to see them behind bars forever. If there were a penal colony on the dark side of the moon, I’d want them incarcerated there in a cage for the rest of their miserable lives.” She narrowed her eyes at the big screen on the wall. “Do you hear me, Luke? Right now you represent law enforcement. If these men have abducted my father and forced him to do something he would never ever do by turning his love for me against him, if they are planning to flood the streets of the West Coast with heroin, I want them brought to justice, I want an airtight case, and I want to sit every single fucking day at the trial.”
Luke’s eyelids flickered briefly when she said fucking. Clearly they hadn’t spent much time in the emergency room in hospitals.
He nodded.
“Whoa, Joan of Arc.” Matt held up his hands. “A bloodthirsty doctor, that’s a scary thought. We’ll get them. Do we have a date for the next ship to land?”
Honor shook her head. “If I were in my father’s office I could check, because it would be an internal system. But I don’t know how to check from outside, certainly not without attracting attention. I don’t deal with any of the day-to-day business aspects of Quest Line Shipping.”
Luke disappeared from the screen and they heard his low voice, murmuring. After a few moments, he came back online. He read off a screen to the side.
“Next landing of a Quest Line ship is the 19th, day after tomorrow. At the Port of Los Angeles. The Maria Cristina. Among the declared merchandise — antique pottery, elements of a triptych to be assembled for an exhibit at the Getty Museum, a shipment of one thousand antique rugs.”
Honor felt her jaw drop, just a little. She closed her mouth with a snap.
“How’d you do that?” Matt demanded.
Luke smiled faintly, the first smile she’d seen on his face. “Magic,” he said.
“I heard that.” A light voice floated in the air.
Luke sighed. “Okay okay. To be more precise, our own magic fairy. Felicity.”
“Wow.” Honor’s eyes widened. “I think — I think you just hacked into Quest Line Shipping’s servers, Felicity. Did you? Because if you did, hats off. Dad just spent a ton of money getting this fancy computer security company to make his system unhackable.”
“What company?” Felicity’s voice was still disembodied.
“Ah —” she wracked her brain. “A weird name. Akzo.”
Felicity made a noise that was both funny and disparaging at the same time. Not an easy thing to do. “Amateurs. And besides, I have a ton of time on my hands now that I’m not barfing my insides out.”
Honor wisely kept quiet. Felicity had hacked into her father’s super secure system in the past fifteen minutes. Which her father would have said was impossible. But thanks to Felicity, they might save her father.
“Thanks a lot, Felicity,” Honor said quietly.
Luke disappeared and Felicity’s face filled the big screen. She was smiling. “Hey, doc. Nice to finally meet you in person, virtually.”
“Hey.” Honor smiled back. “You’re looking good. Happy to see it.”
“Mmm. I’d forgotten how great it is not to upchuck all the time. I have you to thank for it.”
“Not really, but I’ll take the credit because you have to promise me something in return.”
“Anything.” Felicity’s smile widened.
“I want you to take some B6 vitamin supplements.”
“Consider it done.”
“And if you start vomiting again on an industrial scale like before, I want you to promise me that you’ll go to the hospital for IV infusion of liquids and electrolytes. For both you and the children.”
“Hm.” Felicity’s pretty face tightened.
“Done.” A deep voice in the background. A very large hand appeared on Felicity’s shoulder. “Promise. She promises, too.” Metal’s big hand tightened on her shoulder. “Doesn’t she?”
Felicity lost the slight pout and sighed. “Okay, promise.”
“I don’t think it’ll be necessary. I think your hyperemesis gravidarum is probably over. While you were, um, in the system, did you find out anything about my father?”
“No.” Felicity’s face turned sober. “Or rather, he’s been giving orders, been carrying out business, but no one has actually seen him. He might — he might be going into the offices at night.”
Honor blinked, trying to process this. “At night?”
Felicity nodded.
“He’s an early morning person. Unless there’s an emergency, Dad always leaves the office by six. But he might be in the office the next morning at six. Why do you say that?”
“At night there’s movement. Secure doors opening, using your father’s card. But no recording.”
Honor took a big breath, sat back. Was grateful for the presence of Matt right by her side. Scenarios were running through her head but it felt like they were in fast forward, and nothing slowed long enough for her to grasp it. “So, just to be clear, you think he is coming into the office at night?”
Luke appeared on the screen. “Either it’s your father or someone using his card.”
“Some of the doors require a retina scan,” Honor said. “And a thumbprint.”
If it wasn’t her father … she couldn’t go there.
“But no one’s seen him?” That was something she could grasp onto, something she could understand.
“No. No face to face meetings that I could see, and I took a pretty thorough tour of his schedule.”
Honor looked at Matt, miserable.
“Okay.” Matt slapped his knees. “We’ve got a working hypothesis here. That maybe a Quest Line ship is carrying a cargo of heroin and will be docking in two days’ time at the port of Los Angeles. Dante is in LA and like I said, he has a bunch of DEA contacts and a ton of experience. We have to be careful with probable cause here but at least the shipment can be tracked once it’s off-loaded. We can get sniffer dogs down to the port. We’re also operating under the assumption that Honor’s dad is somehow under their control. That’s what we think we know.”
Honor’s heart jumped when he talked about her father being in those monsters’ hands. It had the horrible ring of truth to it. Like the stage 4 cancer diagnosis of someone who’s been feeling unwell and doesn’t want to face it.
It was horrible to be sick with worry, but completely unable to do anything about it.
This was so far outside her wheelhouse, she could barely cope.
Honor considered herself a pretty capable woman and she knew she was really good at her job. She couldn’t save everyone who entered the emergency ward — that would be impossible and she’d understood it on her first day of medical school. But she did her damndest and a lot of people were still alive because she knew what she was doing.
The same with most life challenges. She hadn’t married the wrong guy, she navigated her way through a mortgage, she had excellent credit ratings, she kept herself healthy.
This — this was just impossible for her to deal with. There were no parameters, nothing she could cling to.
Except Matt. Matt and his team of men and women who did seem to know how to deal with this situation.
She leaned into him, into all that heat and strength. Closed her eyes. “Thanks,” she whispered.
Thanks for everything, she wanted to say. She’d have listed the things she wanted to thank him for but he picked up the remote, switched off the screen, and kissed her.
It was dark outside though it was late morning. Another rainy Portland morning, but there was an extra heaviness and darkness to the air. She could still feel the horror of that other morning, one week ago. Twenty one high schoolers, all with gunshot wounds. Scared kids, some of them dying.
The team springing into action, more grievously wounded kids than medical staff.
She had to triage.
Three bloody hours later, six kids were dead, four were in surgery, the rest stabilized.
The doctors and nurses milled around, exhausted and heartsick.
This was a day like that one. Dark and ominous.
Garrick Smith turned to her and she gasped, took a step back. His face was bloody, teeth caved in, deep lacerations. White cheekbone showed. He grinned, mouth bloody. “Good day for our job, eh?”
Honor took another step back, wanting to turn and run. His expression was feral, like he’d just come in from the wars. Not an ounce of compassion or human feeling.
“What?”
His grin broke open the laceration on his cheek, which widened. She could see teeth through the cheek. “Don’t be a fool. It’s starting. Right now. Nothing can stop it.”
There was no air to breathe, the day grew darker still. This wasn’t the Garrick she knew, who was smart and compassionate. This was a wicked stranger, a man who had no business in a hospital. He licked his bloody lips with a bloody tongue and smiled again.
“It’s starting.” He looked around, humming the funeral march hoarsely. There was something wrong with his voice. When he turned his head, Honor saw that his Adam’s apple was crushed.
He shouldn’t be able to talk.
He shouldn’t be able to breathe.
He shouldn’t be alive.
He wasn’t.
Garrick Smith had died in a horrific car crash the year before.
Her skin prickled but before she could say anything, ambulance sirens filled the air. Many sirens. It sounded – it sounded like last week, when medics were finally able to get the victims of the Washington High School shooting out of the building and into ambulances. Many ambulances, many broken kids.
This couldn’t be a repeat of that. Could it?
“Oh yes.” Garrick’s skeleton smile grew broad. “It can. It is.”
No! Honor wanted to scream but suddenly the ambulances started arriving, tires slewing on the asphalt, doors slamming as the medics hurried around to lift out the gurneys. One, two, three ambulances. A fourth braked, a fifth and sixth queued up. More could be seen racing up the driveway.
It was going to be bad.
“Very bad,” Garrick said, nodding. A bubble of blood from his mouth broke, speckling his ruined face with blood. “Horrible, in fact.” He smiled again. “Fun.”
But she wasn’t listening as she ran to the door, together with the two other doctors and five nurses on duty, and met the patients being rushed in. They looked small on the gurneys, occupying half the normal space. They were children, she saw with horror. Just – just babies.
And the parade of horror started. Heads blown apart, one little boy with half his torso shot away, another with his entire shoulder demolished. They were pale little waxworks, already dead. Honor counted the kids coming in, her heart swollen and breaking.
Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
She walked down the line when – yes! A little girl with long shiny brown hair and brown eyes, looking up at her. The little girl held out her hand and Honor took it. The little girl’s eyes closed, then opened, latched onto her face. “I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Please don’t let me die.”
At any other time Honor would barely hear her, she’d be snapping out orders, prioritizing care, stabilizing, prepping.
No stabilizing, no prepping here. It was a miracle the little girl was still alive. Her body from the waist down was mostly missing. But somehow, the little girl was still alive, barely.
Beneath what must have been beautiful copper skin, she was ash gray, her pretty mouth was turning blue.
“Don’t let me die,” she begged again.
“No.” Tears were running down Honor’s cheeks. Mayhem reigned in the emergency department as kids kept arriving – little kids, grade school kids, lives cut short, blasted apart by bullets. Everyone was rushed off their feet trying to deal with three, four, five emergencies at once, but Honor was frozen, holding the little girl’s cold hand.
The little girl blinked once, long lush lashes sweeping down, then up, then down. They stayed down.
She was gone.
Honor stood by the gurney, still holding the small rapidly cooling hand, weeping.
Garrick shuffled to the other side of the gurney, picking up the little girl’s other hand. He tugged at it, smiling that bloody smile. “Come on, honey,” he said, cackling. “You’re mine now, you’re coming with me.”
They were in a little bubble, while controlled chaos swirled around them. A mass shooting engenders a lot of noise. Shouted orders, the screams of the wounded, the whomp! of the paddles.
Garrick was pulling what was left of the little girl off the gurney. Soon she would slide down to the blood-covered floor.
“No!” Honor screamed, tears streaming down her face. The little girl couldn’t go with the wrecked monster that was what was left of Garrick. The thought was too horrible for words. She needed to stay here so her parents could come and say goodbye to their little girl. Not taken to some monstrous netherworld.
Honor could barely talk through the tears. Garrick looked up at her and she could see how ruined his face was. It had been a closed casket funeral and now she could see why. As she watched him, the left side of his face caved in, an eyeball popped out of its socket, hanging by the ocular nerve. He was reverting to his real state.
And he wanted to take the little girl with him.
He’d have to kill Honor first. When he reached out a bloody hand, she batted it away and when he tried to embrace her she fought with all her strength, with her arms and legs, screaming and crying.
“Honor! Honor honey! Stop, it’s me!”
The battle was unequal. Somehow Garrick had acquired iron strength in death he’d never had in life and she couldn’t move him. She couldn’t move at all.
Her screams wouldn’t come out of her throat, they were all trapped inside. All she could do was flail and weep, because she was not going to let that little girl be carted away.
The arms holding her tightened. Not painfully but they stopped her from flailing. And Garrick was suddenly large, capable of enfolding her, bending his head above hers.
Protecting her?
She stilled, weeping.
“Honor. Sweetheart, wake up.” That voice. So deep, so familiar. Speaking right into her ear.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone was so physically close to her that he could speak right into her ear, the voice conducted through bone. “You’re having a nightmare, hon
ey. Wake up.”
The words made no sense, but his body did. Big, strong, calm. She could feel a steady heartbeat against Garrick’s chest. How could she do that? Garrick was dead.
It made no sense. Nothing made sense. The world had gone mad. Someone had shot little kids. How could anyone do that?
A sob escaped her chest, another. She bowed her head, forehead touching warm, hard muscle.
She opened her eyes, still weeping. Lips kissed her forehead, her cheek, her mouth. “Shhh, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
Honor was awake now and it wasn’t Garrick there, it was Matt. His chest was wet with her tears. “No,” she croaked. “It’s not okay. It will never be okay again.”
“You had a nightmare,” he said matter of factly. Somehow a tissue was in his hand, and he wiped her eyes, her face.
Honor sometimes hid deep emotion behind sarcasm. Ordinarily, she’d have answered something like – no shit, Sherlock. But her grief was real and his comfort was real. There was no shame in her grief.
There was silence in the room, the deep silence of the night. Now that she was awake she managed to wrestle her emotions into a semblance of control. It was what she’d been doing since the shootings. There was no counting the nights she’d awoken from a nightmare to find her face covered in tears.
This time there was someone else, and all he wanted to do was help.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Her ear was against his chest and she could feel the vibrations of his voice rather than hear it. “It must have been nasty.”
Honor sighed. Yes. Nasty. And recurring. And something that would follow her the rest of her life.
Matt eased her away from his chest and she instantly missed the connection with all that heat and strength. But he hadn’t pulled away emotionally. Looking up, she saw his face, focused on her, dark eyes warm and full of sympathy.
He’d been a warrior. He would have nightmares of his own.
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 19