by Jove Belle
When the water ran cold, she gave up and stepped out of the shower. She carried out every action—drying her body, moisturizing her skin, brushing her hair—through a distant haze. She could feel her body moving, knew she was the one going through the motions, but she couldn’t connect her efforts with the changes she saw taking place. Before she was prepared for it, she stood at the front door, dressed and ready to head to the hospital.
An urgent knock sounded at her door as she was about to touch the doorknob. Startled, she jumped back. She stared at the door for a few moments, unable to process the sound. When the knock came again, she shook herself out of her stupor and slowly opened the door.
“Oh, thank God.” Chris pushed her way into the house and wrapped Tor in a hug. “I’ve been so worried.”
Tor blinked several times, her arms still at her sides. Finally it registered that this was Chris, whom she’d thought dead, yet clearly wasn’t, standing in her open doorway. She clutched Chris to her, holding her tight as a sob worked its way from her chest and out her mouth. She held on and cried for several long minutes. Finally, she forced herself to pull away and look at her friend.
“I thought you were dead.” She’d called Chris so many times that morning she’d completely lost count. The lack of response combined with the news about Beckford had made Tor surrender to the obvious and start mourning her best friend.
“No, silly. I’m right here.”
“I called…your building.”
Chris pulled her into another hug. “I know,” she whispered, her voice filled with anguish to match Tor’s frayed emotions. “I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
Tor pulled away long enough to smack Chris in the shoulder. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“Me? You’re the one who’s been locked down by a group of terrorists. I’ve been frantic trying to reach you.”
“I’m okay.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “That’s why your shirt is inside out?”
Tor looked down. The T-shirt that she’d pulled on in her post-shower haze was, in fact, wrong side out. No wonder it had felt funny against her skin. “Shit.”
Chris laughed as Tor pulled the shirt off, then put it on again, right side out this time.
“Where are you going?”
“Huh?”
Chris tapped the keys in Tor’s hands. “You just walking around with these just in case?”
“I don’t know. I just…” Where had she been going? She had this overwhelming drive to go to Sera, but she had no idea where she was. She would start with the hospitals, she supposed, except her car was still at work, covered with rubble. Seriously, what was she thinking? She had no business leaving her house until she got her head sorted out. She set her keys on the counter. “Never mind.”
Chris studied her. “Want me to go with you?”
Tor considered the offer. Even after her denial, Chris knew her well enough to know she was, in fact, headed somewhere important. It would be comforting to have her friend there to support her once she found Sera, but how would she explain the search? What was Sera to her exactly? Her ex-girlfriend? Her current love interest? Her kidnapper? Her rescuer? It was all far too complicated to even try to explain. She chewed her lip, sorting through her misfiring emotions with no hope of finding the answers she needed. At some point, she’d be able to talk through it with Chris, but for now, she wasn’t ready.
“Can you stay here with me instead?”
Chris pulled her into another hug. “Oh, honey. Of course.”
Tor buried her head in the crook of Chris’s neck. This is what she needed, time with her friend, some normalcy in an otherwise screwed-up day.
“Thank you.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Eventually, Chris released her. Tor smoothed her hands over her clothes, a rote action that meant nothing in the casual clothes she’d thrown on, but the motion was comforting. She headed toward the kitchen feeling more normal than she had since she’d seen the smoke cloud rising on the horizon during her drive to work that morning. “You pick the movie. I’m making popcorn.”
*
Sera wasn’t sure which bothered her more, the sounds in the hospital room or the smell. She wrinkled her nose against the cutting smell of bleach. Even with the strong application of disinfectant, she was still more likely to get an antibiotic-resistant infection here than at home. She wanted to leave. Now.
She’d woken up several hours ago, alone in this room with the constant beeping of her monitors keeping her company. Several people had come and gone since, including a handful of hospital staff including at least two doctors. Neither was willing to discharge her yet. Through it all, a guard stood just outside the door. Assigned by the FBI, no doubt, a clear sign that her cover was blown and the Bureau believed her to be in danger.
The last thing she remembered was finding the second bomb, and then her memory turned black. She had no idea if Tor was alive or dead, and so far no one here knew who she was talking about. She couldn’t even call to check on her since her cell phone was mysteriously missing, not to mention she didn’t know Tor’s phone number.
Another doctor, one she hadn’t seen yet, entered the room. She didn’t wait for him to speak.
“I need to get out of here.” Sera knew they couldn’t keep her without her permission, but the FBI was very strict in these situations. If she left without clearance, she’d be suspended from duty. They wouldn’t accept “the place was making me crazy” as a legitimate reason for checking herself out. Besides, the guard wasn’t in place just to keep people out. Until they cleared her for the shootings, she needed to get used to having an escort. There were too many dead bodies for it to go any other way. She couldn’t remember much, but the impression of blood everywhere stayed with her.
The doctor, a gray-haired man with tiny eyes and wire-rimmed glasses, smiled sympathetically. “Before we can release you, we have to make sure that you’re okay. You suffered a massive blow to the head.”
Massive blow to the head. Sera decided then that she liked this doctor the best. The others spoke far too carefully, using terms she didn’t understand. His assessment made him seem almost human.
“So what do we need to do?”
He glanced over her chart for a moment and shrugged. “We wait.”
Sera’s head thumped in time with the steady beeping of the monitors. They’d given her a serious dose of painkillers, but all it did was take the sharp edge off. She had to breathe cautiously to keep the cracked rib from crippling her. It was a complete mystery to her how it could hurt so much with all the medication she had in her system, given that it had barely registered most of the time while she was running around the bank. Her memory was fuzzy, but no way could she forget this kind of pain. It grabbed her from the inside, twisted her around until she couldn’t tell up from down.
“How long?” She schooled her tone, partially because she liked this guy, but mostly because she was a professional and throwing a tantrum was never a good idea. Still, some of her impatience leaked into her words. She had work to do that she simply couldn’t do from this bed. And she needed to find Tor, make sure she was okay.
Beth entered the room. “Stop giving the doctors a hard time. You’re not going anywhere.” She surveyed her surroundings, studying the area the way all experienced field agents did, looking for exit points before she needed them. It didn’t take long, since the only exit was the door she’d just entered through and the window on the far wall. Given that they were twelve stories up, Sera hoped they didn’t need to use that way out.
“I need to check in with John before my cover gets completely blown.”
Beth raised one eyebrow. “You honestly think it’s not already blown?” She paused for a second, as though considering the possibility herself, then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The Bureau is pulling you regardless.”
“What?” It was expected, but Sera still wasn’t ready to hear it.
“Your assi
gnment was to catch terrorists, not get yourself killed in the process.”
“I don’t think that will happen.”
“How nice. Well, we think we don’t want to take the chance.”
Sera glared at Beth, not because she was particularly upset, but because her head hurt too much for her to pull off any other expression. That and she should be upset about her cover being blown. Mostly she just wanted to take a nap, something she wasn’t allowed to do since the doctor said she was officially concussed.
“Stop glaring at me.”
Sera worked on calming her expression, channeling every tai chi and meditation DVD she’d ever watched.
Beth chuckled. “That’s not any better. You’re creeping me out.”
Sera went back to glaring.
Beth turned to the doctor. “What do you know, Doctor?”
“As you realize, she was hit in the head hard enough to cause a loss of consciousness.”
“By what?” Sera could feel the spot where she’d been hit pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She’d been knocked out during hand-to-hand combat before, and that felt nothing like this.
The doctor looked at Beth, one brow slightly raised. “A steel pipe.”
No wonder she felt like her head was going to pound off at any moment.
“Who hit me?”
“Marcus.”
“Really?” How had she let herself get hit that hard in the back of the head? “Where’s Tor?”
“We’ll talk about that in a moment. Go on, Doctor.”
“Yes, at any rate, she’s suffering a concussion and loss of short-term memory. Also, in addition to the head injury, she has one broken and several cracked ribs.”
“But no gunshot wounds,” Beth added succinctly. Sera agreed it was a positive worth observing.
The doctor inclined his head in agreement. “At this point, we just want to watch her for a while.” The doctor returned her chart to the hook attached to the end of her bed. He went through a quick exam, listening to Sera’s heart and lungs, then had her follow a light with her eyes. “I’ll be back later.”
Beth waited until he left, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
This was the part Sera had been trying to avoid. She knew she had been in the bank with Tor, but everything else was static filled. “There was a bomb?”
“Three of them, to be specific. You disarmed two of them, good job, and the third was detonated but appeared to be more about flash and noise than destruction.”
Sera remembered covering Tor’s body as debris fell from the ceiling, but then the details slipped away. She could remember bits and pieces, but they were fleeting. She started to shake her head, but the slushy thump made her stop. “I don’t remember.”
The doctor had told her the memory loss wasn’t unusual given the nature of her injury, and it should be temporary. She hoped he was right, because she’d hate to forget doing something as badass as disarming two separate explosive devices.
Beth smiled. “You’re a bona fide hero, Sera.”
“Thanks.” Somewhere in her fog-filled brain, she knew it wasn’t as simple as that. She knew other people had helped her. She just couldn’t remember the details, no matter how hard she tried.
“Tor?”
“She’s fine. I spoke with her at the scene. She’s shaken, but otherwise okay. She’s at home resting now.”
The clutching pain in her chest eased with the news. Knowing Tor was alive made the rest seem less urgent.
“Is Marcus…” She let the question drop off. It seemed too callous, even for an FBI agent or a gangster, to ask if he was dead.
“He’s dead, yes. Craig Tinder shot him. He saved your life.”
“Craig?” Sera filled with relief. When all was said and done, she hadn’t been wrong about Craig. It didn’t justify her extreme rush of emotion, but she blamed that on the leftover adrenaline. Her body was trying to figure out how to come down from being high all day. “What will happen to him?”
Even if he had saved them, as Beth was saying, he was still part of a terrorist plot. That wouldn’t go away with one good deed.
Beth shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s talking to the US Attorney now. Witness protection is possible, depending upon what he gives us.”
“That’s good.”
“A lot of bodies hit the floor on this one, Sera. Not all of them bad guys. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer.”
Chapter Nineteen
As soon as the doctors released her, Sera was ushered to the FBI building and locked in an interrogation room. She was only a few blocks from Tor’s bank but had absolutely no hope of getting to her any time soon.
“Go over it for us one more time.” Agent Black tapped his pen against a tablet. That wasn’t his real name, but he was so stereotypically federal agent, with the black suit and mirrored glasses, that she’d long since forgotten his real name. He, along with the other agent pacing behind him in a perfect bad-cop mimic, became Black and Blacker.
Black held his pen over the paper, poised to write her every word. He’d done the same thing at least six times previously, holding the pen at the ready without actually taking notes. It was an unnerving habit, and Sera was tempted to take the tablet and pen from him. They were recording the session anyway.
She wasn’t under arrest, nor was she a suspect. It was far worse; she was a federal agent under scrutiny. That meant she could get up and leave whenever she wanted, but as soon as she did, she would become a suspect and promptly be arrested. She didn’t have a lawyer to guard her responses. All she had was a massive headache and the remnants of heavy-duty painkillers fading fast from her system.
“Do we really have to do this again?” She sat with her back straight, eyes forward, and hands flat on the table in front of her. She refused to massage her temples no matter how badly her head hurt. Yes, this experience was unpleasant, but talking to her colleagues was nothing compared to what would have happened if she’d somehow ended up in a similar situation with John. The interview would have ended hours ago with a bullet to her temple. She could endure a few questions without flinching. “My answers won’t change.”
Before Agent Black could respond, the door to the interrogation room opened and Beth stepped inside. She held the door open, and Sera had a strange urge to make a break for it while she could. No wonder they handcuffed people to the table during interviews. The confinement made her cagey. What would it do to those who were actually guilty?
“Sorry to interrupt, but we need to wrap this up.” Beth nodded at Black and Blacker, then held the door wider and gestured for Sera to exit.
“Of course. Thank you for your time, Agent Andrews.” Black set the pen on his tablet and Blacker nodded somberly. She couldn’t remember him saying anything at all during the hours they’d been in the room together.
Sera gave Beth the barest of smiles as she passed through the door. She understood the need for internal investigation, but the process was exhausting. How many times did she really need to say she knew something big was coming, but she had no idea what that something was before it actually happened? They were right to scrutinize the civilian deaths. Even she didn’t believe something more couldn’t have been done to prevent them from being hurt.
“That was fun,” Sera said as the door slipped shut behind them.
“That was necessary. And don’t think that gets you out of writing a report, because it doesn’t.”
“Perfect.”
“First, though, I thought you might like to go for a ride with me. We’re on our way to execute several warrants, starting with John.”
Sera looked at Beth, waiting for her to continue. She’d heard they were close to closing the investigation and had hoped she’d be included when the time came. With a multi-agency action, like the one against LFA, it was difficult to coordinate individual schedules. She’d been undercover on the case, but she wasn’t the lead investigator. Not to mention she was on administrative le
ave because of the shootings. There was no way they’d let her participate, so it meant a lot that Beth thought to include her, even in a limited capacity.
“Based on your reports and Craig’s testimony, we’re bringing in John and a handful of other people.”
They’d already questioned John but hadn’t been able to hold him. After shooting Marcus to save Sera, Craig had given the US Attorney enough insight to keep them busy for months to come. John hadn’t known about the bombing beforehand. Marcus’s connections to the LFA sidestepped John, and for some reason he had trusted Craig with some very sensitive information. He probably saw the same thing in Craig that Sera had, a lost little boy searching for purpose in his life. Lucky for her, Craig had stepped on the right side of the line at a critical moment. The downside of his act of heroism was the fact that he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He’d pissed off a lot of dangerous people.
Even though John hadn’t been involved directly in the terrorist plot, he’d been funding their efforts for years. They had enough now to bring him down.
“I’m totally in.” Sera’s head hurt a lot less with the knowledge that some very bad people were finally going to be brought to justice. The past two years of work and sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing.
*
Tor stepped off the train and took a deep breath. She hated being confined in the metal tube with strangers almost as much as she hated the persistent smell of urine inside the train car. Still, until she could bring herself to park in the garage beneath the bank again, the train was the best option.
The few blocks between the station and the bank were a nice, easy walk and gave her time to focus her thoughts on the day ahead. It’d been a week since the bank had been taken over by terrorists, and a week since she’d seen Sera. That was enough time for a cleaning crew to clear away the debris, but not long enough for the repair crew to erase the damage. The bullet holes in the floor were gone, as if they’d never happened, and the blood that seemed at the time to leave a permanent stain on the tile was gone too, but the elevator was cordoned off.