by E. A. Copen
I made a face. “You’re going to patch me up with porno?”
“They don’t exactly keep Better Homes and Gardens laying around at the clubhouse, Judah. I grabbed what I could on the way out.” Sal positioned the magazine under my arm and folded it up on either side.
I watched what he was doing, but I couldn’t make sense of it. The memory of what had happened suddenly felt out of reach. “What happened to my arm?”
Sal exchanged glances with Bran. “Do you know where you are, Judah?”
I glanced around while Bran handed him some masking tape and he used it to make a makeshift splint for my arm. Bran’s motorcycle sat off to my left a few feet and Sal’s truck had come in behind it. I was out in the middle of nowhere with no clear reason. “Who’s with Mia and Hunter?”
“Hunter’s got Mia for a few hours.” Sal’s voice was muffled as he ripped the tape with his teeth. “I was at the clubhouse. Emergency meeting. I didn’t have time to call a sitter.”
“Where’s Hunter?”
Frustration crept into his voice and his hands moved a little faster. “I just told you. God, Judah. You’re really messed up.”
“Did you say something about the club? Were you there? Why?”
Sal paused what he was doing and looked behind me at Bran, the look on his face telling me he wasn’t supposed to talk about it.
Bran came to his rescue. “Help for a friend of the club.”
Sal sighed through his nose. Bran handed him the red bandana that he usually wore around his head. Through a series of knots and strategic draping, they fashioned a quick sling for me and eased my arm into it.
I frowned at the awkward silence. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Sal shook his head again. “You’ll have to clear it with Istaqua or another officer.”
Bran cleared his throat.
“You know something?” I tried to scramble to my feet but the dizziness and Bran’s hands on my shoulders kept me down.
Bran shrugged. “Istaqua and Phil know something. I only know a little, but I know that what they know could be useful. Of course, they won’t be willing to help you for free.”
Something buzzed against my ass and I jerked. It took me an extra long time to realize it was just my borrowed cell phone ringing. I’d somehow wound up on top of the dumb thing. Using my uninjured arm, I fished the phone out from under me. Hairline cracks spread over the screen from the center, but the display seemed to have held up. My fingers fumbled to slide over the broken screen to answer the call.
“Judah!” Ed sounded exasperated. “I finally got two of those video files to work and took a peek at one. I didn’t get far. You’re going to want to see this ASAP.”
“Video files?” Sal raised an eyebrow. Damn werewolves and their impeccable hearing.
I shook my head, dismissing Sal’s questioning. The less anyone knew, the better. If Abe was willing to beat me up to stop me, I didn’t want to think about what he’d do to Sal or Ed. “Ed. Didn’t we just talk?”
Ed was silent a beat. “You okay, Judah? You sound kind of funny. Never mind. This is more important than that. It’s bigger. Seriously, you need to see this.”
Sal’s hand closed around the phone in my hand and he jerked it away. “Someone just beat the shit out of her, Ed. Rattled her brain pretty good. I’m taking her to the hospital. Whatever you have can wait.”
Hospital? Over my dead body. Sal hated hospitals. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
I tried to pull myself up and winced at the pain. Even though I hadn’t moved my arm, gravity acted on it and even the tiniest of shifts hurt. My head spun with the movement. Sudden contractions in my gut forced me to bend over and gag on vomit.
Sal swept me up in his arms. “Bran, an escort?”
“You got it, brother.”
Concrete and sand passed under me as I floated to wherever Sal had decided I should go. I was too dazed to do much objecting. Everything felt surreal, as if I were watching it through a monitor instead of experiencing it. The last time I’d felt that lightheaded, I had died for a full four minutes. Icy fear formed a lump in my throat at the memory of my short stint in the afterlife. Was I dying again?
I floated from a prone position to sitting upright. Warm air struck my face and neck along with the distant smell of burning ash. My eyes saw road moving in front of us at seventy miles an hour, maybe faster, but I had no sense that we were actually going anywhere. Every set of headlights that passed made the back of my eyes feel raw. Every blast of sound ached. When I tried to move my arm to cover my eyes or ears, the nerve endings lit on fire. Pain felt like my only anchor, the only thing keeping me awake and alive.
~
I don’t recall my initial exam in the emergency room. I remember the doctor coming in briefly and speaking to Sal and not to me. Even when I tried to direct his attention to me instead of to Sal, he barely gave me the time of day, the jerk. Not that I would have understood anything he had to say. His voice sounded like it was underwater.
It wasn’t until I was lying on my back, listening to the rhythmic pounding of the MRI that I had any sense of just how serious my injury was. The fog cleared a little, but didn’t lift entirely. I blinked and thought, I’m in a hospital. Sal brought me here when he wouldn’t even bring Mia for her check up. He must have been really worried about me.
Slowly, things came back to me.
Espinoza was going to be pissed when he found out Abe took his car. I hoped he’d stash it somewhere easy to find at least. Maybe I could report it stolen. It wouldn’t be too much trouble for Abe to get that sorted out, but if I could inconvenience him in the slightest, I wanted to try. I sure as hell wasn’t going to try fisticuffs with him again anytime soon. I’d have to get back at him some other way, at least until I was better.
I stared into the mirror inside the plastic helmet encasing my head. What then? Was I supposed to just go back to work, be his partner and pretend like he hadn’t just beat me up? I couldn’t report him to our superiors, not until I knew for sure about those BSI agents Doc had been hiding. People higher up the chain could be involved and, if I tipped them off that I was poking around…
Judah, you idiot! If I hadn’t been crammed inside a plastic tube and suffering from a concussion, I would’ve smacked myself in the head. That’s exactly why he tried to stop you!
Abe’s intervention proved that Ed’s theory was right. BSI was trying to cover something up, something to do with Reed. Abe didn’t want me to find out. In his own weird way, he thought that busting me up bad enough would put me down for the count. I’d have to spend time recovering. Every moment I was down and out, he got closer to succeeding with his cover-up. I needed to get out of the hospital and fast, before he destroyed everything.
It suddenly dawned on me that I’d stripped out of my clothes at some point and put on the oh-so-flattering hospital gown for the MRI. The tooth I’d found at the scene was still in my pocket. I really hoped they hadn’t tossed it out or that it hadn’t fallen out in all the excitement.
An intercom buzzed and a pleasant female voice filtered through it and into my head. “Make sure you stay nice and still now. We don’t want to have to do this again.”
“How much longer?”
“Twenty to forty minutes, hon. Just try and relax. It’ll be over soon.”
I squared my jaw and stared into the mirror above my head. My eyes crossed, but at least I could see and process information again. Maybe Sal’s healing had given my brain a little recovery boost as well. Whatever time I had left in that machine, I had to use it to try and figure things out. I had to connect Reed to Hector and BSI, whatever the cost. Abe hadn’t deterred me. All he’d done was make me even more determined.
Chapter Seventeen
After an eternity in a freezing, sterile room with little to no privacy, the doctor decided I could go home. There was no internal bleeding or visible damage. All the scans had come out fine and there was nothing wrong
with me that rest wouldn’t fix. I was to go home, rest, report back to the ER if symptoms continued longer than two days or got worse. Sal was supposed to monitor me. Doctor’s orders.
To say I was unhappy about it was an understatement. I sat with my arms crossed, staring out the side window, and refusing to look at Sal all the way home. The night had faded, replaced now by the endless blue Texas sky. I watched buzzards circle in the distance while Kenny Rogers sang The Gambler on the radio.
Sal didn’t seem to take the hint that I didn’t want to talk. All during my time in the hospital, he’d barely said two words to me. I knew a scolding was coming, I’d just hoped we’d make it home before he started.
He reached over and turned down the radio. “So, what is this? You trying to kill yourself?”
I shifted in my seat. If I could have turned my back to him, I would have.
“I don’t know what all is going on, Judah, but I know you shouldn’t be out in the middle of the desert, alone, in the middle of the night. And this thing you’ve got Ed looking into… It’s one thing for you to go off and get hurt, but for you to drag Ed into it—”
“Ed involved himself.”
Sal gave me a look, one he often shot Mia when she was about to do something that’d get her into trouble. The kind of look that made every kid stop what they were doing. The dad look. What right did he have to be throwing that look at me?
I shot back. “You saw him at the first fire. You know he’s been involved since the beginning. And you know how stuck on Mara he is, Sal. He’s not going to back off just because someone tells him to. Would you if it were me?”
“That’d be different. Ed and Mara aren’t like you and me.”
“Aren’t they?”
The cab of the truck was silent but for the radio. Kenny Roger’s upbeat tune had ended and Johnny Cash had come on with his rendition of Hurt.
Sal reached over and turned the radio off. “You know, when Ed and Daphne came here, everything was falling apart. Zoe and me were at the height of our fighting, facing down the split that was to come. Silvia’s death was still fresh for Chanter and Valentino and Nina’s breeding permit had just been turned down. It felt like the whole world had gone to shit. Daphne was quiet, reserved. She smiled a lot, and that helped, but it was Ed who really put us back together. He brought an energy with him so that you just couldn’t help but laugh. It’s hard to explain, but that energy really changed us. He’s always been the heart of the pack. Ever since Mara, things have changed. He’s different.”
“Growing pains.” I smiled and closed my eyes. “He’s not a kid anymore. Hard to watch him grow up, to not think of him as someone that needs protected, but someone who can handle himself.”
After a long moment of silence, Sal nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s my job to protect people, to keep my pack safe and happy. But everybody keeps telling me they don’t need me to do that anymore. What good am I to anyone if I can’t stop them from getting hurt?”
I suddenly felt even worse about being short with Sal. I’d been dodging his protective detail for months and frustrating the hell out of him. If I’d known it meant that much to him, I might not have tried so hard.
From a parent’s perspective, I understood. Here I was, watching Hunter grow up and not need me. It stung to be told to drop him off a block from school, to hear him tell me to butt out. I missed being close enough to share secrets.
Sal was in that same position with Ed. Ed was the baby of the pack in a lot of ways. Both Sal and Valentino had looked at him like a younger brother. While Valentino had been pushing Ed to be more like him, Sal had always done everything he could to preserve Ed’s innocence. He’d tried and failed. It was inevitable, really. No matter how hard you try to shield those you love from pain, you know deep down it’s impossible. Facing that hurt down when it came, that change in status from an innocent to be protected to a peer, can destroy a relationship if it’s mishandled. There had to be a balance between giving someone their space, letting them fail, and being a guiding hand there to pick them up when they fell.
Not only was Sal going through that with Ed, but with Mia and me, too.
I sighed through my nose and winced at the dull throbbing in my head. “You know I can’t promise you I’m going to give up and rest easy.”
“It’s just not in you. Sometimes, your tenacity is what I love about you. Other times, I’m so damn worried that’s what’s going to get you killed.”
He flipped on the turn signal and the truck slowed. Off to our left, the massive concrete wall of the reservation loomed. Black shapes patrolled the towers, the border patrol. It seemed like there were more agents up there today than normal, but maybe that was just because I so rarely paid attention. The border patrol agents lifted the barrier and we drove right through without being stopped.
As we pulled into the reservation, Sal tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, deep in thought. “I know you won’t promise me that you’re going to rest and get better, but will you at least promise me you won’t go anywhere alone? At least not for a few days until you’ve had your follow up appointment with Doc. No more walking around in the middle of nowhere late at night.”
“If you promise to trust me enough to choose who goes with me, sure.”
Sal nodded. “I trust your judgement. I just want to know you’re safe.”
“I think I can do that, then.” I offered Sal a tired smile. More than anything, I wanted to curl up in bed next to him and sleep for days, but I couldn’t afford it. If I was lucky, I’d get a nap. Time off was a luxury I just couldn’t afford, broken arm and concussion or not.
We pulled into the driveway and parked. Sal didn’t come and open the door for me, but waited for me, a hand out if I needed it. I took it to climb down from the truck and we went hand-in-hand to the front door.
Hunter and Mia were still in their pajamas watching cartoons on the TV. Rather, Mia was watching her cartoons while Hunter had his feet up on the coffee table, texting away. Hunter looked up as we came in, his face changing as he took in the splinted arm, the bruises and scrapes. Gold flashed through his eyes as he rose to his feet. “Tell me you got the asshole that did that to you.”
Sal held up a hand. “There won’t be any getting anybody for at least a few hours. Your mom needs to rest, kid. Our job is to make sure she gets it.”
Mia toddled over. She had a half-eaten cookie in her hand that she held out to me with a smile. “No thanks, kiddo. You enjoy your cookie.”
When I didn’t take her cookie, she latched onto my leg in a tight hug that sent a prickling sensation through me. I wouldn’t be able to pick her up, not until my arm fully healed. Without picking her up, how was I supposed to change her? Put her in her high chair? In her car seat? I’d barely been home a minute and already I felt even more helpless. Tears welled in my eyes as I bent down to return the hug. It hurt and made the dull throb in the front of my head even worse, but I’d been through worse. I’d go through worse any day of the week, so long as it meant I got to come home. Sal was right. I needed to be more careful. I had a family waiting for me.
“Alright, bratling, that’s enough.” Hunter came by and scooped Mia up. “It’s about time for Sesame Street.”
“Elmo!”
“Yeah, and that freaky red monster puppet you like so much.” Hunter nodded to me, the message clear. Don’t worry, mom. I got this.
I was relieved, but felt a pang of loss at the same time. When had my boy grown up so much?
Sal took me to the bedroom and tucked me in, drawing the blankets up to my chin. “What about you? How the cut on your side doing?”
He shrugged. “Healing. Slowly. As I have the energy, I’ll try to do what I can for your arm, but the concussion is serious. Healing that is delicate work and I just don’t have the strength for it. Chanter was good at that kind of thing. I’m more the kind of healer that can get you good enough to go back at it.” He wagged a finger at me. “But if you keep getting hurt, there’
s going to be a point I can’t help.”
“I know, doc.” I yawned, stretched and turned over. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
Sal grunted, probably in approval, and closed the door behind him on the way out.
~
Heavy shadows darkened the room when next I opened my eyes. The curtain moved in a slight breeze coming through the cracked window. Sweat rolled down my upper arm and settled inside the cast, making it itch. Red digital numbers on the alarm clock next to the bed told me I’d slept through the day. It was already going on eight thirty in the evening.
I sat up with a groan. The pounding in my head had faded slightly, but the dizziness was still there. It would probably linger for another week or so, the doctor had said. I hoped the nausea would fade before then, though.
Something hard had dug into my thigh through the jeans I’d fallen asleep in. A little pinprick of pain prompted me to reach into my pocket and pull out… a tooth? Memory of what I’d found at Four Corners came back. I hadn’t yet had time to figure out whose tooth it was or even if it would be useful to my investigation.
I lifted the tooth into a tiny beam of light, turning it. “Well, I’ve got all the time in the world now.”
Science could have identified the owner of the tooth if I wanted to wait six weeks and bag it as evidence. Or, I could do a little magickal heavy lifting and get an answer.
I tossed aside all the blankets and piled the pillows behind me before pulling my feet in to sit cross-legged. It’s not necessary to do magick in any particular position, but I find it easier to focus on an object if I’m comfortable. Some spells require specific ingredients, mathematical equations, special times of days, or can only be performed on a certain day of the year. The one I wanted only required a biological sample, intense concentration, and a physical or mental connection. I didn’t have a physical connection to Gideon Reed, but we were friends and allies. What I knew would have to be good enough.