I had so many questions. He said we had our code names before we worked together. Did we work for the same company?
The door opened, and instead of Smoke, a different nurse came in. I rested my head and closed my eyes when, like the other, she checked my blood pressure. I looked up at her when I felt her hand on my wrist.
“Wait, is that pain medicine?”
“It is,” she said without even looking at me.
I tried to jerk my hand away, but it wouldn’t budge. “Hang on.”
“What?” she snapped.
“Another nurse already gave me pain medicine.”
With the syringe still in hand, she picked up a piece of paper. “You’re due. Once every four hours.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Smoke, coming in the door. “You’re nowhere near ready to be off that stuff.”
“How do you know?”
“If you had a mirror to look into, you’d know.”
“What does that mean?”
Despite my protests, I felt the warm sensation flow through my arm and into my chest. “Fecking hell,” I groaned. “I don’t want to sleep.”
The bitch of a nurse scurried out, leaving Smoke smiling at me.
“What?”
“You’ll be back to your regular self in no time.”
If I could lift my arm, I’d have flipped him off, but I couldn’t. Maybe the pain killers they kept shooting into it made it numb. “I wonder if that’s a good thing,” I muttered.
“You need to get some sleep, and I need to eat. I’ll come back in the morning.”
“Morning? What time is it now?”
“Almost midnight.”
“You get calls on your mobile at midnight?”
“In our line of work, we get ’em twenty-four seven.”
“Okay, well, goodnight, then.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Smoke, wait,” I said when he turned to walk out. “You aren’t going to kiss me goodnight?”
“Um…sure.” He walked closer, leaned down, and kissed my forehead.
“You call that a kiss?”
His face was still close to mine, and he scrunched his eyes. I pursed my lips, and he brushed them with his.
“Better than nothing, I guess.”
He stood and turned toward the door. “Yep, back to yourself in no time.”
3
Smoke
“What are you doin’ up this late, old man?”
“Fuck you, Hammer. you’re older than I am, and it’s midnight.”
“I’m older than you by a week, asshole. Hey, how’s Siren?”
“That’s what I’m calling about.”
“Who.”
“Siren.”
“Right. She’s not a that; she’s a who.”
“Jesus Christ, why did I call you?”
“Because you wanted to talk about Siren.”
I looked longingly across the street at the pub that was already closed.
“Smoke? You there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. I need a drink.”
“That bad?”
“Worse. A lot worse.”
“Are we gonna play this two-, three-word game all night, or are ya gonna tell me somethin’?”
“She has amnesia.”
“You’re kidding.”
He said it in such a way, I knew he didn’t think I was. The other thing I knew, was that Hammer wouldn’t tell a soul anything I said in this conversation. He was a lawyer. My lawyer. Actually, he was the lawyer for everyone who worked for the Invincibles. Not that what I was about to tell him counted as attorney-client privilege.
“Smoke?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I sat down on a bench outside my hotel. “She doesn’t remember much of anything. Not even where she was born.”
“But?”
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “We were both given a job by Rile DeLéon. Asset protection. He teamed us up.”
“I know about the op, Smoke. What happened?”
“We were off duty one of the nights that we were on the island—”
“And?”
“If you’d shut up for a minute, I’d tell you.” I waited. “Anyway, one thing led to another, and we had…sex.”
Crickets.
“Hammer?”
“I’m here.”
“That’s what she remembers.”
When he started to laugh and then kept laughing, I wanted to hurl my phone against the side of a building. “Shut up,” I muttered.
“You’re shittin’ me?”
“Go ahead and laugh. Meanwhile, Siren asked me to crawl onto the hospital bed beside her and ‘hold her.’”
“And she wasn’t playin’ you?”
“First thing I thought, but she was dead serious.”
Hammer laughed again.
“What do I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Should I tell her?”
“Tell her what? That she hates the ground you walk on?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know, Smoke. What do the doctors say?”
I told him how hard it had been to get any kind of answer out of the surgeon.
“I’d wait. Maybe in a day or two, her memory will return.”
“There’s something else.”
Hammer was laughing so hard he could barely talk. “Wait. Don’t tell me. She’s pregnant?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Sure am.”
“She’s also having trouble controlling movement on the left side of her body. If IMI gets wind of this…”
Hammer stopped laughing. “It’ll mean the end of her career.”
“Glad you’re finally taking this seriously.”
“Who knows about this?”
“Outside of the hospital staff, me. Now you.”
“You’re where?”
“Just outside London.”
“Does she have a handler?” Hammer asked.
“I’d have to check with Rile on that.”
“Can she be moved?”
I shook my head. Not in response to Hammer, just unsure where he was going with that question. “What are you thinking?”
“Look, I know that you and Siren have had your share of issues, but she’s a brother-in-arms, man. Just like anyone else, we have each other’s backs.”
“I agree, but what are you suggesting?”
“Get her the fuck out of the UK as fast as you can.”
“And take her where?”
“You’ve got that spread in North Carolina.”
“Tennessee.”
“Yeah. Wherever. Take her there.”
“And do what with her?”
“Give her time to recover.”
“What am I? A doctor?”
“Smoke, you’ve got more money than Midas. Hire someone. You know, a therapist or somethin’.”
“I don’t do this kind of shit, Hammer.”
“I’ve known you for a lot of years, my friend, and there’s only one thing I can think of to say in response.”
I waited, knowing he wouldn’t pull any punches.
“Maybe it’s time you thought about someone—something—outside the next mission.”
“Siren and I…we…”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly, what? I didn’t say anything.”
He let out a deep breath that sounded more like a huff. “She was shot on an Invincibles’ op. Let me make some calls to the partners and see who can step up to help her, since it sounds like you won’t.”
Hammer ended the call.
Rather than sleeping, I walked. I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going. That wasn’t the point. What I needed
