time.”
Certain? Nothing was ever certain. PhDs, my ass. They were all idiots. Every single one of them. And I was nothing more than a piece of their Charlie-busting machine. Something to be used, and the hell with the consequences to me in the process. I was an idiot, too, to have ever thought differently.
“Go away,” I repeated flatly.
This time, he did, his footsteps followed by the lighter ones of Meleah, and I was left alone with thoughts. Many thoughts.
None of which was mine.
18
“I brought you a change of clothes. You can shower here in the infirmary instead of going back to our room. It’s probably safer, limiting your exposure to other personnel as much as we can.” Hector put a meticulously folded pair of jeans and black shirt on the foot of my bed.
I ignored him and took another bite of the pancakes Eden had brought me. Homemade blackberry ones with real maple syrup, not those hockey pucks from the cafeteria. As far as I had determined, she was the single saving grace to this particularly heinous pit of hell. She’d come in the middle of the night with more pain medicine, this time an injection. When I’d asked her when she slept, she’d winked and replied, “When I don’t have special patients. And you’ve been through enough here, Jackson Lee, that you’re labeled permanently special on my list.” She’d patted my arm with her hand, safely covered with a latex glove. “Now, roll over to your side. This goes in your hip.”
“Dr. Guerrera only gave me pills before. Why the needle?” But I’d already been rolling. Pill or injection, the previous pain medicine had worn off, and my rib had been more than ready for more.
“This has something extra to help you sleep. Don’t think I hadn’t noticed you weren’t doing any of that.” She’d gone for stern, but the sympathy had washed that away.
I’d returned immediately to lying on my back. “I don’t need that. I don’t need to sleep.” I hadn’t wanted to sleep; that had been closer to the truth. The whispers, the screams, the sounds of chewing, the wicked curve of a hook-they were all more clear when I was asleep.
The sternness had returned, along with a finger shaking the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my granny Rosemary. “I hear you have a big day tomorrow. Riding out to one of those creepy sites.” She’d made a face. “Doing more of your psychic readings. You need your sleep.”
“I’m not doing any more readings. I’m going to help with Charlie tomorrow and then be home, my home, before midnight. No more readings and not another night spent in this hellhole. Dr. Allgood is on his own from now on.” Like I should’ve realized that I’d been all along.
“I don’t blame you one tiny bit. These people have all the compassion of a toad, and I’ve been thinking long and hard about finding another job with people who care, not people who care who they can use.” She’d tilted her head. “Well, you’ll get plenty of sleep tomorrow night, then, and sleep through the next day if you have any sense. You’re positive you don’t want the shot?”
More than. She’d shaken her head. “You’re a stubborn one, but I’ll miss you, Mr. All Seeing Eye.” She’d given me an impish smile and apparently had gone home, slept three hours, and then was up making me the best good- bye pancakes I’d ever eaten.
And which I continued to eat while Allgood went on to annoy me further. I didn’t appreciate reminders of my first episode of gullibility since I was six or seven. “I had three guards on the infirmary door last night. I know you didn’t want to hear it at the time, but I didn’t want you to think I’d leave you without backup until we get you out of here.”
I didn’t say anything as I wiped syrup off my hands and put my gloves back on.
“You didn’t think that, did you?” he demanded.
I took the clothes and stood. “No. I thought about how men were stringy, women were better, but little girls tasted best of all. I thought about how my hooks needed sharpening as they were beginning to blunt on bone. I thought about how once it seemed the winter would never end. But that was when I was hungry. Now my stomach was full, and I hoped the snow never stopped falling.” I headed for the shower room.
“We’re not going there,” Hector said, his voice harsh and guttural. There was a tinge of green to his face from my recital of cannibal Renfrow’s thoughts. Hundreds of years old, but to some people, people like me, they were as clear and sharp as the day his blackened, corrupted brain had spat them out. “I’ve already told Thackery and the others. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t see you there, and none of us can see what you saw. Going back there might be the most logical choice, but it’s not the most humane one. If I can keep my soul intact through all this, I will.” He exhaled. “We’re going to a low-risk site. One at the bottom of the list. It’s a simple family dispute over a fifty-fifty split of a farm in a will. One brother whacked the other over the head with an axe handle. It’s still a murder, has to be, but it’s nothing close to what had happened at the caverns.”
I kept walking. He started to grab my arm as I passed but aborted the motion almost before it began. “I apologize for considering anything else.” The formality of a good man who was finding out that pedestals weren’t healthy things-not for your brother and not for yourself, especially when you tumbled off of yours. “Desperation is no excuse for becoming like the rest of them. I’m sorry, Jackson.”
I paused at the door and took the biggest leap of faith of my life. I let myself trust him again, and this time not because of Charlie but because of Hector himself. Abby had told me hundreds of times that people can’t live without trust. They can exist, but they can’t live. I was beginning to see that she was right. Hector had messed up, more than once, but he’d also risked his life to save mine-and more than once on that, too. He wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t any kind of fool in believing I was, either.
I gave a single nod. “All right.” It wasn’t apology accepted, but it was the closest I could come to it. I went on into the shower and closed the door behind me.
Fifteen minutes later, I was out, changed with the shirt over a new Kevlar vest. Hector had said next time it would be a head shot, but it hadn’t stopped him from doing what he could in case I was lucky and a head shot wasn’t practical for my invisible stalker. And wasn’t that some kind of luck? Hoping someone would shoot you in the chest instead of the head. With my damp hair pulled back tightly into a ponytail and with gloves on, I opened the door to see that Meleah had shown up. She was standing next to Hector. Moral support.
“Have you two made up?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we’re just peachy. Bestest friends.” I dumped my dirty clothes onto the bed. “Hector’s going to braid my hair, and then he’s going to show me his new dollhouse.” All right-trust with a shaky foundation and a razor-sharp defense mechanism, but a modicum of trust was better than none at all. Hector would have to accept it for what it was: the best I could do right now.
“I suppose that means yes.” She smiled. “Are we ready for this, then? To set Charlie free?”
“You’re going?” I asked, admitting to myself that it wasn’t the worst idea I’d heard as Meleah made the argument aloud.
“Every time you and Hector are together at one of these sites, someone is thrown off a roof or nearly drowned,” she noted pointedly. “I think a doctor is mandatory for this trip. And…” She touched the ring hanging on a chain around her neck. “I’d like a chance to say good-bye-to my best friend. My family.”
I understood that. I’d have given anything to say good-bye to Tess.
Once the van was loaded, it was Fujiwara driving. It was a good idea to bring him along. If you wanted anyone caught up in a violence cycle and trying to kill you, it was Fuji. He wasn’t very good at it. That upped everyone’s chances of survival considerably.
Thackery was in the front passenger seat. That I didn’t care for much. The sociopath who had let Charlie die through indifference and ambition wasn’t someone I wanted watching my back. But Hector had said, lack of conscience aside, that next to him, Thackery was the best scientist, and he’d rather have him in sight than lurking back at the base unsupervised, doing God knows what. Psychic reading wasn’t any kind of proof that Hector could take to his government oversight contact, and Hector did have his own eventual plans for Thackery that government oversight had no part of.
