With his eyes closed, Thatch looked at peace. I had no doubt I screwed that tranquillity up as soon as I asked the question, but it was something that had been playing on my mind. There were a few beats of silence, just the slight ripple of water making a sound, and the odd cricket in the distance.
The water around Thatch splashed as he moved off his back to face me. Just the tops of his shoulders and his head were above water. “She was the only person left in the facility by the time I infiltrated the night before. It wasn’t until the next day, the day of the fire, that I was able to get her out of the cell she was trapped in. She was locked up tight.” His eyes drifted away from me, looking into the distant night. “I spent hours the previous night trying to get her out.” He shook his head. “She never, not once told me anything personal. Nothing about her daughter, nothing about her brother being in the SICB, even though I told her who I was.
“Jenson and Michaels were dealing with something for the head office, and Kent was doing everything she could behind the scenes to help me get her out. It was a shitshow.”
“They knew you were there?”
“They must have done. The cells and labs were empty. The majority of hard drives wiped clean. We lucked out with the one we managed to get access to.”
“But they left Hazel behind.” I frowned, thinking back to that night and why I was there. I gave a humourless snort.
“What?”
“And there I was thinking Cartwright had a hard-on for me, when it was all about you.”
He quirked his brow at me. “Not sure if I should take it as a compliment that the guy set the fire to kill me.”
A wry grin flittered across my lips. “Yeah, I suppose.” I’d previously explained to him how I’d got the lead about the real purpose of the lab Cartwright had set up. Thatch had been interested in how Cartwright had let down his guard and left the fragment of a paper trail for me to follow. I just thought Cartwright was a cocky bastard and had made a mistake. Thatch wasn’t convinced.
Thatch sobered, his tone lowering. “Your sister was already injured, dying. She’d told me about what she knew, what she’d seen. But even though I spent hours with her, the reality was she drifted in and out of consciousness, and”—he grimaced—“she was in pain the whole time so she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She left me a jigsaw, so many bits of information that made little sense.”
I hadn’t realised I’d been looking away, consumed with thoughts of Hazel’s last hours and the pain she’d been in, until Thatch’s warm hand rested on my neck. “You okay to hear more? I can st—”
I shook my head, relieved when I didn’t shake his hand away, relishing in the comfort his warmth and strength offered. “Please go on.” This time his hand slipped away. The motion paused, his eyes scanning my face. Perhaps I should have been humiliated that he saw right through me, but I didn’t have it in me to care. His hand moved slowly down my arm, goosebumps following his path. His hand stopped when it met mine. I turned my palm upwards and welcomed his fingers, gripping them tightly.
Breath rushed out of me, a reminder that I needed to breathe.
He didn’t say anything for a beat. Didn’t react. His eyes simply remained connected to mine. With his gaze steady, he tugged me along with him towards shallower water. When our feet touched the soft bottom, he stopped moving and continued with his story. “Kent came through in the end. She’s how I was able to get to Hazel. We all knew it was too late. She was physically hurt, her body bouncing between shifts. Even if she hadn’t told me, the poison, the chemicals they had pumped her with were killing her.”
My jaw clicked as I pressed my teeth together, the bone groaning and muscle throbbing. I was thankful for the minimal light from the half-moon; it allowed me a semblance of anonymity in my grief. While my sister deserved every one of my tears, I was spent. Drained. I needed action, and I knew with Thatch leading the way, we’d take the evil bastards down.
“When Hazel asked if I understood how her last bite worked on humans…” A grim laugh escaped him. “…hell, I understood her intentions immediately. She had so many answers locked away in her mind. She couldn’t get to them, not in her condition.”
“So you took one for the team.” There was no mockery, no indignation in my response. Thatch was… damn… I didn’t know what he was. Brave. Stupid. A goddamn hero. “You could have died.” The truth of the statement had me flexing my fingers against his. My eyes widened. “Shit, you could have died.” Horror edged my voice. It didn’t matter that he was before me. Very much alive. Very much okay. “You couldn’t have known whether or not her bite would have worked, considering everything in her system.” Anger crept into my voice. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
His wide eyes and gaping mouth would have been amusing any other time, but not now. Not with the very real knowledge that he was goddamn
