Actual Stop (33 page)

Sounds were easier. I remembered clearly, for example, the sound of the motorcade taking off, the punching roar of the engines, and the screech of tires attempting to gain traction against pavement. In my head, I could hear distant voices shouting, though I couldn’t make out precisely what they said. The slam of doors. The stamp of boots against concrete. I remembered hearing lots of different things. But I couldn’t see any of it. Not really. Just useless flashes. The delegation being rushed into the cars. Feet dashing by my head as I lay on the ground. The curve of a tire next to a curb. Nothing useful. Nothing that helped me put together exactly what had happened. Why not? What was I forgetting?

“Your leg’s a bit mangled,” Rory went on, though whether she thought I was even awake at that point was unclear. Maybe she simply didn’t care. On TV, people talked to their unconscious loved ones all the time. Perhaps that’s what she was doing now. The sensation of her fingers tracing gentle circles on my hand was soothing. “One of the bullets grazed the outside of your right thigh. You’ll have a scar, but there was no major muscle or tissue damage.”

I sighed. The urge to just let go for a while and put off remembering until much later was seductive. I wanted so badly to give in to it. I started to drift off, Rory’s voice floating to me as though from the other end of a long tube. She was saying something about lungs and kidneys and internal bleeding, but her words weren’t hitting home with me. I tried to murmur good night to her but couldn’t quite rally the energy to move my lips. I’d tell her later. She’d understand.

“It could’ve been much, much worse.”

At those words, I suddenly remembered everything. The abrupt clarity was almost startling, and I would’ve sworn I actually heard a click as the missing pieces snapped into place. My eyes flew open, and the nausea Rory had asked me about earlier punched me hard in the gut, but I doubted it had anything to do with my physical injuries. No, this reaction could be attributed to psychic wounds.

“Luce?” My voice was shaky, and I trembled. “Where is she? Can I see her?”

My sister’s expression was all the answer I required. My heart shredded, and tears welled up in my eyes, blurring Rory’s face. I wanted to beg her, plead with her not to say the words I knew were about to come out of her mouth, but I couldn’t make my voice work. The lump in my throat was too big. The sudden, painful pressure inside me was too great.

“I’m so sorry, Ryan. Lucia didn’t make it.”

A fraction of a second before it happened, I knew exactly what the bedpan was for, and somewhere beneath my anguish, a part of me was grateful Rory knew me so well. She was already lifting the dish with one hand as she helped me turn to the side a little with the other. I expelled the contents of my stomach with such force I was positive I was either reopening old wounds or inflicting new ones. Either way, I welcomed the pain. I deserved it. I hungered for it. Lucia couldn’t feel anything anymore because of me.

I have no idea how long I vomited, only that the moment seemed to stretch on into forever. Finally, when my stomach spasms quieted somewhat and I appeared to be through dry-heaving, Rory placed the bedpan on the floor.

I squeezed my eyes shut to block the scalding tears gathered in them. The side of the bed dipped with the weight of another body, and I buried my face in Rory’s chest, sobbing. Guilt threatened to drown me, and no words could’ve offered any comfort.

Rory must’ve sensed that, too, because she merely held me quietly as I cried.

“Are you still mad at me?” Rory’s voice floated through the open doorway, interrupting my attempts to find anything even remotely entertaining on TV.

I thumbed the power button on the remote with as much force as I could and turned to glare at her. “You mean because you refused to let me attend Lucia’s funeral? No. Why would I be mad about that?”

Rory sighed and shuffled into the room. She looked ragged, but I refused to let that sway me. “You haven’t recovered nearly enough to handle the stress.”

“So you said. Just before you fled the room. Coward.”

“Yeah, well, you were being unreasonable.” She pulled a chair up next to my bed and flopped into it, tipping her head back and closing her eyes.

“Is it even legal for you to do what you did?”

She cracked open one eye. “What did I do?”

“Used your position at the hospital to make decisions for me.”

She scoffed and closed her eye again. “Please. Like you were even sober enough to realize you were missing it.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Mine,” Rory mumbled, not sounding really interested. “Everything’s mine.”

“Glad you can admit it.”

“Mmm.”

We were quiet for a long moment, and I took the opportunity to really study her as she dozed. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised, and I would’ve sworn the stress lines creasing her brow weren’t there before. My heart lurched, and I rubbed my own forehead as though I’d be able to soothe her that way.

“It was best,” Rory murmured, startling me.

“What was?”

“You skipping the funeral.”

“I should’ve been there, Rory. I should’ve at least had the chance to honor the life she’d lived and the sacrifice she’d made.”

Rory groaned as she hoisted herself into a more upright position and twisted and turned to work out some kinks in her back. “I know. And I’m sorry. But I didn’t want you to have to deal with all the whispers and the staring and the questions.”

It was my turn to sigh. “Yeah, I figured it was something like that.” A beat. “Thanks.”

“Any time. How’d your visit with her family go?”

Even now, I felt like I was being pressed in a vise at the mere memory of that conversation. I forced myself to breathe in despite the tightness in my chest. It wasn’t easy. “It went okay.”

Rory quirked an eyebrow. She knew I was full of shit. “Really?”

“Well, if you overlook the fact that she hadn’t told them anything.”

“Anything about…?”

“About anything. Our breakup. Her sleeping with someone else. That she was upset with me because I’d…” I couldn’t even bring myself to say that she’d been in the line of fire instead of on the far side of the limo by the Intel car because she’d felt compelled to confront me. I didn’t want Rory trying to convince me it wasn’t my fault. “Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.”

“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.”

I cleared my throat in an attempt to break apart the heavy ball that’d gathered there and blinked furiously against the tears welling in my eyes. “Yeah, well. I thought they’d come to yell at me. Imagine my surprise when they cried and fussed over me like I was part of the damn family.”

Rory was silent for a while. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”

I shook my head. “No. But I thought about it.” Had teetered on the brink of revealing the truth the entire visit, in fact. I’d even opened my mouth a few times, intent upon confessing everything, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Why not?”

“If she’d wanted them to know, she’d have told them herself. Besides, that would’ve been for me, not for them. To make me feel better.” She probably had no idea what I was talking about, but that was okay. She didn’t need specifics. “I couldn’t take advantage of them like that.”

Rory favored me with a pitying look that grated on the underside of my skin like a thousand splinters. “Ryan, you know that—” Her pager went off, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say, and I sagged against my pillows, relieved. She checked it and stood, a dark frown washing over her features. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll come back and check on you later.”

“I’d rather you get some sleep,” I called after her.

She waved over her shoulder and strode purposefully down the hall. I shimmied around in the bed for a bit after she’d gone, trying to get comfortable, but it just didn’t seem possible. The best I could do was settle into a position that produced the least amount of pain. But the physical aches were a welcome distraction from the shame and guilt bubbling like a witch’s brew inside me. So that was something, I supposed.

My work phone chimed to announce a new email and intruded upon my wallowing. With a sigh, I retrieved it and awkwardly typed in my password with my left hand. God, I wished I knew how much longer it’d be before I could use my right.

The message wasn’t from Allison. Speaking of nada, zip, zero, and zilch, I hadn’t heard squat from her since the day I’d been shot, and that cut me to the quick. News traveled faster than the speed of light in this agency, so she’d surely heard what’d happened. I’ll admit it, I’d sort of been expecting her to call to check up on me. That she hadn’t even emailed was devastating.

Whenever I threatened to drown in thoughts like that, my pragmatic side reminded me she was overseas on a protection assignment. She had responsibilities and couldn’t just drop everything to confirm what everyone in the agency had surely already told her—that I was going to be fine. Besides, she and I were just finding our way back to one another. I had no right to expect her to magically appear at my bedside.

I sighed. Pragmatism be damned. I was equal parts hurt and saddened that Allison hadn’t asked to be released from her assignment to come home. And the frustration and regret that sliced through me at the thought that she hadn’t even called or emailed me was painfully acute.

I clenched my hand impossibly tightly around the phone before I slung it onto the nightstand. It clattered before coming to rest against a pitcher full of water. A bitter taste like bile rose in the back of my throat, and I gritted my teeth against all the negative emotions pulling painfully on my insides like they were so much taffy. Unfortunately, all the teeth-gritting caused some pain to my outside, too. I winced at the stab along the right side of my jaw.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a tentative voice said from the doorway.

I glanced up and saw Meaghan hovering there, looking a touch uncertain. I smiled at her and nodded, waving her inside. Agents from the office had been taking turns coming to visit me throughout my stay. Though I didn’t always remember much about the visits due to the painkillers my doctors kept pumping through me, in my lucid moments, I appreciated them immensely.

“Hi, Meg. How’s it going?”

“Are you, you know…?”

“Sober?”

Meaghan nodded.

“Mmm. Ish,” I told her honestly. I’d been moderately successful at getting my doctors to back off on the drugs a bit. But I was still out of sorts.

Meaghan entered the room and took a seat in the chair Rory had recently vacated. Her eyes took in my battered face and my sling, and a strange expression flickered across her features. She reminded me of a little kid, for some reason, and I immediately wanted to put her at ease. “You sure about that?”

I frowned. “Reasonably. Why?”

“Eric Banks is running around telling everyone that when he was here you said you were going to take his badge and smack him hard enough on the forehead with it that it’d leave a permanent indent.”

I laughed. “He is, huh? Nice.”

“So is it true?”

“Absolutely. Though I’m still not sure why he was even here. I barely know him. I think we’ve met like once.”

“He came over with Anna. She wanted to see you. She seemed pretty shaken up by the whole thing. And for some reason Eric decided to tag along. At least that’s what Anna said.”

“It was sweet of her to be concerned. She’s a nice girl.”

“I think she’s got a crush on you.”

“Come on. She does not.”

“If it’s not that, then she thinks you’re the reincarnation of Wonder Woman. So maybe ease up with threatening the rookies. Don’t want to tarnish your image.”

“Not rookies. Just the one. I’d never say something like that to Anna. She’s squared away. And you’re right. It was the drugs talking. I’d never have said that out loud if I hadn’t been all doped up.”

She grinned. “But you’d have thought it.”

“Definitely.”

“Do I even want to know why?”

“Probably not. Have you ever interacted with him?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. It was a real treat. I loved having a guy with a couple months on the job telling me how we needed to handle the demonstrators at a site when he isn’t even in PI.”

“He’s a peach.”

“It’ll be interesting to see how much longer he lasts before Rico kills him.”

“That’s right. Rico’s his backup now. Ha. I love it.”

“Yeah, well, Rico told him if he ever even spoke your name again, he’d get worse than a smack on the head with his badge. And then he had Ops assign Eric to midnight desk duty for a week.”

I couldn’t help smiling at Rico’s protectiveness.

Meaghan’s expression became serious as she went back to inspecting me. “So how are you doing? Really?”

“I’m okay. Speaking of people I want to smack with their own badge, I only did this in order to show up Bill Steelman because of his huge arrest last week.”

Meaghan cracked a weak smile and shook her head before raking one hand through her hair. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

I shrugged, once again forgetting my injured shoulder, and tried to hide my reaction to the resulting pain. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t have him hogging all the attention.”

Meaghan’s brows pulled down, which made me wonder whether she’d caught onto my physical discomfort. “How much pain are you in?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Because of the drugs?”

“No. Okay, well, maybe. A little bit.”

“Fantastic.” She eyed me with a hint of exasperation as she crossed her arms over her chest. I couldn’t help it. I laughed at her.

“What were you expecting to hear?” I liked to tease her.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Not that.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Yeah,” she murmured quietly, almost sadly, as her eyes scoured me from head to toe. “I guess I do.”

“And yet you still felt as though you had to ask.”

“Come on, Ryan. Be serious for once in your life.” Meaghan appeared annoyed with my attempts at levity, and the harshness in her voice shocked me. She had a dull fire in her eyes, and she opened her mouth, but she must’ve changed her mind about what she wanted to say because she closed it again and rubbed her fingertips across her lips.