Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (38 page)

I felt Nick nod, even before he spoke. “Okay. Just don’t shoot anyone until you know it’s them. Okay, Miri? I know how you feel––”

“No you don’t.”

He fell silent, then exhaled again.

“Okay. Fair enough. Maybe I don’t. But don’t do it anyway, all right? I know you, Miriam. If you make a mistake and get the wrong guy, you’d never get over it. I want this bastard off the streets too, which is why I’m telling you... don’t go off half-cocked right now, okay? Make sure you have the right guy first. Then let
me
handle it. Okay?”

I nodded, hearing him.

I even agreed with him, in principle anyway, but his words still annoyed me.

Maybe I was just sick of being lectured. I’ve never much liked being told what to do. Maybe it was from having parents die when I was too young and uncles who took off and then adults all of a sudden inserting themselves and giving me unwanted advice.

I remember thinking even as a kid that the people who did that always seemed to want it both ways. No one
wanted
me or Zoe when we were kids, in the sense of actually taking responsibility for us. We were always told to suck it up, to learn to make do, to be self-reliant––but then those same people wanted the right to wag fingers at us when we did our best and the results weren’t picture-perfect. People always want it both ways.

But I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t having it then, and I wasn’t having it now.

Black and I were alone in this.

I couldn’t wait for anyone to fix this for him. Or for me.

Even with my uncle’s help, and Nick and Angel’s, and Black’s employees, something about our situation, surrounded by all of these people, made me realize just how alone we were.

Or maybe I just realized for the first time, or admitted to myself maybe, that Black was in a different category. Not just a different category from my friends, but a different category from all of the people who’d ever been in my life.

All of them except maybe my sister, Zoe.

Something about that realization hit me hard––hard enough that it struck me as containing a truth I’d been avoiding with all of my being up until now. That was the part of all this I hadn’t really wanted to face, even before Black got shot, even before I was faced with the prospect of losing him. He really was my family now.

Nick and Angel were my family too, of course, but not in the same way.

I couldn’t even explain to myself in what way it was different.

I just knew it was.

Weirdly, that knowledge made it easier not to argue when the people at the hospital treated me the same way. When Black finally got out of the second surgery, and my uncle’s medical technicians told me it was better if he just rest and replenish light with me for awhile, I didn’t feel anything but relief.

I went right into his room as soon as they let me.

When they didn’t kick me out, I pulled up a chair, laid my head on the bed next to his arm, and held his hand. Once I was settled comfortably, where I could see the door if anyone tried to come in, I started doing that thing where I gave him light again.

By then, I’m pretty sure the main visiting hours were long over.

I knew there were uniformed cops stationed outside Black’s door.

I knew my uncle’s people might still be there too, although I hadn’t seen either of the guys from earlier and I knew for a fact the seer medical techs had left. They told me just before they went, assuring me they’d be back early the next day. They also said to call if I needed them back earlier, that they’d be staying at a hotel just down the street and would keep the phone nearby.

I admit, all of that reassured me.

It assured me more than when the human doctors told me essentially the same thing.

I still hadn’t seen Black open his eyes, but I could feel him breathing now, and he’d gotten some of his color back.

The human doctors definitely seemed puzzled when I talked to them, but they also assured me the surgery had gone well––better than they’d feared, given his condition when he was first brought in. The coma concerned some of them more than they admitted to me––I read that much on the head surgeon––and they definitely had questions about Black’s physiology, but the seers must have done something to make those questions less alarming than interesting to them.

I knew from reading them they’d also gotten the same cover story Black used at his company, so a few were curious about his genetic history, as well.

Either way, I probably felt more relieved than his current condition warranted.

I could tell from what the seers told me and what I could read off the human physicians that Black wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Even so, just being able to be in the same room as him, watching him breathe, made me relax more than I probably should have. Having his warm, bare arm pressed to mine, being able to give him light as I rested my head on the mattress next to him, holding his hand, made me relax in ways I couldn’t begin to express, not even to myself.

None of it made sense to me, but I was too damned exhausted to care.

And yes, as unlikely as it would have sounded to me even an hour earlier, after Nick and Angel left and the doctors left and the nurses dimmed the lights...

I must have fallen asleep.

Fifteen

SILENCE

MY HEAD JERKED up from a deep sleep, but I don’t think there was a noise.

Strangely, I think now that the silence must have woken me.

According to my internal clock, at least a few hours had gone by since I could last remember anything. The hospital felt truly dead now. The private room Black Securities and Investigations must have procured for Black for some exorbitant amount of money was silent of anything but Black’s breathing and the muted beats of a heart monitor.

The corridor outside the room was deathly still.

I still held Black’s hand. I must have gripped it even tighter as I woke, because releasing it was almost an act of will. Once I had, I rubbed my face with the same hand, exhaling as I leaned my forehead against his arm, and ended up resting my cheek there for a few breaths.

That silence deepened somehow.

Then it occurred to me. I couldn’t hear anyone outside Black’s door.

It’s not like the two cops sitting there had been loud. But they hadn’t been totally silent either. I’d heard them move around, murmur to one another, flip pages, talk on the phone in quiet voices. I’d been listening to them right up until when I’d fallen asleep.

I’d also been watching Hawking, using a kind of psychic thread or line I’d spun between his mind and mine, something Black had mentioned doing when he tracked people.

I’d never really done such a thing consciously before, but I’d wanted to keep an eye on Hawking, and make sure I’d feel it if his mental “flavor” changed. I specifically wanted to know if it changed into something closer to what I now recognized as the Templar, both from the two murder scenes and what I’d felt in Chinatown.

So far, I couldn’t be sure.

Hawking’s mind was quiet. At times it was even silent––with a similar flavor of “hunting” there as what I’d felt on the Templar––but I flat-out couldn’t decide if they could be the same person. If Hawking was the Templar, he disguised that fact when he was playing cop. Maybe he even compartmentalized those two sides totally, like I’d speculated with Nick.

The flavor there was definitely... different.

Now that I was more or less conscious again, and the silence grew increasingly deafening outside the private hospital room’s door, I found myself looking for Hawking again. Concentrating on the flavor of his mind without lifting my head from Black’s arm, I tried to reconnect to that thread I’d established while I’d been focusing on him during the briefing meeting down at the Northern Police Precinct. He’d shown up there eventually, after about three hours of working with the team around Stow Lake.

When I finally managed to find him, it felt almost like Hawking was asleep.

I concentrated more, and grew more sure of it.

Eventually, I could even see him lying on a hotel room bed, breathing deeply, rhythmically, wearing only sweat-pant shorts. Something about watching him there felt really invasive though, so I clicked out once I was sure.

Exhaling in relief, I decided I was overreacting.

The cops outside might be dozing too. That, or one of them had gone for coffee or food and the other was just being unusually still for some reason. I was still thinking about that when I stood up from the chair, straightening with a grimace from my legs being stuck in the same position for too long and stretching my whole body.

I looked down at Black.

It was dark, and I couldn’t be certain, but it looked like he’d regained more color again. His face still looked overly pale, but it didn’t look as hollow-cheeked as I remembered, and some of the tension had left his forehead and the area around his mouth and jaw.

That might have been the drugs dripping down into his IV, of course. I was sure they had him doped to the gills for the pain, since they’d spent most of the afternoon sawing into him and sewing pieces of him back together.

The surgeons had assured me that the bullet missed his spine, which had been their initial fear they told me, especially given how still he’d gone after being hit.

Leaning down, I found myself stroking the hair out of his face, avoiding the oxygen tube before I kissed his forehead.

“Okay,” I said to him. “I need the bathroom, Black. And probably a vending machine with instant coffee and someting stale to chew on. I won’t be gone long, okay? Promise. I’ll come straight back, and I’ll eat whatever I find in here.”

He didn’t move.

His breathing didn’t change, his eyelids didn’t flicker, and his body remained as deathly still as before. Even so, for some reason, I was glad I’d said it.

Combing my fingers through my own hair, I stretched out my arms again, swinging them in a few quick circles as I walked towards the door to the corridor.

As I did, it hit me that I hadn’t thought to bring any actual money with me. I hadn’t taken a purse with me from Angel’s house when we all drove to the park and Stow Lake. I’d just grabbed my ID and a credit card, figuring that would cover it.

But at this time of night, I’d probably need actual dollars.

I wondered if one of the cops would lend me some cash. I could have Angel bring my purse in the morning. She and Nick would probably be here early anyway––probably before these guys changed shifts and they brought in the next crew.

I pushed open the door gently, peering out into the corridor.

Both of the metal folding chairs sitting there were empty.

I stiffened at once, using my psychic sight to scan the immediate area.

I was starting to get alarmed, to wonder if I should call Nick...

When I felt a familiar presence approaching and abruptly relaxed.

I’d been right. They must have gone for a walk to stretch their legs, or maybe in search of vending machines, like me. Even as I thought it, the face and uniform belonging to that familiar presence rounded the corner down the hall.

He sped up as soon as he saw me, frowning a little at the empty chairs outside the door and then holding up a hand with a smile.

As he approached, I walked the rest of the way out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind me. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d done it that I was trying not to disturb Black.