Equal Parts (3 page)

Felicity
, I wanted to snap, but instead I got to my feet. “Well, I’ve had a great night, but I really should be going. My curfew is midnight.”

“It’s only ten,” he told me, looking at his watch with a frown.

I laughed in the most charming way I knew. “Then I might find you in two hours, and maybe you can give me a lift home.” I even added in a wink.

The full-blown wattage of his smile hit me with another round of good feelings. I quickly latched on to it and mentally stuffed it into the bottle with the rest.

Before he could trap me with another ‘quick’ story of his grandeur, I returned the smile and fled downstairs, elbowing my way through the crowds until I made it outside.

I didn’t allow myself to think as I drove with urgent speed to the hospital. I told myself I was simply escaping Finn’s advances in the most radical way possible, but I knew, deep down, there was another reason. I just didn’t want to acknowledge what it was.

Grabbing the bag holding my scrubs from the trunk of the car, I marched through the hospital, trying my best to look as though I was there on a normal shift.

I changed into my scrubs in the bathroom, and it was then I noticed the navy top stuck to my skin in an unusual way, and it was then that I realized I was sweating.
Sweating
. Like I had something to be nervous about. Like I was doing something
wrong
.

Again, I pushed my motives for being here to the back of my mind. I was simply checking up on Achilles. That was it. No talking, no eye contact, no interaction. Just seeing if Finn was telling the truth.

Shouldering the bag now containing my regular clothes, I sent Lucia a text
telling her I’d gone home early
and slipped into the shadows of the hospital hallways. It didn’t take a genius to know where Achilles was being held – there was a
maximum-security
wing for that very purpose. Carova City Hospital wasn’t grand or big enough to warrant a psych ward –
nutbags were sent straight to the Carova Institute for the Mentally Unstable.

The nurses’ station was empty, by some miracle. At the very end of the wing, guarded by two cops, was the
maximum-security
ward. Signs littered the hallway, advising patrons to stay away. I ducked behind a laundry bin, and waited until the two men were looking elsewhere, before sliding into an open closet in an alcove of the hallway. I was near enough to hear their feet shuffling on the tiles.

A full fifteen minutes ticked by before one of them spoke.

“He’s not going anywhere. I don’t see why
two
of us need to stand guard.”

“It’s in case he overpowers one of us. Standard procedure,” replied the other one, then added, hesitantly, “Although, I
would
like to be at home watching the game right now.”

“Overpowers us,” snickered the first. “I give him another few nights, tops. If the bullet didn’t kill him, I’m sure one of the doctors wouldn’t be opposed to
accidentally
pumping too much morphine into him. For the right price, I mean.”

The other chuckled. “You are one evil son-of-a-bitch. Would make our job a lot easier, that’s for sure.”

That was the thing about Carova police – they were relatively thick, but they were also very dedicated to the job at hand. If it
were
the means to an end, they would do it. It was something they shared with the villains of Carova, not that anyone would ever speak that theory aloud. My time at the gazebo with Achilles had only proved the idea.

“I’m going to the vending machine. You want anything?”

“Yeah, get me a soda.” The topic changed from Achilles, and I knew I had to take this chance to get out of there. When footsteps faded into the hallway, I peeked around the corner to see the single guard left, his attention on Achilles’s form, bedridden behind the heavy glass door.

Sticking to the shadows, I moved back out of the wing, past the nurses’ station, down the fire exit, and used the faulty fire escape on the second floor to get down to my car.

I wasn’t not a great believer in fate, but I did believe in coincidence – and sometimes, they can mean the same thing. The fact that the cops didn’t start discussing Achilles’s health until I was there? Definitely not a coincidence.

Which meant … what? That I was supposed to do something about his condition? Or was I simply trying to justify some act of gratitude?

Three days
, I told myself firmly, zooming back home in my tiny car.
If he’s still alive in three days, I’ll visit him. If he dies before then, I wasn’t meant to interfere
.

Cursing my conscience for all it was worth, I tried to forget the words of the policeman, about the doctor overdosing Achilles with morphine.

But, to my dismay, the idea lingered in my mind, until it took up a spot on my priorities, and stayed there.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You haven’t been to work in three days. It’s just not like you.”

Lucia’s voice crackled through my ancient cell phone, disrupting my train of thought. Just in time, too – I had been considering attempting to straighten my hair with a
flatiron
. I’d done it a few times before, and the apartment always smelled of burnt hair afterwards.

“Just a cold,” I told her, blocking my nose slightly. “I hate being sick.”

She snorted through the connection. “You’ll survive. I’m sure you’ve had the
worst
time, lying on your sofa and watching every re-run of
The Nanny
.”

“For your information, I was sitting. And they were
Mad About You
re-runs.” I hated lying. I was a terrible liar. But the good thing about Lucia was that she was usually too caught up in her own world to even recognize the hitch in my tone.

“Well, you haven’t missed anything at work. That dumbass Bridget girl spilt hot coffee all over herself and had to be taken to the E.R. It wasn’t even an accident – she did it to see if her shirt was, I kid you not, ‘hot-proof’.”

That had me laughing hard enough to hurt. The café where we worked – and where I first met Lucia – was a minefield of idiots and bimbos. Part of the reason I hadn’t quit yet was because the staff
members
were too entertaining.

After I’d convinced Lucia I would meet with her for lunch tomorrow, I hung up and stared at the clock on the wall. Ten o’clock. It had been exactly three days since I’d overheard the guards’ conversation about Achilles, and no news had been heard of his condition since then. I had to assume he was still alive, somehow – the city would be celebrating and declaring a national holiday if he was dead.

For the thousandth time that day, I ran every possible outcome of me helping him in my mind. If I saved Achilles’s life – or aided him, anyway – there could only be four immediate repercussions that I could see: he could turn good (unlikely); he could lie low until he was recovered (less likely); he could escape and never be seen again (more likely); or he could escape, go on a murderous rampage, and hunt me down to use me for his own purposes (most likely).

Then
why
, for the love of all that was holy, was I already in my scrubs, in the car, driving towards the hospital?

It had to be gratitude. I was thankful for him not killing me and, in some ways, saving my life. If he hadn’t pushed me out of the gazebo and distracted the cops, they might have shot
me
on sight. I assured myself it was perfectly normal to feel such compassion, even if a small voice in the back of my mind was telling me I was acting crazy.

For the second time that week, I acted as though I was absolutely supposed to be there. None of the nurses or doctors really paid me any attention – I was a volunteer orderly, after all. You couldn’t get much lower on the
food chain
than that.

I strode through the corridors with a feigned sense of purpose, praying it w
as enough to ward off any curiou
s glances or queries. When I reached the
maximum-security
ward, my palms got sweaty once more, and I steered a cleaning trolley out from behind the nurses’ station to stop my arms from shaking.

The same two cops from the other night were posted outside the door, looking bored as ever. They didn’t even bother looking up as I pulled up in front of them.

“Sorry,” I stammered, hoping I looked as timid and innocent as I felt, “I’m supposed to clean out the trash.”

The tubbier of the two straightened, as though it was a great pain to even look at me. “I.D.?”

I gave him my volunteer security badge and he nodded. “Go on in. Want one of us in there with you?”

I peered through the glass window at the unconscious figure in the bed. “Is he awake?”

“Nah, he’s been out for a few days
straight
. Doesn’t look good.” He swiped his key-card to open the door, and held it open for me. “Don’t be too long. Just scream if you need any help.” The two of them chuckled at
the
rather macabre advice, and I gave him my weakest smile.

“Thanks.”
Not
.

Hauling the trolley in behind me, I closed the door and went about my usual tasks at a painfully slow rate – emptying the
trashcan
, disinfecting the
tabletop
, wiping down the windowsill. When I felt the eyes of the policemen turn from me back to the hallway, I snuck a peek at the object of my intrigue.

If Achilles had heard my entry, he didn’t react to it. His
heart rate
lifted a little, but his eyes remained closed.

With the caution of a rabbit approaching a trap, I inched towards Achilles’s still form, making it seem as though I was going to spray and wipe the bedside table. His face paint was intact, though it was cracked at the edges and smudged across the eyes. His suit-shirt, now rolled up to his elbows and open at the neck, exposed skin the color of cinnamon, peppered with freckles. Tubes and wires ran out of his hand and nose, and something eerily like sympathy tugged at my heartstrings. Crap.

“You smell like a bakery,” he croaked without opening his eyes.

I froze, and made sure I looked busy when I replied, “You smell like death.” I wasn’t kidding – the whole room had a horribly ‘dead’ feel to it, like a black mist blanketing the small space.

He crackled a laugh. The corners of his mouth-paint splintered. “Darling, you would too, if you’d gone through what I’ve –” He broke into a rattling cough, and I instantly returned to the windowsill, expecting the cops to barge in at any second. When not a single peep came from outside, I half-turned, well aware a security camera in the corner was watching my every move. To my knowledge, though, they couldn’t
hear
me.

“Why did you help me escape?” I demanded in a hiss, wiping down the glass with much more vigor than necessary.

Another laugh, this one much quieter. I saw his eyes blink open and stifled a gasp when I saw the all-consuming black contact-lenses were left in. “Did you really come all this way to ask me that?”

“If you died, I would never get an answer.” It was the only justification I was ready to give to either of us.

Those terrifying eyes studied me, but I didn’t find myself frozen in place this time. I moved to his bedside, crouched near his head, pretending to pick up things from under the bed. Something about seeing him so vulnerable made me much more confident than it should have.

After a long moment of silent observation, he tried for a shrug. “You looked like a girl who would appreciate chivalry.”

I tried not to take offense – I had to assume there was an insult in there somewhere. “Does that mean you weren’t planning on killing me?”

In the blink of an eye, his wrist flicked out and grabbed my neck, his grip tight enough to keep me in place without hurting me. I prayed his arm was blocked by my body for the camera in the corner, instead of praying for my life. I didn’t want Security rushing in here and spoiling my suicidally-brave intentions.
“Are you implying I’m a coward
? Because I could finish the job right here, if you’d prefer. Nobody would even hear you scream.”

Like that night in the gazebo, my spine prickled with unadulterated fear. One of his fingers curled against the skin under my ear, sending shivers across every part of me. Somehow, I managed to find the courage to speak. “No, but they’ll hear
you
scream when I take my
mop
and
shove it up
your –”

“Kinky,” he purred, black eyes flashing. For a heart-stopping moment, I wondered if they were, in fact, his
real
eyes. His grip on me tightened ever-so-slightly. “But an empty threat, I think. You should be careful – that streak of fire will get you killed one day.”

“As will yours,” I retorted, rolling my eyes back towards the security camera.

With a growl, he released me, and I backed up towards the
cart
, idly rearranging my cleaning products.