Finding North (46 page)

He gave her a fierce
scowl, but his head moved up and down in a nod. He leaned back in
his chair. Erin sat down. Vince and Royce went around the table to
stand behind her. Marcos’s lawyer came into the room and sat down
next to Marcos.

“
What did you want to tell
me?” Erin asked.

He looked at her for a
long moment. His eyes reviewed her hair, her face, and her
body.

“
You look different,” he
said.

“
New cheeks, new jaw, new
teeth, and new nose — courtesy of your fists,” Erin
said.

He snorted and lifted an
edge of his mouth in a proud sneer.

“
Safe and protected,” Neev
said into Erin’s ear.

“
Okay, well.” Erin got up
to leave.

“
My lawyer told me I had
to do this,” Marcos said. “But I wanted to. You have no idea how
much I wanted to be here. Your sister’s back there, isn’t
she?”

Marcos nodded toward the
glass. Ignoring his question, Erin sat down.

“‘
Reduces my sentence,’ he
said,” Marcos said. “Looking at
you . . .”

He gave her a vicious
sneer.

“
I used you, fucked you,
beat you because you’re a filthy whore,” Marcos said. “The target
was always the Fey.”

“
Thank you for letting me
know,” Erin said.

She got up and started
toward the door.

“
That’s it,” Alex said.
“She’s coming out.”

Alex pushed Colin toward
the door. Through their surveillance camera, Alex watched Colin
meet Erin on the other side of the door. His six-foot-five-inch
bulk wrapped her tiny frame in a bear hug. He carried Erin away
from the door, and down the hallway. Marcos’s attorney rushed out
of the room and met a wall made of Trece and White Boy.

Inside the room, Marcos
started screaming at the top of his lungs.

“
I need to talk to her,”
the lawyer said.

Trece and White Boy didn’t
respond.

“
What the hell is wrong
with him?” Neev asked.

“
Something’s going on!”
Alex said. “Fey Team — be alert!”

“
He has a bomb!” Jesse
screamed as he flew through the one-way mirror.

“
Bomb! Get down!” Alex
screamed and dropped below the window. She pushed Neev hard enough
that she bounced off the wall and fell to the ground. Raz dove for
Samantha and Helen. “Get down!”

“
The joke’s on you!”
Marcos screamed.

Marcos
exploded.

Shards of glass, blood,
and fragments of his body rained down on Alex, Raz, Samantha,
Helen, and Neev. Smoke filled what was left of the rooms and the
hallway. Alex jumped over the broken half wall into the interview
room.

Vince and Royce had been
standing against the other side of the room. When Alex shouted her
warning, Vince had flipped the metal table on its side and pulled
it to the wall. Together, they’d ducked behind the table. Their
bodies had blown into the corner near the door. Marcos’s torso,
fused to the back of his metal chair, lay against an exposed side
of the table. Plasterboard and pieces of cinder block were blown
into the corner with them. Alex grabbed Marcos’s torso and threw it
off Vince and Royce. Raz appeared and began tossing plasterboard.
Together, they lifted the table from Vince and Royce’s
bodies.

“
Talk to me! Talk to me!”
Alex yelled, but her ears only heard the high-pitched ringing from
the explosion. “Talk to me!”

She felt a hand on her
shoulder. MJ was kneeling next to her. He pointed to the ground.
She looked down and saw a pair of feet. He nodded. She picked up
the feet and pulled one of them out from under the other. The scarf
was Vince’s color. Alex ripped off the scarf and
balaclava.

She glanced back at the
corner. MJ was working on Royce. Raz helped her move Vince to a
clear area of the floor. Blood and dust ran together onto the
ground. His left calf was broken in a compound fracture. Some part
of the metal chair had impaled his shoulder. He was bleeding,
unconscious, but alive. Feeling movement, she looked up to see Navy
medics.

She jumped up and went to
where MJ was working on Royce. MJ was stitching up a wound on the
back of Royce’s head. Royce must have tried to keep from hitting
the wall, because both of his arms were broken. His legs looked
fine, but at least one ankle was broken.

Marcos’s torso and the
table seemed to have protected Vince and Royce from the lethal
blast. Raz grabbed Alex’s shoulder and pointed to the door. Joseph
was standing in the doorway, gesturing for her to come to him. She
walked to the door.

Hearing her warning,
Marcos’s lawyer had attempted to return to the room. He’d opened
the door a foot when the explosion went off. His hand, attached to
his arm, still gripped the door handle, while his body lay at
Joseph’s feet. The open door exposed the hallway to the force of
the blast. The hallway was blackened from the flame and smelled
like burned bodies.

Both Trece and White Boy
were cut up and bruised. They’d miraculously missed most of the
blast by choosing to jump from the open door and move down the
hallway. Colin had carried Erin down the hallway. They were dazed
and dirty but otherwise uninjured.

The medics were taking
Neev out of the observation room on a stretcher. She was holding
gauze against a gash on her shoulder. Inside the room, Samantha and
Helen were dirty and cut up but otherwise alive.

Joseph pointed toward a
female Navy medic. Alex shook her head. The medic pointed to Alex’s
arms. Her hands and arms, where Alex had pushed up her long-sleeved
shirt, were covered with tiny cuts from the glass. She assumed her
face bore the same damage. She let the medic escort her to a quiet
corner of the hallway, where her cuts were cleaned and stitched.
When the medic finished with Alex, the medic ran to help move Royce
to the hospital ward. Vince was just behind him.

Still unable to hear, Alex
stood in the hallway and watched them go. Erin touched her arm.
Alex hugged her sister and tried not to grunt with pain at her
return hug. Colin gave Alex a hug and turned to hug
Samantha.

Erin said something, and
Alex pointed to her ears.

“
Why?” Erin said,
exaggerating the word so Alex could read her lips.

Alex pointed to herself
and then shrugged.

Someone touched her arm.
Alex turned to look. Margaret Peaches was standing near her. Alex
pointed to her ears, and Margaret signed that Royce, Vince, Trece,
and White Boy were in the base hospital. Neev and Helen were being
stitched up. The Jakker said to be ready to travel in an
hour.

Erin touched Alex’s arm
again.

“
How?” Erin said in the
same exaggerated way.

Alex shook her head. She
had no idea how Marcos had pulled it off.

“
No,” Erin shook her head.
“How did you know?”

Erin pointed to Samantha
and back at herself. Alex smiled and nodded but pretended not to
understand the question.

Margaret touched her arm.
Alex turned back to look at her. Margaret waved for Alex to come
with her and bring Erin and Samantha. Alex gestured to her sisters.
Margaret escorted them down the hallway to the executive suite that
was their base.

Alex indicated for her
sisters to use the bathroom. They made gestures for Alex to go, but
she insisted. Not wanting to cross her, they went into the
bathroom.

The moment the door
closed, Alex was suddenly too tired to hold up her body. She
collapsed to the floor. Margaret dropped down beside her. Seeing
Margaret’s concerned face, Alex tried to smile.

It was the last thing she
remembered.

F

Chapter
Thirty-two

One week later

Tuesday morning

May 31 — 10:07 a.m. MDT
(12:07 p.m. Cuba DT)

Denver,
Colorado

Alex woke with a gasp. She
sat up and unhooked the IV from the cannula in her arm.

She was sitting in her own
bed, in her own bedroom. Maggie was lying on the bed next to her.
Instinctively, she looked toward the French door to the porch.
There was light outside. It was daytime.

She looked at the clock.
It said 10:07 a.m. May 31.

Holy Crap! She’d lost an
entire week!

What about Helen talking
to her father? She’d promised Sami she would be there when Sami
talked to the Senator! Alex felt a wave of guilt.

Then she
remembered.

She was supposed to be in
Alexandria on May 31
^st
to hear Bestat’s story. She’d hoped to find out
what the hell was going on!

Alex threw off the covers
and tried to get up. The room spun.

She lay back down on the
bed. The last thing she remembered was retreating from the blood
and dust of the explosion to the executive suite. They’d had an
hour before they would travel back to the states. Erin and Samantha
had gone into the bathroom.

Alex looked up to see
Jesse. She tried to use her right arm to point to her ears, but the
arm was taped to her side. She pointed at her ears with her left
hand.

“
Your ears are better,”
Jesse said. “I don’t think you hear me that way,
anyway.”

“
What happened?” Alex
asked.

“
The explosion bounced
your brain around,” her mother’s voice came from
somewhere.

Alex looked around and
found Rebecca standing in the bathroom door. Alex noticed that a
romantic suspense novel was face down on the bed near the green
stuffed armchair. A soft cotton blanket was draped on the bed.
Rebecca appeared next to her.

“
How do you feel?” Rebecca
asked.

“
Disoriented.” Alex
flipped her legs around to get out of bed and felt instantly dizzy.
“Woozy.”

Rather than lying back
down, Alex forced herself to sit up.

“
Here,” Rebecca said. She
held out a few white pills and water.

“
What are those?” Alex
gave the pills a suspicious sniff.

“
Ibuprofen,” Rebecca
said.

Alex took the pills and
the water. She emptied the glass.

“
Where are Máire and
Joey?” Alex asked.

“
Downstairs.” Rebecca gave
her a beaming smile. “They have so many people who love them. When
you were injured, your father and I rushed over to take care of
them and found . . . Well, they didn’t need us at
all.”

“
We’re very lucky,” Alex
said.

“
I’m a little jealous,”
Rebecca said.

“
How are Vince and Royce?”
Alex asked to change the subject.

“
Alive,” Rebecca said.
“They have quite a ways to go until they are better, but they’re
alive and that’s a miracle. Trece and White Boy, too.”

“
Are they home?” Alex
asked.

“
No, they’re here,”
Rebecca said. “Neev is here, too.”

“
Here?” Alex
asked.

“
In the basement,” Rebecca
said. “Colin can keep an eye on them that way. John, too. They’ve
hired nurses to help. It’s like a hospital ward down
there.”

“
Wow,” Alex said. “Full
house.”

“
You’re supposed to stay
in this bed,” Rebecca said.

“
I’m itchy,” Alex
said.

Alex scratched her right
arm and opened one of the remaining small cuts on her forearm.
Rebecca blotted at the cut until it stopped bleeding.

“
How did I get here?” Alex
asked.

“
You mean, you don’t
remember what happened after saving everyone’s life?” Rebecca
asked.

Alex nodded and then
groaned at the motion. She had to bite her lip to keep from
throwing up.

“
Why do I feel like I had
surgery?” Alex asked.

“
Your scapula,” Rebecca
said. “You have a few screws to hold it together. They took
advantage of you being unconscious. They thought you wouldn’t
complain too much.”

“
Figures.” Alex
nodded.

Rebecca smiled and sat
down on the bed.

“
I’m not supposed to tell
you anything,” Rebecca said. “But I
wanted . . .”

Rebecca’s eyes filled with
tears. She leaned forward and kissed Alex’s cheek. Her thumb
automatically rubbed off the lipstick print.

“
What?” Alex
asked.

“
Philippe,” Rebecca said.
“Thank you.”

“
He was murdered?” Alex
asked.

“
Poisoned,” Rebecca
nodded. “The hanging was just . . .”

Rebecca’s voice broke, and
tears dropped down her face.

“
I made Benji tell me,”
Rebecca said. “You’d have been proud of me. I forced him to tell me
why Philippe was killed. Benjamin said you think he and I were
supposed to get together to take him out of the intelligence game.
He said that he thought I was . . . Well, he said
‘tricked’ — I think he meant mind-controlled like those poor girls
you worked with last year — into going to Chicago.”