Hold Me Like a Breath (36 page)

Everyone was moving. So fast. So blurry. We were free. Char was flipping the table on its side. Aiming a gun at Al Ward, who was aiming a gun at us. Garrett was standing. Yelling, “Get down.”

Triggers were being pulled. And Garrett was diving. Hitting me. Hitting Char. Knocking us down. He was screaming. Bleeding.

We'd fallen like pick-up sticks. Me, against the sideways table, my back pushed into the underside of the tabletop, which served as a wobbly barricade. The impact stole my breath and made the spots in my vision explode. I was seeing through pinpricks. Tilting and turning my head to try and make sense of what I saw. Garrett, gasping and curling into a ball, but trying to pick himself up to crawl toward me, leaving smears and streaks and splashes of crimson in the layer of white plaster on the floor.

Char had been pushed outward. Toward a doorway. Toward safety, but totally exposed.

He should've crawled backward. In two seconds he could've been through that door. Safe. But he stood. Drew Al's attention to himself. “Take me, leave her alone.”

“It's not an either/or,” laughed Al, tapping his gun against the edge of the table a few inches above my head.

“Princess.” Garrett's hand was on my ankle, but I kicked off whatever protection he wanted to offer.

Bracing my bare feet against the floor, the broken glass, I threw myself backward against the underside of the sideways table with all the strength I had left.

I felt the table teeter on its edge, then the bottom legs lifted from the floor; all four were parallel with it for a blink before continuing their arc upward. I felt the impact when the tabletop hit Al's waist as it flipped. I fell backward with it, experienced its uneven landing as the heavy table settled upside down with his body beneath it. I heard his scream of pain, a satisfying, high-pitched sound like a hurt rodent. All I could see, taste, or smell was blood.

I shut my eyes against the sting of it and couldn't open them again.

Waking up in a hospital bed wasn't a new experience for me.

But waking up in an unfamiliar clinic was. With Char disheveled and crumpled in a chair beside me. His head had fallen back at an angle that made my own neck muscles ache in sympathy. Behind the frames of his glasses, his eyelids were closed, black lashes resting on under-eye shadows as dark as bruises.

As dark as the bruises that peeked out from the edges of the bandages that covered so much of me.

I sucked in a breath, a breath full of pain but also so much gratitude. He was okay, I was too. My next breath was a prayer for everyone else.

I was attached to an IV and a pain-medication pump—and it was tempting, but before I let myself succumb to relief and its accompanying medicinal spaciness, I wanted answers, reassurance. I wanted to hear Char's voice.

I reached over and touched his face, tilting his neck to a more neutral position.

“Hey, Maeve. You're awake!” He stretched and blinked owlishly at me, rolling his neck and shoulders. “How are you feeling?”

I'd wanted to hear his voice, but now that I had, I was inexplicably angry. Angry to be back in a hospital. Angry at Garrett for his family's betrayal. Angry at Whitaker for not stopping the Wards after I'd gift-wrapped and handed him an informant. Angry at Char for all his deception. Angry at my own lies and the ways they tainted everything.

“Why are you even here?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” He reached out to touch my cheek, but I turned my head away.

“You said I was special. You said I
saw
you—”

“You do! Mae—Penelope.”

My anger collected speed, weight, pushed its way past my lips in sharpened words. “Since everything you told me was a lie, how did I not see you were a liar? The person I fell for doesn't exist. It may be who you wish you were, but it's not who you
are
.”

“So now we're defined by our parents?” He looked angry too. “No. You saw
me
—not who my father is or what people expect from
his
son. Want to know the true reason I went to New York? Yes, I made a scene at my graduation party about med school. Yes, my father said he couldn't stand to look at me and sent me away. That was all true. But want to know why New York?”

I crossed my bandaged arms across the stiff fabric of the pale-blue hospital gown. “Sure.”

“I heard my dad talking to Mr. Vickers about Deer Meadow and how they thought it was connected to the murders, but they didn't know where in New York—”

“And you thought finding it and confronting murderers was a good idea?”

“No!” He stood and rubbed two fisted hands down his thighs. “Okay, yes. But not really. I just wanted to find it—then turn the address over to the FBI—like, an anonymous tip. And I came close. I followed one of the Wards to the right street, but I missed seeing which building he went in.”

“But
why
?” I asked. This conversation felt like a sucker punch to all my bruises. “To impress your father? I thought you didn't want to be part of the Business?”

“I don't. Not as anything but a doctor—I did it for your family. I needed—I need—to believe people can do what we do, what our Families do, and still be good people. Your parents were. Your mother made everyone in the room feel welcome and appreciated. Your father cared more about patients than profit. And
you
—”

“You hadn't seen me since we were kids,” I protested.

“I know. Not since that visit when we were twelve, thirteen. And I was so shy and awkward. I didn't know what to say to you, so I was hiding in your library, reading. My father caught me. He was yelling, ‘What's wrong with you? Why can't you—'”

“I remember that.” I tried to dredge up details from that day. He'd been short. He'd had crooked glasses—that hadn't changed. He'd been horrible with eye contact, too busy studying the floor as if he were searching for a trap door or escape hatch.

“You walked in looking like something from a movie screen and I wanted to die, but you just turned to me and said—”

“‘There you are, I've been looking for you everywhere!'” And he'd looked up and given me a smile so sincere and heartfelt I'd wanted to hug him … if hugging were a thing I'd been allowed to do.

“And you spun a story about hide-and-seek, and how much fun you were having. We were way too old for playground games, but my father bought it, thought we were flirting, was
proud
of me. I think I fell a little bit in love with you that day.”

“We were just kids,” I protested again. “It was just … a day. Any day.”

“I know. But you were kind. Your whole family was. And if I'm going to spend my life doing this—if this is going to be my future—I need to believe I can be like
your
family—and they deserved justice. That's why I chose New York.”

“Your father, do you hate him?” I asked.

“There's no point in that anymore …” Char shut his eyes and exhaled slowly. “I don't know how much you remember, but the Wards, the attack … There were casualties.”

I swallowed a mouthful of guilt and misplaced priorities. This wasn't the time to blame and point fingers. “Your dad? Was he shot? Is he okay?”

“No. Not shot.” He stood and walked over to the window. I wanted to see the expression on the other side of his bowed head and slumped shoulders, but I was tethered to my bed by bandages, wires, and IV lines.

“Char?”

“He had a heart attack.” His voice was hoarse, the type of dryness that occurs when your face is wet with tears. He sniffled, and I started to take an inventory of what I'd need to unplug and detach in order to get to him, but then he started talking again, palms flat against the window, head down.

“The irony is, he
knew
he needed heart surgery … He
knew
it, knew it even back before the scare at my party. But he's been putting it off …” His hands turned to fists, and he banged them against the window in time with his words. “The stupid, stubborn, proud idiot wanted to be the first recipient of our artificial heart prototype. It's not quite ready yet—hadn't been tested enough, but he insisted. He had a stroke midtransplant. He hasn't woken up … I don't think he's going to.”

“I'm so sorry.” Those weak, empty words not doing a thing to touch his pain. I held my breath and braced myself. “And your mother?”

“Fine. Well, not fine. Her husband's in a coma, her house is destroyed, and the FBI have been …” He waved a hand to indicate something. “But she's not injured.”

I exhaled my relief and studied him more closely, doing an inventory of the parts I could see and forcing away the memory of the last time I'd seen him: standing, exposed, with Al's gun pointed at his chest and Garrett's gun in his hand.

The sleeves of his gray button-down shirt weren't lying the same. “Your shoulder? How bad are you hurt?”

“Just a few stitches. Nothing serious. Nothing like—” He turned around again, coming to stand and rest his hands on the metal railing of my bed. “I'm so sorry no one listened to you sooner. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you.”

“It's not your job to protect me.”

The words fell like stones between us. There were people whose job
was
to protect me. They were the same people who'd tried to kill us. And one of them was shot trying to save me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask Char about Garrett—not in the same conversation where he'd shared his father's condition.

My left hand wasn't entirely bandaged. And even my right had individual fingers and knuckles wrapped. I reached out with both of them, placing them on top of one of his. He lowered his eyes from some invisible spot on the ceiling; I raised mine to meet them. Our linked gaze was heavy with apology and sympathy and fear and concern. All the things we couldn't say out loud just yet.

It was hard to turn away from him when the door opened.

“How's my favorite pincushion?”

My eyes filled so quickly I couldn't make out the figure coming in the room, but that was okay because I'd know his voice anywhere.

“Char—how did you? How did you know I needed him?” I squeezed Char's hand before reaching my arms out. “Hello, Dr. Castillo. Hello!”

And maybe the doctor knew how badly I needed it, or maybe
now that we were off our estate, the same rules no longer applied, because he hugged me—gently—rocking me slightly like a child.

“It is so good to see you, Penelope. So good to see you awake.”

“I didn't—I didn't bring him. I would've if I'd known how happy it would make you, but it wasn't me.” Char was edging toward the door. “I'll give you some privacy.”

Dr. Castillo nodded to him. “I'll stay with her; you go see your father. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help there, but he's in very capable hands.”

Char nodded. “Thank you for trying. I'll come back soon?”

“Please,” I answered before I hugged the doctor again. “If not Char, who?”

“Vice President Forman called. I was on the next flight. Penelope, you have
not
been being careful.”

I laughed through tears. “No, I really haven't. But it's so good to see you.”

“You too, little one. You too.”

There was another knock on the door, and the man standing there cleared his throat. “Ms. Landlow, this isn't where I expected to see you. I can't say I'm happy about it either.”

“Hello, Whitaker,” I answered. “You were supposed to stop this.”

“Things didn't go according to plan. The youngest Ward wasn't quite as influential or in-the-know about his father's intentions as he thought. We lost track of them, and they got the jump on us. It shouldn't have happened.”

“Is he okay?” I remembered his blood on the floor. The smear
his thumb had left on my ankle before I shook him off. The bullet that had hit him instead of me.

“He's expected to make a full recovery.”

“Can I see him?”

“No. I'm sorry, but that's not going to be possible.”

My forehead wrinkled in confusion. “But you just said he's going to be okay.” I turned to Dr. Castillo. “Didn't he? Why can't I see him?”

“He's gone,” said Char from the doorway. When I gasped, he quickly added, “No! He's not dead, but gone. He had some surgery in our clinic. It went well, but when the doctors came to check on him post-op, he … wasn't there.”

“I don't understand. Did his father get to him? One of his brothers?”

Whitaker shook his head. “You don't need to worry about Garrett. Or the other Wards. Al and Mick are in custody.”

“Hugh? Jacob?”

Whitaker's jaw tightened, Char lowered his eyes, and Dr. Castillo pressed my cheek back into his white coat. I nodded, my mind flashing to dim memories of Mrs. Ward at Keith's funeral and my collection of black dresses. I wouldn't be attending these two, but I hoped someone found her and told her so she could.

“You should rest,” said Whitaker. “And when you're ready, we can move you to a private hospital. There are some questions we need to ask you.”

“Can't I stay here?” I didn't want to go out in public. The idea of being resurrected from the dead was exhausting. And
answering questions. Putting my life back together or building a new one on the ruins of the old.

“There are people who would like to come visit you,” said Whitaker.

“I'd really rather she wasn't moved,” said Dr. Castillo. “At least not yet. I'd like a few stable counts first, and time for her to recover.”

“And isn't this location more secure than any hospital would be?” I asked. I knew who Whitaker was implying, and I wanted to see Bob too—but the media circus would be less if the meeting occurred here.