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In the emergency room, I collected information a little haphazardly, as people came in and out of my cubby, and as I was hauled out for X-rays. Some of the people were pack, some were the nonpack who worked for Adam, but a few of them were strangers who looked like alphabet agency types. The fog increased after they decided I didn’t have a head injury and gave me something stronger.
I woke up to an unfamiliar voice.
“—twenty-five years old. Grad student in viticulture at WSU.”
“What does making wine have to do with making bombs?” That was Kelly. So I must have dozed off long enough ago that he’d had time to shift back. He sounded indignant, as if people who grew plants (like he did) should not contemplate blowing up hotels. It struck me as funny.
The bed moved a little, so I pried open my eyes.
A grim-faced man was sitting on the end of my bed. Apparently disaster makes us all friends because it was the caustic Secret Service guy from the meeting, now a little more battered and dusty.
He said, “Nothing. But growing up in a family with a demolition business does. I don’t know what the connection with Ford is, but the FBI is working on that.”
“Ford?” I asked; my voice came out a little wobbly.
Adam leaned in to look at me. He was seated on a rolling, backless chair pulled up to my bed. He and his clothing were filthy with blood and dirt, but his face and hands were clean.
It made me aware that sometime between when I was last functioning and now, I’d been stripped out of my blood-soaked clothing and put in a clean hospital gown. Parts of me were clean and parts of me were horrid. I smelled like gunpowder, muck, and Paul’s blood.
Adam touched my face with gentle fingers. “Back with us again, I see,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Floaty,” I said, instead of telling him I wanted to crawl out of my skin to get Paul’s blood off me. “Floaty” was true, too. “It’s nice. What does the bomber have to do with trucks?”
He smiled—it was a real smile, though his face was tired. “Not much, sweetheart. But Ford is the name of Rankin’s man. Right now it looks like he’s the one who arranged for the bombing.”
“Okay.” I couldn’t quite remember which of the men in the meeting was Rankin’s man. Rankin was one of the Democrats, included because he was on the House committee on fae and supernatural affairs. That committee had undergone so many name changes over the past few years that I couldn’t, right off the top of my head, come up with what it was officially called. I knew it wasn’t the Tinker Bell Committee, which is what most people called it.
The filth and the blood and the dust that everyone was wearing told me that it was probably still the day of the bombing. The position of the sun told me that it wasn’t more than a few hours later.
“What’s the situation?” I asked Adam.
I didn’t have to spell out for him what I needed.
“Paul is dead. The bomber is dead,” he said.
“Did you—” I glanced hurriedly at the Secret Service guy, who glanced blandly back at me. This was why I didn’t drink. Too many minefields.
“I didn’t kill the bomber, no,” Adam said, his voice a little harsh. “I didn’t need to because he did it for us.”
“How about everyone else?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“We got tossed around a little. The windows went and we lost chunks of ceiling and wall. No one was seriously hurt—Abbot has a broken arm. The rest of us just got bumps and bruises.”
“Luke broke his shoulder,” Kelly added. “But it healed up. Adam sent him home with Darryl.”
Translation: Luke was too worn out by the healing to change back to human and too upset by the bombing to be trusted out in public without a wolf dominant enough to make him mind.
“Okay,” I said. I looked at the Secret Service guy. “If the bomber died at the scene, how did you figure out—” I was still not at the top of my game because I had to run down truck brands until I came up with the right one. Not Dodge or Chevy. “—Ford was responsible?”
“I missed all but the end of it,” said the Secret Service guy regretfully. “I was too busy not dying and then scrambling out from under Kelly—thank you. But as soon as he realized he was alive, Ford started screaming that it was fifteen minutes early.”
“Abbot got the whole thing on his cell phone,” said Adam.
“We contacted Representative Rankin,” said the Secret Service guy. “You’ll be surprised to know that he was shocked and appalled.”
The Secret Service guy sounded honestly regretful when he added, “Unfortunately, I think that shock was real, at least. I’d love to pin this to that slimy toad. But it’s likely that the whole thing rests on Ford.”
“What is your name?” I asked. “I can’t just keep calling you the Secret Service guy.”
“Judd Spielman,” he said.
“Cool,” I said, leaning forward earnestly. “Paul saved me.”
“And there she goes again,” murmured Kelly. “We know, Mercy. You’ve told us a time or two.”
I turned to look at him—he was somewhere behind Adam—but I ended up burying my face against Adam’s chest. It felt so good I stayed there.
When I lifted my head, the Secret Service guy whose name was Judd Spielman was gone from the end of the bed. Instead, inexplicably Tory Abbot was there in an immaculate suit that was slightly different from the one he’d worn in the meeting. The lines in his face were a little deeper, and he had a splint on his left arm.
He was saying, “—hadn’t panicked we’d all have been dead and he’d have been alive.”
It felt like I’d just blinked and he’d appeared out of nowhere, but his presence wasn’t the only change in the room. Everything was a little grubbier than it had been—the white sheets had acquired dirty smudges.
Adam was cleaner, though. His hair was wet and he was in different clothing. Kelly was gone, and Warren sat on the windowsill, looking out at the setting sun.
“I hate drugs,” I said muzzily. “My mouth is dry.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Adam, kissing my forehead. Warren got off the window ledge and brought a glass of water with a straw. “And they won’t be giving you any more. Looks like you sustained lots of cuts and bruises but nothing major.”
“Probably,” said Warren, going back to the window.
“Probably,” agreed Adam smoothly. “Having a hotel dumped on top of someone isn’t usually something people walk away from, so they’re keeping you here for a couple more hours to be sure.”
