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“Standards change depending on where you are. Well, I’m going to go back out there.” The man retraced his steps across the space and then looked over his shoulder at her. “You holler if you need us.”
“Actually, I was thinking I’d go check outside to make sure the fire is extinguished. What’s the code to get back in again?”
Mayhem’s eyes shifted up a little so that he was still staring in her direction, just wasn’t meeting her eyes anymore. And then she felt a headache coming on—or maybe it was more like the one she’d had before was returning. Either way, she cursed and rubbed her temples.
“Yeah, you let me worry about that,” Mayhem said in a low, serious voice.
“The fire could attract attention, though,” she muttered through the discomfort. “I mean, the whole point of not working during the day is to make sure there’s no activity, right?”
“You’re good. It’s not a problem.”
“I just thought I’d help—”
“Listen, I really appreciate what you’re doing for Lucan. And Kane, too. I mean, seriously, it’s amazing—plus, it’s clear you’ve got guts and you’ve done us a favor with the Exhibitionist. But I’m not giving you the code to entering the building at large. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“It’s totally okay.” She put her hands up. “I honestly am just restless and looking for something to pass the time before he wakes up properly. Totally fine.”
Mayhem nodded once. “And remember—no matter what happens, the people out in the rest of the building can’t get in here—and they can’t burn you out, either. The wall is flame-retardant. Same is true in the back. This space was designed to be a kind of fortress.”
“Thanks.”
There was a moment of quiet. “Rio. That’s your name, right?”
“Yes.”
“Nice name.”
As he disappeared through the door, a shiver went through her. Something was not right about this, she thought. Something was . . .
Shaking herself, she looked over at Luke on the bed. “Paranoia is not going to help here.”
On that note, she ate some of the cheese. The taste was sharp, but not unpleasantly so, and with the bread? Well, it was pretty much the best thing she had ever put in her mouth—although that was more a commentary on that thing mothers always said rather than the food itself.
Hunger was the best spice. Or whatever the phrase was.
Getting up from the table, she took the makeshift sandwich with her, and the next thing she knew, she was systematically going through the quarters like it was a crime scene—
Well, because it was. Three men had died here, and one of them—the one who was mounted on that wall out there—had been the result of her own actions.
She inspected everything from the bathroom, the changing area, the gun rack—
Rio found the car keys hanging on a nail by the rifles.
Chrysler. A fob with a single black-headed key. Sneaking it into her other pocket, she turned to Luke. Lucan. Whatever his name was. He was breathing easier, now, although that was a relative thing. He still looked like he was in pain, his brows pulled in tight across the bridge of his nose.
Maybe he needed some of what they’d given Kane, even though he certainly wasn’t wounded as badly.
Back at the bedside, she lowered herself down onto her knees and looked at the back of his hand, the one that had been burned so badly. Then she frowned. The skin seemed . . . a lot less red and inflamed, as if it was progressing through the healing process, but at a much faster rate than made any sense.
She thought of what the burn had looked like when they’d been locked out in the back parking lot, next to the fire. Not that she had any medical training outside of rudimentary CPR and first aid, but the injury had looked like a third-degree one, what with the uneven blisters that had extended out of his sleeve at the wrist and down his fingers. Now? It was like a bad sunburn, nothing more.
Miraculous.
In the back of her mind, the warning bell that had saved her too many times to count started to ring properly. It had been on the verge of getting serious about its job ever since she and Apex had hurried down that corridor upstairs together—and he had crouched and had to fight through that nothing-wrong hallway like it was an obstacle course of radioactive chemicals.
Rio cursed softly and thought about the strange trance that guard had put her in in the workroom, how her hand with the gun in it had lowered of its own volition.
But surely that hadn’t happened, right?
After all, she’d had how many blows to the head over the last how many days? It was more likely that her mind was malfunctioning than there was some sort of mystical anything going on.
