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“I want to see Holden. ”
“Emilio, can you maybe go discuss it with the doctor?”
The shorter agent left. Ten minutes later Tyler disappeared as well, going to see what was holding up the process.
Twenty minutes went by, and I had all but given up hope of my request being fulfilled, when a wheelchair was pushed through the curtain.
He was pale, but that was nothing new. His cheekbones had a malnourished look still, but he was moving beyond the concentration-camp gaunt and back towards model thin. My heart leapt into my throat, making my words catch there. The nurse who’d brought the chair in did a perfect impression of a strict Sunday school teacher when she said, “Mr. Chancery is to stay in his chair. Ms. McQueen is to stay in her bed. You’re both healing, please respect the healing process. I’ll be back in five minutes. ”
I barely heard a word of what she had said after Mr. Chancery. He looked like shit, but he was alive, and that made him the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.
Ignoring any warnings he’d received, he stood up, legs still wobbly, and climbed into the bed beside me. In spite of my theory about not wanting hugs, when he wrapped his arms around me, I melted into him like I was butter and he was the pancake.
“I thought I’d never see you again. ” I burrowed my face into the crook of his neck.
“I know. ” He brushed back my hair and placed a kiss on my forehead. “Has he been in to see you yet?”
“You mean Tyler?”
“Tyler? The gangly detective? No, why on earth would I mean Tyler?”
I tilted my chin up, abrading my nose on the stubble covering his jaw. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Holden with stubble. “Who are you talking about?”
“Desmond. ” His confusion got more pronounced when he saw my face. If I looked half as shocked as I felt, my expression must have been a doozy.
“What?” It was my new favorite question over the last couple of hours, though in fairness people were telling me a lot of things that were hard to process.
“Desmond is here. They wouldn’t let him in to see you, not sure why, something about protection was all I overheard. I assumed they would have told you though. ”
If I’d known Desmond was anywhere within a hundred-mile radius, I would have kicked off the covers and gone looking for him myself. Since mobility might be an issue, I would have insisted they let him in to see me.
“Why is he here?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t who he was trying to see. I just listened to what I could hear from where they had me. He really hasn’t been in to see you?”
I shook my head and tried to sit up, but the movement made me dizzy. How long was it going to take before things got back to normal and I started feeling like myself again instead of a half-dead walking skeleton?
“You’re sure they said Desmond?”
He sat up beside me, wincing. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what Desmond would be doing here. I was elated to know he was close, but I couldn’t comprehend his presence. He had no interaction with the council—not the one back home or the one here—so how could he have figured out where to look for me?
Aside from our brief conversation en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I hadn’t spoken to him in days. Almost two weeks if I factored in the time I’d been kept locked up.
Questions swam around in my brain, bumping against one another to derail my thought process. I would just about have a grasp on one idea when another would push its way to the forefront. Tyler and Emilio had asked all the questions to fill in whatever blanks they had, but it hadn’t occurred to me that between us we would have a complete picture. I should have been more thorough, made them tell me what they knew. Then I might have the slightest hope in hell of understanding the whole story.
Desmond might have some of the answers I so desperately needed, but more than that I needed him. I had dreamed of him the way a prisoner dreams of freedom, and now I was out and he was so close, but he was still out of my reach.
I squeezed Holden’s hand, looking back at him. “Did they tell you anything?”
“Only that you were okay. That was all I needed to know. ”
“Did they…did they tell you about Max?”
He grimaced and swallowed hard, I think to fight off any display of emotion. His expression became stoic and he said, “I heard. ”
I didn’t ask if he knew all the details. Knowing Maxime had died was bad enough; I didn’t want to burden him with how. Gruesome details of the scene would be burned into my psyche for the rest of my life, and only one of us needed to be haunted by those images. Besides, no words existed to paint a proper picture of what The Doctor had done to him, and maybe that was for the best.
I fought the urge to escape from the bed and go in search of Desmond. The nurse who’d brought Holden to me had said we’d only have five minutes, and for those five minutes I would stay in his arms. Leaning back into him, I twined the fingers of my good hand into his and settled my head on his shoulder.
