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TWENTY-TWO
Decima
Carter didn’t even lookat me when I set down the hamburger and fresh water bottle I’d brought for him. We’d locked him up in the basement bathroom of the current house we’d broken into, a windowless underground space from which no shouts would be overheard. But he didn’t seem inclined to make any noise at all. He just glowered at the wall.
I couldn’t bring myself to care all that much about his reaction. I had bigger concerns on my mind.
“Don’t starve yourself,” I told him briskly, and shut the door on my way out.
On the first floor, behind boarded up windows that ensured no one would notice our presence, Julius and Talon were sprawled at one end of the small living room, their makeshift beds just a couple of feet from each other. The doctor Garrison had reached out to had offered us a couple of padded mats that normally adorned stretchers, and we’d laid sleeping bags on top of those to make the two men as comfortable as possible, but it didn’t feel like enough.
At the same time, how lucky were we that they’d survived this long at all? It’d been two days since the doctor had done his emergency surgery, stitching up the organs that had been torn by the bullets of Mr. Gordell’s security guards. By some small mercy, neither of them had faced heart or lung damage.
After Blaze and I had dropped the women we’d rescued off at a local shelter where they could get help, not sticking around long enough for anyone to ID us or ask questions, we’d retreated to a city a few hours away from DC to give Julius and Talon time to recover. We were hoping that the Blood Hunter wouldn’t be extending his search for us this far abroad, and for the time being our luck had held there too.
But for how much longer? The doctor had said that moving around after the first few days of bedrest would help speed their healing, but that they shouldn’t attempt anything more than brief, careful walks for the first couple of weeks. They weren’t likely to be ready for normal physical activity for at least a month. There was no way they’d be able to make a run for it or fight off attackers if anyone stormed this house.
We’d decided to stay here one more night to give them as much undisturbed rest as possible to begin with, and then to move to another hideout tomorrow morning. Then we’d be back to switching locations every day. Maybe we’d pull back even farther from the territory the Blood Hunter had been scouring for us, but my gut twisted at the thought.
As long as our greatest enemy was out there, we weren’t really safe no matter where we went. And the longer he continued to operate unchecked, the more time he’d have to recover from whatever damage we’d already done to his business endeavors and allegiances.
Julius and Talon had been awake on and off over the past day, though a bit hazy with the painkillers they were taking. They’d managed to eat and drink but not much. Right now, both men were dozing, their bodies unsettlingly slack under the light blankets pulled over their well-muscled forms.
I stood over them for a moment, confirming that their chests were rising and falling in a regular rhythm of breaths, that the sound of those breaths was soft and not strained. Then I glanced toward my other men.
Blaze was sitting cross-legged in the far corner of the room near a thin beam of sunlight that seeped past the plywood boards that covered the window there. He’d set up several alerts on his laptop that would sound the alarm if any concerning activity popped up on nearby traffic cams and the like, but he couldn’t seem to stop checking it manually too, maybe simply because he didn’t have much else to do. His genius didn’t extend to hacking the human body and programming it back into better working order.
He’d spent all yesterday digging through the files he’d stolen from various Blood Hunter operations and still hadn’t been able to come up with a definite solution that would destroy our enemy.
And Garrison… Garrison was pacing from one end of the room to the other, as he had been for most of the day. Guilt and frustration radiated off him so palpably it hung in the air like a cloud. My gut tightened even more, watching him.
I walked over, catching his hand just as he turned at the back of the room. He halted, blinking at me as if he’d forgotten I was here—that there was anyone in the room except him and his self-recriminations.
“Hey,” I murmured, keeping my tone light. “You’re going to wear a hole in the floor at this rate.”
He let out a quiet snort. “Like it’d matter if I did.”
I frowned, squeezing his hand and tugging him around to fully face me. “This isn’t your fault. You need to stop beating yourself up over what happened.”
His gaze darted up to meet mine, sharp with derision. “Are you kidding me? It’sallmy fault. I left my post, and that was the only reason those guards managed to come up on the house and surprise us. If I’d been there—”
“If you’d been there instead of helping me, there’s a good chance I’d have been killed by the other guard,” I broke in. “How would that have been better?”
“Obviously it wouldn’t have been,” he muttered. “But I just assumed youneededmy help. Why would you? You’re ten times the fighter I am. I got caught up in going to your rescue instead of sticking to the plan…”
I held his gaze firmly. “Garrison, I’ve been trained in combat since I was two years old, and IknowI needed you there. I didn’t even realize that man was in the room until I heard you tackle him. In another second, he’d have shot me. And I didn’t have an easy time with the other guards who came at us, even with your help.”
He swiped his hand over his face. His expression still looked haggard. “It always happens,” he said in a voice so quiet I barely made out the words. “I get people hurt. That’s what I do. It’s always better if I just play the part I need to and forget what I really want or any ideas about who I actually am… At least then I can be sure I’m doing something useful.”
The words brought an ache into my chest. He’d told me about his family—how he blamed himself for the car accident that’d killed his parents and brother when he was just a kid. So many masks he’d worn to try to escape that old guilt, and this situation had obviously brought it blaring back to the surface.
I didn’t know what to say to him. I hardly knew how to argue against my own lingering emotional hang-ups. So I just wrapped my arms around him and hugged him with all the compassion I had in me.
Garrison hesitated and then let his arms rise to embrace me in return. His head bowed over mine, but there was still something despondent in his pose.
I had to saysomething. I groped for the right words. “It’s a dangerous job. We’ve all gotten hurt in the line of fire before.You’vegotten hurt. That’s just how it goes, and it has nothing to do with who you are or how real you’re letting yourself be. The Blood Hunter put us in this awful situation, and you had to choose between two evils. There wasn’t any winning or any way to protect everyone. At least the way you chose, we all survived in the end.”
Garrison sucked in a breath, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t think I’d quite convinced him. As I struggled to think of how I could ease his pain, a rustling behind me drew my attention.
