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“I’ll go right in,” I said.
As I eased open the hospital room door, Logan and Holand took up a hushed conversation behind me. But that and everything else fell away at the sight of my mother’s form sprawled in the bed in front of me.
A bruise mottled her forehead where it poked from beneath a large bandage that swathed most of her upper head. A cut with fresh stitches veered along her jaw. Her left arm was propped up in a cast, and there was a faint rattle to her breath as she inhaled deeply at my entrance.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Oh my God. It’d been even worse than I’d let myself picture. Seeing my mother like this, the woman who’d supported and protected me for my entire life, felt utterly wrong.
I pushed myself to the side of the bed. “Hey, Mom. I got here as fast as I could. How are you doing?”
“Maddie,” Mom mumbled in a faint voice. “My little girl.” She reached up to finger the strands of my hair as they fell across my shoulders. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Mom,” I managed to say around the lump in my throat, and took her hand in mine. I wanted to lean in and throw my arms around her, but I was afraid of hurting her more.
I settled for pulling over a chair and tipping my upper body next to hers, resting one arm gingerly around her waist. Mom hummed as if she was totally content, and my heart wrenched.
She had no idea that this might be my fault.Hadthe accident been a threat—a warning that my involvement in the Vigil’s investigations had been noted and would be punished further if I continued?
Would the same person—or people—who’d stolen Dad from me rip another parent out of my life too?
The thought just about broke me. I closed my eyes against the tears that’d started to trickle down my cheeks and just lay there next to Mom as her breaths evened out with a sleep I hoped would be healing.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t lose Mom too. It was too much—too hard—too terrifying.
I lay still for more minutes than I could count, an ache spreading through my chest and my eyes burning. Part of me wanted to crawl under the bed and never come out. But that feeling was so familiar it dredged up other memories of much longer ago.
There’d been all those years right after Dad’s death when I’d become a mere fragment of my usual self. I’d barely talked to friends, sleep-walked through my schoolwork, cringed at bullies’ taunts rather than standing up to them. My world had felt like it was cast in shadow, and I’d let those shadows consume me.
A tendril of resolve rose up in my abdomen, winding through me. I couldn’t let myself falter like that again. I couldn’t shrink away and leave it to other people to stand up for me and fight my battles for me. I’d taught myself how to be strong after those years of weakness, and I had to hold on to that strength.
If someone was attacking my family again, they needed to be stopped. I couldn’t back down. Dad deserved justice, and everyone else I cared about should be able to live without a threat hanging over them. I wouldn’t let them get away with hurting Mom like this.
If our enemies thought this move would scare me off the case, they were sorely mistaken. The Vigil would just have to work smarter so the people responsible for this wouldn’t know we were still on the case. And then we’d crush them liketheydeserved.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Logan
The freeway was nearly empty as I drove back to campus, occasionally jarred by another set of headlights out so late. It was past one in the morning now, and the buzz of the cup of hospital coffee I’d chugged was wearing off.
Dad had tried to convince Maddie to stay the night at the house, but then Lindsay had woken up enough to get concerned about Maddie missing tomorrow’s classes. As soon as Maddie had seen her mom upset, she’d been frantic to reassure her. So when the doctors had come to kick us out for the night, I’d promised to get Maddie back to campus. No doubt she’d make the drive back again on the weekend and be glued to her phone in between for updates, as would I.
I was glad I’d insisted on driving her. She’d been so exhausted that she’d drifted off in the passenger seat within a half hour of us leaving the hospital. I glanced over at her now, her head cushioned by her bent arm against the window, her pale hair drifting across her face that was momentarily relaxed with sleep. A shiver ran through her body as if even unconscious some part of her was still dealing with her panic over her mom, and my chest clenched up.
The urge to pull over and gather her in my arms gripped me with an ache that ran all the way through to my bones. But I knew that getting her back to her dorm where she could sleep properly mattered more than any comfort I could offer. How much comfortcouldshe even take from me right now, when I’d been acting like such an ass toward her until recently?
That thought sharpened the ache so it dug into my gut with an edge of guilt. I loved this woman so much. The emotion flooded me so fully it was difficult to breathe.
How the hell was I ever going to make up for all the ways I’d hurt her? I’d convinced myself I was protecting her, that it was better for her in the long run, but those efforts had failed, and now she was in the thick of it right along with the rest of us. All I’d accomplished was putting her through years of anguish.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel. Never again. Never again was I going to watch that kind of agony cross her face because of me. Even if I couldn’t fix everything I’d broken before, I’d damn well make sure I was everything she could possibly need from here on out.
I had no idea what she might be going through now. We’d both experienced losing a parent as kids, but even that had been more traumatic for Maddie than for me, since she’d had to watch her dad slip away without any idea why it was happening. The thought of Mom’s death still sent a jab of loss through my heart, but I could recognize with the benefit of time that it’d been mercifully quick and simple. One moment she’d been walking to work, the next she’d been gone, the victim of an explosion that’d claimed three other lives at the same time.
Dad had campaigned to ensure better safety testing from the gas company, and we’d buried the hand that was the only whole piece they’d recovered of Mom’s body. And then it’d been over, no lingering questions other than the basic,Why did it have to be her bad luck and not someone else’s?
And now Maddie might lose her other parent if we couldn’t figure this out. Lose her to villains lurking in the shadows, knowing that her attempts to help us uncover her dad’s murderer might have provoked them.
I couldn’t wrap my head around that idea either. It’d been bad enough seeing how wrung out Dad looked over Lindsay’s “accident” without wondering how I’d feel if he’d been harmed too.
