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“I’m not usually present when the women wake up,” he said.
She had no idea what that meant or if she was even supposed to know. Given what she’d just been through and this family’s penchant for cryptic, she didn’t waste time sweating it at this moment.
Taking in her environment, she recognized the ceiling and the bed, but couldn’t figure out when their bedroom had become a common room.
“Beau, why are there so many people here?”
Tuck answered. “We had a pool going about whether Thad was shitting us about his day job. But he came through and patched you up good.”
“I feel heavy,” she said when she tried to push up and failed to sit.
Brodie pushed Thad out of his way with a forearm and sat on the bed beside her. “You’re gonna stay right there.”
“You’re doped up,” Tuck said. “You’re probably feeling pretty high.”
“This close to my beau, I always do,” she said, turning her smile to Brodie, who leaned over her to squeeze her shoulders. “Why am I doped up?”
“The bullet sliced through the periphery of your liver and lodged in a rib. It will need a few weeks to heal. But you’ll be good as new,” Thad said.
“The bullet.” Events were still jumbled. It took her some time to put the disparate pieces together. “You saved my life,” she said, flashes of what had happened in the warehouse crossed her mind’s-eye. She’d believed that she was going to die. She’d said goodbye to Brodie and everything, which might explain the grimace on his face and the negativity radiating from him now.
“You bastards clear out of here,” Brodie said, smoothing his rough fingers along her cheekbone.
The others left them alone in the bedroom, except when the door closed, Brodie still didn’t speak. She wanted to know why he was brooding but was so tired that she doubted her ability to probe him.
“You saved my life too,” she said, her eyes closing again. “If you hadn’t found me when you did—”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the image out of my head,” he said, flattening his palm on her cheek. “The explosion, the fire, all that smoke… we were still half a mile away, but…”
“You knew it was Atlas. Going back there must have been difficult.”
“We got your message… I didn’t give a fuck where it was, I gave a fuck that you were alone. What the fuck were you thinking—”
“Caine told me that she was there and that she had someone meeting her, someone with a boat,” she said. Digging her nails into his arm, she pulled and forced him to help her into a seated position.
If she remained lying down, she would fall asleep again. The exertion of sitting up was enough to make her rest on the pillow Brodie adjusted behind her. If her rib was damaged, she was pleased Thad had loaded her up with painkillers, otherwise getting into this position may have hurt a lot more than the dull throb she felt around her diaphragm.
Brodie wasn’t finished chastising her. “You should’ve waited.”
“It all worked out.” Maybe it hadn’t ended without a hitch, but it had ended. “Have you seen her, I mean… did she… make it?”
Zara had taken life before. Though killing Elvis was self-defense, she could probably argue the same about Cuckoo. But it had to be a head fuck for Brodie that his current girlfriend had killed his ex.
“Tuck did a drive-by, there’s nothing of the device left, and we already made sure that the van wasn’t traceable. Kraft says there’s nothing in the police system. They’re not gonna waste their time tracking down something that far away from anything worth protecting. I don’t think anyone even saw or reported the fire.”
That worked out in their favor because if Art’s blood was still there, then the blood of the goons Brodie had killed would be too. They didn’t need anyone sniffing around. It paid to have a cop keeping an eye on things for them.
Cuckoo would most probably have been taken out by the blast, but even if she made it out alive, she wouldn’t last long without medical attention. The remaining Game Time devices were under lock and key in the manor weapons room, and the viruses untouched in cold storage. The world would carry on oblivious to how close they’d come to annihilation, yet again.
“Is Kahlil dead?” she asked, rubbing her hand down Brodie’s forearm then locking their fingers together as he nodded. “Caine?”
He shrugged. “He’ll live to fight another day… we think.”
That kind of ambiguous answer made her nervous. “You think?”
“Thad says it doesn’t look like there was enough blood loss to suggest Caine had died.”
She’d tied off his leg, and he’d said he would take care of himself. “No body?” she asked.
