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“She’s not my…” I cut off the words. Damn. I was still afraid to tempt the gods.
Ethan gave me a wry look. “You were saying?”
“Yes,” I said, with grim determination. “I’ll concentrate on helping my girlfriend.”
I ran back into the TV room. Reggie was tossing restlessly on the couch.
“Let me take her to the bedroom,” I said. “She’ll be more comfortable in bed.”
Red nodded, wiping her eyes and sniffling. I scooped up the little girl, who weighed practically nothing. She was limp and shivering. Red scrambled ahead of me, opening doors for me, opening the bedclothes so that I could lay her down.
Red peeled off Reggie’s goofy, alligator-swallowing-foot slippers, and tucked the blankets around the shivering child. Then she sat down cross-legged next to Reggie on the bed and grabbed her sister’s hand.
“Mommy?” Reggie murmured.
“It’s Cass, sweetie pie.”
I sat down on the foot of the bed and just blurted it out. “Ethan’s going to hack into the Coatesworth database with SmokeScreen,” I said. “He’s getting started right now.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh God,” she whispered. Her mouth began to shake. “Thank you.”
Her dazed reaction made me nervous. “Don’t pin too much hope on it yet,” I warned. “We don’t know if he’ll find anything. Or if what we find will be useful, or accurate. It’s just…”
“It’s the last stone to turn,” she said quietly. “Thank you. For turning it.”
“Save it for when it actually helps,” I said.
“It helps me right now, whether you like it or not,” she told me.
I scooted closer to her, hesitated, then scooted closer still, wrapping my legs and arms around her so she had something to lean on while we waited for the doctor.
CHAPTER20
Cass
“Iwant her at the hospital,” Demiguel repeated stubbornly. “And yes, I know that Ethan could outfit a clinic for her at the Mountain House, but not fast enough to help her now. We need to run tests now, and I have four different specialists on their way here to examine her. We save time if she’s at the hospital. We don’t have time to waste.”
My body was as tight as piano wire at the thought of leaving this small paradise of safety and going back to the wide-open setting of a public hospital. Not that the last one had actually been a hospital at all, but still. Trauma never listened to logic.
In any case, in Reggie’s condition, she wouldn’t know the difference.
“I have to stay with her,” I told Demiguel. “That was my mistake the last time. I got bullied and strong-armed into leaving her there. That won’t happen again.”
“Stay if you want,” Ethan said. “She’ll have a private room. And a two-man guard detail outside, at all times. Darius and Amos volunteered to go watch her.”
Things moved fast after that. Angela and Kat packed for me and Reggie, which was great, because Reggie and I had no possessions or toiletries of our own to pack. Holly gathered up books, which I hoped that Reggie would soon be well enough to read. Then Shane wrapped Reggie up in a blanket and soon we were rocking and swaying in the back of an ambulance.
If there was paperwork needed to admit her, someone else dealt with it, thank God, because I was useless. All I could do was hang over my sister, who was unresponsive to any attempt to talk. I tried to brace myself, but I just couldn’t do it. I’d gone through this with Mom, and that had been horrible, but this time, it was uniquely horrible in fresh new ways.
I sat there near her hospital bed, doing my best to stay out of the way of the hospital staff, as they drew blood, gave her oxygen, set up an IV. Watching that made every muscle in my body contract. Reggie’s poor little arms and wrists and hands hadn’t even had a chance to heal from the last attack of needle-wielding hacks. But so far she hadn’t woken up to protest, and hopefully these nurses weren’t hacks.
Shane was squeezing my shoulder. “Earth to Red? You there?”
“Sorry. What?”
“I’m going back up to the Mountain House to work with Ethan while he digs for that cure,” he said. “Freya, Jed and Remy will be up there with me. Rose is coming over to join us. Darius and Amos are right outside your door, and Kat and Holly will be here first thing in the morning. Will you be okay if I go back to work with Ethan?”
No, no, no. don’t leave me please.I swallowed the words back and stared into his beautiful, worried dark eyes. “I’ll be fine. Thank you. I’m very grateful that you’re working on this for us. Will you call me if you find anything?”
