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“What about Dad?” I retort, standing and striding right up to her until the tip of the knife presses between my breasts. Sun Yi’s eyes go wide, and she takes a step back. I step forward again, keeping the knife on me. “What about the man who fathered me? Didn’t he love you?”
To give her maternal instinct a bit of credit, she drops the knife. Oh, sure, she keeps hold of the rolling pin, but against me, it won’t do shit.
“Mark was your father,” she hisses. “He raised you.”
I cross my arms over my chest and roll my eyes. “Herapedme, ‘Mom.’ Your English is slipping.”
“My English is just fine.”
Well, things are off to a swimming start. She hasn’t actually kicked me out yet, though, and so far, it doesn’t sound like I’ve been followed. No cars have driven by since I got here, and no sirens to indicate the cops are on the way. This is awkward as hell, but it’s my best bet for a place to hide until things stabilize out there.
Sun Yi turns her back to me—a stupid move—and marches down the stairs. “Dinner is getting cold. Come and eat. You’re too thin.”
Chapter 18
Kendrick
When the dust settles, the garage is toast. Keys lies unconscious a few feet away from me, but I can’t see either Doc or Neil. Half of the garage appears to be completely caved in, and I pray to God that Doc and Neil ended up safe on the other side. I don’t see any blood coming from under the rubble, so I take that as a good sign.
Since Keys is useless until he wakes up, I haul him over my shoulder and start making my way for some kind of exit. There’s not much to see from my vantage point, but I can make it to the stairwell door and check the other floors for an outlet.
At the third floor, I finally find a hallway that’s not completely collapsed. I skirt the edges, keeping to the wall, and only set Keys down long enough to dart into the med supply closet to cobble together a quick makeshift first aid kit. I don’t like how badly his head is bleeding, and when I use a spare penlight to check his pupils, one seems a bit sluggish. Shit. Neil and Bunny are gonna kill me if this guy doesn’t wake up.
The laptop bag he was carrying is getting awkward, so I stash it in the med closet for the time being, in a secret compartment that even Doc doesn’t know about. It should be safe enough there until we can come back.
Since I’m not the greatest at stitches, I opt for cleaning Keys’ head wound and using some steri-strips to tape it shut. The bleeding slows down to a trickle, and much as I hate to admit it, he’s gonna keep those annoying good looks. He might even be more attractive with a scar on his forehead. Draw in all the Potterheads.
He’s got a few more scrapes and cuts to tend to, and by the time I’m done, sirens blare outside. Hopefully the cops scare off the remaining Vipers before they find me and Keys—or Bunny, Neil, and Doc.
There’s no telling where my little rabbit got off to. My hope is that she escaped down the back alley.
That hope soars when I get to the third-floor fire escape and see the damage to the alley below. Four, no, five dead Vipers lie in the alley, likely victims of a Bun on the run. Good. She made it this far, and I don’t see any signs that she’s been injured. No blood trails leading away from the Viper slaughter … That means she made it out of here in one piece.
We have contingencies in place for being separated in an attack on the Burrow, but there’s not a Plan Y for if I have an unconscious half-naked hacker to lug around with me. Normally, we assume we can meet up with Doc in the nearest secondary clinic location, but I don’t know if Keys can make it that far. My best hope, my only hope, is to take the biggest risk of my life: I have to approach the cops and beg them to call an ambulance.
While I make my way down the ruined fire escape with Keys draped across my shoulders, I try to come up with a viable story for why Keys and I would have been caught in the explosion in the first place. Theoretically, nobody lives in the Burrow. It’s a condemned, abandoned warehouse with boarded-up windows and, to the average passerby, no signs of life inside. If the cops suspect us of being up to shit in there, they’re going to arrest me. Hell, they’ll probably arrest Keys when he wakes up.Ifhe wakes up.
Finally, a story comes to me that just might pass for believable. Unfortunately, it’s a story that makes me sick to my stomach. There’s only one explanation for why I’d be carrying around an unconscious man who’s wearing pajama pants and nothing else …
“Officers!” I shout and wave from the alley, hoping none of them are itching to use their service weapons. “Officers! Please, my boyfriend needs help!”
Oh, God, I almost gagged on the word “boyfriend.” Why couldn’t Doc be the one I have to carry? I’d have no problem calling Doc my boyfriend. I actually love Doc; Keys barely registers on my people-to-tolerate list.
Two uniformed officers run over, and one gets on the radio to request an ambulance. As I suspected, his partner questions me while we wait for the bus.
“And you say you two came in here for ‘some alone time’?”
“Yes, ma’am. We thought it was safe enough for a quick, er, y’know … Then, all of a sudden, the place started coming down around us.”
She looked up from her notepad long enough to give me a dubious glance then went back to her notes. “How did he get patched up already? I haven’t seen any paramedics on the scene yet, but those bandages look pretty fresh.”
“I—I did that. I found some supplies when I was looking for a way out, so I did what I could.” Fuck. I forgot about that. I let some of my real emotions through, my concern for the fates of Bunny and Doc, and manage to work up some tears. “Please, officer, he hasn’t woken up since he hit his head. Can I ride with him in the ambulance?”
Through some miracle, after a brief conference with her partner, they agree to let me ride along instead of accompanying them to the precinct.
Just to keep up appearances, I hold Keys’ hand on the way to the hospital. I brush his hair off his face and stroke his cheek. I whisper things that I’d only ever say to Doc if there wasn’t a paramedic watching me.
The waiting area at the hospital is thankfully empty when we get to the emergency room. I can pace as Keys is taken back for testing without concern for who might be watching. Only a few nurses and aides scurry back and forth throughout the night, and hours pass before they admit Keys to a room under a pseudonym I gave them. He’s pale, but they’ve cleaned off the blood, stitched up his cuts, and gotten him hooked up to an I.V. The scans apparently show brain contusions from his head injury but no active bleeding. He thankfully didn’t need any surgery. With any luck, they say, he’ll wake up by morning.
