Lies by Omission
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been knocked out so many times in just a five day period.
Maybe that was the repeated head injuries, though.
I recognized the ceiling above me as my dry, crusty eyes flickered open, because I’d seen it—or some variation thereof—for years when I woke up injured. White tile after white tile, with little holes like painted corkboard. Probably to absorb screams.
Bravo Division.
Oh god, it’s worse than being dead.
The skin around my hand pinched as I flexed my fingers. I.V. needle. My head seemed mostly about me and I wasn’t seeing dancing unicorns so, the painkillers couldn’t’ve been too heavy duty.
“How long have I been here?” My voice came out a croak, scraping my throat.
“A day,” Drew answered softly from somewhere across the room. He didn’t move into view, but then he didn’t need to. He was always there when I woke up.
Like Nic was.
Fuck, she must hate me. I sold out her best friend. She always gave me that stupid, hopeful look, like maybe she thought I was better than I actually was. Now she’d know the truth.
I closed my eyes and let them water a little, the headache at the back of my skull finally getting to me. “Where’d I get shot this time?”
A chair creaked and his steps whispered on the tile. “Chest. Missed the heart, thankfully.”
I wiggled a little. Didn’t feel shot in the chest. “I’m pretty lucid for being on morphine.”
His presence weighed on me a moment before he touched my head and pulled my eyelid up, shining a penlight in my eye. “Vampire blood.”
I twisted my head away and blinked at the blue spots playing over my vision. “Zara?”
“I suspect it was the other one. She phoned us—me, specifically—and said where to find you.”
The other one. Nicolette. “I don’t remember her there.”
“You were moved to a second location—side of the road, outside of the city.” Warm fingers pressed against my throat and my pulse leapt up, steady. “What happened?”
I sighed. My left hand wasn’t hooked up to anything, so with considerable effort I dragged it up and wiped at my eyes. “I fucked up.”
“I gathered.” He pulled loose the tie behind my neck and eased the front of my gown down, then loosened the tape holding gauze to my chest and inspected the skin. “You’re healing quite well. You were...a mess when they retrieved you.”
Well, shot in the fucking chest, I didn’t think I’d be modelling swimsuits afterward. “Everything still in the right place? Nipples are where they’re supposed to be?”
He made an irritated little noise and shook his head, then tied the gown back behind my neck.
“I’d say that’s a win, then. How long ’til I’m out of here?”
“You’re to remain in the infirmary for a week. Then we’ll move to a different base and you’re be on bed rest for a—”
“Excuse me?” I tried to sit up—he put a firm hand on my shoulder and urged me back down. “I have work to do.”
“And you’re only here and not in a detention cell because I lied about how injured you really are. You leave here, they’ll detain you. They wouldn’t give you a car anyway.”
Blah blah blah BLAH. All I heard was that I was stuck at fucking Bravo Division while Sean O’Connor—mass murderer and douchebag extraordinaire—was still walking around in a body and I was possibly the only one who could get him out. The more I thought about it, the harder my heart beat, the more I ground my teeth.
Fuck this shit up the ass—I was getting out.
Drew turned his back to pick up one of my charts; I hauled my ass up, wincing and biting back a gasp. My free hand latched onto the I.V. cords and I gave them a yank.
Papers fluttered to the floor as Drew spun back to me. “Jesus Christ, Peri—”
But I had my weak, pale legs thrown over the edge of the bed already as I inched myself toward the floor. “I have shit to do. Don’t get in my goddamn way.”
He shuffled behind me and something cool and metallic touched the top of my spine. “Sit down.”
My hands clenched the edge of the mattress and I chewed hard on the inside of my mouth. The spot on my tongue I’d bitten during the brawl stung. “You did not just put a fucking gun to me.”
“I’ll shoot out your kneecaps if you try to leave,” he said calmly. “Back on the bed.”
I didn’t move back, but I didn’t go forward either. I sat there tensed, aching, pretty sure the back of my gown was flopping open as a chill danced up my spine. “I guess ‘do no harm’ doesn’t apply to geneticists?”
“Not this one.” He moved around so he was in my line of sight, tucking the gun in a holster under his white lab coat. And while I looked at Drew—knew it was Drew—it was like a film was lifted and I really saw him. He had a harder edge than I’d noticed before.
“Mild-mannered Drew Singer,” I said bitterly, barely able to even look at him. “I didn’t even know you carried.”
“We’re not allowed on the base or within ten yards of you without being armed and the equivalence of at least a Sharpshooter badge.”
Fuck me sideways. “Surprises abound.”
“You’d be,” a sad half smile before his pun, “well, surprised.”
“What I’d like to know is why Bravo employs a geneticist for their chief medical practitioner. Personally, I’d’ve hired an ER surgeon or something. Unless they were in need of a geneticist.”
He didn’t comment, just stared at me, and it burned. Burned like I never would’ve expected it to. Of everyone on the fucking base, he was the one I thought was at least being honest with me.
“Did they have you lying around already when they picked me up, or were you a later addition?”
“Day after you were retrieved from the site of the incident in Chuo-ku. They brought you to the Division base just outside of Osaka and I oversaw the initial tests.”
Son of a fucking cockbite whore. “You know, at least Fraser is open about hating my goddamn guts—”
“I don’t hate you,” he cut over me.
I really wanted to throw him out the nearest window but we were probably underground so I cocked a brow instead. “All this bullshit about letting people in and how I shouldn’t kill—”
“It’s not bullshit—I love you, Peri—”
Ugh, my fucking skin crawled, like bugs digging under my skin. I flinched, words hitching only briefly while I kept ranting. “—myself is about my genetics. Because you people need me for something.”
“I have more samples than I could ever possibly use,” he bit out. “It’s not about that—”
“What are you looking for? Hmm? What it was that made my mom’s genes so compatible with the antichrist’s? Want to build more of us? Is Bravo aware of the fact that, much like the Highlander, there can be only one or we kick into motion the motherfucking apocalypse?”
He moved closer. I shrank back but it did no good as pain spiked through my ribs, zigzagging hotly through my muscles. His hands closed on my arms and he drew me closer, enough so that I breathed in his aftershave and the disinfectant hospital smell always clinging to him. My stomach gave a sick flop and I shoved at his chest, though I was weak and damaged, body not obeying me.
“Let me go,” I warned, my voice pitched low and dangerous, even if I didn’t feel I could back the words up. I glared up at him from beneath black hair splayed over my eyes.
“No.”
I couldn’t stay here anymore. Not at Bravo. Not even if they suddenly got serious about letting me find my family’s killers—which seemed unlikely now anyway. They’d make me putter around, stuck in my own head, and...and I didn’t fucking want that now. At least out there in the world I felt like I was doing something. The thought of being in that tiny bedroom again like all the rest, at heading out on assignments and enduring psych tests and being poked and prodded by doctors—by geneticists—was just too much. Too much. There was a hole in my chest and not from the bullet Zara put in me.
It was worse than any alternative I could think of. And for once there was an alternative. I felt like I had options. A choice to make. And I wasn’t going to stay here.
“I’m leaving!” I tried to wiggle out of his grip and stars played over my vision, pain spiking.
“They won’t let you—”
“I’ll find a way.”
“You wouldn’t get out of the building. You know the garage—”
“I’ll get someone to pick me up. Nic will come.”
His expression changed, tightening and creasing, rage licking behind his irises. “No.”
When he let one of my arms go to reach in his pocket, I fought to bolt again, losing my balance and tumbling back on the bed. I kicked, my foot connecting with his midsection; he grunted but hadn’t let go of my arm. My eyes went wide at the sight of the capped needle he withdrew from his pocket, and with expert ease, he flicked the cap off. Light darted off the plastic, off the long ugly needle.
“This will help you sleep,” he began, angling it toward me.
Fuck that—I wasn’t sleeping anymore.
I dove off the table, hauling him with me because he was still locked on my arm. The needle struck my flesh, dragging, and I yelped but it didn’t sink in. I grabbed the I.V. unit and swung it his way, the metal rattling and fluids sloshing in the bag.
“Fuck!” He lost his grip on me and I slipped away, stumbling on rubbery, aching legs.
I slammed into the counter, my palm striking a tray of tools, metal against metal clattering. Panic clawed at me, some primal fear at being locked away—at losing...losing this sudden light I felt around me, felt like I saw—shoving my heart to beat high in my throat. Bruising fingers clamped onto my shoulder, the pinch of a needle sinking into my flesh. I grabbed a scalpel from the counter, hand locking on metal, spun and slashed.
Cut.
Drew’s jugular.
The syringe in his hand struck the ground, his arm going limp. Blood sprayed, soaking his shirt, soaking me, warmth striking my face. My arm dropped, scalpel still gripped tight in my hand. Drew’s eyes went big, glassy. He sputtered. Stumbled. I’d cut deep, whether by accident or by my subconscious knowing how to kill swiftly after so many years of training.
After Bravo Division’s training. Geneticist, killed by his employer’s own little monster.
Two steps back and he slipped on blood, elbow knocking a tray and sending supplies scattering across the tile. His back struck the side of the bed and he slumped down.
Still staring at me.
Shock registered in his expression. Sadness. I saw it in his eyes then: whatever else he’d done, whatever else they made him do, he did love me in some odd way. In his way. I knew, too, without a doubt that whatever I felt—that begrudging friendship, the rapidly rising guilt—I didn’t feel the same way.
I panted. I hurt. I trembled head to toe, still not giving up the scalpel.
Moments later, his shallow breaths ceased.
Okay. Okay. Plan, dumbass. PLAN.
Holy shit, I just killed Drew.
My only sort of friend. The only person I sort of trusted in the damn place. Grief rose—not the deep, raw, bleeding wound sort I felt with my children, but something sharp and surprising, that knocked me off balance and flipped the world around. Blood was spreading across the floor, a shiny dark pool I felt like I could drown in. It soaked the front of my hospital gown, dripped from the blade in my hand.
Drew’s blood.
Shit.
Plan. I could plan. First, take stock: no cameras in the medical bay and definitely no microphones because he wouldn’t’ve spoken so freely if there had been. The hallways might have a camera or two. I had to get out of the building.
But that wouldn’t be enough. They had genetic samples somewhere—would’ve brought it with them, wherever they moved. Perhaps in the lab that had to be in this wing somewhere.
So, plan. Get cleaned up. No time to move or hide the body, no way to deal with the blood, so he would stay there. Then I just had to destroy the genetic samples and get myself out alive. And maybe not pass out.
Yeah. No problem.