Eighty-eight

Sabrina sat in a blue plastic chair rather than on the bed she’d been ordered into. “Put this on,” the nurse said, tossing a johnnie onto the bed beside her before rushing out, yanking the curtain closed behind her. As soon as the woman was gone, she hobbled over to the supply cabinet and jimmied the lock. Finding an ACE bandage, she used it to wrap her ankle. It was still swollen. Not broken, but the sprain was bad enough to slow her down. Afterward, she wadded up the hospital gown and used it to stop the blood weeping from her shoulder blade.

Now she waited. Truth was, she’d have left hours ago if not for the fact she’d been stabbed in a place she wasn’t able to stitch up herself. So instead of making a slick getaway, she sat, pressing her shoulder into her wadded-up hospital gown wedged behind her against the wall, watching CNN with the captions on because she couldn’t reach the remote.

“Wanna play doctor?”

She looked up to see Church in the space between the curtain and the wall, wagging a surgical staple gun in her direction. In her other hand was a paper bag. She was wearing scrubs—bright purple bottoms with a multicolored, tie-dyed top. Her hair was in a ponytail. The badge clipped to her shirt front was turned backwards to hide the ID photo on it. If Sabrina saw her in the hall, she’d have walked right past her without a second glance.

Beyond her, nurses and doctors buzzed around, soft-soled shoes squeezing against worn linoleum while they tangoed with an assortment of uniform officers and reporters. It was starting all over again. Santos had already called twice with interview requests from local news stations—his superiors were pushing him to hold a press conference. It was only a matter of time before the story went national.

“Yeah,” she said as she repositioned herself against the wadded-up hospital gown. “The sooner I stop leaking, the sooner I can get the hell out of here.”

“Amen to that, Kitten.” Church slipped into the curtained room to circle behind her, snagging another chair. A moment later, Sabrina heard the snap of surgical gloves being pulled on.

“How’s Ellie?” she said, hissing out a slow breath when Church peeled the johnnie away from her wound.

Church sighed. “She lost a lot of blood. Fractured skull. Severe concussion,” she said like she was reading off a grocery list. “They’re worried about brain damage.”

Listening to the commotion in the hall, Sabrina remembered when it had been her. The bright lights and the noise. All those frantic hands fighting to keep her here. To save her, when all she wanted to do was float away. She wished it was her this time too. She wished it was her instead of Ellie. Not because she wanted to die but because if Ellie did, she’d never forgive herself.

“Hey.” Church’s hand landed on her good shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “If she’s anything like her sister, she’s going to fight her way through,” she said, digging her finger into the tear the knife had made in her shirt, opening it even wider so she could assess the damage. “She’s going to be okay—they both will.” Church cleaned the stab wound on her shoulder, dabbing it with betadine-soaked gauze.

She nodded, smiling despite everything that’d happened over the last couple of hours. “You’re getting pretty good at that.”

“At what?” Church said distractedly as she gave Sabrina two quick jabs with a hypodermic needle.

“Pretending to care.”

Church laughed, pulling the wound closed with one hand while straddling the stapler over the gash with the other. “I’m a fast learner,” she said, right before she pulled the trigger.

Sabrina winced, her not-quite-numb flesh zinging. “How’d you find me?”

“Remember room service in Helena?” She pulled the trigger again, the staple shooting forward to anchor into the meat of her shoulder. “I ordered the entire menu and poured you a glass of orange juice?”

She remembered. She’d been sure it’d been poisoned. “I remember.”

“I put a tracker in it.” Church pinched. Pulled the trigger. “You’re welcome. And don’t worry, it’ll flush out of your system in another couple days.”

After a few moments, Sabrina asked another question. “Where will you go?”

“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you, Kitten,” she answered, repeating the pinch-and-shoot process as she followed the line of her wound.

Sabrina thought of the man she’d called Jared. The man who was her brother, if not in blood than in shared experience. “Back to your family?”

Church paused, pressing the stapler into her shoulder. “That’s where you and I differ, Kitten.” She pulled the trigger again, setting the staple deep into her shoulder. “I don’t have a family to go back to.”

Sabrina breathed through the pain, eyes glued on the screen in front of her. The banner on the bottom of it read LIVE: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA. Above it, a small group of men in expensive suits gathered around each other, shaking hands and clapping shoulders on the steps of the capitol building, pausing for the flash bulbs before disappearing inside. “You can always—”

One of those men was Ben.

Sabrina focused in on the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

Senatorial candidate Benjamin Shaw met with a committee to discuss his potential appointment to the California Senate by Governor …

The stapling had stopped but the head of the gun was still pressed into her shoulder. She didn’t have to see Church’s face to know she’d just seen the same thing. “Did you know?”

Church pulled the trigger a final time. “Did I know what?” she said, setting the stapler down. “That he sold his soul to his father to save everyone you’ve ever loved?” She wiped the wound with betadine a final time before covering it with gauze. “Yes.”

“He told you not to tell me, didn’t he?” Sabrina said, looking at Church over her shoulder.

“Yes.” Church anchored the gauze in place with a length of surgical tape, smoothing it out with her thumbs before meeting her gaze. “There’re some military types snooping around. Asking why the FBI didn’t contact them before poking around in their backyard,” she said, standing. She reached down, retrieving the paper bag from the floor before setting it on the bed. “Just to be safe, I think you should take the long way home.”