“You can touch her, you know.”
The voice was soft, the vowels slightly curved, but there was an authoritative edge to it. Before Oliver could turn, a dark-haired woman in a white coat came all the way into the room. He hadn’t heard her over the rasp and shush of the ventilator and the hum and beeps of the various monitors attached to his sister, Thea, who lay, pale and frail, in the hospital bed.
“Go ahead,” Dr. Schwartz said. “Hold her hand, stroke her hair.” She made an encouraging wave in his direction. “Contact has been shown to help coma patients.”
“I don’t want to hurt her by accident.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “I believe when you hurt someone, it is always very deliberate.” It was a stone thrown in the well of his mind, rippling through remembrances of all the pain dealt at his hands. By dint of long practice, he kept it off his face.
“Not always.”
“Your sister is made of stern stuff, Mr. Queen,” the doctor continued. “She survived injuries that would kill others. She can withstand having you hold her hand.”
Tentatively, being as careful as if he were disarming a bomb, Oliver lifted Thea’s fingers and placed them in his. The pads were calloused from a thousand arrows he had shot. Thick and tough and nerveless, but in his palm, in the sensitive creases that cut across it, he could feel the flutter of her pulse and the bird-like weight of her slender bones.
“It feels so small,” he said.
“Nevertheless, it won’t break.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her hand in his. To do so would mean looking at her, seeing her, completely. She looked so… not lifeless, he was far too familiar with death to make that mistake, but hollow, as if the spark—the wild fey spirit that made Thea the stubborn, infuriating, caring, fiercely loving person that was so much like their mother, so much like him—had gone elsewhere, leaving her body unattended.
Come back, Speedy. He pushed the thought out to her, trying to force it down to her through the connection of her hand in his.
Thea didn’t move, didn’t even twitch.
The shallow pulse did not waver or change.
Wherever she was, it was far away. He pulled a hard sigh through his nostrils and looked up to find Dr. Schwartz watching him carefully. After a moment she spoke.
“I know it doesn’t appear so, but her physical condition is improving.”
“When will she wake up?”
“That I don’t know,” the doctor admitted, adding, “I’m sorry.”
“Is there anyone else we can consult?”
Dr. Schwartz frowned. “I’ve consulted with Dr. Price out of Blüdhaven and Dr. Oakroot from Midway, two of the top experts on this coast. And no doubt you are aware of the upgrades we’ve made to our facility, all possible through donations from your family. Your sister is receiving the best care she can.”
“I wasn’t questioning your—”
“Shush.” She put her hand up to interrupt him. “I know. You’re grasping for answers. I understand. I have been in your position.”
He considered her words. “If that’s true, I am sorry.”
“Mr. Queen, you know that I am aware of your… night job.”
He waited for her to continue.
“A man like you, both an active politician and a…” She let the word vigilante slip away unsaid. “Well, you are used to being able to tackle problems head-on, to solve them, to handle things and make them right.”
He gave a slight nod of his head.
“Well, this isn’t that sort of problem,” she said. “As much as you might wish otherwise, this is something that is beyond your ability to fix.”
“It’s my fault she is here.”
You’re wrong.
The thought burned through his brain, a bullet shot from a gun and plowing its way across his cerebellum. Thea lay here, hurt, because of his actions, because of his very existence. Because of things he did, Adrian Chase had taken Thea to Lian Yu as a hostage. She was only there because she was his sister, a person Chase could use to manipulate him—and finally a person Chase could use to hurt him.
Images came, flashing against the back of his mind’s eye. A chain of flames covering the island, black smoke roiling through the blast fields, his loved ones burned and hurt. Thea lying on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.
Dr. Schwartz moved around Thea’s bed, coming close enough to lay a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re doing what you can, here and now,” she said. “Hold your sister’s hand, Mr. Queen.” With those words and a strong squeeze on his shoulder, she left him alone with the hum and beep of the machines and the silence of his sister.
* * *
“Why is this damn door down?”
Raylan turned as his supervisor, Crenshaw, came up the stairwell. He wasn’t surprised at the man’s appearance on the scene, he’d heard him huffing and puffing from two floors down.
Crenshaw used the safety rail to haul his bulk up onto the landing. The big man wore the same uniform as Raylan. Same polyester-blend gray slacks and blue button-up shirt with a DEARDEN TOWER SECURITY patch over the left breast. The fabric on Crenshaw’s had turned dark in the pits despite the abundant air conditioning.
“You going to make it?” Raylan asked.
Crenshaw waved away his mild concern, staring at the flat slab of steel that blocked off the doorway.
“This thing shouldn’t be down.”
“No, it shouldn’t.”
“You know when this door is down, it kicks the kill switches on the elevators.”
“I don’t think they’re kill switches.”
“Elevators don’t work,” Crenshaw snorted. “Sounds like a kill switch to me.”
Maybe we should leave that to the engineers, Raylan thought, but he said, “No alarms are going.”
“Well, thank God for that. If they were, we’d be crawling with all kinds of cops and EMTs and other people all freaked out.”
A loud click sounded, and the door began to slide up as if it had been oiled. Both men jumped, their hands going to the service revolvers on their hips.
The door opened to reveal a slender man with a head full of wiry red hair. Coveralls hung off him as he stood with his hand on a rolling dolly, empty but for a paint can with a wire handle. A tool belt hung at an angle off his hips, handles jutting and wires spooling from yawning pockets. He tilted his head, studying them.
“Why, hello gents! Top of the morning… no, evening to you.”
“Who are you?” Crenshaw asked.
“No one of consequence, now that this door is repaired.”
“Repaired?” Raylan asked. “We didn’t have a repair order.”
“Gentlemen,” the man said, palms outstretched, “I get it that you didn’t expect me, but honestly, how would I even be up this high unless someone in your department had cleared it?” He stared at the security guards, eyes wide and innocent.
“Who gave you access?” Crenshaw demanded.
The man shrugged. “I just go where I’m told. You know how it is. Bosses, right?”
The security guards chuckled at that, both easing their stances, hands dropping from their guns. Their supervisor was a huge pain in the neck, Raylan mused to himself. “What’s that bucket of paint for?” he asked.
“Touch up. You try and you try but something always gets nicked.”
Raylan nodded his empathy, and the man offered a quick salute.
* * *
Enough with these two, Alex Faust thought to himself. I’m wasting time.
“Well, I must be on my way,” he said cheerfully. “Have a safe night, gentlemen.”
As the two security guards nodded their goodbyes, as clueless as ever, he rolled the dolly to the elevator and stepped on.
And like that, he was gone.