It sounds so crazy that it has to be true,” Agent McNally said, keeping her voice low so the bustling staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center didn’t overhear.
I’d spent the last few hours alternately telling her Seward’s story and receiving status reports on my people. I didn’t much care that I was bleeding from a dozen places, had nearly been choked to death, and had probably rebroken my hand. My body was completely numb, pain receptors blown, and I wasn’t allowing myself to be treated until everyone else had their turn.
Cedars-Sinai hadn’t quite known what to do with the lot of us when four screaming ambulances tore into their emergency lane, but McNally had used her impressive vocabulary to bully the staff into clearing out a section of the ward for us, allowing us the privacy we needed.
Psystorm (whose real name, I learned, was Simon Hewitt) and Caleb were physically uninjured from the experience. The boy spent every waking moment in the ward crying in his father’s arms. He’d watched his father be tied up and drugged, and then he was locked in a storage closet. Caleb’s escape was a blessing. His nightmares would end one day, but for now they were very real.
Dahlia was up and moving. She’d been injected with drugs to keep her unconscious, and she only vaguely remembered having Specter poking around inside of her brain. Conversely, the doctors had shot Renee up with muscle relaxants. Her body had been stretched and twisted and left in impossible positions for too long, resulting in multiple muscle tears. They were too small to repair surgically; they required time and staying still, which Renee did not do naturally.
Marco spent two hours in surgery. Morphing and running on broken fingers had shattered several tiny bones that needed to be repaired before they could heal. His own concussion was minor, and the handful of burns he received during the Medical Center explosion would heal.
By the time I got the news on Marco, word had spread of our invasion of the hospital, spurring a secondary invasion of reporters and cameras. The security guards had their hands full corralling them all into the ambulance bay. They had a long wait; no one was talking to the press until I knew my people were okay.
As expected, Ethan had pulled some of his old stitches. Once they decided his insides were all in the correct places, they fixed his external wounds and put him to bed. He’d remained stuck between the seats until rescue workers pulled him out. He came through the final fight without—as he’d feared—hurting any of his friends.
I watched the waiting room doors swing shut behind Ethan’s surgeon. “So how much of this do we release to the public?” I asked McNally, rubbing my eyes. The only person still in the woods was Gage, but I didn’t know how much longer I could keep myself upright.
“We can decide that later,” she said. “For now, they only need to know that there was an accident, and that your team is recovering. The rest can wait.”
“Good.”
Another hazy hour passed before Gage’s surgeon finally came out, and I might have tackled him if I’d had the energy. I was impressed I managed to stand up.
“He was lucky,” the doctor said. “The knife nicked his carotid artery without severing it. The wound was repaired, and he’s received two transfusions to replace his blood loss. He also has three fractured ribs that will take several weeks to mend.”
“So he’s—will he be okay?” I asked.
“He’s shown an impressive will to live. I do believe he’ll make a full recovery.”
My anxiety fled when the surgeon said that, and with my anxiety went every last ounce of energy. I passed out in his arms.
Twelve hours later, I had a new cast on my right hand, eighteen stitches in my back, a bandage on my chin, and a raging sore throat. Except for Renee, Gage, and Ethan, everyone else had been officially released, but they remained in the ward anyway. Although two buildings of HQ still stood, we hesitated to return. It felt haunted, incomplete. Stained. I’d wanted change, but not on this level. And not so quickly.
I spent my time in an uncomfortable chair next to Gage’s bed. He had remained unconscious after the surgery for no physical reason his doctor could find. It could have been because of Specter’s possession. I didn’t know; I just wanted him to wake up. They say coma patients can hear you, so I talked as much as my sore throat would allow and sucked on ice chips in between.
During one of those breaks, Dahlia wandered over. She slipped through the curtain surrounding the bed and stopped at the foot. I looked up and smiled. She stayed quiet.
“I know I look horrible, but you don’t have to stare,” I said hoarsely.
“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes widening. “I didn’t mean to stare. I just wanted to ask you something.” I nodded, giving her silent permission to continue. “Well, it’s about the MHC and what you said before.”
The things I’d said before had been not long after our arrival, in a fit of blind anger and panic. I’d repeated what the doppelganger (I still couldn’t reconcile the killer with the Angus Seward I’d known and trusted) said about the fail-safe; killing the last surviving Banes as a safety measure. Ranted on my own feelings of betrayal for not being told about the collars or the Wardens.
“I was pissed. Shouldn’t have.”
“You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it, Trance.”
Good point.
She stepped around the bed, moving closer. “Well, what if we didn’t have to work for the Bureau anymore? Instead of being employees for an agency that foots the bills, we go out on our own. Freelance heroes, rather than corporate ones.”
A nice notion, only she’d forgotten one small problem. “We don’t have the money, or the resources.”
“What if we did?”
Something in the way she asked warned me it wasn’t just a rhetorical question. Freelancing was an option I’d considered seriously for the last couple of days. I no longer trusted ATF, even if MHC ceased to exist on any official level. We weren’t what they’d created with the Rangers a century ago, and we could never fit back into their mold. I didn’t want to, not now that I knew the truth about the Warden and MHC’s fail-safe. The truth about Agent Anders and Dr. Seward. So many lies.
The Ranger Corps was finished. It physically ceased to exist fifteen years ago, and the last of its recorded history had burned down with the Medical Center. Something new started last week, and we’d failed to see it until today. I’d failed to see it. Now my vision was clear.
No going back.
“What did you have in mind, Ember?” I asked, using her code name on purpose.
She smiled. “I have access to some money. A lot of money, actually, and I think this would be a very good use for it.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Three million.”
“Dollars?” If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’d have fallen over. I couldn’t wrap my head around that kind of number.
“I know it’s not a lot,” she said, and I blanched at the comment, “and it will probably spend fast. I mean, we need a place to live and security measures and transportation—”
“Whose money is it?”
“Mine. It’s been in trust for a while, and I never wanted it until now.” Something burned in her eyes—determination, intent, and a little bit of excitement. “I just wanted to make sure you were on board with going freelance before I did anything.”
I was more than on board with the idea. It was something we needed to do and, while part of me wanted to interrogate Dahlia about the source of this trust fund, most of me didn’t want to jinx her insanely generous offer.
We would have a purpose again—of that I had no doubt. Joy bubbled up inside me like a fountain, frothing out in a gale of giggles. It hurt to laugh, so I sobered quickly. The euphoria, however, remained close to the surface.
“I take it you like the idea,” Dahlia said.
“Sweetheart, I love the idea, and if this works out, then, I think I love you.”
A grunt—not from me, and not from her. I looked at the bed. Gage had peeled one eye open, and was staring at me through the slit. The eye blinked, and the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile.
Dahlia made a discreet exit.
Gage worked his other eye open. My heart swelled under the intensity of his silver-flecked gaze—eyes I’d seen closed by the slice of a blade and feared would never look at me again. I slid onto the bed next to him. Tears welled and I didn’t fight them.
He licked dry lips. I brushed an ice chip over the rough, chapped surface, offering him a small measure of relief.
“You hit me with a car,” he said, low and tired.
“That’s what you get for standing in the middle of the road.”
“I tried to fight. He was so strong.”
“It’s okay, Gage. We won.” I bent my head and brushed my lips across his. The kiss electrified me and sent my heart galloping. Maybe we still had a few personal kinks to work out of our relationship, but I wanted our touches to feel like this always. I slid down next to him and rested my head on his shoulder.
“We’re okay?” he asked.
“We’re okay. We’re all okay.”
And who knows? I might even learn to like this whole leadership thing.