“We just have a few questions to ask,” someone shouts outside my hospital room, followed by a bunch of shouts of my name and so many flashes it’s like Fourth of July fireworks in the hallway.
Ah, twenty-four hour cable news. They have to cover something. And El Brujo’s death and my role in it makes me a minor celebrity.
For now.
It’s day three, and Mark had to go to D.C. for a briefing. He had no choice. I vaguely remember him whispering in my ear and telling me how much he loves me. He left the staff with strict instructions not to let anyone in here. Flashed them his DEA badge.
And a look that makes them all comply.
That must have been this morning. It’s night time now. I can tell because it’s dark outside.
The flashes in the hallways make the darkness even starker.
A man in a suit squeezes through, flanked by two guys who also wear suits, though a different color. Both have guns. They look like bodyguards.
“Carrie,” says the first man. He’s familiar. Young, like me. Somewhere between me and Mark in age. Short hair. Direct speaking style. He talks like he expects to be respected.
The clipped tones of a man in charge.
He walks to the side of the bed and sits in Mark’s usual seat. “I’m Drew Foster. We met two days ago under very unfortunate circumstances.”
“I’d call them fortunate,” I say. I lost my voice, maybe from screaming in the storage room. I sound like an eighty-year-old chain smoker. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
He gives me a half-grin. “Fair enough. I’m here because Mark sent my firm.”
“He sent mercenaries to my hospital room to protect me? What are you going to do? Defend me against bad hospital food?”
I swear one of the guys’ mouths twitches.
“They’re here to guard you,” Drew explains.
“Guard me? Guard me from who? El Brujo is dead.”
He thumbs toward the door. “The media.”
I laugh. It hurts. I stop laughing. “The media? I don’t care about the media.”
“They care about you, though.” He won’t stop staring at me. His eyes bore into me. The other two men stand at attention, eyes roving over the room.
“So what? They suck. Nothing I say will get quoted properly. I know the drill from when my dad was imprisoned. No comment and all that.”
“You weren’t healing from being physically and psychologically tortured by El Brujo and his men back then, Carrie.” He isn’t compassionate. Drew is all no-nonsense. This is business for him.
“No. But I was tormented by their lies and destruction of my entire life back then. And I thought the man I loved had betrayed me.” I look down at my bandaged body. “This? This is nothing in comparison to thinking that the only person I’d ever given my heart to had double-crossed me and left me to hang out to dry.”
Drew flinches. It’s like watching a wall wince.
I’ve hit a nerve of some kind.
He stands. Walks over to the two men and whispers something to them. They nod in unison.
Drew walks to the door, puts his hand on the doorknob, and turns around.
“It’s day two of the investigation. We don’t know who might still be out to get you in El Brujo’s organization, Carrie. We’re mostly certain you made a lot of people very, very happy by killing him—”
“I didn’t kill him! Allie did. She should get the credit.”
“—by facilitating his death.” He narrows his eyes. If I weren’t broken and bandaged in bed with a raging case of narcotics hangover, I’d think he was hot as heck.
“Who’s happy? Aside from the DEA,” I ask, genuinely intrigued.
“Dealers oppressed by El Brujo. People under his control.”
I frown. It hurts. “What about Claudia?” I sit up with a jolt of memory. “And Eric? Eric Horner?”
Drew frowns. “Mark hasn’t told you?”
“Mark’s in D.C. getting yelled at by his f-bomb screaming boss.”
Now all three men stifle smiles.
“I assure you she’s not yelling at him,” Drew finally says. “In fact, Mark’s probably getting a promotion right now.”
“A promotion? No! He wants out.”
Three sets of eyes all catch each other in an unspoken exchange of thoughts.
Drew opens the door an inch, then turns to me.
“You’re being guarded. It’s for your own good. And don’t judge Mark too harshly. There’s always more to any story that doesn’t make sense on the surface.”
And with that, he leaves. A woman squeezes past him, her body small and soft. He moves aside just enough to let her in. A nurse?
No. A familiar face. A familiar scratched-up slightly red, ragged face with big, brown, worried eyes.
“Allie,” I rasp. “Oh, Allie.”
The tears come again as she sits carefully on the edge of my bed and gives me a tender, light hug.
“Hey, you,” she murmurs in my ear, against the giant bandage that is my head.
“Hey, you, hero,” I whisper back.
We just hold each other.
It’s all we can do.
There really aren’t enough words for what we’ve been through.
A hug has to be enough.
She holds me while I weep. It feels like hours go by.
“You did it,” I say through sniffles and waterworks, finally breaking the calm truth of just being held and understood.
“We did it.”
“How’s Amy?”
Allie pulls back. Her big, brown eyes are framed by black hair. She must have dyed it back to her normal color. She’s strikingly beautiful, scratches, scars and all.
“She’s recovering. Her mom’s with her. She’s in a different hospital. They got antibiotics in her right away, but her kidneys aren’t doing so good. It’s touch and go but she wouldn’t even have a fighting chance if it weren’t for you, Carrie.”
“And you.”
We squeeze hands. Well, my good one, anyhow.
“How are you. Really?” she asks, eyes darting around the room. “I know that it took a long, long time for me to recover from what happened to me.”
I don’t have to lie to her. I don’t have to shine her on. Even with Mark, I pretend. I did earlier today, when he told me he had to leave.
I lied.
I told him it was okay.
It wasn’t.
“I’m a mess. Look at me. Whatever I look like on the outside isn’t as bad as how I feel on the inside. And I’m different from you. Mark’s here. Mark didn’t do to me what Chase did to you. I never had a moment where I thought Mark double-crossed me and left me to the mercy of El Brujo like you did.”
She nods. “It’ll be easier for you. But never easy.” Stroking the scarred skin on her forearm, her eyes glaze over. “It never really goes away.”
“It’s only been a year for you, Allie. Two days for me. I’m mostly drugged up, anyhow,” I say with a giggle.
“Right. But he’s gone, Carrie. Dead. I shot him. I killed him. I killed a man,” she says, her voice going lower and lower into a whisper of utter horror.
“You didn’t kill a man.”
“What? You saw it happen.”
“You killed a monster. You killed evil in human form.”
She sighs. “That’s what Chase says.”
“Then listen to Chase.”
“You sound like Mark.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
We hug again.
And then, in the stillness of my sterile hospital room, we weep like children until we’re boneless.