`
The Pharmacy
Barely awake, Sheppard groped for his cell phone and saw Mira’s text messages. He bolted upward and forwarded the texts to the group. Just then, he heard Nigel howling outside the rear door of the bookstore. Sheppard loped over, opened the door, and the dog ran inside, barking urgently, panting hard, running back and forth from Sheppard to the door.
“It’s okay, Nigel. I got her text. I know where she is. Where they are.”
Like the dog understood English. Hell, Sheppard thought, maybe he did. Nigel went over to his bowls, lapped at water, gobbled down some dry food, then ran to the door, barking frantically.
Ten minutes later, Sheppard and Nigel hurried outside into the predawn stillness, the dog now leashed. They scrambled into a JLTV—which Sheppard still thought of as a Humvee—with Keel, Gutierrez, Delgado, Rincon, O’Hara and Annie. Sheppard started to tell Annie to get out, but she anticipated it and gave him such a fierce look that Sheppard said nothing. She was Mira’s daughter, after all, knew how to defend herself, and had more right than any of them to be included.
Ahead of and behind them were Jeeps and another Humvee manned with troops that would remain in the background—backups if needed, Keel explained. Sheppard thought the procession of vehicles was impressive but hardly subtle, and asked Keel to stop two blocks short of the pharmacy. “We need subtlety, Frank.” Sheppard threw open the door.
“We need to go in unified,” Keel argued.
“Then go. But we’re outta here.” He, Gutierrez and Nigel got out, and the dog yanked so hard on his leash that Sheppard lost his grip on it.
They loped after Nigel, across the street to the pharmacy and then behind it to the parking lot, the first light spilling across the island. Gutierrez ran to the back door, Sheppard followed Nigel as he pursued a scent to a distant corner in the lot, near the trees. The dog hesitated briefly, nose to the ground, then took off into the woods.
Sheppard tore after him, crashing through shrubs, fallen branches, dead leaves, circling around, then looping back, just as the dog was doing. Nigel finally stopped, nose to the ground, and picked up something. Sheppard stopped beside him. “What’ve you got, big guy?”
He extended his hand and Nigel dropped a cell into it. Mira’s cell. Sheppard tapped in the code, went to messages. Her last text to him and Annie was vocal, and had been sent at 6:02 a.m. Taken. Pharmacy. It was now 6:38. He guessed she’d thrown the cell into the trees so Hal wouldn’t be able to confiscate it. Where was her weapon?
Nigel answered that minutes later when he located her gun near a pile of dead leaves in the woods. No phone, no weapon. No way to communicate or to defend herself. Such despair filled Sheppard that he just stood there, looking from her gun to her cell. Now what? But his mind had emptied.
The dog whimpered and Sheppard glanced at him. “You did great, Nigel.”
He howled and dropped abruptly to the ground, as if in shame. Panting hard, he rested his head against his paws and shut his eyes. Sheppard sat beside him, stroking him with one hand, scrolling through Mira’s cell with the other, a part of him hoping to find something on her phone that would provide a clue, a hint.
He realized the recorder was on and quickly stopped it, took it back to the beginning, and started listening.
Mira: Nigel got loose. I think he’s after a squirrel, but I’m not sure. The Tango Pharmacy is across the street from me. That’s where he’s headed. Where I’m headed.
Nigel, still on the ground beside Sheppard, lifted his head. Cocked it. He recognized his name, Mira’s voice.
A few minutes later, a woman’s voice: I think vitamin E is supposed to be really good for you, Hal. And I could use some shampoo and a bar of soap that smells good.
Hal: Pick out whatever you want, Liz.
Hal and Liz, the shape shifter. He fast-forwarded to Hal again: What are you doing here, Mira?
Mira: Nigel woke me up. He needed to go pee. Then he apparently sensed you two and took off.
Hal: I should melt you both.
Liz: Don’t you dare hurt that dog, Hal.
Noise erupted, things falling off shelves. Then Hal’s voice: Okay, okay. Just stop with the wings. I won’t hurt the dog… Hey, will you lick me, too? So you didn’t come here looking for me?
Mira: The last thing I’d do is look for you, Hal. You really damaged my store and by destroying the bridge, you fucks have set Tango Key back twenty years. You and your people should leave before you get killed.
Hal laughed and made fun of her. Mira mentioned drones, bombs, grenades and why he didn’t have a defense against any of that. Then Hal abruptly changed the subject and asked about antibiotics. For the freak wounded in her store by Keel and his team, Sheppard thought, and listened to their exchange, what followed afterward, then heard Hal say, You’re my hostage.
He listened to the rest of it. By then, Sheppard’s mouth had gone dry and pieces of his heart had shriveled up and died. In the next exchange, he could hear Mira struggling to keep her voice calm, neutral, then her forced laugh as she told him he didn’t know much about this century. And finally, her shout at Nigel: Go! A la casa!
Nigel sprang to his feet.
“It’s okay, boy.” Sheppard stroked him until he sank to the ground again. “It’s already happened.”
The final sounds of the recording were a resounding thud, probably when her cell struck the ground, then his shouts for the dog, and Nigel’s panting. The last noise was the clatter of Nigel picking up the phone.
Sheppard turned off the recorder and went through Mira’s photos. He found pictures of some of the scribblings in an array of the damaged books. Hal’s scribblings. Sheppard started reading, his horror deepening, and was still reading when Nigel barked and Annie reached him.
“Shep? Did Nigel lose the scent?”
“Not entirely.” He held up Mira’s cell, her weapon. “Did you read Hal’s notes in the backs of those books?”
Annie’s expression told him everything. She lowered herself to the ground on the other side of Nigel. “Yeah. Some of them. Mom wanted it kept between us until she could figure things out.”
“Why? This is important, Annie. If it’s true that he’s your descendant, then it explains why he came to Tango Key in the twenty-first.”
“How? How does it explain that? He wanted to meet us? Warn us? Give us his life story in the dome? I don’t think so. Did he hope we’d become his allies? I doubt it. I don’t think it explains anything.”
“Regardless, you and Mira should’ve shared this with everyone.”
When she replied, she sounded angry. “Hey, look, it’s her experience, Shep. Not yours. Not mine. She has the right to do whatever she wants with it. I think Mom was going to tell you and the others, but in her own time. The only reason I found out is because I went into her office while she was reading the stuff.”
Sheppard nodded. Annie had hit it, of course, that he had no claim over Mira’s experience or what she chose to do with it. But hadn’t the dynamics between them always been like that? “Listen to this.” Sheppard started the recording.
Annie stroked Nigel and listened closely. She didn’t say anything until the recording was finished. “Do you have any idea how all this has affected her, Shep? Did she tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Shep, she turned into Carrie.” Annie’s hands burst upward from her knees. A quick, violent motion.
What the hell is she talking about? “Who’s Carrie?”
“Oh my God, c’mon, Shep. Stephen King’s Carrie. I think Mom’s proximity to Hal, a guy who blows past anything we understand about telekinesis, triggered these latent abilities in her. That night the ladies took over the guard on the cabin roof, I saw what she can do, so did Blanca and Carmen.”
Sheppard envisioned his wife waving her arms and things whirling around in the air. Carrie. He’d read the book, seen the movie with Sissy Spacek. And he remembered thinking it was entertaining—but. “Then why didn’t she use it in the pharmacy?”
“Probably because she was terrified he’d melt her and Nigel before she could do anything to him.”
Sheppard couldn’t quite wrap his head around what she was saying. Not yet. He forwarded the photos of Hal’s scribblings to himself, then they got up and walked through the trees, toward the parking lot, Nigel leading the way. “Describe what she did on the rooftop, Annie.”
Annie told him, and also related a story he’d never heard about Mira being bullied in elementary school and how she’d gotten even with the bully. Why hadn’t she ever confided any of this to him?
As soon as he thought it, the answer was obvious. Because of his absurd skepticism, she’d stopped working with any law enforcement agency. Her personal readings had dwindled to several a month. A large, significant portion of her life had dropped away because of him, so she could keep peace in their marriage, and he hadn’t begun to understand the magnitude of that until that night on the bridge. And until now. By closing herself off from her passion, she had closed herself off to him.
“I’ve been such an idiot, Annie.”
She slipped her arm around his waist. “Sometimes, yeah. But you’re a great dad, Shep.”
Sheppard hugged her. There were times like right now when Annie felt like an equal, not like his twenty-five-year-old stepdaughter. “Here’s what I’m thinking.” They paused at the edge of the trees and stared out into the parking lot behind the pharmacy. Several Jeeps were parked out there now, soldiers milling around, and the JLTV, Humvee, whatever the hell you called that yellow monster, was close to them.
“Direct confrontation with these Crows, like what Keel pulled in the bookstore, isn’t the way to go. It’s too dangerous. But we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing, either. Hiding out. Cowering. Sequestering and barricading ourselves in our homes. There must be—what? Eight or ten thousand people left on the island?”
“A Miami TV station gave a count of ten to twelve. Considering there were, like, thirty thousand plus at the height of snowbird season, before all this started, that sounds about right.”
“I think everyone has to be evacuated—snowbirds, residents, everyone except law enforcement and the National Guard. Let’s isolate them, the Crows. Yeah, they have these extraordinary powers, but they aren’t invincible or immortal. We know what some of them look like, so they won’t dare come out in daylight.”
“Only the governor can order a complete evacuation, right?”
“Of Tango County? Yeah, I think so.”
“Would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if Keel is on board.”
Annie didn’t reply right away. “How long would it take to evacuate everyone?”
Good question. It had taken several days for the evacuation of the fifteen thousand or so since O’Hara’s story on the stone woman had gone viral. But for one of those days, the bridge and two ferries had been accessible. Now they were down to no bridge and only one ferry unless Keel or someone else in the state or federal government could arrange for more ferries.
“We could aim for forty-eight hours. Twenty-four would be much better, but I don’t know. Depends on resources.”
“What would a complete evacuation do?”
“Give us more latitude. No worry about collateral damage. We’d need at least three more ferries to get people out of here. And more troops. And we’d have to go building to building to flush them out. But with Mira as their hostage, I don’t think it would get to that. I think they would try to bargain first.”
“I’m not leaving, Shep. Jon isn’t either, just so you understand that.”
Loud and clear. “Honestly, I’d be disappointed if you said otherwise.”
“Shep, Frank Keel works as a molecular biologist for the DOD. They want at least one of these Crows. Make a deal with him. Even though I don’t trust him, I think we should get him on board with this evacuation idea.” Then she squeezed his hand. “Let’s get this plan going. What can I do?”
2
Advil. Two doses of the antibiotics. A thermometer.
Squirt’s fever already had dropped—from 105 to 103, then 101, and finally to 98.0, about normal for the Crows. When Hal pressed his hand to Squirt’s forehead at noon, the skin was sweaty but cooler. Squirt asked for water, something to eat. Hal fed him the Jell-O Trixie had fixed, and even though he ate it, the act of eating seemed to exhaust him.
“Have we… won yet, Hal?”
“We’re closer. We’ve got a hostage now.”
“Okay.” He flopped back against the pillow, shut his eyes, and went back to sleep.
Whiskers had been following Hal around the house and now the cat jumped up in the windowsill and settled down, watching him and Squirt.
Hal drew the sheet back over Squirt. When he turned, Cam stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. The old man looked more rested now and wore clean clothes—jeans, a work shirt, running shoes. “How is he?”
“At least he ate something.”
“Good.” Cam held out his right foot. “Found these shoes in a closet. And they fit. And oh man, are they comfortable. And these clothes. Much better. Where’s everyone else?”
“Trixie, Red, and Nico went off to steal a car large enough to accommodate all of us. Just you, me, and Squirt are here.”
“And the hostage. Where’s she?”
“Back bedroom.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Go ahead. She’s awake, unrestrained. The door is locked.”
“Has she eaten?”
Hal shook his head. “I first wanted to make sure that Squirt was taken care of.”
“I’ll take her some food. Might be a way to get her talking. She’s the seer Jon mentioned in his columns, right?”
“Yeah, she’s the one. But I haven’t seen any evidence of her ability. Would you look in on Squirt when you’re done, Cam? I need to recharge for a bit longer.” This century wore him out.
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.” Hal weaved into the living room, kicked off his shoes and flopped back on the couch, his fatigue so extreme he was asleep in seconds.
3
The room wasn’t particularly large, but it was comfortable enough, Mira thought. Double bed, a dresser with a TV on it, a small desk with a stack of magazines, a pen, yellow pad, and cell charger in the top drawer, and printed directions about using the remote for the TV. A cheap painting of an island scene—beach, water, palm trees—hung on the wall. Airbnb, she thought.
In the closet, she found a set of clean sheets, an extra blanket and pillow. The room had an adjoining bathroom, with two clean towels, soap, a shower, a bathmat. She opened the medicine cabinet and found a can of shaving cream, a packet of razors, hand lotion, shampoo, a hair dryer, and other amenities.
Nothing as useful as a cell phone.
She raised the wooden blinds on the window. Bolted shut. No surprise. She might be able to break the window, unless it was high impact. It looked out into a pretty backyard—sculpted flowerbeds that surrounded a fountain where several blackbirds hopped around in the water. A looming banyan tree offered ample shade for a patio with a table, chairs, a built-in barbecue.
It was dark when Hal had led her in here a couple hours ago, said he’d be back, and locked the door. Now she was hungry, scared, and uncertain. She turned on the TV, kept the volume low, and clicked through the channels, looking for local news. A Key West station reported that “terrorists” had raided the Tango Pharmacy and an unidentified woman had been taken hostage. The broadcaster, a young man, continued, “My sources are telling me that a mandatory evacuation from Tango Key will be implemented. But there hasn’t been any official announcement. We’ll keep you posted.”
Mandatory evacuation?
It made sense. Remove everyone except troops and law enforcement, no more cowering and hiding, then go after the Crows without fear of anyone else getting hurt. Great idea, except that one of them had the power of invisibility. Or had that one been injured in the confrontation with Keel and his team?
Had Hal and the others heard this rumor?
The outside lock rattled and she quickly turned off the TV. A tall, elderly bald man came into the room with a tray of food. He was new. Mira hadn’t seen him on any videos yet.
“I bet you’re hungry, Mira.”
“Starving.”
He shut the door with his foot and set the tray on the dresser. “It’s some sort of vegetarian stew. Incredibly good. I’ve never tasted vegetables so fresh.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. And you are?”
“Cam. The name’s Cam.”
Mira stood at the dresser and in between delicious bites, said, “And what’s your ability, Cam?”
“Camouflage.”
She looked up at him and watched his face become her own, then Sheppard’s, Annie’s, Nadine’s, and even Tom’s. It happened with shocking speed. Then he did it more slowly, so she noticed it wasn’t just the faces he mimicked. With her, Annie, and Nadine, it was also the bodies. He looked female. “Holy shit. You can camouflage yourself to look like another gender? And to look like the dead? How?”
He sat at the foot of the bed, looking like himself now. “When I looked like you, I had access to your memories, voice, mannerisms, nearly all of you.”
“Even my soul?” Mira polished off the rest of the food, then sat in the closest chair. “Do you go that deep?”
“Not your soul.” He looked bemused. “You may be the only person who has ever asked me that.”
“So when you’re camouflaged like me, do you have my ability?”
His frown brought his large dark eyes closer together. “Just once I camouflaged myself as Liz and I couldn’t shape-shift. Couldn’t fly. There are limits. But with other abilities, yes, to differing degrees. The exception is Hal. I can’t duplicate what he does. But I haven’t tried camouflaging anyone or anything yet it in this century. Should we experiment?”
Was this some sort of trick? A Vulcan mind lock? A mind fuck? Find out, Mira. “Sure.”
“Wonderful.”
Cam immediately camouflaged himself and looked exactly as she did, right down to her jeans and shirt and bare feet. Even his eyes were hers, the same brilliant blue. It felt eerie, like staring at her doppelgänger or identical twin. When Cam spoke, his voice sounded like hers.
“You prefer touching objects or people. That’s how you read Stoner and Lightning.”
Okay, this old man was good. “Can you also speak the languages that I speak?”
“English, of course.” He paused. “And Spanish. Cómo andas, Mira? Tu abuelita siempre me preguntó.”
Perfect accent, like he’d been speaking it all his life. “I’m impressed.”
“My vocabulary is sometimes limited, but Spanish is easier than Chinese.”
Yeah, okay. Mira removed her wedding ring, held it out. “See if you can read this, Cam.” As he took it, she saw the wedding ring on his finger and gestured at it. “Then we’ll trade.”
“Fair enough.” His fingers—hers!—closed over her wedding ring and for a full two minutes, he didn’t say anything. His head bobbed, as if he was listening to someone, and once, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and only the whites showed, which sometimes happened to her. “Six years ago, you worked on a child abduction case. It caused a terrible rift in your relationship with your husband, so you quit reading crime scenes. In fact, you pretty much squashed your own ability until Stoner.”
Very good. “Can you tell me something I don’t know?”
Beneath his lids, his eyeballs flicked back and forth, like they did in REM sleep. When his eyes opened again, all that blue had brightened, deepened. “The ability you demonstrated on the rooftop of the building where you were staying is your greatest weapon. But you have to allow yourself to use it. You could have prevented yourself from being taken hostage but your fear kicked in—and so you did something… practical?” He cocked his head. “Your strategy wasn’t working and you knew it. Hiding didn’t work. So deep down, you seized on the idea of working from the inside out. And if you go after your needs rather than your wants, you may succeed.”
What the fuck. “Explain what you mean, Cam.”
The illusion of her identical twin sat forward, her ring dangling at the tip of his index finger, his thumb slipping over the gold. “Before Lightning destroyed the bridge, you just wanted your life to return to normal, back to what it was before you read Stoner. Except you weren’t really satisfied with that life because you felt incomplete psychically. But once the bridge was gone, you realized your normal life wasn’t going to happen ever again and your want, your burning desire, became defeating Hal and his group. But your need, Mira, your deepest need, is to tap into your full potential regardless.”
Accurate. And how weird that it had come from a facsimile of herself. “You’re really good, Cam. Let’s trade.”
They exchanged rings. As soon as Mira’s fingers closed over Cam’s wedding ring, images exploded in her head: the death of Cam’s wife, a Crow, at the hands of a small militia, the death of his son, also a Crow, born because Cam and his wife had escaped sterilization. After those deaths, Cam had used his camouflage to elude the police, work at odd jobs, occupy housing that belonged to other domers. And then one day, searching for information about the twenty-first century, he had entered the archives camouflaged as Hal’s mother. She had shown up while he was there, recognized him as what he was, and recruited him for Hal’s group.
All of this story tumbled from Mira as she held his wedding ring. When the spigot of information ran dry, she looked at Cam. He stood at the window, facing her. Tears dampened his cheeks.
“True,” he whispered. “All of it. Hal’s mother—and his dad—pretty much saved my life. Hal put everyone through a stupid loyalty test, but I got a break because of my age. The only thing I wanted at that point was to get out of the dome, to live some place where I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to seize this island. I just want to live out the rest of my life in peace.”
He sounded so tired that Mira got up, took his left hand, and slipped the wedding ring back onto it. “If we can trust each other, Cam, maybe we can help each other.”
Just then the door swung open and Red and Trixie rushed in, looking triumphant. “We have the perfect SUV, Cam!” Red announced.
“And Nico’s out there right now, experimenting with rendering the whole thing invisible,” Trixie added, then her eyes went to Mira. “You, hostage. Can we trade you for the island?”
“I doubt it,” Mira replied. “People own pieces of this island but no one owns the whole thing. You’d be smarter to blend in.”
“I knew it!” Red exclaimed. “I’ve been saying this all along.”
“Yeah?” Trixie said. “Blend in how? Where? As what? And why? I don’t know if I can’t blend into this place. How do I find work? A partner? Where do I live? How do I act? The only way any of us are going to blend is if the island is ours. From there, we can negotiate for certain rights, for…”
“Negotiate with who?” Red asked.
“Negotiate with whoever’s in charge in exchange for the hostage’s life,” Trixie said. “Give us the island, we return her.”
“My name’s Mira.”
“Honey, I don’t give a shit what your name is. You’re a Normal, just like the monsters who…”
“Wrong,” Cam said. “She’s the seer mentioned in Jon’s columns.”
Trixie’s eyes widened. “You? You’re the one who read Stoner and Lightning and Weather Wizard and…”
“It was through Stoner that I learned about the dome and through Lightning that I learned she felt betrayed by Hal.”
“Wait, what’s your name again?” Trixie asked.
“Mira. Morales.”
“Well, Mira Morales, that’s bullshit about Lightning. She knew just like the rest of us that without Hal, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Now, hold on, just hold on.” Red patted the air with her hands. “I can see why Lightning felt betrayed by Hal. She completed the job she was assigned—and died because of it. Hal could’ve pulled off that job by himself, but I think he knew it might kill him. And look at what happened to Stoner and Wizard. They both went nuts, just like Lightning, and also were killed.”
“That’s such bullshit, Red,” Trixie spat. “Hal couldn’t be first. We couldn’t risk losing him. He isn’t just the most powerful among us, he’s our leader.”
Red laughed. “Shit. He’s not my leader. Not here. I don’t take orders from some wannabe dictator.”
“He’s not a dictator. He’s…”
“Authoritarian,” Mira said.
“Focused,” Cam offered.
“Yeah, focused.” Trixie snapped her fingers. “He’s been focused for, like, forever.”
“Dictator,” Red repeated.
“Then why the hell are you hanging around?” Trixie shot back.
“Because he may succeed.”
Fractures existed within Hal’s little group, Mira thought, and she intended to find a way to deepen them. “You’re the telekinetic. I saw video of what you did. You could have decimated the Tango bridge.”
“Yeah, I could’ve. But not with Lightning’s dramatic flair. That’s why the committee selected her for the task.”
“What committee?” Mira asked. “Who’s on this committee?”
“No one knows,” Cam said. “Not even Hal.”
Ha, Mira thought. “How’s it work, then?”
“Wrong question,” Red said. “How DID it work before the dome collapsed?”
The door swung open just then and Squirt stood there in bloodstained clothes, his skin the color of Wonder Bread, eyes bulging in their sockets, right hand gripping the door frame so he didn’t fall over. “You all… talkin’ shit about Hal.”
A ragged Frisbee appeared in his left hand. He tried to lift it, presumably to hurl it at one or all of them, but his arm refused to move. “I think… I’m pretty fucked up.” Then he pitched forward and Cam caught him before he slammed into the floor.
“He’s not breathing,” Cam announced.
He set Squirt gently on the floor and tore open his shirt, exposing his chest, all that pudgy, pale skin. Cam pressed his mouth to Squirt’s for one deep inhalation followed by a sharp exhalation. But beyond this, the resuscitation was like nothing Mira had ever seen.
Cam raised up, pressed his hand to Squirt’s bare chest, then Red and Trixie did the same. Flames from Red’s fingertips pierced Squirt’s chest without burning the skin, without leaving any marks at all. Powerful pulses of energy traveled through him, pulses Mira felt, pulses that caused Squirt’s body to jerk up from the floor, then fall back against it. He briefly changed appearances—a man Mira had never seen, then looked like himself again and he snapped upright, wheezing, coughing, struggling to catch his breath. Mira caught him and slapped him hard on the back.
Squirt coughed violently, expelling a large wad of phlegm from his throat, then dropped to the floor again, panting. Mira’s hands lingered on his forehead and face, inadvertently reading his short life in the dome—and his life here—and knew he wouldn’t survive unless he saw an actual doctor. She blurted, “He needs to see a real doctor.”
“That’s me.” Nico strolled into the room like he owned it. Tall, thin, white as bone, he stooped over Squirt, pressed his hand to the kid’s forehead. “Fever’s way down. Can someone help me get him onto the bed?”
Trixie stepped forward and slipped her arms under Squirt’s shoulders, Nico took hold of his feet and they lifted him onto the bed. “It’s not just his fever,” Mira said. “His heart stopped. He really should see a doctor.”
“I had five years of med school,” Nico snapped. “How many have you had, Mira?”
The scorn in his voice annoyed her. “You’re not concerned that his heart stopped?”
“I feel like shit.” Squirt whimpered, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “My legs hurt, my back hurts, my face hurts, I hurt all over.”
“Well, it’s not like we can take you to an emergency room,” Nico told him. “We risked a lot just to get you antibiotics.”
“Can you bring a doctor here?” Squirt pleaded.
“Not without Hal’s permission.”
Red exploded. “Fuck that. We don’t need Hal’s permission. You can shroud us and the car and we can bring the doc here. Squirt is our responsibility, Nico, not just Hal’s.”
“I agree on that,” Trixie said.
“Me, too,” Cam added.
Nico looked at Mira and when he spoke, his voice sounded almost conciliatory. “Do we have to go to a hospital to nab a doc?”
“No,” Mira replied. “Plenty of doctors have offices. But I don’t how many are left on the island. Nearly everyone evacuated. And it’s not like just any doc will do. A dermatologist wouldn’t be able to help him since his problem isn’t skin-related.”
Nico rolled his red eyes. “I know what dermatologist means. Who’s your doctor? We’ll go to your doctor.”
Ian Rincon. “He’s downtown.”
“Has he left the island?”
“No.”
Nico looked relieved. “You and I are going to pay him a visit, Mira. I’ll need one of you Lethals with us. Just in case.”
“I’ll go,” Trixie said. “And keep the bitch in line.”
“That’s cool,” Red said. “Cam and I will stay with you, Squirt. Get you something really good to eat.”
He sniffled and wiped at his tearing eyes. “Just hurry, Nico. Please.”
Nico scooped up Mira’s sandals, thrust them at her. “Let’s go, Mira.”
Please be there, Ian.