29. SHIFTING BLAME
I held onto Donovan long after he was gone. I knelt on the pavement with my chest pressed against him, wishing my breaths were his. My bent legs slowly going numb came as a cruel taunt because I felt everything else.
I was so damn close. Donovan was going to get the happy ending he deserved; Holland even said so. She had somewhere lined up. A safe place gone to waste.
Knowing that didn’t help me accept it while I clutched my brother like I could put the warmth back in his body. I brushed the dark hair away from his glassy eyes, then stared at them too long, whispering pleas for him to blink, to wake up, to live.
Sickness surged up from my gut. I gagged, coughed, and gulped as acid burned my throat raw.
There was no good time for the investigators to come stumbling into view, but it felt like an insult to see the three of them upright and breathing while me and mine were strewn across the bloody ground.
“Fitch…” Holland’s voice cracked.
She stood on Tobin’s left, and Vesper was on his right, jointly supporting his sagging, claw-shredded body. I couldn’t tell whether he was conscious and couldn’t bring myself to care. He’d failed at his job. They all had. They bumbled around and made a mess of what should have been a simple operation. So continued the theme I found pervasive with the Capitol and everyone associated with it: they disappointed me.
I stiffened while glaring up at them with all the venom I could muster. I wanted to scream, to throw them back, to choke the life out of them one by one so they could take turns feeling how I did right now. But it wouldn’t be enough.
Despite having rid myself of the earpiece, I still wore a microphone, so I assumed Felix had clued the women in to the tragedy that unfolded in their absence. Neither appeared surprised by the carnage before them, just sad. As if they had the right to mourn.
“Leave,” I muttered as I cradled Donovan’s head in my blood-slicked hand.
Holland’s brows knit together. “Let us help you—”
“I said go!” The scream tore loose, and it hurt. I was shaking, head to toe shivering with rage and a chill that seeped in through my shins where they pressed against the asphalt.
Holland slid from under Tobin’s arm, leaving Vesper to bear his weight alone.
“Your friend needs healing.” Holland stepped slowly forward with her hands up, palms out. The tip of her chin indicated Ripley lying beside me drawing rib-rattling breaths.
“He’ll be fine,” I said without fully—or even mostly—believing it.
Holland crept closer. Her bare arms were smeared with red, and her sweater had been forfeited to the cause of slowing Tobin’s blood loss. She kept her gaze locked with mine, fighting the slip toward Donovan’s face where it tucked against me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This shouldn’t have happened.” The remorse in her eyes started a fire that overwhelmed the cold in me.
“It wouldn’t have,” I spat, “if even one of you knew what the fuck you were doing.”
Holland’s sorrow turned into shock, and she began to protest, but I had more to say.
“ You caused this.” Donovan’s limp corpse in my arms made my meaning clear. “ You made me bring him. Why? Because I needed to ‘give a little?’” My voice climbed into a shout, and every statement made her flinch. “This is more than a little.”
It was more than a lot. It was everything. And it was gone.
I felt sick all over again, sucking air in a desperate effort to settle my roiling stomach.
“Fitch, it was an accident.” Holland protested. “I couldn’t have known—”
“You’re out of your depth, Investigator,” I seethed. “I don’t want you here, and I don’t need your help. I never did.” Holland reeled as I glowered at her. My nostrils flared through a snorted breath. “Now, go before I hurt more than your goddamned feelings.”
She stood, looking from me to Donovan to Ripley and back again, arguing without words.
“Holl…?” Vesper prompted, struggling under Tobin’s weight. “We need to get Toby to the Capitol. Soon.”
“Not without them,” Holland replied. Her features softened as she inched toward me once more. “Fitch, do you want to carry Donnie? I think I can get…” Her hand extended toward Ripley, and I targeted her with a repelling thought.
There was force to the blow, and it slammed into her, staggering her backward. She doubled over, holding her stomach.
“Holland, we can’t fight him.” Desperation edged into Vesper’s voice. “He’ll kick our asses.”
Finally, someone was talking some sense.
Holland steadied herself, then gave me a fleeting, wounded glance. “What about my dad?”
I huffed a bitter laugh. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask me right now.”
“Do you blame me?” Holland asked.
For asking? Or for killing my brother?
“Why shouldn’t I?” I replied.
Her features pinched. “Please, don’t hurt him.”
A snarling grin curved my lips. “I don’t know, Holland, maybe you need to give a little.”
Quick as a blink, she drew her sidearm from her waist holster and leveled it at me.
“Holland!” Vesper yelped, but the lead investigator didn’t back down .
“Tell me where he is,” Holland said. It must have taken every shred of her composure to sound so severe.
I knelt, half-collapsed on the pavement, hot with anger, cold with chill, and numb from the waist down. Donovan’s body had gone tepid in my arms, unmoving for the longest time. I wanted to join him wherever he’d gone, wanted to swallow the bullet Holland had chambered and leave this place forever. Death was the kindest thing the investigator could have offered me.
A morbid thought targeted the barrel of the pistol and raised it until the sight sat between my eyes. “Go ahead,” I said in a soft voice. “Make it quick.”
Her lips fell apart, and her finger curled back from the trigger.
“Can’t even kill someone right,” I sneered. “Little wonder you investigators are a dying breed.”
A white panel van rolled into view, the beams of its headlights bouncing across our sorry scene. Felix must have given up waiting and brought the getaway vehicle curbside.
Vesper shifted against Tobin’s slumped body, clearly struggling with the dead weight. “Holland, we have to go.”
The pistol hovered in the air between us until Holland holstered it and sighed. “Fitch…” She swallowed. “I am so deeply sorry. Please… don’t do anything rash.”
Turning, she joined Vesper and the two of them hobbled Tobin toward the waiting van. I watched as Felix bounded out and around the side of the car to tug the sliding door open and usher the other three inside .
Putting Donovan in the trunk was the hardest part. Physically. Emotionally. I stood with the lid hinged open for what felt like an age, apologizing, then finally closed him inside.
Ripley slouched in the passenger seat, in and out of consciousness as we made our way across town. The cruel collar had been removed, left on the ground beside Jax’s corpse, but the damage remained. I tried not to stare, but the grievous wounds dug into his chin and chest made me wonder if he wouldn’t have fared better in the Capitol healers’ care.
Too late for regret now. The investigators were gone, and we were leaving, too. I started driving before I knew where I was going, but the way became clear as I exited the warehouse district. I wanted—needed—to go to the Bitters’ End. The place I kept crash landing lately. One time literally.
The needle on the gas gauge bumped empty as I shifted into park. The Porsche was spent and so was I, but I still had to get Ripley into the building. Fortunately, the stick-thin teen weighed next to nothing, so I cradle carried him to the porch, then used my magic to open the door before stumbling inside.
The warm, bright interior felt as inviting as home. I staggered through the entry and into the bar area, where the redheaded Nash siblings were in the middle of what looked like a heated discussion .
I heard none of it, but I saw the frustration on their faces melt rapidly away when they turned to my arrival.
Behind the bar, Nash stood, so stricken and speechless that it frightened me.
Tears—finally—stung my eyes. My body went weak, and I sobbed his name.
He sprung into motion, launching himself over the counter with a speed of purpose I’d rarely seen. Bolting across the floor, he made it to me as I sunk to my knees and laid Ripley’s body out.
Nash dropped beside me and caught my face in his hands as I began panting, shuddering, collapsing in on myself.
He asked questions I couldn’t answer.
“What happened?”
“Are you all right?”
“Where’s Donnie?”
That one broke me.
I tried to bat his hands away with my bloodstained ones but ended up clinging onto his wrists instead. I held on and wished they were life preservers because I was drowning.
“Donnie’s gone,” I choked out.
Nash’s ruddy cheeks went pale.
“I told Holland it was her fault,” I stammered, “but I think it’s mine…”
“Where is he?” Nash asked, his voice remarkably even.
“In the trunk,” was all I could say before another sob strangled me.
His eyes had a sheen of moisture as tears welled up. In the years we’d known each other, I had never seen him cry. I wasn’t sure I could stomach causing one more person to hurt tonight.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” He thumbed the hair off my face. “I’ll take care of the rest.” Sliding his hands down, he gripped my shoulders and pulled me to my feet.
No sooner was I upright than did he throw his arms around me. I lay against him, completely enveloped. I hung on loosely, soaking his shirt with my tears and Donovan’s blood.
Pippa joined us, pulling Ripley to the side and tending to him like a battlefield nurse. I spent a tearful glance on the two of them and was relieved Maggie wasn’t here to see this. The last thing we needed was a frantic zombie scurrying around the bar or sniffing out the cadaver I had stashed in my car.
My fingers knotted in the buttery fabric of Nash’s flannel as he lifted and carried me out of the room. I was silently grateful and so, so weak. Ready to lay down and never get up again.
When we reached the upstairs bathroom, he sat me down on the edge of the tub. It was a strangely distant sensation, sitting as motionless as a mannequin while he crouched and tugged off my boots, then got to work peeling away my ruined clothes and piling them on the tile floor.
As he pulled my shirt off over my head, my bare skin brushed against him. I almost begged him to hold me again, but other thoughts were quicker to find voice.
“Nash?” I stammered. It was risky to start speaking and find myself unable to stop, but I had to know. “Why are you nice to me?”
He looked up from where he’d crouched between my legs. His brows knit together over eyes trimmed with feathery lashes.
I swallowed hard, remembering missed calls and unanswered messages. Things I did wrong because I couldn’t do a damn thing right.
“I’m not nice to you.” I wiped my hand across my bleary eyes.
Rather than answer, Nash stood and reached past me to turn the shower on. In a matter of seconds, the air began to cloud with steam.
He moved to the sink, lathering his hands with a bar of soap then rinsing them under the faucet. While he dried them on the hanging towel, I caught his expression in the foggy mirror. He looked distant, pensive.
“I’m going to check on Ripley,” he said. “Take your time. I’ll be close by.”
I nodded, feeling numbness creeping in again. Not from cold or immobility, rather a response I’d trained into myself after years of practice. When it came to feeling things—namely anguish or remorse—I could deal with them on or off. Donovan said he hated off, but I liked it so much better.