33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
W hile I wait for Lorcan to emerge from Finn’s room, I try to stay as still and calm as possible. Inside, I want to fidget, jump up and pace around, anything to release this nervous energy.
When the hospital door swings open, Lorcan pauses at the threshold for a minute, scanning the hallway for me, and I almost collapse in relief. His expression is the one I’ve come to recognize so well. There’s no rage or confusion anywhere. Whether Finn remembers or not, he didn’t say anything to his brother.
“He wants to see you.” Lorcan nods at me.
We’re toe-to-toe and he still hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“You okay?” I ask.
A wisp of a smile flits across his face before it vanishes. His lips brush my temple as one of his arms circles my waist. “I’m headed home. I’m leaving one of the guys here to come with you.” He gestures to a man whose name I can never remember. Felix? Jorge? It’s strange to think how much I relied on Antonio. Lorcan’s hand slides away, and his footsteps retreat behind me, brisk, determined. Closing my eyes, I realize I forgot to mention telling Antonio’s family.
The metal door handle is frigid against my palm when I push on it. Finn’s icy eyes snap open and zero in on me. Unlike Lorcan, I can’t read him. I have no idea whether I’m in trouble or in the clear.
“How are you feeling?” I shove my hands into my pockets as the door clicks shut behind me. I hover inside the room, balanced between staying put and fleeing at the first sign of trouble.
“Like I was stabbed a bunch of times and left for dead.”
“Is that better or worse than normal?”
He chuckles and then coughs. With a breath in that appears uncomfortable, he says, “I heard you found me.”
With that, the tension drains out of me. He’s not going to grill me. He doesn’t know anything. I take my hands out of my pockets and inch closer to the end of his bed. “I did, yeah. Lucky find, I guess.”
“Thank you.”
A smile blooms in me, even as the sound of his skull connecting with the flagstones rings in my ears again. “You don’t remember?”
“Last thing I remember is kicking the shit out of Derry in the bathroom because he was putting his paws on you.”
That means he doesn’t recall any of the interactions with Malik either in the basement or before he got in the helicopter. I couldn’t have asked for a better head injury. “That’s what you told Lorcan?”
“Yeah. You didn’t tell him Derry was after you?”
I freeze. “No, no I did not.”
“Well, he was fucking pissed. Looks like we might have more than one war to worry about now. Not that I mind. It knits us together tighter.”
I run my hands down my face. “I should go talk to him.”
“Do you or Lorcan know who did this? He said he didn’t, but his face told me another story.”
“He has an idea, but he won’t tell me.”
He smirks. “Keeping secrets from you? How dare he.”
“What’s your prognosis?” There are the obvious bandages, and I wonder what else happened to him I can’t see.
“I’ll be out of here in a week.”
“According to?”
“Me, of course.” When he shifts in the bed he winces. “I’m a liability here. Get home. Get the ol’ memory jogged. Go after whoever did this.”
“The doctors think your memory will return?” I clench the bottom of his bed.
“They don’t know shit.” With a grunt, he squirms in the bed again. “Can’t get comfortable. They need to start giving me the good drugs.”
My mind drifts to the last time I was seriously injured. It was a few years ago; I woke up to Malik clutching my hand.
“How’d you find me?”
I give my head a quick shake to clear the memory and devote my attention to Finn. “It was luck. Ian was supposed to have swept the exterior. We checked the dead bodies for ID or anything else. We thought you were missing. And I don’t know. I was standing in the field, and something about the shed called to me. So I went to look.”
“And there I was.”
“And there you were.” Leaning against the side of the shed, pointing a gun at me.
We stare at each other, time ticking between us, but I can’t determine what he’s thinking. If he was Lorcan, I’d ask, but Finn would never tell me, even if I begged.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay.” Part of me actually means that; I hope it isn’t the part that gets me killed.
“My deartháir beag says we’re not trafficking women and kids anymore. I’m guessing that was your doing?”
“Bad for business.”
“That is the business. If you’re going to stick with my brother, you need to realize that. ’Cause whether me and Lorcan go our own way”—he pulls his hands apart and then laces them together, resting them on his stomach—“or we lock ourselves together, neither one of us is any Robin Hood. We’ve killed for each other. We’re bonded by blood.”
Except there’s good in Lorcan. “I don’t have a problem with your lifestyle.”
“Not much you can do about it, even if you did.”
A smile threatens to burst onto my face, and I glance away from him before it can take hold. Just because he can’t remember doesn’t mean he can’t figure it out again. “I should go. All hands on deck while we figure this out.”
“I want you here tomorrow with a status report.”
“There might not be anything to report.”
“Then come tell me that.”
“Whatever you want.” I open the door.
In my room, on the dresser, is a note from Lorcan indicating he’ll be out of town for two days, with the code for his office scribbled beside it. I gape at the numbers for a while, surprised he gave it. Maybe he’ll change it to something else as soon as he comes home. That’ll be the true test of how much he trusts me. Does he leave me with the code beyond the next couple of days?
Although I didn’t need to see the marks in the field, I made the trek out there for show as soon as I was on the property. It’s important to keep up appearances, especially now.
When I pick up my phone off the nightstand, there are two messages. One is from Carys and the other is from Dai Qing disguised as another random text. This time it’s a doctor’s appointment.
Frowning, I stare at the text for a few minutes. They’re calling me to headquarters for a meeting. While it would be nice to see Malik, the timing isn’t great. I need to speak to Dai Qing before I leave for the airport.
I dial Carys’s number and hold the phone to my ear.
She answers on the first ring. “Oh, God, Kim. Is he still alive?”
“What?”
“Finn. He called me early this morning or late last night. I was in a meeting, and so my phone was off. But he left this rambling message on my phone because he was dying.” Her voice catches on a sob.
“He’s alive, Carys.” What else did he say in that message? She’s calling me, so he couldn’t have outed me as FBI to her, or she’d be here shooting me herself. “What did he say in his message?”
Carys takes a few steadying breaths. I picture her worrying a wad of tissues as she talks. “Some personal stuff.”
“He has a phone in his room, if you want to call him. But—” I purse my lips. “He won’t remember calling you. His memory of last night is completely gone.”
“Oh,” Carys breathes out the word in a rush. “He’s okay?”
“A lot of injuries. Nothing that’s going to kill him.” Finn calling Carys when he thought he was dying softens me again. I can’t imagine receiving that phone call and being too far away to help. How would I feel if Lorcan called and left me that sort of message?
“Will he—is he likely to remember?”
“The doctor wasn’t sure.” There’s a heavy silence on the phone. “Look, Carys, if you need to see him, come. I can get you on the list at the hospital.”
“No.” Her voice is quiet. “No.” Her resolve hardens. “There are more reasons I shouldn’t. I have to go. Thank you for calling me and letting me know he’s okay.” Before I can say anything, the dial tone rings in my ear.
I stare at my phone, a little glad she’s not coming. It would be another complication I don’t need right now. Pushing my phone into my rear pocket, I head out of my room. I need the payphone—the one the FBI makes sure is within a few blocks of an operation for emergencies—to call Dai Qing and find out what’s going on before I hop on a plane. While Lorcan and Finn are too tied up to wonder where I’ve gone, it doesn’t seem like the best time to disappear, even if it only ends up being for a few hours.
Dai Qing answers on the third ring. “DQ, go.”
“You want me to come in?”
“Kimi.” There’s silence for a moment, and I picture her scrambling around her office to double-check our connection is secure. “I want to talk to you about your file. And we need to talk to you about something else that came up.”
“You need me to come there? After your sledgehammer subtlety last night, I have fires to put out here.”
“I thought you might want to check on Malik.” Her voice is quiet, but there’s a hint of reprimand in her tone.
I worry my bottom lip between my teeth. “Dare I ask?”
“You should ask.”
“How is he?”
“In a medically induced coma. I—it’s—do you realize what they did to him?”
I swallow. “Some of it, yeah. I told you it was bad.”
“You remember where to meet the plane?”
“I need to be out and back today. The turnaround needs to be quick.”
“Noted.”
“I’m serious, Dai Qing.”
“I’ll do what I can to make it happen.”
“Finn wants me in his room tomorrow. I don’t know exactly when Lorcan will be back. I can’t create more suspicion in anyone right now.”
“I understand. I’ll do whatever I can to minimize that.”
I hang up in a burst of annoyance. It’s not directed at her. Part of me is afraid I care too much about the wrong people right now.
Going to the head office when I’m on assignment feels like I’m standing too close to an open flame. The stench of burned hair follows me around as though I’ll burst into flames at any moment.
When I check in, Dai Qing has left instructions for me to meet her at the interrogation rooms closest to her office. That can’t be good. Did they take Zhang’s men with them when they left? Releasing everyone was a good initial strategy to keep Finn and Lorcan from knowing which person was valuable, but are they trying to force people to flip?
When I enter the room, Dai Qing is in the corner, her back to the door. There’s a file laid out in the middle of the table. Without saying anything to her, I flick it open.
“When do I get to see Malik?” I glance up at her.
She cocks her head. “When we’re done here, before you head back.”
“What’s this?” I tip my chin at the file. It’s already obvious it’s mine. I can’t believe she’s giving me access to it.
“Parts of your file. Not all of it was necessary for what you wanted, so I kept some of it.” She crosses the room and places her hand on the top before I can riffle through.
“What?” I meet her dark gaze.
“There are clear connections in here to people you’re currently working with.”
“So what?”
“Kimi, reading this, it might make it impossible for you to keep pretending with them. Are you sure you want to do this now?”
“Are there definitive answers in here for Chad’s death?”
“No.” She takes a deep breath. “It raises questions in my mind. First, why you were ever allowed to become an agent. I mean, it was pretty clear the other day you’ve got unresolved PTSD, and there are serious Mafia connections floating around you.”
My memory sparks again with the reaction my mother had to Lorcan. Not him. Not him. Anyone but him. “To the Donagheys?”
“Mostly the file points to the O’Malleys. But as you know, they’re in bed together in one way or another.”
“I know Chad was connected to the O’Malleys through The Cage. Who else?”
“Chad’s father, Ho-Jun.”
“He died a few months before Chad. An accident, right? I was so young, and then Chad died. I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“It was labeled an accident by the cops investigating. Ho-Jun worked at a garage as a mechanic. He was working after hours, and the jack holding up the car he was working on was faulty. He was—”
The blood leaves my body in a rush. Darkness floats around the edge of my vision. “Crushed.”