13. Chapter 13 #2
I sat down. “Gunnar will be pissed about having to stay here. He hates hospitals.”
Freda chuckled. “He hates everything.”
“True.” A ghost of a smile touched my mouth.
Freda rubbed the back of her neck. “Jamie’s going to be devastated if he loses that eye. He’s vain.”
“He’s also a shifter. He’ll heal faster than a human.”
She nodded, but stood and started pacing. Freda was a soldier at heart, and soldiers hated not being able to do anything. The waiting was probably worse than the fight.
I took my cellphone out. It sat next to the sat phone, a bulky, utilitarian thing, the kind of hardware that cost more than most people’s cars and did one thing very well. Conall had pressed it into my hands before I left Denver, his expression leaving no room for argument.
“Call him,” Freda murmured. “I’ll wait here.”
I went outside to make the call. The night air was cold and clean, and the mountains loomed black against the star-scattered sky.
Conall picked up on the first ring. “Riley. Thank fuck. I couldn’t get through to you earlier, and one of Drew’s people spotted Marlowe in Wyoming.”
“That’s why I’m calling. We ran into him and his operatives on the trail. I’m so sorry. Jamie was shot, and it grazed his eye socket. They’re taking him to an eye center in Salt Lake City.”
I told him what had happened, including Marlowe having an implant and Compulsor energy. The words came out flat and measured, the implant shutting out my worry and fear. I realized with a jolt that the thing was becoming useful. I shoved the thought away.
“Are you hurt?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing serious.” I didn’t tell him about the bullet grazing my thigh or needing a few stitches. “Mangus took a hit from whatever device Marlowe used. Some kind of taser. He’s recovering, and Athena is fine. They’re with Beau.”
“I’m sending two Betas from the area. Hudson and Lainey Sanders are mated and work a ranch in West Yellowstone. What else do you need?”
“I need a cup of tea, your blueberry pancakes, and ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. Since none of that is practical, I think we’re okay for now.
” I leaned against the cold brick of the hospital.
“Thank you for taking care of me and for the satellite phone. We’d still be on that mountain without it. ”
“I’m coming to Jackson.” I could hear his wolf close to the surface.
“No. You have important Council meetings. The Pack needs you there.”
“My mate was ambushed by the man who tortured her, and one of my best Betas is in the hospital and may lose an eye. The Council can wait.”
“That’s exactly what they want. To pull you away so the Feds can push through those registration laws while you’re distracted. Don’t give them that.”
He growled, low and frustrated. “Riley—”
“I’m safe. I’m in a hospital with Freda, and Beau and his people know where we are.”
“Marlowe is out there.”
I looked up at the brilliant night sky. “Marlowe wants me to go to him. He’s not done with me, but I don’t think he’s after me. He also wants whatever is at Mary Mountain. Finish what you need to in D.C., then come.”
Silence filled the line as he wrestled between the Alpha instinct to protect and the Tracker’s understanding of the bigger game.
“If anything changes, if you so much as smell that bastard, you call me immediately.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
He sighed, and the bond vibrated between us, a little stronger than before. “Keep the sat phone on you if you head out again.”
“I will. You be careful too. Washington is full of another kind of predator.”
I stood in the cold parking lot for a few minutes after disconnecting. Jamie had been seriously injured because of me. The implant noted the guilt and filed it away. I got a strange sense that the thing considered guilt a useless emotion.
Shaking my head, I turned and walked back inside. Freda looked up when I came in, her eyebrows raised in question.
“I talked him into staying in D.C.”
She nodded. “Good call.”
The next morning, I pushed Gunnar’s hospital door open with my hip, two coffees balanced in one hand and a bag of donuts from the vending machine in the other. The coffee smelled burned and tasted worse, but it was hot and caffeinated, which was all that mattered at seven in the morning.
Gunnar lay on a bed that looked like a child’s mattress.
His massive shoulders spilled over one side, and his feet hung a few inches off the end.
Bandages covered the left side of his chest and shoulder, and an IV line snaked into a thick vein in his forearm.
His skin was pallid, and he had dark circles around his eyes.
“You look better,” I lied, setting a coffee on the rolling table beside him.
He grunted, reaching for it with his good arm, and wincing as he pulled at his stitches. He took a long sip and grimaced. “That’s terrible.”
“I know.” I abandoned my own coffee and pulled a chair closer.
Gunnar eyed the packet of powdered sugar donuts. “Those for me?”
“Yep.” I unwrapped them and set the package on the table in front of him.
A nurse bustled in, checked his vitals, and adjusted his IV. She eyed the donuts, but didn’t say anything. Gunnar scowled when she left the room.
“They keep waking me up every two hours to take my temperature and blood pressure.” He picked at the edge of the bandage on his shoulder. “I told ’em I heal fast, but they don’t listen.”
“That knife came a quarter inch from your subclavian artery. You were this far from bleeding out on that mountain.” My voice was colder than I intended, the implant filing away the clinical facts, but raw fear lurked beneath the surface.
“And the doctor said your blood type is rare. They had to fly it in from Bozeman.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders and immediately regretted it, his face tightening. “I’ve had worse.”
“Name one time.”
“I fell off a cliff in Glacier when I was twenty and broke a leg and an arm. My cousin had to carry me seven miles back to the trailhead. This is nothing.” The donut between his fingers looked tiny.
“Jamie’s in Salt Lake. The bullet fragmented near his optic nerve.”
Gunnar went still, a donut halfway to his mouth. “Damn it. Is he gonna lose his eye?”
“I don’t know. The doctor here said it’s light-responsive, which is good, but there’s extensive damage.
Freda’s with Beau, going through the gear we removed from the operatives.
Military-grade weapons, body armor, and comms equipment.
Nothing traceable, but it’s more evidence that Apex Mentis is running operations with the engineered operatives. ”
“Langston’s gonna have a field day with this.” Gunnar’s massive hand curled into a fist on the blanket. “Three dead operatives in a national park. The Feds will be all over us.”
“Let them come. We were ambushed, and they shot first.”
He gave me a long, assessing look. “You talked to Marlowe. Did he really stick a damn implant in himself and figure out how to duplicate Cognizant abilities? My brain is struggling to process that bullshit.”
“Yes.” I watched him eat the last donut in one bite.
He absently wiped his fingers on the front of his blue hospital gown, smearing powdered sugar all over. “If it were anyone but you, I’d think they were making this shit up. According to everything I know about Cog abilities, they’re innate. You’re either born with them, or you’re not.”
I tried another sip of coffee and set it back down. “He stood ten feet away and told me to come to him. My foot moved before I could stop it.”
“Jesus.” Gunnar ran a hand over his face. “This is worse than we thought.”
“Much worse. He’s heading to whatever is at those coordinates, and now he knows we are too.”
Gunnar was quiet for a long moment, his thick fingers tapping a slow rhythm on the blanket. Then he looked up at me, his expression shifting into something almost amused.
“In all my years as an ISB investigator, I’ve had two cases go sideways.” He held up two beefy fingers. “Can you guess which ones they are?”
“I’d rather not.”
“The last two cases. Both with you.”
My shoulders hunched. “I’m sure it’s a coincidence.” The implant seemed to stir. Damn it, that was weird.
“Is it?”
I crossed my arms. “You’re the one in the hospital bed, not me. I think the common denominator is you.”
He huffed, then winced and pressed a hand to his bandaged shoulder. “Shit, don’t make me laugh.” He lay back and studied me for a moment, his dark, beady eyes shrewd. “That thing in your head. It’s evolving, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer right away. “Some days are better than others. Conall’s Pack and the hellhounds help. But yes, it’s evolving.”
“They can’t take it out,” he confirmed.
“No.”
He nodded once. “However this ends, and whatever we find out there, you fight to stay yourself. Not the closed-off, robot version who came back from Roswell, but the real you. The one who gives me the side-eye and teases me about my cats.” His voice dropped, gruff and earnest. “I don’t want another partner. Breaking you in was bad enough.”
I nodded jerkily and rose to gather the coffee cups and trash. He was still pale. “Get better. I also need my partner back. I’m not going to call Fergus on this one. I think it’s better not to involve him at this point.”
Gunnar nodded. “Try not to get shot, stabbed, or kidnapped again before I get out of here.”
“You’re the one in the hospital bed.” As I left the hospital, I pulled out my phone and dialed Parker’s number.
It was time to get him involved.