34. After
Chapter thirty-four
After
Carrson
Smell returns first, the sting of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. Then sound, a steady beeping that grows louder as consciousness drags me toward it.
I pry open my eyes. White ceiling tiles form a perfect grid above me, one stained yellow near the air vent. The room is dim except for sunlight leaking through the blinds.
I drag in a mouthful of air, and pain scrapes through my chest. My lungs feel lined with sandpaper, each inhalation dragging across raw tissue. I try again, slower, but the burning only worsens.
Burning.
Smoke filling the tunnel. A wooden beam crushing my father’s legs. Thomson and I lifting together until our muscles shook while flames consumed the supports behind us.
Laurel disappearing into the darkness ahead.
I sit up so fast the room spins. The monitor beside the bed protests, its steady rhythm breaking into frantic beeps, and the IV taped inside my arm pulls against my skin.
I grip the mattress until the walls stop moving, then search for my clothes, my phone, anything that might tell me how much time I lost.
The door opens, and Thomson walks in carrying a paper cup.
He stops with one foot still in the hallway.
His shirt is wrinkled enough to have been slept in, although judging by the shadows beneath his eyes sleep is not something he’s been getting a lot of.
A white bandage wraps his forearm. Dirt rims the soles of his shoes, dried into the grooves, and the coffee cup bends beneath the pressure of his hand.
“Oh, thank God.” He enters and lets the door close behind him. “You’re awake.”
“Where’s Laurel? How long have I been unconscious?”
Thomson crosses to the table beside my bed and puts the coffee down. The warm, nutty aroma of it fills the air.
“Three days. You had severe smoke inhalation. Your oxygen levels wouldn’t stay stable, so they sedated you while your lungs recovered.”
“Where’s Laurel?”
His eyes move to the monitor, then the IV, then the streaks of sunlight on the floor. Anywhere except me.
He picks up the cup again, blows the steam from the surface with his lips pursed. “I need you to stay in bed.”
The ache behind my ribs has nothing to do with smoke.
“Where is she?” I ask again, frustration beginning to spike.
“We don’t know.” He finally looks at me, and the exhaustion in his face tells me this is not a problem he discovered on his way into the room. He’s been carrying it since the fire.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Thomson moves immediately, planting himself between me and the door. “Carrson, listen to me. You’ve been unconscious. You can’t get up and start running around the hospital.”
“Then explain what’s going on.”
“Laurel’s missing,” he says without softening the words. “Sam, Abbie, and Cicley too. Almost half the Sisters from our year haven’t been seen since the fire.”
His thumb moves over the crushed seam of the coffee cup, pressing it deeper. “They just…vanished.”
“How?” I ask, already thinking it through.
A group that large can’t disappear by accident.
Thirty women have phones, cars, bank accounts, families, and friends.
Each should leave a trail even if she doesn’t intend to.
If they fled together, one of them would have called by now.
If they were injured, a hospital would have a record. If they died, there would be bodies.
So what the fuck is going on?
“Did the tunnel collapse?”
“No. Burning debris broke through parts of the ceiling, but the main passage held.” Thomson drags a hand over his face. Grime remains beneath his nails. “The fire department cleared it. The police searched it twice. Our people went through again after they left.”
“Search it again.”
His hand falls to his side. “I spent fourteen hours down there yesterday. Your father finally sent two Brothers to drag me out. We checked the main passage, the service tunnels, the chapel branch, every exit that hasn’t been sealed for decades.”
I look at the mud on his shoes again. Not mud. Soot and pulverized stone ground together beneath the soles.
“The tracker,” I say, desperately grasping for anything that might help. “What happened to Laurel’s tracker?”
“It stopped transmitting during the fire.”
The beeping accelerates beside me. I draw another breath, forcing air through lungs that refuse to expand.
“When?”
“While everyone was in the tunnels.”
“Where was the last signal?”
“The main passage, near the eastern branch.”
The passage leading toward the old chapel ruins. No collapse. No body. Only a signal that existed one second and disappeared the next.
I press the heel of my hand against my eyes. “Could the heat have damaged it?”
“Maybe. It wasn’t designed to withstand those temperatures.
” Thomson takes another sip and I wonder if that’s all he’s been living on while I was sedated.
“Water could have shorted it. Enough stone or metal between the tracker and the receiver could block transmission. Or enough distance. Its range has limits, like all trackers.”
“Silas could be blocking it again,” I offer, remembering how Silas severed the connection when he had Laurel inside the Faraday cage on his bus.
He could have done it again, but why would he take half a class of Sisters as well?
If he wanted ransom, he would have made contact by now, and the success of Devil’s Dust means money is unlikely to be his motive.
My left palm aches as I brace my hand on the mattress.
A row of stitches crosses the center, the skin swollen and bruised around them.
The wound brings back the dagger between our hands, blood gathering over the blade, and Laurel curling her fingers around mine after I loosened my grip enough to let her leave.
She chose me.
Less than an hour later, I let her hand go.
She told me to leave. Pressed her palm to my chest and sent me back for my father, but that doesn’t change what I did. I turned away from her in a tunnel filling with smoke and flame, trusting her to keep moving while I answered someone else’s call.
It’s not the first time.
During the attack, Laurel told me to help Rebecca, and I obeyed because The Order was under siege and duty demanded it. She went into the Vault without me. This time my father called, and I left her again.
Both times, she gave permission.
Both times, I took it.
I told myself I was protecting everyone I loved, but the result is always the same. When duty pulls in one direction and Laurel stands in the other, I leave her behind.
Now she’s gone.
The pressure in my chest becomes unbearable, a pain no amount of oxygen could correct. I promised she would be my first bond and my last. My only bond. That promise means I can no longer choose everyone else and expect Laurel to survive until I return.
I catch the edge of the tape securing the IV.
“Don’t,” Thomson warns.
I pull the catheter free. Blood rises from the puncture and drips toward my wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Finding clothes.”
I push myself upright, but Thomson catches my arm before I can stand, his grip biting.
“I already watched you stop breathing this week. Watched while they pounded on your chest so your heart would beat.” The anger in his voice can’t disguise the fear underneath it. “I’m not doing it again.”
“I can breathe.” I shake free.
“Barely.”
My feet meet the floor, cold tile to bare skin. The room tilts, and Thomson shifts closer, ready to catch me. I bite the inside of my cheek, refusing to give in.
“The eastern tunnel is where we start,” I continue once the floor becomes level again. “Map every exit and work outward. I want the name of every missing Sister, the last location of each phone, and every vehicle that left Ashford property after the fire.”
Thomson releases my arm but remains between me and the door.
“Traffic cameras,” I add as the plan takes shape. “Between the house, Rosewood Hall, the chapel ruins, and every road leading out of Ashport.”
“The police are already investigating.”
“The police know only the tunnels the fire exposed. They don’t know Silas has been watching Laurel, that he blocked her tracker before, or that Jack will do anything to hurt my father and me.”
Thomson dips his head in acknowledgement. He knows I’m right.
I straighten, waiting for my lungs to punish me. The pain comes, but it doesn’t put me back in bed.
Memory returns more clearly now. My father trapped beneath the beam. Thomson and me pulling together while Jack and the remaining members continued through the tunnel.
“Is Father alive?”
“They released him yesterday. Two cracked ribs, a burn along his left arm, and enough smoke inhalation to keep him furious for the next week, but he’ll recover.” Thomson watches me before adding, “He’s at Rosewood Hall.”
Relief comes tangled with shame.
My father is alive because I went back for him.
Laurel is missing because I went back for him.
“Jack?” I ask.
“He made it out with the others. Uninjured. He’s at Rosewood too. So is Jackson.”
Of course Jack escaped untouched. He demanded the sealing, watched it, and left the destruction without so much as a burned sleeve.
I move toward the door.
Thomson blocks me. “You aren’t walking out of here in a hospital gown.”
“I don’t care what I’m wearing.”
“I do. No one needs to see your ass while we search for Laurel.”
Any other day, the comment might get a response from me. Today it barely reaches the surface.
“Move,” I tell him.
“No.”
I consider shoving him aside. In my current condition, I could probably manage it, but not without losing time and possibly consciousness. Thomson recognizes the calculation in my face. His shoulders shift, feet positioning themselves as he gets ready to fight in a hospital room.
The door opens before either of us decides how far we’re willing to take this.
Two men enter wearing dark suits.