Before I can sort that out in my head, two vans speed down the steep drive, screeching to a halt in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
Dad yells, “They’re not ours!”
I pull up my rifle and sweep it across both vans, careful to avoid the residential elements. Both vehicles and all of the people in them are instantly destroyed.
Then it’s quiet again, as if nothing happened.
I blink, take a deep breath, and turn, catching True’s eye. He looks a little shocky. He wipes the vomit from his lips, not a single one of his fingers pointing in the right direction.
“Your hand!” I say, reaching for him.
“Asshole rifle-butted me. Guess he didn’t like that I was shooting at him,” he cracks, some of the life coming back into his face.
“I hope you killed that motherfucker,” I mutter, worrying over his mangled digits. “This is your cutting hand.”
“Yes, it is.” Truett goes green again. “And yeah, I did.”
He’d said something about never wanting to kill another person, and it’s strange that none of this has quite landed with me. Or, more accurately, that I’m perfectly fine with having killed people who were trying to kill me.
The fuck?
“You won’t ever be a spy, Wildling,” Truett says, looking at his hand with a pained grimace. “But you sure are a good person to have around in a firefight.”
Before I can respond to that nonsense, an intense beam of light rains down on us, like a spotlight in a Broadway play.
Only, this isn’t Manhattan, and that’s no stage light. I look up, and the illumination is coming from a helicopter directly overhead, thewop-wop-wopnearly silent, barely disturbing the trees around us. More people in black gear descend from ropes into this fucked-up theater in the round.
My stomach bottoms out as I take aim, no idea how much—ammo?—I have left, or if we have any shot of coming out of this alive.
“No, Rahm! That’s Wimberley!” Dad yells, waving his one good arm. “They’re with us!”
Thank God.
A woman with a long blonde braid and Dad’s eyes approaches with a black canvas bag.
“Maya?”
Instead of answering, she scans the various injuries with a practiced eye, then sends a hand signal to the helicopter, which moves off.
Her first order of business is Truett’s hand. Pulling a syringe from her black bag, she injects something into his palm, then efficiently and brutally straightens his broken fingers. From her flak vest, she pulls out a black sheet of…something. Peeling the sheet apart into two separate layers, she works quickly to press the layers on either side of his hand, past his wrist. Within seconds, the—polymer?—molds to Truett’s hand like Han Solo in carbonite, stabilizing it.
Not gonna lie. There’s not one element of this scenario that isn’t freaking me out.
Side note: the newStar Warsremakes suck.
“This will crack off in thirty minutes and your bones should be good to go by then,” she informs him. “If any of your tattoos come out crooked, let us know, and we’ll fix them on the back end.”
Truett does not look reassured.
Before I can ask my twin what the fuck is going on—or why she’s clearly in the loop about some part of our fathers’ lives I’m only just now hearing about—she’s already moved on to Dad, flanked by two familiar figures hauling extra gear.
“H and H?” I say, stunned.
Holmes and Honoré. My special-ops cousins.
Figures.
It’s the first time I’ve felt a step behind the rest of the family—and I don’t love it.
