Holmes sends me an apologetic look as he cuts away Dad’s shirt. Honoré holds his arm together while Maya administers an injection. She then takes a roll of something from Holmes that looks like that same polymer and wraps Dad from shoulder to wrist. I watch, fascinated and horrified, as they work like a pit crew to position his elbow tight to his body and his forearm across his abs.
This is not the first time they’ve done that.
Seconds later, the entire arm is immobilized, and Dad looks down, giving that sprawling chuckle I’ve heard all my life. “I’ll be back,” he says, his Terminator imitation as terrible as always.
Maya shakes her head. “No. We are not doing that again.”
Heads-up: those remakes suck too.
“You’re no fun, Maya-girl,” Dad says, touching her nose.
She rolls her eyes at him, then hands him a bottle of water. “Here. I’ve got to deal with Baba.”
Maya turns to our father and pours water over his head, then makes a series of small injections around the wound, holding the edges together. Seconds later, she pulls away, examining her work. Satisfied, she kisses Baba’s cheek before checking on the remains of the people we killed.
The ash… That’s people too.
Maya lets out a loud whistle, and Baba goes over. Maya looks away as he shoots—ashes?—the person on the ground.
H and H approach me, and Holmes, Maverick’s by-the-book twin, takes the rifle from me. Sirens go off in the distance, and I finally catalog the full scene. Nearly silent helicopters hovering in a perimeter, operators using the same rifle to reduce the remaining bodies and vehicles to ash.
My brain finally catches up, then jumps ahead.
This isn’t just vigilantism. This is military. Or military adjacent.
No.
Dad said this is Wimberley, but that’s where his lab is.
So…notgovernment-run.
Dad’s lab is in Elijah Energy’s home office.
And my fathers’ portfolios total in thebillions.
“Big pharma plus big energy plus black ops,” I spit out. “Fuck. Are we the bad guys?”
Honoré, whom I last saw at my impromptu rooftop dinner, shakes his head. “No. We’re the good guys,” he says, his French-Rwandan accent much like my Uncle Jean-Pierre’s.
Holmes grimaces and gives me the so-so gesture. “Mostly good. We dabble in a lot of gray area.”
Truett grips my shoulder with his good hand. “Wakefield lets them go after bad guys, and they bring back any technology that could make a profit.”
Wakefieldis Seth Wakefield. The guy who owns this whole operation. My dads’ boss.
And suddenly I know at least one other thing True’s kept a lid on. “They’re recruiting you.”
24
TRUETT
All the thingsI held back in a bid to avoid traumatizing him, Rami put together in seconds. Also, he doesn’t seem to understand how big a deal it is that he picked up a gun and took out the bad guys without flinching.
He’s more weirded out by the three operatives surrounding us, whom I finally recognize as Wildlings.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t lying when I told Hedy I didn’t want to kill anyone.
“Maybe,” I answer, pointing out the pool of vomit, “but I’m guessing they won’t want to recruit me now.”
