“Fuckingwhat?”
DOM
I watched the nurse glare at Levi as she looked at his bandaged face. “A bar fight, huh?”
I didn’t need to be a genius at reading people to know she didn’t believe him for a minute. Levi, though, just gave her a sheepish smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Hope you got a good look at who did it so the police can find them,” she said.
“Well, I would have, but seeing that he took one of my eyes, that was a little harder than usual,” he told her.
“Funny,” she said dryly. “Seems like you should avoid bars on top of construction sites.”
“What can I say? I’ve had a run of bad luck,” he said, and I watched the nurse as she left, leaving us in a room that was actually a lot nicer than the one I’d been in. Apparently, crime lord insurance wasn’t always a failure.
I pointed at the doorway she’d marched through. “Do I want to know?”
“She was the one who checked me after the explosion,” he said. “At a different hospital. I don’t even know how I ended up with her again. It seems just being in proximity to you and your family is enough to attract strangeness.”
“Don’t blame my family for this,” I said as I took the seat next to his bed. They had taken him away to work on him for a few hours, but he’d been returned with his head wrapped tightly. Since he hadn’t said anything about the wound, I was going to guess we were both right, and he had lost his eye. He was probably telling himself it was the least of his concerns right now, but I knew he was putting off the inevitable. At some point, the full realization that he had been maimed for life was going to catch up to him, and whether he liked it or not, I was going to be there to make sure he fell apart properly and help put him back together. “How long do you think it’ll take for them to realize I’m an escaped patient?”
“It’s an entirely different floor, so the chances of being recognized are low,” he said with a sigh. “Though with how badly staffed most hospitals are, it’s not zero; someone could be working here that might recognize you.”
“That should be fun,” I said. “By the way, my family figured out where I am.”
“What, how?”
“They won’t tell me.”
“Dom.”
“What?”
“Give me your phone.”
“Uh...okay?”
He took it from me, squinting at the screen, pausing, and then sighing. It took me a second to realize what was wrong and turned my eyes from him. He was only seeing with one eye, and some part of him must have known he wasn’t seeing correctly; it took him a moment to realize why.
“You’re in a family group with Arlo,” he said with a sigh, handing back the phone.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, looking down and seeing a map with two circles, one of them with my face on it,the other with Arlo’s. His was moving in what looked like my direction. “Wait, what?”
“The two of you have been sharing your locations for who knows how long,” Levi explained tiredly. “So either he figured it out, or one of your siblings did, and they’re using it to find you. Fantastic.”
“Nosy assholes,” I muttered. “At least they think I’m at the hospital.”
“Dom...uh, I don’t know how to tell you this, but they could have very well been tracking you since they realized you left.”
“Okay?”
“And they’ll know you were where I was...and I’m sure that explosion will have hit the news. Your family isn’t stupid; they can do basic addition.”
“I...oh, ohman. I’m never going to hear the end of this.”
“Probably not,” he said with a sigh. “If it helps, I’m not exactly thrilled about a family reunion either. Not after the last one.”
“A pity,” came a voice I should have expected, but hated to hear anyway.
