Caleb opens his laptop.An artery map glows with lines, nodes, red dots pulsing like a heartbeat.“A living graph of Spider,” he says.
“We have to start collecting every debt we were ever owed because it’s going to take them all,” Adrian says.
“Is there a head above her?”I ask.
“It doesn’t seem like it,” Adrian says.“Either way, we break the fucking hourglass.”
I close my eyes for a second.Blood and tile and a blade and the moment I looked away and Lindy saw me the way dead men do.Her thumb strokes across my knuckles.
“We finish this,” I say, wanting nothing more than to pull my wife on top of my aching body.
She holds my gaze, unflinching.“Yes,” she says.“But you don’t do it without me”
Everything in me screams no.I swallow it.“You’ll know everything.”
Atlas clears his throat too loud.“Okay, barf.”He lifts a bag.“I brought donuts.”
The nurse shoots him a death glare.“I brought orders.”
“My thing is better,” he says.He does not open the bag.“Glazed makes everything better.Doctor Elsie will cut you off after half, but I’ll stage a diversion.”
“Don’t stage anything,” Elsie says from the doorway.She steps in, checks Lindy’s IV, my dressings, the machines.“You get five minutes before I kick everyone out, including all the people in the waiting room.”
Adrian tilts his head toward the hall.“Door’s covered.”He doesn’t say by who.“Vex has eyes on the street.Mavik is already scrubbing the cameras you shouldn’t have been on.Rest.When you’re discharged, we sit down and pull the thread clean.”
A draft slips in as the nurse moves; something warm, clove and steel, rides it.Adrian goes still, a faint crease between his brows.“Familiar,” he murmurs, almost to himself.Then he lets it go.Footsteps pause outside the threshold and don’t cross it.
“Copy,” I say.
Caleb squeezes my ankle.Adrian taps the bedrail, a little too hard, because feelings make him itchy.Atlas, in true little brother fashion, makes a huge show of kissing my fucking forehead on his way out the door.The room exhales.Vegas hums outside the window, but inside it’s just beeps and antiseptic and the quiet of still breathing.
Lindy studies me.“You tried to escape?”
“I had to see you for myself.”
She smiles.“You’re impossible.”
“When it comes to you, yes.”
“Did you really threaten to kill the nurse?”
“I will not apologize for that.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she says and leans over, wincing from the pain, to kiss my shoulder.My cheek isn’t within reach.“I’m okay.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m okay.”
I close my eyes and let that be true for the space of a breath.The monitor settles.The pain is still there, but the panic loosens its teeth.
“I can’t believe I liked that woman,” she says after a bit.
“I never suspected her.She’s too good to be new.The way she shot without an ounce of hesitation.The way she talked about kids like inventory.”
“It’s like you said before,” she says.“The legs keep regrowing, she replaces them, but if we take off the head together…”
“Together,” I echo, because it’s apparently the way I’m built now.I can’t imagine taking her on another job and I can’t imagine letting her out of my sight.Impossible math.I hate math.
