Chapter 36
“Saber twin powers - activate!”
-Cam
I don’t move or say a word as I watch the door shut behind Aaron. Casper The Tatted Up Ghost shrugs at me through the camera. Everyone else in the conference room looks away from me.
Except Ryan.
His face is warring between defeated and hopeful. Defeated because of how Aaron stormed out of the room. The hope is directed at me. The hope that I can fix this steaming pile of shit.
He doesn’t know me well enough to know that I am the killer of hope.
“Ryan,” I clear my throat. “Maybe you could head back to the hotel? I’ll catch up with you when they release me from the hospital, okay?”
His eyes light up even more, and it squeezes my heart. I don’t dare to tell him this will be a tough hurdle. I’m not sure Aaron will ever speak to me again.
Ryan nods and leaves the conference room.
Dings and pings from phones in the room reach a frenzied crescendo.
Tatiana furiously types away on her laptop. “Hey, Radioactive Saber Sister, we’ve got a lead on Virgil Troutwine.”
Casper points to three guys in the room, and they step outside.
“That’s good, right?”
“Might be. Might not be. But I’m gonna shut down the video link for a while,” Tatiana waves as the screen goes to black.
I sigh and put the phone on the rolling table next to the hospital bed.
Not that I’d admit it to anyone, but that took a lot out of me. And I wasn’t doing anything but talking. I was paying attention when the doc told me about the long road of recovery, but I didn’t believe her.
Everyone keeps telling me to get some rest. That I’ll recover faster. But nurses and doctors barge into the room, taking blood and vitals. Then, they wake you up at all hours of the day and night to make sure you’re breathing. When you add in the awkward visits from friends and family, I’m exhausted.
Maybe I needed to get out of this bed.
“Knock, knock,” a familiar voice calls from the doorway.
I smirk at my twin. “Come back with a warrant!”
“Har-har, sis,” Cat sneaks into the space between the door and the plastic bubble that is my life right now. She shuts the door closed behind her. “How you feeling?”
“Like I was at the center of a nuclear experiment,” I sip some water. “Do you think this is how The Hulk felt right before he, you know, hulked out?”
Cat folds her arms across her chest. “You know better than to ask me that. Carolina might know, though. She loves that nerdy shit.”
I laugh because it’s our favorite pastime. Making fun of our sisters. We don’t do it behind their backs. We’ll do it right to their faces.
Carolina is our favorite target because she’s the oldest, the tallest, and, quite frankly, the most gullible. Or at least she used to be. Now, I’m not so sure. She toughened up a lot in the last six months. She’ll make an equally fierce Mama Bear to her baby.
I shake these thoughts out of my head and sit up. “What are you doing here?”
Cat spies a folding chair leaning against the wall, pulls it open and sits down. “Mama told me what happened. I was headed to Flamingo Cove for work anyway.”
“You said that in your text,” I point. “What’s up?”
“Marshal business.”
