I got out of Locke’s way. With the small room crowded with brothers, there was nowhere to go but the bed.
The bends.I knew those words, but I couldn’t say why until a long-ago conversation popped into my head. “He said he felt like he had the bends after radiation treatment. In his joints.”
Locke put a mask over Folk’s face. “It’s not a world away. The IV will disperse some of the bubbles in his blood, but I meant what I said about it being too late. When you surface too fast from a dive, you need pure oxygen as soon as humanly possible. Until he’s talking, I can’t tell if he had that.”
“He did not.” Alexei’s voice came from the door. “Not enough, anyway.”
Locke asked more questions.
Alexei answered, then he came closer, his grey eyes heavy with fatigue. “We had spare tanks, but he forced them all on me. The IVs too. Is why I am standing and he is not.”
“How long were you in the water?”
“Too long. And the rain. It was a long run home.”
“From where?”
“Ten miles out where we burned our vehicle. But even before then, we did not really get dry.”
“We need church,” Nash interjected from his position at the end of the bed. “We need this whole fucking story before Jakov sends some scarier fucker than Ranger for answers.”
Alexei frowned. “Jakov? Why would he need answers? Viktor is intelligent enough to figure it out for himself.”
“Viktor’s missing,” Nash countered. “He didn’t come back from a meet with Sambini, and Jakov thinks you killed him.”
On any other day, the impact of Nash’s words would’ve gone unnoticed. But Alexei was stripped back right now. As flayed open as he’d been when Saint had got hurt, and he couldn’t hide the shock in his eyes.
The fear.
Fuck me, Ranger had been right. If Viktor had died on that boat, Jakov was going to wage war, and by the look on Alexei’s pale face, it was one we might lose.
Folk’s arm, the one without the IV, was splayed out on the bed between us. I rubbed his forearm, tracing the veins with my thumb.
He didn’t respond.
“Lexi.” Cam’s tall frame darkened the doorway. “Come lie down.”
Alexei slowly turned his head. I realised belatedly that River was holding him up. “I am okay.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Comehere.”
“I need to know Folk is all right.”
“He will be,” Locke answered from the other side of the bed. “Give him some time, man.”
Whether that was enough for Alexei, I’d never know. Cam intervened and towed him from the room.
Locke rose to follow them. “I’m going to check him over if he’ll let me. If I don’t come back, it’s because he’s stabbed me in the eye.”
He left.
Nash moved to the door too, but he stopped before he stepped through it and fixed me with a look that chilled my blood. “We need to know what happened on that fucking boat. Find me as soon as he wakes up.”
He disappeared.
River kicked the door shut behind him. “Fuck that. Focus on him.”
“He’s right.”
