“Go,” she says. “I’ll sit with Grace. She won’t wake up alone.”
“I can’t leave her.” Fear practically chokes me. As long as I’m at her side, I know she’s safe. Alive. Healing. It doesn’t matter how much I trust Parker. She ain’t me.
“AJ, when was the last time you even took a piss? You’re no good to her half-dead yourself.” Parker closes the laptop with a heavy click, sets it on the window sill, and yawns as she stretches her arms over her head. Then she points at the door. “So here’s the deal. You go. You grab hot sauce. And while you’re at it, queso and chips too. I’ll nuke it downstairs and she’ll actually eat. Don’t argue.”
She’s right. Dammit. She’s right. If only that made it easier to walk out the door.
I’m in the middle of the hot sauce aisle when my phone buzzes in my pocket. One glance at the screen, and I drop the bag of chips in my hand.
Perimeter Breach - Backyard Cam
Connor’s message follows in under ten seconds. “Possible movement off the deck.”
Fuck.
I’m already moving, shoving my way past a guy debating salsa brands like his life depends on it. Taking off at a run, I make it out the sliding doors, across the street, and back to the hospital in under two minutes.
The elevators in this place are too damn slow. Stairs it is. I nearly collide with Hardison as I burst out onto the neuro floor.
“They’re—” I’m still moving, almost to Grace’s room, when Nate grabs my arm.
“You’re not running point from her bedside, man. Grace doesn’t need a live action suspense movie playing out in her hospital room.” He turns me around, prodding me past the nurses’ station. “Last room on the right is empty. We can work without spooking her. Parker’s got her.”
Marvin rounds the corner before we make it to the end of the hall. That damn belt buckle shines like the sun amid his black pants and dark gray shirt.
“Somethin’ goin’ on?” he asks.
“No time,” I snap. “Post yourself outside Grace’s door and don’t fucking move until I relieve you. Got it?”
“Yeah. Sure. But if you need any help?—”
Hardison glares at him. “Help is you on doorstop duty, man. Don’t improvise.”
I slide my comms device into my ear and mutter, “Talk to me.”
Grace
For the first time since my surgery, the pencil feels steady—right—in my hand. Steadier than my thoughts. Parker’s gone over the alphabet with me half a dozen times today. She’s always slow. Always patient. And when I make it from A to Z without fumbling, she smiles so wide, my own lips curve too.
But the shadows have started creeping in at the edges of my vision. Whispers I can’t understand echo against my skull. They’re ghosts. Memories I can’t touch, even now.
So while she sits in the chair next to my bed, her eyes closed, I draw.
For weeks now, I’ve tried to get this one image from my head to the page. I could see fragments of it, but whenever I tried to piece it together, all the lines and curves blended into what might as well have been a child’s first scribble.
This time, it’s clearer. Or, at least parts of it are. The lanterns. The altar. The cult members gathered to watch me die. I turn the page, try to find another angle. This one is better. In front of one of the poles is a man. Average height. A little overweight. Short hair, thinning on top. And at his waist, a large belt buckle.
I switch to drawing just the buckle. A man riding a bull. His arm raised high in the air, hat in hand. But it’s the lettering around the outside that’s always confused me. The brightness of it. The ugliness of it.
Fort Worth Rodeo
I can’t say the words. They’d come out all jumbled—nothing but an incomprehensible mess of vowels and consonants.
Oh, my God. It all makes sense now.
Why I couldn’t draw it before. Maybe even why I can now.
My brain took all the shapes—the man, the bull, the hat, the letters—and jumbled them all together.
