Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (35 page)

“Justine will keep,” Eric said. “I won’t forget.”

Those ominous words hung in my ears for a moment and then I slipped into a darker place.

I lay below the surface, sounds reaching me as if from a long way away, perhaps at the other end of a tunnel. I became slowly conscious of dim lights, and something holding my arms down.

Shrieking, I tossed and yanked against the restraints. “No! No!”

“Cat,” Jamie’s voice came, urgent, but strangely comforting all the same. “Shh, shh. You’re safe now. You’re in the infirmary at the Order.” His hands closed on my shoulders and laid me back down in the narrow bed. “Sleep if you can. You need to heal.”

I obeyed him and sank down, back down into the dark.

The next time I woke, the world came into focus: hospital room, dim lights, lots of machines around me. Jamie dozed in a chair beside my bed, arms folded, legs askew, head hanging. The scruffy stubble he’d had when we left the Institute had morphed into an actual beard. He wore a clean white T-shirt over the same old pants, and his feet were bare but bandaged, bruised toes sticking out the ends.

I shifted my weight and, oh God, how my head hurt.

I must have made an involuntary noise. Jamie stirred, and one eye popped open.

He shoved himself upright in the chair, shaking his head.

“Cat,” he said. “You’re back in the land of the living.”

“Why is it dark in here?” I grumbled.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Why does my head hurt?”

“You were shot, remember?”

My hand moved up to the side of my head, tentative. Fingers met bandages.

“You should be okay. The bullet grazed you, traveled around the outside of your skull, so you’ve got a few stitches. They balance out the ones you already had in the other side. Good thing you’ve got a hard head.”

I lay back against the thin, rustling pillow. “Do you hate me?” I said.

“I’m not going to have this conversation with you until you’re better, and not drugged up to the eyeballs.”

I shut my eyes, pressed my lips together. It was no more or less than I deserved. My shoulders shuddered and I couldn’t keep the sob inside.

In a moment, Jamie had enveloped me in the kind of awkward hug you can only give someone who’s hooked up to a bunch of machines.

“Don’t be bloody silly. Of course I don’t hate you. I meant we can save any serious stuff for another time.”

His words unleashed a torrent of hysterical crying. I buried my head in him, protesting when he pulled away until I realized he was trying to climb in beside me. I shuffled over and made room, and soon I had my head resting on his chest, my nostrils full of his scent.

The crying subsided soon after that, helped by his warm body against mine, and the touch of his fingers stroking my shoulder.

“Is Eric here?”

“He is. He’s waiting to see how you are. I don’t believe he’s staying though.”

I sat up, making my head pound and the wires and tubes around me tighten. “Where’s he going?”

Jamie sighed. “Took him a long time to find that backbone, but now that he’s got one, he says he needs to figure a few things out.”

“Is he okay?”

“Surprisingly so.”

“Are the police still after him? Did the Major die?”

He groaned. “Enough with the questions. I knew if I answered one, it’d be the thin edge of the wedge.”

“Please,” I said. “I have to know.”

“Everything’s fine. Eric can tell you himself as soon as you’re up to it. For now, would you please concentrate on getting better? There are plenty of things to talk about and do as soon as you’re out of here.”

I grumbled at him for a bit longer, but knowing we were all free, I succumbed to the drugs soon after, and slept longer.

I didn’t manage to get anything further out of him for another two days until the Order’s healers pronounced me well enough to leave the infirmary. I still had stitches in my head and was instructed not to wash my hair until they came out. Ugh.

Foolishly, they allowed me to shower, so I washed most of my hair while shielding the stitches with my hand. It was only a flesh wound, after all. I guess I’ve never been good with authority.

After a good talking to by one of the nurses, Jamie came to pick me up. They made me go out of there in a wheelchair, of all things, at least until I got to the door of the infirmary.

 
Turned out I’d spent the last few days in a small restored cottage in the gardens at the back of the Order’s grand old mansion house.

“It’s what they call a tenant house,” Jamie said. “There’s a couple of them in the grounds, from when this used to be farmland.”

I stood up from the wheelchair, the headache today only an echo of what it had been before.

“Don’t you want me to push you?” he said teasingly.

“What do you think?” I growled. “Do I have to fight you off?”

He laughed and offered me his arm.

“That’s completely different,” I said.

We began walking through the grounds. Spring had come and the paths were adrift with cherry blossom petals among the puddles.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said.

Jamie squeezed me, saying nothing as we continued to walk.

We rounded a bend in the path, approaching the patio of the main house. I spotted Herb, playing cards with a couple other guys, one wearing a baseball cap.

“Beautiful day,” I called out, full of the joys of the sunshine, and having my dear Jamie with me.

The man in the baseball cap stood and removed his hat, revealing a crown of white-blond hair. His icy eyes bored into me.

Chapter Thirty-Five

I cried out once, and staggered back from Ryder, the rush of fear overwhelming my weak body.

Jamie caught me. “It’s okay, Cat, it’s okay.”

Scrambling, I fought his arms around me as I tried to run away. And failed.

“Shh, shh. It’s okay. Ryder is on our side. Listen to me, Cat! He helped get Eric off the hook. He helped us escape.”

My struggles exhausted me and I let myself go limp in Jamie’s arms. It was then that I realized the other man at the table was Eric. He had one arm in a sling, but climbed to his feet and smiled at me.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Ryder nodded, his head snapping down once in perfect military style. “Let me explain.”

“Go on.”

He pressed his lips together, and then began. “This may be hard for you to grasp, I don’t know. I have always believed that acting for the good of our country demands many sacrifices. We are under threat from evil men. This allowed me to overlook some of the more…controversial practices that took place inside the Institute. Your friend”—and here he gestured at Jamie—“and I have never been allies. However, when I found out that he had been tortured, I could not see how the end justified the means. I put my key card in his pocket, and hoped you would find it.”

“Thank you,” I said, surprised how much I meant it. My brain seemed incapable of putting two thoughts together. “What will you do now?”

Ryder nodded grimly. “I’ve spoken with the police and the FBI, and I don’t intend on returning to the Institute, even if it can weather this storm. I don’t know what I’ll do next.”

“Will you stay here?” Jamie asked, his hands tightening on my body.

“I don’t know. Probably not.” He grimaced. “It’s…not for me.”

Jamie let me go and reached his right hand out to Ryder. His dark eyes were wary, and Ryder’s blue ones even warier as he took it.

“Thanks, man. Hate to say it, but I owe you one.”

“No big deal.” Ryder made eye contact with me for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Good luck.”

“Same to you,” I said.

He put his cap back on and walked away, leaving us in the spring garden with Eric and Herb. I watched his stiff back retreating and wondered where a man who’d spent his whole life fitting in and obeying authority would fit in now.

Herb also rose, with the aid of his cane. “Good to see you, my dear,” he said. “Your brother has told me about your adventures. I’ll leave you to catch up.”

I sat down in his chair when he left, exhausted. Eric smiled at me again, his face calm, and decidedly less gray than it had been. I didn’t know what to say to him.

“Are you staying here?” was what I settled on.

“Until I’m better,” he said. “Then I think I’ll travel for a while, see the world.” His eyes held an echo of the darkness that had once consumed them. “I need to make peace with myself.”

“The police aren’t chasing you?”

“Not anymore. I cooperated with their investigation. Now they’re looking for Major Hudson, and Justine.”

A cloud moved across the sun. “The Major didn’t die?”

“They both vanished.” He paused, staring deep into my face. “The Major has to be dead. He burned to a crisp. I can’t believe anyone could live through that. Justine must have taken his body. As for her—let’s say I hope I may stumble upon her in my travels, if luck is with me.”

I shivered a little, not wanting to think too hard about that. “Are you okay?”

Eric laughed, and it was still hollow. “I’m alive, I’m in control of my destiny. It’s a hell of a step forward.”

“We’ll see you later, then?” Jamie said.

Eric nodded.

“Come on,” Jamie said, tugging at my hand, bringing me to my feet.

“Where are we going?”

“For a drive. We need to talk.”

We took one of the Order’s cars from the carriage house. This was an old Italian convertible—an MG, I think? It was even older than the junkers I was used to driving. Still, it was a beautiful day, and I lay back against the seat, the wind in my hair, my eyes closed in the sunshine, as we drove out of the driveway and back into the world.

I recognized where we were going partway there, but I didn’t say anything. Jamie had his sunglasses on and drove with intense focus, gunning the hot little car around the bends in the wooded road.

When we finally spun into the clearing in the woods between the cabins, I blew my breath out, staring at the burned-out cabin. After all the chasing we’d done in Vegas, the hard parts of this journey had begun here.

There were no vehicles parked here other than ours.

“What happened to Miller?” I asked.

“We offered the whole family a place at the Order, but he said something about being too close to DC, and they headed down to New Mexico to be closer to family. His burns are healing. We do have a few new people in the house, though. My comrades from prison, who were rescued by the fire department.”

“Are they really all insane?”

He shrugged. “Some, probably. The Order is still the best place for them to be.”

Jamie pulled himself up onto the back of the seat and swung his legs over the side of the car. He went to the trunk and took something out, then came around to my side and opened my door. “Let’s walk,” he said.

I took his hand and kept it as we headed out into the woods. It smelled different from the last time I’d been here. Then, it was dry pine needles and a touch of the smell of rotting things. Now the scent in my nostrils bloomed with green things growing, pollen and the fresh smell of rain on grass.

Jamie had a duffel bag with him. I wondered what was in it. He clearly had a plan and a destination, and I was not inclined to argue.

We came to a clearing by a little creek. Jamie let go of my hand and set down the bag. Opening it, he pulled out a picnic blanket and gestured at me.

“Make yourself comfortable.”

I sat down facing the water, legs out in front of me, and waited.

“Back in the infirmary, you wanted to talk. I wanted to wait until you were feeling better.”

“I’m glad we’re talking.”

Jamie stretched out beside me.

I gathered my thoughts, staring off into the distance, not sure how to broach what I wanted to talk about.

“You wanted to ask me something,” he opened.

“I do, but I don’t know how.”

Jamie sighed. “All right. Let me tell you some things to start. When I found out you’d turned Eric in, I was pissed. Really goddamn pissed with you.” His face was expressionless, and he sat ramrod straight and still.

“Do you hate me?”

“Not now. And not then, either.”

“How can you not?” I burst out. “They tortured you, they captured you when you drew them off to save my skin and Eric’s, and I threw that sacrifice away.” Something wet began to trickle down my face. I refused to call it a tear. I rarely cried under normal circumstances, and I’d been doing a ridiculous amount of it lately.

Jamie watched me. A cold feeling started in my stomach and spread over my whole body as I silently cried. Maybe he didn’t hate me, but whatever had been growing between us had ended. I grieved for that, for something special lost.