Page 118 of Sin

London lay beside me, his brow creased and fingers softly smoothing over my wrist… Which was now in a brace. I supposed something really had snapped then.

I felt like shit. I had the migraine from hell, and my muscles ached in ways I didn’t know possible. Sort of what happened when you fought against a team of highly trained Supers when you haven’t had that sort of training.

I didn’t know how long they’d all been waiting for me to wake up, but as I shifted, trying to sit, their focuses zeroed in on me.

“Look who’s finally awake,” Lewis teased, though there was a hollowness to his words. He had a few bandages over his hands and face, and his leg, now straight, was in a brace. There were dark circles under his eyes.

In fact, all of them had matching circles. London only had a few stitches, lucky enough to have come out of the fight mostly unscathed. But Jinx’s head was wrapped with gauze, and Blade…

“Were they able to heal it?” I asked her, my voice hoarse.

A square piece of gauze had been taped over her eye like a pirate. She turned her head away before she responded. “Not much. Mend did what he could, but I’ll never be able to fully see again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. Then I voiced the elephant in the room. “Where’s Mare?”

“She ran off with her dad,” Blade said, sounding more than a little bitter as she said those last two words. She and Mare were close, or at least I’d assumed they were. Keeping this secret must have hurt.

“Didn’t you sedate him?” I asked, and she gave me an impressed look.

“Caught that, did you?” She crossed her arms. “He’ll likely still be unconscious right now. It usually knocks someone out for around two to three days.”

“How did Mare escape with him when he was knocked out?” I asked because Lucas wasn’t small by any means.

“When the first police car arrived on the scene, the officers didn’t understand what was happening since not many people know about Lucas,” Jinx said. “Mare and I were the only ones conscious by then, and she… She used her powers to incapacitate them before dragging Lucas to the car and escaping.”

“You didn’t try to stop her?”

He scowled at me. “I said we were the only ones conscious. Not that I was in any state to fight her.”

“And we don’t know where she is now?”

“No,” President Osborne said, shocking the hell out of me and reminding me of the first time she’d come to pay me a visit. It was all too similar to right now. “We have people looking for her, even our programs are sweeping the city’s video cameras. But she’s playing it smart. Our teams discovered the police car abandoned in a parking lot. She must have switched cars from there and has been avoiding any major roads or areas.” She stepped into the room, surveying all of us. “I’ve spoken with Mend and the other doctors, but I wanted to check in with you all myself. How are you all feeling?”

“Like we just got our asses kicked,” Jinx muttered, and we all nodded our agreement.

“Yes, well, hopefully within the next few days, your asses will be nice and healed and you can get back to your lives.” Her lips quivered as she fought to fight a smirk. “Now that Mr. Gonzalez is awake, I’d finally like to know what happened.” She came to stand at the foot of my bed, eyeing mine and London’s positions. “The others have told me what they remember, but since Lucas had control of their minds, they don’t remember much of what happened.”

I tried really damn hard not to react to her words. Really damn hard. Because I knew Lucas hadn’t been able to actually take control of their minds, which meant they would have been able to remember everything that had happened.

So why had they lied?

“We were driving back to the capitol when I realized something wasn’t right. He’d managed to take control of everyone else in the van, but I don’t think he meant to cause us to crash. He was struggling to control his powers.” I continued on with the story, keeping it as vague as possible.

When I finished, ending it where I passed out, President Osborne pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is not good. I don’t know how we’re going to keep this out of the media now. His attack was too public.” She paced a few steps, then back, muttering words too fast and low for me to hear.

But while she was worried about what this would do if people found out about Lucas, there was still another issue entirely.

Sitting up straighter, I cleared my throat. “There’s one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“Lucas wasn’t working alone,” I said, and her gaze slanted to me. “That’s how he managed to find out where everyone was hiding. Keith Pittel was helping him find them all.”

“The engineer?”

I nodded. “I still don’t know how he found them either, but he needs to be arrested and—”

“I’m going to stop you right there. At this point, I’m not concerned about Mr. Pittel. He’s not the biggest threat. Our main and only focus is finding and securing Mr. Delacruz.”

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