Page 33 of Shadow Blind

“Oh,” Dr. Cole’s face turned hopeful again. “You plan on returning?”

“Don’t have much choice.” Aiden left it at that. It wasn’t like he had any other place to go.

Chapter fourteen

Day 7

Denali, Alaska

With a muffled grunt, Aiden settled back against the plush pillow of his hospital bed. The constant beep-beep-beep coming from the medical monitors next door was irritating, but that annoyance was mitigated by the spring-fresh scent of his recently laundered pillowcase. The nurses must have changed his sheets while he was in that last CT scan.

Now that he was free from testing, it was time to rustle up that jet. He picked up the borrowed cell phone from the bedside table and dialed Wolf’s number. When the call went to voicemail, he left a message.

Since there wasn’t anything to do until Wolf hooked him up with a plane, he relaxed into the freshly laundered sheets and closed his eyes. Might as well nap until Wolf showed up. Fuck, he was tired. Ironic, since he hadn’t done a damn thing all day except get wheeled from test to test. He was pulled from dreams of twisted, nightmarish trees and a misty, alien terrain thirty minutes later by the whisper of footsteps outside his door.

“Lunch is served. Chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with a vegetable medley.” The perkiest nurse in the history of perky nurses slipped through the privacy curtain. She set the plastic covered platter on the swivel tray parked along the side of his hospital bed and rotated it until the food was in front of his chest. “Applesauce for dessert.” She stepped back and beamed at him, the smile brightening her hazel eyes. “Never let it be said we don’t treat our patients right. Don’t forget to leave us a positive review.” She winked at him before brushing past the curtain on her way out.

Aiden grunted in response. All that cheerfulness was downright exhausting. The thick, meaty smell of chicken fried steak and gravy soured his stomach, so he pushed the swivel tray aside. Before he reached for the phone to call Wolf again, the squeak of rubber soles against the rubber flooring brought his head up. His visitor wasn’t wearing tactical boots, not with all that squeaking, so it wasn’t Wolf outside his door.

Sure enough, Kait squeezed through the gap in the curtain. Cosky didn’t bother with squeezing in, he just shoved the drape aside. The shriek of the plastic curtain rings against the metal rod followed him into the room.

“Either of you see Wolf? I need that plane.” Aiden watched the pair advance on his bed.

Although he’d talked to them on the phone over the past four days, he hadn’t actually seen his sister or Cos since they’d been hustled to the isolation units. But the two looked good, bright eyed and bushy tailed. He suspected he didn’t look nearly as bright eyed. But then, unlike them, he’d had gallons of blood drawn, and dozens of tests run.

“I try to avoid the bastard as much as possible.” Cosky dropped into the second chair and grabbed the swivel tray, maneuvering it toward him. He popped the plastic lid off the tray and picked up the knife and fork.

Aiden scowled. He should give the bastard a rash of shit for co-opting his lunch, but it was too much effort. Besides, he wasn’t hungry.

“Wolf won’t forget about the plane.” Kait’s gaze was wide and worried as she scanned Aiden’s face. “He knows how important Demi is to you.”

He must look even worse than he’d suspected for his sister to look so anxious.

“Before you ask, I feel fine.” He could tell she was dying to ask, even though she could sense how annoying he found the question.

Partly because it was the question that everyone—from nurses, to doctors, to scientists—kept asking him, which became tedious, and partly because the simple act of having to answer that question reminded him of why they were asking it. Which reminded him of what had happened to his squad brothers. Which was a constant reminder of what he could face himself—death by insanity.

Although that possibility was lessening every day.

“So…nanobots? How the hell did you pick those up?” There was a hint of accusation in Cosky’s question, like he figured Aiden had to be responsible somehow. “I mean, seriously? Nanobots?” The shake of Cosky’s graying head held disbelief and disgust. “What the hell?”

The good doctors must have filled Cosky and Kait in on the culprits they were facing off against.

“Yeah.” Aiden’s headshake was just as perplexed. He still hadn’t processed that disturbing news. “You know anything about those damn things?”

“Nanobots?” Cosky paused his chewing. “Not enough. We need Leonard Embray, he’s Shadow Mountain’s organic robotics consultant.”

Aiden scowled. If Embray was the go-to man on nanobots, why the fuck hadn’t someone already gone to him? Maybe they had. Except a Dr. Embray hadn’t sat in on any of the medical updates he’d been given. “Haven’t met him.”

“He’s the CEO of Dynamic Solutions.” Cosky glanced at Kait. “He was instrumental in neutralizing the NRO.”

Aiden’s eyebrows rose. The dude they were talking about was that Leonard Embray? The founder of Dynamic Solutions? Fuck, the company had their fingers in most of the robotics—hell, most of the technology—the world’s brainiacs were creating.

As for Embray — “Wasn’t he forced into a coma? Didn’t his buddy steal Dynamic Solutions from him?”

The scandal had been all over the news.

Cosky’s face hardened. “Yeah. Turned out his second-in-command was NRO. When Embray fell into his handy-dandy coma, the NRO stepped in and took over the company. After we rescued and revived him, he turned all that brain power to defeating the organization that had turned him into a pawn.”

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