Page 278 of Fearless

She had no idea how to classify the expression in his dark eyes. “Alright.”

Movement against her hand. Ava hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d tried so hard to stay alert, but sitting upright in the chair had devolved into leaning against the side of Mercy’s bed, and then resting her head on it, mindful of the wires and tubes. She knew that she’d succumbed to sleep when she became aware of the movement, and saw that the world was black behind her closed eyelids.

She lifted her head, wondering if she’d only imagined it, but now, she saw it, the reflexive opening and closing of Mercy’s hand, the subtle tension going up his arm.

She heard a soft rustling and saw that his head had turned toward her on the pillow. A faint glimmer at his lashes revealed that his eyes were open, if only a crack.

Ava slid her hand inside of his. “I’m here, baby. Right here.”

“Hmm,” he murmured against the sedation of the morphine. He blinked, pressed his head back, sighed deeply. “Where…?” He made a sticky sound in the back of his throat, like even one word was too many.

Ava squeezed his hand. “We’re at University Hospital. You had one surgery, and you’re going to have another one in the morning. Aidan’s here.” He had wandered off in search of food at her insistence. The growling of his stomach had been catching the attention of passing doctors and nurses it had been so loud. “Mom and Dad are on their way.”

She thought he’d fallen asleep again, the way he went still. But then there was the glitter of his cracked eyes again and he said, “You?”

“I’m fine.”

He sighed again, eyes easing shut.

He slept.

**

Aidan got a text from Maggie when they were two miles out. With one last check of Ava – she was awake, staring blankly at Mercy, head against the back of her chair, deeply absorbed. She didn’t seem to hear him when he said, “I’ll be right back,” just kept staring. He wasn’t even sure she blinked.

It felt good to stretch his legs on the long walk down the hall to the main doors; he checked the time on the wall clock as he went through the airlock out into the balmy rich dark of a New Orleans night. It was eleven-fifteen.

There was a no smoking sign off to his left, and a doctor in scrubs lighting up to his right. He shook out a cig and realized, on the first drag, that his hands had been shaking before. They stilled now. He trembled, not with fear, but with a consuming relief. Mags was almost here; she’d know what to do with Ava.

He braced a shoulder against the outer wall of the hospital and studied the unfamiliar patterns of manmade light spread out before him. He’d never been anywhere like New Orleans. Beautiful city. The kind of place that made you feel small and young and stupid. The Dogs down here were different; less hurried, less caught up with their own importance.

How did it go? “Nobody owns New Orleans.” That’s what Bob Boudreaux had said the first time Aidan met him. He was beginning to understand that. This place felt like a storied, history-laced wilderness, one only the locals knew how to navigate. A vein of danger pulsing in the welcoming warmth.

He saw Maggie first, her banner of bright hair under the Halogen lights as she hurried toward him. Ghost was dark in contrast beside her, his face set at grim angles Aidan knew to be the product of exhaustion, and not anger. His own face did the same thing.

“Hey,” Maggie said when she got close enough. She threw herself at him, hugged tight for one brief second. A warm squeeze of perfume and hair product, all warm and soft and feminine. When she pushed back, her face was all business, brows tucked together. She laid her hand against his stubbly cheek in apology and reassurance and affection, all three at once. “Where?”

“ICU. Straight back through there. The desk nurse can show you.”

She nodded and took off, power walking through the automatic doors of the airlock.

Ghost stayed with Aidan a moment, reached to give his shoulder an uncharacteristic, fatherly squeeze. “What’d she say to the cops?”

“That it was punk kids joyriding, shooting out the window for the fun of it. She said the original GSW – infected as shit, by the way – was target practice gone bad. They didn’t believe it, but what are they gonna do? They’ve got no shooters, no bodies, no crime.”

“You guys cleaned it up good?”

Aidan nodded. “Gator food.”

“Good job.”

When Ghost made to walk away, Aidan made a reach for his father’s jacket that went nowhere. He retracted his hand, but said, “What happened at the charity thing? Tango talked to Walsh over the phone. Collier shot Jace?”

Ghost nodded, face grim. “In sight of the damn PD. He’s trying to take the fall for Andre, Ronnie and Mason too.”

“Shit.”

“If I know him” – eyebrows raised to indicate that yes, he did know him – “he’s thinking that if he’s gonna go away anyway, he might as well take the heat off the rest of us.”

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