Page 6 of The Assassin
Chapter Three
“Remi’s in intensive care,” Eli told me, the scratchiness of his voice having everything to do with emotion and nothing to do with the excellent reception on my cell phone.
“Which floor?” I asked, approaching the elevators.
“Sixth.”
I hung up without a response. An Atlanta Braves baseball hat and thick-framed glasses helped distort my features as I entered the elevator andpressed the button for the sixth floor. Several more people entered, but I kept my head down, my posture bent and broken, an aura of worry surrounding me. If anyone took notice, the fact that I exited at the ICU waiting room would give them a reasonable explanation for my demeanor. Hell, it wasn’t really acting.
Not one of us had ever needed a doc. I’d picked up enough basic first aid as a teento be pretty damn good at stitches and splints—had to be with two younger brothers and no money. Now we could pay for the best medical treatment money could buy, but the fact that we needed to made my gut feel like a rock. I’d already puked once, when Eli told me Remi wasn’t dead. Pure relief, that’s all that was. Thank fuck my stomach was empty as I walked out of the elevator and into the stenchof chemicals and artificial lemon, of pain and fear that was the ICU.
Eli’s head came up the minute I appeared in the door of the waiting room. Red rimmed his amber-colored eyes, so different from my own. He and Remi had gotten my mother’s coloring—dark blond hair and eyes that hovered somewhere between brown and yellow depending on the light. I took after our father—black hair and gray eyes.Right now Eli looked young and vulnerable, like the kid he’d been when we were forced to run for our lives, leave everything we’d known and loved behind. I’d never wanted to see him look like that again; it was why I’d taught my siblings to fight, to kill.
And look where that had gotten us.
I motioned for my brother to come out into the hall.
“How is he?”
Eli shook his head, gaze clingingto mine like I was his lifeline. “Nothing new. The surgeon said the operation to repair the gunshot wound was successful. The bullet ricocheted off his collarbone and pinged around his chest cavity, but by some miracle missed his lungs and only minimal damage to his heart.”
“But there was damage?” To his fucking heart.
“Minimal,” Eli said wearily. Any damage was unacceptable, but I could seethe acceptance in his eyes, understood where it came from. This could’ve turned out much, much worse. “The main concern now is the swelling on his brain from the head injury.”
Because he’d hit the ground after a thirty-foot fall and a bullet to the heart.
“The surgery took hours, so he was under anesthesia for a while, both to repair the chest wounds and to relieve the pressure on his brain.”
“Do I even want to know how they do that?” I asked.
Eli grimaced. “It involves a drill.”
I scrubbed at my eyes. “Holy fucking hell.”
“The last time I went back, the nurse told me now they just wait for him to wake up. Head injuries are uncertain; he could be unconscious for a while or wake up as soon as the anesthesia clears his system. No one knows but Remi.” Eli ran a hand down his face.“He almost died, Levi. He still could die. He—”
“What about the police?”
Eli stopped, blinked. “The police?”
“Yes,” I bit out. “What happened with the police?”
“For fuck’s sake! Can’t we take a minute to care about our own fucking brother before you start worrying about covering our asses?”
I shoved Eli back against the wall, getting right up in his face. “Covering our asses is what I do.It’s how I keep you both safe. You think I don’t give a shit that he’s lying in there on a ventilator with a hole through his fucking chest?”
The fluorescent lights reflected off the sheen of tears that filled his eyes. I bit off the rest of my words and gripped him by the back of the neck, pulling him in to me until our heads were alongside each other. “I care, asshole. Okay? I may not givea fuck about anything else in this life but you two, but I’d walk through hell for you both.”
I squeezed his neck tighter. “But I can’t focus on that right now. Got it? If I do, I’ll lose it.”
Eli took a deep breath, nodded. “Got it.”
I held on to him a moment longer, then let go. Handed him the bag I’d brought with me. “Go change.” We both needed a minute to get ourselves together, and I wantedhim out of the clothes he’d worn last night. The clothes that still smelled of our brother’s blood. “We’ll talk when you get back.”
I lingered in the hall while he was gone, unable to confine myself to a chair in a crowded room with only one escape route. Instead I noted camera placements, security personnel, the nurses at the station farther down the hall, behind a wall of glass. One in particular,a blonde, caught my eye. She flipped through charts, scanned the rooms that circled the station like spokes on a wheel, studied monitors showing patients’ rooms. The other nurses went about their duties, oblivious to their surroundings, but she glanced my way more than once, and not in a “there’s a hot guy hovering outside the ICU” kind of way. She was alert. Aware.
Knowing she was near Remi,watching out for him, eased my tension the tiniest bit. Not much, but I’d take every set of eyes I could get, whether they knew they were working with me or not.
