Page 152 of A Breath of Life
He’d agreed more readily than I expected, and I figured he was probably out of cigarettes. He’d been fidgeting excessively since we woke up, an agitation I recognized as symptoms of withdrawal.
I glanced up to greet my visitor, glad for the distraction, and found a haggard version of my cousin at the door. A more put-together Quaid Valor stood at his side.
“Hey,” Costa said. “Can I come in?”
“Please.”
“I’ll be down the hall,” Quaid said to my cousin, who nodded. Quaid squeezed his shoulder and offered me a small wave before vanishing.
Costa entered, clothing wrinkled, hair in disarray, and dark smudges under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t slept in years. He looked like shit. I figured he would collapse on Diem’s chair or hover awkwardly at the end of the bed, but he did not.
Instead, he approached and hugged me with affection I’d never known from my cousin.
I winced at the pressure but hugged him back.
“I’m so fucking glad you’re okay,” he said without releasing me. “When I heard what happened, I thought I was going to be sick. I thought I got you killed.”
“I’m okay.” I had been saying that a lot lately. “Not dead, thanks to you.” The statement only made him squeeze me tighter.
It was Costa who had insisted Joshua and I wear vests under our costumes. We didn’t know what to expect, but it was a simpleprecaution that had saved my life. I would have been a corpse on a steel table in the morgue right now without Costa’s forward thinking.
My cousin pulled back, but not before planting a surprising kiss on my temple and ruffling my hair like I was twelve. We had come a long way from the rivals we’d been growing up.
The troubled expression never left him as he sized me up and down, so I roguishly grinned. “Wanna see a wicked bruise?” I was trying to lighten the mood, but nobody seemed as impressed with my injury as I was.
Costa winced and sucked air between his teeth when I drew the collar of the gown low enough to display the dark imprint that covered half my chest. “Fuck, that looks awful.”
He diverted his attention to the heart monitor. “What’s all this for?”
“The blow knocked the ticker out of whack, but we’re back on track again. I guess there’s bruising on the heart muscle too. Cool war wound aside, I don’t recommend getting shot at point-blank range in the chest. It hurts like a motherfucker. Even with the vest, I thought I was going to die.”
Costa lost three shades of color, so I added, “I might go home today if the doctor gives me the okay, so there’s that.”
“That’s good.” He shifted his feet and stared at the ground. Why did everyone look guilty?
“I heard they interrogated you.”
Costa nodded, still not meeting my eyes. “Yeah. It was rough. Now I know what it’s like to be on the other side of the table. I don’t recommend it.”
“Want to catch me up?”
He blew out his cheeks and nodded again, stuffing his hands into his pockets and drawing his shoulders to his ears.
I wanted to blurt,Do you still have a job? Did they fire you? Are you being charged? Did helping me ruin your whole career?
If it had, how was I ever going to make it up to him?
Instead, I waited for Costa to find the words to tell me himself.
It seemed our plan ran smoothly until it didn’t. Joshua and I had made it inside. We’d planted the fancy James Bond device Costa had given us on the statue. When Joshua activated it, an electric pulse caused the glass to explode. Patrons and syndicate members alike responded as expected; shock, fear, confusion, and eventual chaos when someone suggested shots had been fired, but from whom and where, they didn’t know.
At the moment of the explosion, I signaled Costa, who signaled Kitty, who disrupted the internet and cell reception in the building. The power interruption was a result of a planned power surge meant to screw up cameras and any other electronics throughout the building. On the off chance that it didn’t work, the outage would at least cause a system-wide reboot. Costa had called it a fail-safe method of temporarily disrupting their security. First, by distracting their men with the exploding glass. Second, by frying their computers or at least fizzling them for a time. Fail-safe but not failproof. It was the best we could manage with our timeframe.
By the time the power was interrupted, I was in the hallway, intent on connecting with my cousin at the rear exit so we could locate the basement together and get Diem out.
“But when I came through the back door and rounded the corner—”
“The Bishop had a gun on me.”
