The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(88)

Around midnight, when Priya is fast asleep with a blanket draped over her, Eddison stirs and looks around. “Hermana?”

“I’m here.”

“Get your ass on the bed. My eyes can’t focus to the chair.”

Snickering, I put the book and pen down and ease onto the bed beside him. His left leg is supported by a shaped foam piece but I don’t want to jostle him too much. Fortunately the IV and wires are all on his other side. I settle in against him, head on his shoulder, and we just breathe for a while.

“Did anyone call my parents?”

“They’re on a cruise in Alaska with your aunt and uncle. We told them you were doing well out of surgery, and you’d call them once you weren’t tripping balls.”

“Please tell me you did not—”

“No, we did not tell your mother you were tripping balls,” I snort. “We told her you were heavily dosed.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Poor baby.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” He drifts off again. Eddison’s hatred of high-test painkillers has nothing to do with trying to be manly and tough, he just hates being that out of it.

I’m not sure when I doze off. I’m somewhat aware of someone touching my hair, the weight of a blanket over me, but a voice tells me to hush and sleep, and I do.



30

Bright and early Tuesday morning, I sit on the plain wooden bench outside one of the conference rooms in Internal Affairs, thumbs tapping an endless, anxious tattoo against my phone. My knee bounces, and it’s only through sheer force of will that I keep my heel from hitting the floor to keep time. I am clearly, visibly, a wreck of nerves, and I can’t look away from my hands for fear I’ll see the door opening and freeze.

Steady footsteps approach, and I feel someone settle onto the bench beside me. I don’t have to look to know it’s Vic. Even aside from the familiar sense of his presence, he’s been wearing the same aftershave longer than I’ve been alive. “This is protocol,” he says quietly, still trying to preserve my theoretical dignity even though we’re alone in the hall. “You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.”

“This time is different.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

Protocol. Because whenever an agent fires their weapon, Internal Affairs investigates the circumstances, makes sure it was the best option, that there wasn’t some other way we should have seen. I have done it before, and most of the time, however uncomfortable it is to sit in front of agents from IA and explain every single little thing you’ve done, it’s actually reassuring. Comforting, in a way, to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that not only did you make the right—the only—call, but your agency is holding you and all of its agents accountable to a high standard of integrity and ethics.

Today it is not reassuring, because today it’s different.

Vic’s hand rests on my knee. Not squeezing, just there. Warm and solid and familiar.

The creak and thump of crutches carries down the hall, and we both look up to watch Eddison slowly make his way around the corner. His top half looks almost work ready, the white dress shirt and black blazer paired with a black tie covered in tiny stained-glass rosettes. Instead of slacks, however, he’s in soft black lounge pants and trying desperately to pretend they’re professional, and black sneakers he hasn’t worn to the office since he was promoted to SSAIC. The pants are loose enough that the bulky bandages around his left thigh aren’t particularly noticeable unless you already know they’re there.

He looks terrible. The yellow plastic hospital band is still on his wrist, peeking out from his cuffs, and his color is awful beneath the week of dark stubble that’s basically a beard at this point. Tight lines around his eyes announce that he isn’t taking as much pain medication as he should.

Pendejo got shot a week ago, but damn us all if we try to get him to be sensible. Dios nos salve de idiotas y hombres.

“You’re almost late,” Vic says instead of hello.

Eddison stops in front of us and takes a minute to figure out how to be stationary on crutches. “I think every agent in the building has stopped to talk to me.”

“Glad to have you back?”

“Lecturing me to take it easy,” he corrects, scratching at his jaw. “Watts says I can’t be trusted to take care of myself properly, so everyone wants to see for themselves.”

“She’s not wrong.”

The exchange is familiar, the sound of a million other conversations, and I lean my head back against the wall, closing my eyes to let their voices wash over me. My thumbs keep up their rapid tap-tap-tap against my phone. The repetitive motion is making my wrists ache, but I can’t seem to stop.

The front of a sneaker nudges my shin. “Hey,” Eddison says. “We’ve got you.”

“I know,” I reply, voice a little too high to make it believable.

“You did nothing wrong.”

“I know.”

“Mercedes.” In a trick the dirty bastard learned from Vic, he waits until I look up at him. “We’ve got you.”

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, then do it again, this time on a count. “I know,” I say finally. “I’m just . . .”

“Will this help?” asks a new voice, and Eddison stumbles back with a yelp, catching himself on his crutches almost too late.