The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(82)

“Hello, Keely. I met your parents.”

“I think I hurt them,” whispers Keely, but Inara shakes her head.

“They’re just scared. Be patient with them, and be patient with yourself.”

Victor and his partners hover near the door for nearly an hour, watching the young women laugh and toss jokes and insults back and forth, as they comfort the occasional breakdown or tears. Despite her obvious distaste for it, the girl allows herself to be introduced to the parents. She listens to them patiently as they tell her all about their searches for their daughters, how they never gave up hope, and the only sign of her cynicism is the cocked eyebrow that sends Danelle into giggles strong enough to set off her heart monitor.

Ravenna he can identify—she looks like a younger version of her mother—and he watches their short conversation intently, wishing he could hear any of it. The senator’s daughter has bandages wrapped around most of one leg. Ravenna’s the dancer, he remembers. As Inara gently touches the bandages, he wonders how this will affect that.

He can name some of the other Butterflies from her stories. For others he has to listen for the names they toss around, try to pin them to their owners. With the exception of Keely, never renamed, none of them use their original names. It’s still the names from the Garden on their tongues, on their minds, and he can see the parents cringe every time. Inara said that sometimes it was easier to forget; for the first time, he wonders if any of them did. Or perhaps she’s right, and they’re not ready for this to be real yet.

It’s tempting to stay there longer, to bask in the sight to push back some of the horrors of the past few days, but Victor can’t relax into it completely. There’s more she has to see, and more she has yet to tell them.

More they need to know.

He lifts his wrist to check his watch and immediately Inara’s eyes are on him, a question that doesn’t need words. He nods. She sighs, closing her eyes for a moment to collect herself, then starts the process of reassuring everyone she’ll be back. She’s almost back to the door when Bliss catches her hand.

“How much have you told them?” she asks bluntly.

“Most of what’s important.”

“And what have they told you?”

“Avery’s dead. The Gardener is likely to survive to stand trial.”

“So we’ll all have to talk.”

“It’s time, and look at it this way: maybe the FBI will be easier to tell than your parents.”

Bliss grimaces.

“Her parents are on their way,” Ramirez whispers to Victor, “flying over the Atlantic from her father’s new teaching position in Paris. It’s hard to tell whether they gave up looking for her, or if they simply had to do what was best for the children they still had.”

From her expression, it’s clear Bliss isn’t inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

With a last hug for Keely, Inara leaves the room with Victor and Eddison; Ramirez remains behind to talk with the parents. They pass a string of empty rooms with guards at the doors, all the rooms the girls are supposed to be in but aren’t, then a run of unoccupied rooms that form a buffer between the girls and the rooms at the far end of the hall, with their own guards.

When they stop, Eddison glances in the door’s small window and shoots his partner a curious look. Victor simply nods. “I’ll wait out here,” the younger man says.

Victor opens the door, ushers the girl through, and closes it carefully behind them.

The man on the bed is hooked into an unbelievable array of machines, all beeping softly with their own sounds and rhythms. A nasal cannula feeds oxygen into his system, but an intubation kit stands nearby for the very real possibility of being needed. Dressings obscure much of what the blanket doesn’t cover, some of them bandages, some of them glistening salves and synthetic materials to draw the heat out of the burns and prevent infection. The burns extend to one side of his scalp, a bubbling mess of discolored, blistered skin.

The girl stares at him with wide eyes, her feet rooted barely a yard inside the room.

“His name is Geoffrey MacIntosh,” Victor tells her gently. “He isn’t the Gardener anymore. He has a name and a host of disfiguring injuries, and he isn’t the god of the Garden anymore. He never will be again. His name is Geoffrey MacIntosh, and he’ll be brought to trial for everything he’s done. This man cannot hurt you anymore.”

“What about Eleanor? His wife?” she whispers.

“She’s in the next room so they can monitor her heart; she collapsed at the house. As far as we can tell, she never knew about any of this.”

“And Lorraine?”

“A few doors down. She’s being questioned to determine the extent to which she can be charged for her part in all of this. There will be a number of psychological evaluations before that’s decided.”

He can see the name take shape on her lips, but she doesn’t ask. She sinks down into one of the hard chairs against the wall, leaning forward against her knees to study the unconscious man in the hospital bed. “None of us had ever seen him so angry,” she says in a tiny voice. “Not even for all the harm that Avery caused. He was furious.”

He offers her his hand and tries to hide his surprise when she actually takes it, the gauze rubbing against his skin.

“None of us had ever seen him like that.”