Mockingbird (A Stepbrother Romance #2)(56)
"Go back," he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine. His soft rasping voice is the only thing in the world. "Go back and tell them you couldn't find me. Make it look real."
That won't be too hard.
"Come back to me."
"I will."
"Promise."
"I promise," he says, and kisses me again.
I let him go.
I can't watch. He has to be okay. He has to make it. I run back up the stairs. I'm heading for the ICU but I stop, run through some other places first, let the guards catch me. The words are lies but the emotions are real, I don't have to make myself cry until I can't breathe and Charity has to stop them from dragging me off and sedating me or something. She takes me back to Mom's room. They've moved her now. I can't tell either of them.
Eventually there are no more tears left to shed. I stare at the wall.
Charity falls asleep. Chunks of time bite themselves out of my memory. The next five days are a blur. On the sixth day Mom wakes up, on the seventh she's eating Jell-O and orders me to go home and sleep in a real bed. Charity spends that night with me, and a few more off and on until we bring my mother home.
She makes me fill out my responses to my acceptance letters.
She never says one word about Apollo.
In July I receive my confirmation package, invitation to orientation, tour dates, the works. I'm going to college.
About a week after that, I realize that it's been way too long since I had a period.
Chapter 15: Apollo
I fly coach to Zurich.
It took me three weeks to recover. I'm probably going to be walking with a cane longer than that. The pain in my leg is nothing. It feels like my heart has been ripped out and every time I breathe I can feel the air sucking through the hole it left, ripping me up even more. I can't go back yet, I can't.
God damn, this is a long flight. My leg is driving me insane. It's like there's a knot in it that will never go away, and I can't put any weight on it yet. I think my sword fighting days are over. I'm almost thankful for the distraction. It's like I live in a bland world of paper, all the color drained out of everything. I don't bother with the in-flight movie or the stupid pretzels, I just sit there until finally the plane begins to descend and my leg starts screaming.
With my luck, it was all a lie. Dad told me what to do if something ever happened to him. He made me memorize the account number and access code. There's no other way to get into the account, no name, nothing like that. A death certificate or probate court order won't get me in here, not into this bank. I booked a hotel to rest up before going but I end up heading straight to the bank anyway. In the lobby I'm greeted by a narrow faced man who looks like a butler and speaks perfect English without the slightest hint of the stereotypical German accent. He isn't wearing a monocle but he looks like he should be. I tersely give him the account number and write down the code for him, and mill around in the lobby until he walks out and matter-of-factly instructs me to follow him into an elevator.
It goes up to the second floor and he is noticeably annoyed when I hobble out after him, slowing his pace. Two more bank employees join us and walk into one of the vaults. Plural.
A distant part of me wonders how hard it would be to steal something from this place. The rest of me wants to throw up because I still think like that.
Inside there's a work table, heavily built. One at a time, they lay out ten safe deposit boxes on the table and unlock them. I move to open one and the Swiss Bank Butler lightly grasps my wrist.
"After we leave," he says, calmly. "Before we do, is there anything I can assist you with?"
"I need something to carry stuff out of here."
He nods, and they bring me a big canvas bag, like a gym bag. I'm not sure how I'm going to carry that, until they roll in a cart. It looks like the big flat shopping cart you'd use at a hardware store to move an air conditioner.
Then they finally leave, and lock me in. It's weirdly cold in here, the air dry enough to irritate my nostrils when I breathe. There's no security cameras in here. None of the employees know what's in the boxes, and I don't think they care. I'm not completely sure what to expect either.
There is nothing left of me. I don't know what to make of my father. What was a lie, and what wasn't? Were there any terrorists at all? Was the whole thing made up to string me along?
Why do I have a feeling that there would have been another job, and another and another until he died and left me a bitter shell?
Not that I'm much more than a bitter shell now. Without Diana I'm a dead man walking.
Let's open these f*ckers.
The first one is full of bearer bonds. Funny thing about those, they don't make them anymore. It must be from an old score. I don't remember it. My heart races as I look them over. If they're genuine, there's over fifteen million dollars in this box alone. This is a lot of bearer bonds, but then again, I'm in a bank. I can make it work.
The next box is full of diamonds. Just diamonds, no jewelry, no settings, just the rocks. The box after that, actual jewelry. Gold and emeralds, rubies and star sapphires. It looks like a treasure chest in a movie. I sigh as I realized it's going to take several days to move all this, even with the free duffel bag. That's how you know you've arrived: Your bank account includes free luggage. I open more boxes, find more treasures. Nothing identifiable, nothing that I could return after tracking down the owner. In the next to last box, I find much less, at least by volume. There's a stack of passports, all kinds of identity papers and notebooks.