“It was never your saliva that made him sick,” I realized.
“It looks that way.” Thom rose from his haunches, his stare fixed on me. “Your father is an intelligent man who spent decades on the force. He was friends with Mr. Trudeau for more than a quarter of a century. He would have homed in on any deviations in his behavioral patterns and questioned them, and Famine couldn’t allow that to happen.”
Yet Aunt Nancy, the person who knew him best, hadn’t been drugged. However, she was in good health. It would have been harder to excuse her sickness, and impossible to explain them sharing symptoms when she had no prior heart condition.
But how had she missed his tells? Or had she? She always kept busy, so I hadn’t given it much thought, but had she been busier than usual lately? The baking, the gardening, the Waxy Wonders. How easy would it have been for her to blame any peculiar behavior from Uncle Harold on Dad’s relapse? On worry over me after Jane vanished and Maggie was kidnapped?
The devil finds work for idle hands.
How often had I heard her utter the phrase? Whatever she had seen in him, whatever she had noticed, she must have coped through overextending herself to keep her mind off those worries and his too.
“We have no idea what’s in his system,” Kapoor agreed. “We have the technology and the specialization to treat him. He couldn’t be in better hands. The facility is secure, and he will be kept isolated from the charun patients.”
“What will you tell him? That he had a third stroke? That the stress of the situation sent him into cardiac arrest?” I rubbed the drying blood caked between my fingers. “He’s a career cop. Hearing he choked when his partner needed him most will kill him.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” The grim set of his jaw implied he’d done this a million times, that he would have spared the man his pride if he were able. No brilliant solution popped out of my mouth, and he nodded as though he hadn’t expected a better fix than the one he had already engineered. “I’ll email you a room number, his private line, and directions to the facility as soon as your dad is through admissions.”
“Come on.” Cole engulfed my hand with his, an unbreakable shackle. “I’ll take you home.”
While I appreciated the sentiment, I didn’t have one of those any longer.
“Hey, Kapoor,” Santiago called after the man had turned to go. “Heads up.” He lobbed a silver ball the size of my fist at the special agent’s chest. “Chain her up again, and see what happens.” Knuckles white from strain, he jabbed his index finger at Kapoor. “Luce bows to no one.”
A tight fist of emotion seized me by the throat, and I blinked away fresh tears as I received his message loud and clear. He and the others had earned the right to chip away at me, but no damn body else was allowed to touch a single brick in my foundation, or he would bring the whole house tumbling down on their heads.
Kapoor wheezed what might have been an agreement, hard to tell with him doubled over like that, but we didn’t wait around to find out if his lungs had worked out how to filter oxygen again.
When we hit the sidewalk, I spotted a black SUV idling at the curb and performed a quick headcount. One, two, three, four. The guys flanked me, their steady presence a comfort, but there was no way they would have left Portia at the bunkhouse alone given the intel I had passed on.
Hidden behind the tinted passenger windows, Maggie stared out at me.
The glass was too dark for our gazes to meet, and I was grateful for the barrier that prevented me from reading the expression clouding her heart-shaped face.
“I drove over with Wu.” I patted my jeans but came up empty. “I don’t know what happened to my keys. They’re not in my pockets.” And wild horses couldn’t drag me back into that house. “Looks like my phone is missing too.”
Getting behind the wheel had bad move written all over it anyway. I was not in the right headspace to drive. The only other option, catching a lift in the SUV with Maggie, was out of the question. I would walk before I forced her to endure my company.
“We came in two vehicles.” Cole led me down the street, past gawking pedestrians come to rubberneck at their neighbors’ misfortune. “Do you need to make any stops on the way?”
I shook my head and let him tuck me in the SUV and drive me to the farmhouse for the last time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The covers lifted off my head, static bringing long strands of hair along for the ride, and light spilled over my face. I squinted against the glare, curled in a ball on my side, mumbled profanities, then yanked on the fabric until welcoming darkness once again cocooned me.
The world was less brutal under here, tucked away in my warm bed, in my own home.
Beneath the handstitched, double wedding ring quilt Grandma Boudreau had sewn, I was insulated from the miseries that awaited me once my feet touched the floor.
“You can’t hide under there forever.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t fling the quilt aside fast enough. “Maggie?”
“And Portia,” she allowed, her tone somber. “I’m in control, though.”
I scrambled upright, folded my legs under me, and she accepted the wordless invitation as I patted the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted as she sat. “I’m so sorry. I had no right to give Portia consent without asking you. I wish I could go back and —”
“Let me die?” she finished.
“No.” I churned over my answer. “Yes?”
“I’m not here to say I forgive you, or that we’re cool. Most days I’m not convinced I wouldn’t have rather died in your backyard.” Her fingers wiped under her puffy eyes. “I butted heads with Mom and Dad all the time, over everything, but I miss them. I miss my job, my life, I miss being alone in my own head, in my own body.” More tears flowed onto her cheeks. “I miss Justin. I miss what we had, and I miss what we could have been.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” It came out as weak and as pitiful as I had been in that moment.
“You chose life.” She gave up on keeping her face dry and let the rivulets flow. “You did it because you love me. I get that. I do. I would have done the same for you, no question.” Her watery laugh slayed me. “I’m selfish too. I would have wanted to keep you with me.”
“It all happened so fast.” I ran the sheet between my fingers. “I had a split second to decide, and yeah. I chose life. The alternative… I couldn’t deal. It was all my fault. War, her coterie. You never should have been involved.”
“I always knew you were different, I just had no idea how different.” She wiped her nose with the hem of her shirt. “I can’t blame you for what happened. I saw through Portia’s memories how hard you worked to find me, how shocked you were to learn your identity.” The tide stemmed. “You can’t blame yourself either. This isn’t on you. You didn’t invite any of this to happen. You’re not responsible for what these so-called sisters of yours do any more than I’m responsible for my current predicament.”
“You had no choice,” I reminded her.
“Are you saying you did?” she challenged. “Something tells me no one asked for your opinion either.”
The absolution didn’t stick, and maybe it wasn’t meant to smooth us over so much as make me think.
“I came when Portia explained about Mr. Trudeau.” Maggie dropped her head. “He grilled a mean hamburger, and he never once tattled when he caught us stealing extra cookies from the jar in the kitchen. His fries could have used more salt, and I’m still convinced allowing a marksman to win that laser tag trophy wasn’t legal. But he was a good man, and he loved you.”
A sob broke free in my chest, and I mashed both hands over my heart like that might ease the ache.