“They finally admit you exist now. At long last, the Bureau believes.”
He left them in the garage, all grim and exhausted in the wake of their messy battle. Mia didn’t care that she was standing around in her flimsy undershirt, or that she still tasted the blood of the Dep she bit. All her dark thoughts revolved around David. The poor boy had screamed all throughout the van ride as Amanda disinfected his wounds. Now he’d become dark-eyed and listless, a living corpse.
It killed Hannah to see him like this. David had been their strongest wall, their toughest spine. Now the universe had broken him as thoroughly as Hannah broke the back of that federal agent.
She wrapped her arms around Theo, burying her face in his chest. He rubbed her shoulder and looked to the minivan.
“Zack, if that thing has an antitheft tracker—”
“It does. I’ll rust it.” He scanned the group, his nervous eyes lingering on David. “You guys should get some rest.”
Mia held Amanda’s arm. “You want me to find a towel?”
Through the garage-door glass, Amanda watched Xander depart. The Deps may have been fools to a man, but she knew they had one smart woman. A second encounter with Melissa seemed all but inevitable. Next time she wouldn’t bother with sleeping gas.
Amanda rubbed her brow with a bloody hand, too tired to even cry.
“No. Screw the rugs.”
—
The house was as posh and immaculate as its owner. The living room teemed with modernist sculptures, abstract paintings, and bizarrely shaped furniture that seemed more ornamental than functional.
Mia reclined in a lounger, stroking the neck of a fat black cat while she replayed the events of the morning. She could only imagine how her dad and brothers would have reacted to seeing their sweet little treasure on the highway, growling threats at federal agents as she cuffed their wrists. She might have seized the mantle of Meanest Farisi if she hadn’t screwed up so badly.
She chewed her pen in somber thought, then scribbled into her journal.
The time may come when you need to put handcuffs on people. When you do, make them tight. I didn’t, and David got shot because of it.
Now that she was freed from the fear of paradox, she could send any messages she wanted through her past portals. It brought her a modicum of comfort to think she could create a branching timeline where that agent never broke free and seized Rebel’s gun. The note would make all the difference in the world to a parallel David. She only hoped this one could forgive her.
He slouched at the kitchen table, processing his wound with bleary misery. The bullet had reduced his ring and middle fingers to stubs, turning his right hand into a crude, misshapen trident. The sight of his infirmity, his obscenity, forced his rage into a single vengeful beam. It didn’t point at Mia.
“I warned you,” he told Amanda, through a hoarse and jagged rasp. “I warned you what would happen if you took Theo to that health fair. Do you believe me now?”
The widow sat at his side, bandaging his hand in grim intensity. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry. Just like you were sorry when you ignored Mia’s warning and confronted those policemen. Just like you were sorry when you nearly killed Hannah and Zack with your tempis.”
Amanda hid her torment behind a face of stone. She knew from experience that not all patients were brave in the face of their pain. Some were downright cruel.
“If you would just take an epallay—”
He slapped the patch from her hand. “I do not want that chemical filth in my body. I’d sooner wear leeches.”
Mia shut her eyes in a tortured wince. She could hear David’s every word from the living room and anxiously waited for her due share of the rancor.
“You’re a stupid woman, Amanda. As stupid as you are sanctimonious. The fact that you even lecture other—”
The violent slam of a car hood cut him off. Zack treaded in from the garage and threw David a baleful glare on the way to the sink. The boy’s deep blue eyes narrowed to slits.
“You have something to say to me?”
The cartoonist scrubbed his greasy hands under the faucet. “He was bald and black.”
“Excuse me?”
“The agent who shot you. He was a bald, black man. I’m only telling you this because you seem to have him confused with Amanda.”
She raised a palm at Zack. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not all right. I know he’s hurt right now—”
“Hurt right now?” David stood up and brandished his hand. “Do you think this is a temporary condition, Zack? Do you expect to heal me like you so brilliantly healed that animal? At least Amanda’s fearsome in her incompetence. You were just a joke out there. The way you took Melissa’s side against me—”
“You were acting like a psychopath!”
“I did what had to be done!”
“All you did was prove their worst fears about us! Even I was scared of you!”