“He’s alive,” Sam says. “That’s the good news.”
“It was touch and go on the way here,” Aaron says. “They nearly lost him. My mom is on her way back from Europe. Turns out she’s the only one who knew where Daniel was, so . . . well, let’s just say I have a whole lot of questions.”
Sam shakes his head, and I get the feeling they’ve already had this discussion once or twice. “Come on, Aaron. It’s not fair to blame it all on Michele. She and Daniel didn’t share everything with me, but I knew he’d been doing something with Python for the past few months when he was with the MPD. I just didn’t realize he’d been undercover with them since he got out of training. Like Taylor, I actually bought the story that he’d finally found a girl willing to put up with his grumpy ass and that’s why he wasn’t at home most of the time. So your mom and Daniel weren’t the only ones keeping secrets.”
“That’s okay. I can be pissed at you and Mom at the same time. Daniel, too.”
I notice he doesn’t say the last bit with quite his usual level of venom. Hard to be too pissed at a guy when he’s in the ICU.
“You up for a walk?” Aaron asks. “The nurse said there’s an Au Bon Pain past the chapel. I need fuel.”
“Sure.” I’m about to ask if he minds if Deo joins us, but then I realize Kelsey has Deo off to the side. That’s good. I think he probably needs a session with her right now more than he ever has.
Aaron tells Sam to call his cell if they hear anything. He waits until we’re out of sight, then takes my hand. “How’s Deo?”
“Not talking about it. At least not to me. Hopefully Kelsey’s having better luck. I should have taken the gun. He kind of lost it in the lab when he got control back from Cregg. Fired at Cregg and at Lucas . . . Don’t blame him, but it was more like an automatic response. I don’t even know if he hit them. I should have taken the gun from him and made sure they were both dead. Then this would never have—”
Nope. You already had the vision, Anna. Wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.
Aaron echoes Jaden’s point without even knowing it. “Stop it. This isn’t your fault, and it isn’t Deo’s fault. It’s Cregg’s fault. You heard Daniel. He understood that perfectly. But . . . I’m pretty sure the police will be here soon to talk with both of you. We’ve been going with the story that Lucas grabbed you guys because he believed you knew something about Molly’s death. That we tracked him down.”
I give a bitter laugh. “Ah, Selective Truth. We meet again.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a joke Deo and I have. We’ve had many occasions where we had to avoid telling the whole truth, and nothing but. I’m a little worried that Deo may be a problem, though. He feels so incredibly guilty—”
“That’s one thing Kelsey is talking to him about now.”
I sigh, finding it hard to believe that we’re now in a reality where Kelsey is coaching Deo on why he needs to lie to the police.
“Don’t suppose we’ve considered the possibility of bringing the police in on this? I mean, there’s an entire underground facility an hour up the road that backs up our story.”
“Well, they definitely know there’s a facility of some sort there, since most of the firefighters in northeastern Maryland are currently battling a fire there.”
Good . . . assuming they got the kids out. But . . .
Shh. I’m trying to have a conversation here.
Jaden has been pretty good about keeping quiet and keeping out of my head since we left The Warren, but then again, most of that time I was focused on driving. I’m not sure I have the energy for extra wall building right now, and I don’t want Aaron to think I’m tuning him out.
“. . . not going to find much evidence to connect it to Graham Cregg. The story you need to give them is that you were kept in separate rooms, but you think you were next to each other. You thought you heard Deo’s voice. The only person you saw was Lucas. Daniel broke the two of you out once the fire started. You don’t know who shot him. We’ll deal with all of the other questions . . . like why we decided to attempt a rescue without contacting the authorities.”
We enter an atrium that looks more like a shopping mall. Or maybe a hotel lobby. Several of the shops are closed, but Au Bon Pain is thriving, with four or five tables occupied, despite the ungodly hour.
“Okay. I’ll keep it simple. I just . . . I can’t see how the fire in that lab could have spread throughout the facility. It was separated from the main rooms by a really long tunnel.”