Fifty
When the EMTs arrived, there was no evidence of the Carpathians or the white van. “I think the blood can be attributed to you guys,” Tango assured her of the splotches on the asphalt where Larsen and his two companions had fallen. Grady and Tango loaded the bodies and went speeding down the bayou road toward Lew’s. “We’re gonna rustle us up some gators,” Grady said, with a wicked grin.
“To feed the bodies to,” Ava explained woodenly to her brother, as they crouched beside Mercy together, in the relentless heat.
Aidan rode with them in the ambulance. Ava kept her hand curled around Mercy’s wrist, counting his slow, shallow heartbeats, until the paramedic urged her back so he could work on staunching the blood flow.
They were taken to University Hospital, because they had a Level 1 trauma center.
Trauma.
Yes, there was trauma.
Ava tried, again, to climb down from the exam table, and Aidan, propped against the doorjamb, lifted his brows in silent protest, like he expected that to hold her in place. She reached for the stepstool below with her socked toes and wriggled to the edge of the table. Fuck Aidan and his eyebrows.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said. “If they don’t have time to pop my shoulder back in, then I don’t have time to wait on them. Mercy–”
“Is in surgery,” Aidan broke in, stepping close so she’d have to shove him out of the way if she wanted off the table. He was counting on her being one-armed and unable to resist. He was being abnormally patient with her, and it was pissing her off. “You can’t do anything for him except get your arm patched up. He’ll be mad as hell if he wakes up in recovery and hears you’ve refused treatment.”
She made a face; that was true, but she didn’t want to admit it.
“Besides, doesn’t it hurt like a bitch?”
She shook her head. The pain had been so constant and nerve-shattering that she’d allowed it to cover her and transform into a vise-like shroud. She didn’t feel the shoulder. She didn’t feel anything. She’d ceased to be anything aside from the worried bundle of anxiety that wanted, needed, to get to Mercy.
“I need to get to him,” she said, gesturing Aidan aside. He ignored her hand signal, of course. “He needs me. I told him I’d be with him. I–”
“Ava.” He put a hand that felt very much like their father’s on top of her head, his face transforming, looking older and wiser, more like Ghost than he already did. “You’re in shock, sweetheart. Bad shock. And you’re not thinking right.”
She started to protest.
“Mercy is in surgery. This is a real nice hospital, and I’m sure the doctors know what they’re doing. All you need to do is wait for them to update you, and get your shoulder fixed. Okay?”
She didn’t agree with him.
There was the squeak of sneaker soles on the tile and a surgical intern – Dr. Roth, if she remembered correctly – leaned into her room, in green scrubs and cap, mask dangling around his neck. He was a kid, really, fresh-faced and eager, like an upbeat beagle puppy. Ava would have been entertained at another time. Now, she fixed him with a look that had him wetting his lips nervously before he spoke.
“Mrs. Lécuyer.” People here in New Orleans never mispronounced Mercy’s last name. “Dr. Evans wanted me to update you about your husband.”
Aidan stepped aside so she had an unimpeded view of the intern.
“How is he?” she asked.
“They’ve got the bleeding under control,” Dr. Roth said, sliding into a more comfortable skin now that they were talking shop. “Dr. Evans is going to remove the slug that’s lodged here” – gesture to his lowest two ribs. “The round in the shoulder” – up high above the heart, through the muscle – “was a through-and-through, so we’re checking for bleeders. Dr. Evans wants to get him stabilized and moved to ICU. Dr. Kimber will set his leg with a second operation tomorrow.”
Ava nodded. “Don’t forget about the infection, in the old wound.” She gestured to her own trapezius with her good hand.
“Of course not. We’ll start a central line when he gets to recovery.”
She nodded again. “Good. Thanks.” It was all she could do not to leap off the table and demand to be taken to the operating room, so she could stand at his head while the doctors dug through his big body with all their wicked tools, slicing him in order to heal him. “Please keep me updated,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She felt an insane laugh pressing at her throat. You sound just like Littlejohn, she wanted to tell him. But that would be stupid, because he had no idea who Littlejohn was.
Dr. Roth’s brows notched with concern, but he began to step back.
“Hey,” Aidan called to him. “When’s somebody gonna pop her shoulder back into place? Do I need to do it myself?” The glare he leveled on the intern was pure Ghost, down to the muscle twitch in his cheek.
“Um…” Dr. Roth stuttered. “I’ll get someone. Hold on.”
“She needs some goddamn pain meds too.”
“Yes. Right away. I’ll put someone on it.” Dr. Roth whipped around the corner like a scolded puppy.
When Aidan turned back to her, still scowling, she felt the stirrings of a smile at her mouth. She didn’t want to – it felt like a betrayal to Mercy’s prone form on the operating table – but she couldn’t help it.
“What?” he asked. “Is the concussion kicking in? Early onset dementia?”
“You just looked a lot like Dad,” she explained. “You’ve got early onset Dadding.”
One brow lifted and he almost smiled. “Okay, you for sure hit your head if you’re making jokes that bad.”
“I’m just not funny,” she said, a heaviness stealing across her face, pulling it slack again. Quietly: “Mercy’s the funny one.”
“Yeah, and he can have a good laugh about all this when he wakes his big ass up.”
When Aidan reached to finger a stray piece of hair that had fallen across her forehead, she said, “You’re being really sweet to me.” His hand stilled, like he’d been caught. “It’s because you think Mercy’s going to die, isn’t it?”
It was eerie, seeing her like this. For all that she was like Maggie, Ava had enough Ghost in her to rock along fairly smoothly most of the time. More even-tempered than both her parents. But this? This was spooky how detached and indifferent she was. She made a tiny whimpering sound when the doctors aligned her shoulder and put it back in its socket, pliant and blank-faced as a nurse fitted her with a sling and offered her some Tylenol in a paper cup. “Not while my husband’s on the table,” she protested matter-of-factly when another nurse came to wheel her up for her head CT.
“Hon, he’ll be on the table a while. Let’s get your head checked, okay?” The nurse was a sweet, motherly type who didn’t bat an eye at Ava’s single-minded obsession. She shot Aidan an understanding smile and said, “We’ll be right back.”
Ava twisted in the wheelchair as it was pushed from the room, looking small and pale in her white hospital gown. “Come get me if you hear anything,” she instructed him.
Aidan sighed and nodded, glad when she was finally out of sight.
He sank down into the visitor chair by the bed – they’d admitted her at this point – and dug his phone out of his cut pocket.
Husband. Every time Ava or one of the staff said it, he felt a little jolt. He’d wondered, at first, when she’d said it in the ambulance, if that was just her way of ensuring that she’d be allowed to see him later. But he’d spotted the gold ring on her left hand. “Before we left home,” she’d explained, without him asking. Aidan didn’t guess he could feel like too much of a righteous brother if the man had married her. He respected that.
It would make things so much harder for Ava, though, if for some reason Merc didn’t pull through. If they lost him – if she lost him…he wasn’t sure she’d recover this time.
Aidan hit two on his autodial and Maggie picked up at the end of the first ring. Her voice was a stronger version of Ava’s detached, calm tone.
“How’s it going?”
“They just took her up to CT to get her head checked out, but the doc’s not too worried about it. They’ll keep her in a room overnight, I’m guessing. The shoulder’s back in place; no breaks.”
“Good. How’s he?”
“Still in surgery.”
She let out a breath that rustled across her end of the line. “Okay.”
“Where are you guys?”
“Going across the state line into Georgia. Your dad’s going eighty-five.”
“You driving straight through?”
Ghost must have been able to hear him, because his voice said, “Yeah,” in the background.
“We’re coming as fast as we can,” Maggie said.
“Well don’t get arrested. Ava’s alright and I think he’s gonna be.”
Maggie sighed. “We’re coming as fast as we can,” she repeated.
It was Dr. Roth again, who explained things to her, as Mercy lay on the other side of the partially-open curtain, his skin sallow and almost as pale as his gown, his left leg in an immobilizing brace, his eyes closed, lean face slack.
In a soft, cajoling voice, Roth said, “The infection in the previous wound was fairly advanced. Dr. Evans debrided the edges…”
Ava stared, unblinking at the young intern as he explained that Mercy was on some heavy duty antibiotics and morphine for the pain.
“He’ll probably sleep between now and his next surgery, which would be for the best. It will allow his body to heal.”
She nodded. “When’s the leg surgery?”
“If he remains stable, Dr. Kimber plans on going in at nine tomorrow morning.”
“Good.”
Roth winced. “On X-ray, his knee was a bit of a mess. Dr. Kimber won’t know how extensive the damage is until she gets him on the table. At that point, you may have to make some decisions about how you want us to proceed.”
“You’ll be in there during the operation?”
“Yes.”
She glanced again at her sleeping husband, his arms stuck with IV needles, the glossy clear fluid dripping, dripping, dripping. “He’ll want to be able to ride. Whatever you have to do, he’ll want as much mobility as possible.”
When she glanced back at Roth, he nodded. “I understand.” He winced again. “Mrs. Lécuyer, I’m sorry, but considering the nature of your husband’s injuries–”
“You had to call the police,” she sighed. “I understand.” She reached to pass a hand unconsciously across the crown of her hair, and remembered that her left arm was strapped across her chest with a sling.
“I told them they couldn’t come into the ICU,” he said. “There’s two officers waiting to talk to you in the hall outside the family waiting room.”
“Okay.” She glanced again at Mercy. She just wanted to be with him, touch him, be there if his eyelids fluttered open and he called out to her. She couldn’t leave him alone and injured in this city he hated so much. She couldn’t.
Behind her, at the helm of her wheelchair, her nurse, Patricia, said, “The only place this poor thing’s going is to her bed. She needs to rest.”
“The cops won’t wait,” Ava said, resolute. “We can go talk to them.” She cast an appealing glance up at Roth. “Then I want to be here with him.”
His face creased with worry. “They’ve got a room set up for you.”
“To monitor my concussion. I’m fine,” she insisted. “No bleeding on the CT. Can’t someone check my pupils just as easily in here?”
He debated it internally, then finally consented with a nod. “Okay.”
Ava glanced up at her brother, silent beside her, looking a little beat-up himself, thanks to a severe sleep deficit. “Will you stay with him? While I’m gone.”
He frowned, looking still even more like their dad. “I’m not throwing you to the cops by yourself.”
“It’s alright. I’ve got Patricia with me. Right, Patricia?”
“Sure, honey. Those boys get too nosy, I’ll send ‘em packing.”
“Please, Aidan,” she said. “I don’t want him to be alone.”
She had no idea how to classify the expression in his dark eyes. “Alright.”
Movement against her hand. Ava hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d tried so hard to stay alert, but sitting upright in the chair had devolved into leaning against the side of Mercy’s bed, and then resting her head on it, mindful of the wires and tubes. She knew that she’d succumbed to sleep when she became aware of the movement, and saw that the world was black behind her closed eyelids.
She lifted her head, wondering if she’d only imagined it, but now, she saw it, the reflexive opening and closing of Mercy’s hand, the subtle tension going up his arm.
She heard a soft rustling and saw that his head had turned toward her on the pillow. A faint glimmer at his lashes revealed that his eyes were open, if only a crack.
Ava slid her hand inside of his. “I’m here, baby. Right here.”
“Hmm,” he murmured against the sedation of the morphine. He blinked, pressed his head back, sighed deeply. “Where…?” He made a sticky sound in the back of his throat, like even one word was too many.
Ava squeezed his hand. “We’re at University Hospital. You had one surgery, and you’re going to have another one in the morning. Aidan’s here.” He had wandered off in search of food at her insistence. The growling of his stomach had been catching the attention of passing doctors and nurses it had been so loud. “Mom and Dad are on their way.”
She thought he’d fallen asleep again, the way he went still. But then there was the glitter of his cracked eyes again and he said, “You?”
“I’m fine.”
He sighed again, eyes easing shut.
He slept.
**
Aidan got a text from Maggie when they were two miles out. With one last check of Ava – she was awake, staring blankly at Mercy, head against the back of her chair, deeply absorbed. She didn’t seem to hear him when he said, “I’ll be right back,” just kept staring. He wasn’t even sure she blinked.
It felt good to stretch his legs on the long walk down the hall to the main doors; he checked the time on the wall clock as he went through the airlock out into the balmy rich dark of a New Orleans night. It was eleven-fifteen.
There was a no smoking sign off to his left, and a doctor in scrubs lighting up to his right. He shook out a cig and realized, on the first drag, that his hands had been shaking before. They stilled now. He trembled, not with fear, but with a consuming relief. Mags was almost here; she’d know what to do with Ava.
He braced a shoulder against the outer wall of the hospital and studied the unfamiliar patterns of manmade light spread out before him. He’d never been anywhere like New Orleans. Beautiful city. The kind of place that made you feel small and young and stupid. The Dogs down here were different; less hurried, less caught up with their own importance.
How did it go? “Nobody owns New Orleans.” That’s what Bob Boudreaux had said the first time Aidan met him. He was beginning to understand that. This place felt like a storied, history-laced wilderness, one only the locals knew how to navigate. A vein of danger pulsing in the welcoming warmth.
He saw Maggie first, her banner of bright hair under the Halogen lights as she hurried toward him. Ghost was dark in contrast beside her, his face set at grim angles Aidan knew to be the product of exhaustion, and not anger. His own face did the same thing.
“Hey,” Maggie said when she got close enough. She threw herself at him, hugged tight for one brief second. A warm squeeze of perfume and hair product, all warm and soft and feminine. When she pushed back, her face was all business, brows tucked together. She laid her hand against his stubbly cheek in apology and reassurance and affection, all three at once. “Where?”
“ICU. Straight back through there. The desk nurse can show you.”
She nodded and took off, power walking through the automatic doors of the airlock.
Ghost stayed with Aidan a moment, reached to give his shoulder an uncharacteristic, fatherly squeeze. “What’d she say to the cops?”
“That it was punk kids joyriding, shooting out the window for the fun of it. She said the original GSW – infected as shit, by the way – was target practice gone bad. They didn’t believe it, but what are they gonna do? They’ve got no shooters, no bodies, no crime.”
“You guys cleaned it up good?”
Aidan nodded. “Gator food.”
“Good job.”
When Ghost made to walk away, Aidan made a reach for his father’s jacket that went nowhere. He retracted his hand, but said, “What happened at the charity thing? Tango talked to Walsh over the phone. Collier shot Jace?”
Ghost nodded, face grim. “In sight of the damn PD. He’s trying to take the fall for Andre, Ronnie and Mason too.”
“Shit.”
“If I know him” – eyebrows raised to indicate that yes, he did know him – “he’s thinking that if he’s gonna go away anyway, he might as well take the heat off the rest of us.”
Aidan shook his head in quiet disbelief. Of all the guys, he would never have suspected this would happen to Collier.
“Oh, wait,” he said, as Ghost again tried to walk into the hospital. His dad looked annoyed, but he wanted to say this, out here in the dark, before Ghost laid eyes on the brutal, fluorescent-lighted portrait in the ICU.
He dropped his voice a notch. “The three bodies the guys fed to the gators? Ava’s handiwork, all three.”
Ghost’s face blanked over with shock.
“Mercy realized he was wiping out, and he threw her off. Jasper’s crew must have thought she was out cold, or dead, or didn’t care. She got the drop on them. Dad…she put fourteen rounds in Larsen’s face. In his face. We coulda left him on the side of the road and no one would have been able to ID him. It was nothing but a bit of that blonde hair left.”
“Jesus,” Ghost said, eyes too-wide.
“I wanted to tell you, before you got in there,” Aidan explained. “Because she’s not herself. She’s on a hair trigger. She and Merc got married…”
Ghost’s jaw clenched, briefly.
“…and she’s acting like some kind of super intense Viking wife or something. It’s spooky,” he warned. “And I…I just wouldn’t push her, if I were you. That’s not what she needs right now.”
Ghost swallowed, and glanced toward the light beaming out through the glass sliding doors. “I’m not going to push her,” he said, softly. “I’m not angry with her.”
No, Aidan agreed silently. Because how could any of them feel that way?
“Ava.”
She’d been in the same positon for so long, watching Mercy breathe, tracking the movements of his eyes beneath the closed lids, that her neck was stiff and protested, grabbing as she rolled her head to glance toward the parted curtain.
Mom.
Maggie stood just inside the drape, in her familiar jeans and denim jacket, her wavy hair wild around her shoulders, her expression a mixture of relief and love and grief.
“Mom,” Ava said. And then again, disbelieving, “Mom.” She felt her throat constrict, her eyes burning, her chest heaving. She’d hadn’t shed a single tear since the entire ordeal began, and finally, she was breaking down, the moisture flooding her eyes, washing away all the leftover panic. “Oh God, Mom,” she whispered, as the tears consumed her and her shoulders started to shake.
“Baby,” Maggie said, and came to her, folded her up in her arms, instantly mindful of her sling and the bump on her head, as if she could detect all her little hurts with some sixth sense.
“It’s alright now,” Maggie soothed, stroking her hair as she sobbed into the shoulder of her jacket. “Shh. It’s alright.”