Studied. The word he couldn’t say was studied.

“I’m guessing The Doctor’s notes might prove to be more information than they need for the next while,” I said quietly. “Thank goodness for small favors.”

“It did help,” Tyler admitted. “What he did to you is horrible, and I know nothing I can say or do can help make up for what you’ve been through.”

“If you did anything to keep it from happening again, you’ve done more than enough. Thank you.”

“There’s more to it…”

“My freedom comes with an asterisk?”

“A small one,” Emilio said. “Teeny tiny.” He held his fingers so close together light could barely pass through the gap.

“I don’t have a list of spies I can give them or anything.”

“We’re not the CIA.” Emilio sneered and sipped his coffee with a loud slurp.

“What’s the catch?”

“Well…you’re sort of a government asset now.” Tyler stood up as if he was afraid I might slap him, which would have implied he said something bad, only I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

“An asset as in an employee or an informant?” I asked.

“More like an asset we could stick a label on that says Property of the US Government.”

I struggled to sit up, because surely even in my condition there had to be a way for me to strangle two smirking government employees to death with my bare hands. “What?”

“It’s a formality, just a paperwork thing. This way you can be incorporated into the project but you don’t show up in any personnel documentation. Your asset tag is assigned solely to us.” Tyler pointed from himself to Emilio. “We’re your handlers.”

“I’m not totally sure you heard me the first time, so I’m going to say it again. What?”

“For all intents and purposes, you now belong to the US Government,” Emilio said, leaving no room for me to second-guess his meaning.

“But I’m Canadian.”

“We won’t hold that against you.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Before the boys had a chance to tattoo a serial number on me or inject me with any tracking chips, they went through a standard debrief. What should have been a quick question-and-answer turned into an hour and a half of me reliving the last week of my life for them.

When I was finished, Tyler assured me Dr. Kesteral would be made to pay for what he’d done.

“No court in the world can punish him the way he deserves to be punished,” I said. My headache was returning with more vigor than before, and the blood bag attached to my elbow had gone dry.

“He won’t be tried in a public court. He won’t be tried at all. There’s a special panel that will review what he’s done, get whatever information they can from him and then…”

“Then?”

“He’ll be disposed of.”

“If your panel needs any help, I think the government owns a tool that would be mighty useful to them in psycho doctor disposals.” I tried to make a joke of it, but the truth of the matter was if I ever saw The Doctor again, I would shred him until nothing but a fine red mist remained.

“Do you need anything before we go?” Emilio had left his card with me in case I ever had a request for him when Tyler was unavailable. They both assumed I would continue to trust Tyler as I had before, in spite of the fact he’d been lying to me for over a year.

I didn’t know how I felt about this new revelation, or how to process the news that the Government of the United States knew about vampires and werewolves but suppressed that knowledge from the general public. I shouldn’t have been shocked to learn politicians would lie to the people they represented, but this seemed like an awfully big secret to keep buried.

“I want to see Holden,” I said.

“I don’t think—”

“I want to see Holden.”

“Emilio, can you maybe go discuss it with the doctor?”

The shorter agent left. Ten minutes later Tyler disappeared as well, going to see what was holding up the process.

Twenty minutes went by, and I had all but given up hope of my request being fulfilled, when a wheelchair was pushed through the curtain.

He was pale, but that was nothing new. His cheekbones had a malnourished look still, but he was moving beyond the concentration-camp gaunt and back towards model thin. My heart leapt into my throat, making my words catch there. The nurse who’d brought the chair in did a perfect impression of a strict Sunday school teacher when she said, “Mr. Chancery is to stay in his chair. Ms. McQueen is to stay in her bed. You’re both healing, please respect the healing process. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

I barely heard a word of what she had said after Mr. Chancery. He looked like shit, but he was alive, and that made him the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

Ignoring any warnings he’d received, he stood up, legs still wobbly, and climbed into the bed beside me. In spite of my theory about not wanting hugs, when he wrapped his arms around me, I melted into him like I was butter and he was the pancake.

“I thought I’d never see you again.” I burrowed my face into the crook of his neck.

“I know.” He brushed back my hair and placed a kiss on my forehead. “Has he been in to see you yet?”

“You mean Tyler?”

“Tyler? The gangly detective? No, why on earth would I mean Tyler?”

I tilted my chin up, abrading my nose on the stubble covering his jaw. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Holden with stubble. “Who are you talking about?”

“Desmond.” His confusion got more pronounced when he saw my face. If I looked half as shocked as I felt, my expression must have been a doozy.

“What?” It was my new favorite question over the last couple of hours, though in fairness people were telling me a lot of things that were hard to process.

“Desmond is here. They wouldn’t let him in to see you, not sure why, something about protection was all I overheard. I assumed they would have told you though.”

If I’d known Desmond was anywhere within a hundred-mile radius, I would have kicked off the covers and gone looking for him myself. Since mobility might be an issue, I would have insisted they let him in to see me.

“Why is he here?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t who he was trying to see. I just listened to what I could hear from where they had me. He really hasn’t been in to see you?”

I shook my head and tried to sit up, but the movement made me dizzy. How long was it going to take before things got back to normal and I started feeling like myself again instead of a half-dead walking skeleton?

“You’re sure they said Desmond?”

He sat up beside me, wincing. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what Desmond would be doing here. I was elated to know he was close, but I couldn’t comprehend his presence. He had no interaction with the council—not the one back home or the one here—so how could he have figured out where to look for me?

Aside from our brief conversation en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I hadn’t spoken to him in days. Almost two weeks if I factored in the time I’d been kept locked up.

Questions swam around in my brain, bumping against one another to derail my thought process. I would just about have a grasp on one idea when another would push its way to the forefront. Tyler and Emilio had asked all the questions to fill in whatever blanks they had, but it hadn’t occurred to me that between us we would have a complete picture. I should have been more thorough, made them tell me what they knew. Then I might have the slightest hope in hell of understanding the whole story.

Desmond might have some of the answers I so desperately needed, but more than that I needed him. I had dreamed of him the way a prisoner dreams of freedom, and now I was out and he was so close, but he was still out of my reach.

I squeezed Holden’s hand, looking back at him. “Did they tell you anything?”

“Only that you were okay. That was all I needed to know.”

“Did they…did they tell you about Max?”

He grimaced and swallowed hard, I think to fight off any display of emotion. His expression became stoic and he said, “I heard.”

I didn’t ask if he knew all the details. Knowing Maxime had died was bad enough; I didn’t want to burden him with how. Gruesome details of the scene would be burned into my psyche for the rest of my life, and only one of us needed to be haunted by those images. Besides, no words existed to paint a proper picture of what The Doctor had done to him, and maybe that was for the best.

I fought the urge to escape from the bed and go in search of Desmond. The nurse who’d brought Holden to me had said we’d only have five minutes, and for those five minutes I would stay in his arms. Leaning back into him, I twined the fingers of my good hand into his and settled my head on his shoulder.

“Holden?”

“Yes?”

“Did we really make it out, or is this just some dream you’re giving me to help me let go?”

His fingers twitched against mine, squeezing harder, almost to the point of pain before he relaxed them. “If I was going to give you one last dream, don’t you think we’d be naked?”

I laughed even though it hurt. “Maybe you thought that would be too obvious.”

“No. We made it. We’re out.”

“I gave up, you know.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I did. I thought I’d seen you for the last time. I didn’t think I was going to leave that place alive. I gave up.”

“You don’t know how to give up.” He was stroking my hair, placing delicate kisses along my temple and cheeks. “You don’t have a quitter in you.”

“When I saw Max…”

“Secret, shhh.”

“I gave up,” I whispered, pressing my lips against the cool blue fabric of the gown he wore.