“Oh, thank God.” A familiar voice came from outside the door. “She’s awake? Can I see her?”
My mom! Did Silver get her, too?
The door swung open and she was there, hurrying toward me.
A short, wrinkly man in a white coat materialized behind her, carrying no weapons as far as I could tell.
Beyond them, a tall figure moving in the doorway caught my eye—Sergeant Mathews. His square jaw was set tight, yet his dark eyes were soft. My drugged brain couldn’t make sense of how and why he was here.
Cool air tickled my wrists, telling me I was free. I wanted to rip the plastic mask off my face and bolt out of this white hell, but my mom’s fingers wrapped themselves around the place where the straps had just come off. Not free enough.
“Oh, Rue,” my mom said as she sat beside me and pulled down my mask. She looked unusually haggard and stressed. “I was so worried.”
“Mom, what’s going on?” I still wasn’t sure if I needed to protect the both of us.
“You gave us a scare there,” the wrinkly man said as he wobbled closer and nodded to excuse the woman I now understood was my nurse. “It’s been nearly two days since you came in here kicking and screaming.”
That made no sense. I didn’t remember that. Why didn’t I remember anything? Maybe that was why I was strapped down.
I searched my consciousness for a crack in the dam that held back my memories of when and how I got here.
“You suffered extreme smoke inhalation. We had to give you oxygen and keep you sedated so you could rest,” Dr. Wrinkles said, patting my foot through the sheets.
Smoke. Yes, I remembered the smoke. So much smoke.
Crack.
“Luckily, you only have minor burns on your leg from the fire,” the doctor continued.
Fire, sure—where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Crack, crack.
“Give her a few more days, and your little heroine will be good as new,” he said to my mom.
Heroine? Who did I save?
Crack, crack, crack.
The dam broke, and Dr. Teresa was behind it.
“Where is she?” I sat up tall in bed. “Dr. Teresa? Is she OK?”
“She’s fine,” my mom said, putting her thin hand on my knee. “She’s in a room down the hall.”
I exhaled in relief and went into a coughing fit.
“I have to go see her,” I said, starting to get up. “I need to talk to her.”
My mom’s grip tightened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I jerked away to climb toward the opposite side of the bed, but then I felt a sharp, pointy tug at my forearm. I looked down to find that a scary-looking IV connected me to the medical equipment lining the headboard. The thought of ripping it out made me dizzy and nauseated.
I held my head in my hands for a moment to fight the desire to dry heave. Another attack of the black lung made me double over the bed with a very unladylike hacking noise. Someone slid the plastic mask back over my face, and I concentrated on the cool, wet air replacing the painful darkness inside me.
I had no choice. I let my mom force me back in bed.
When my breathing steadied, I opened my eyes to find my mom standing at the foot of my bed. She had tears in her eyes. Not little ones or fake ones meant for TV, but real streaming tears.
“What is it, Mom?” I asked, pulling the mask away slightly.
“I need to tell you something,” she said, looking at me so hard it felt like she was looking through me.
My heart felt as weak as my lungs. What did she need to tell me now?
“OK,” I said, bracing myself.
Another tear spilled out, and she paused as if forming the words in her mouth pained her. “Detective Martinez is dead.”
Deep down I’d already known, but it did nothing to soften the blow.
I remembered talking to him, feeling his warm blood on my hands as I tried to stop the flow. I looked down at my hands, wondering if they were still stained.
I closed my burning eyes.
“Rue, there’s more,” she said, prompting me to reopen my eyes for another hit. I didn’t know if I could take it.
“The police found Liam with Martinez’s blood all over him.” She paused. “They’ve arrested him for murder.”
CHAPTER 24
It took another three days before they released me from the hospital. This time it wasn’t the IV or the coughing bouts confining me to bed—it was an armed officer standing at my door. My mom said the guard was there for my own protection, but it felt more like he was there for my own imprisonment.
Those three days seemed endless. I went over everything in my head again and again, trying to figure out what I could have done differently to keep Martinez from dying and Liam from going to prison. Where had I gone wrong? I needed to talk to my mother about my involvement in it all, but there was always someone else within hearing distance—a nurse, a doctor, a guard…
After telling me about Liam’s arrest, Mom had explained the investigators’ theory that he had set fire to the apartment complex to destroy evidence. That even though Liam’s motive for the murder was still unclear, his involvement was indisputable. And until he started cooperating with the investigation, he would continue to be the sole suspect. The more she explained, the more guilt wrapped around me—the reason he wasn’t “cooperating” was to protect me.
According to Jane, Liam was claiming ignorance. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and ran her hands through her hair when she recapped his side of the story in press conference bullet-point detaiclass="underline" “Martinez had been shot by an unknown third party, you and Liam went to his aid—hence the blood—you smelled smoke and went after Dr. Teresa, he’d tried to go after you, and someone knocked him out from behind. The next thing he knew a fireman was waking him up in the street outside the apartments.”
At the hospital, I’d mostly just listened while biting my tongue. But once we got home, I knew it was time to come clean. In order to plead Liam’s case, I had to tell Mom the truth. All of it. In the privacy of her office, I dropped every detail, spat out every fact. From me following Charlie LeMarq and the Filthy Five, to Silver’s messages and five forced murders, to going to Detective Martinez with the key.
I wasn’t sure she entirely believed me without any proof to back up my story. No bodies were ever found at any warehouse, harbor, or apartment complex. Well, except for Martinez’s—his burned corpse and gold chain were all that remained in the complex’s ashes.
I told her that Silver had to have been the one to knock out Liam. Of course he was. Stupid-ass Silver and his split personalities had done it again. This was his MO—set us up and then save our skins. But this time, he left evidence that tied Liam to Martinez’s murder. So why didn’t he just kill Liam like he did Martinez? Why ruin Liam’s life when he could take it?
When I brought up Martinez’s cryptic comments about me being brought “back to the beginning” and asked her what Martinez was talking about when he said he’d tried to warn her, she pleaded the fifth. When I showed her the picture of Silver from the art fair, she got that surly look on her face that meant she was going to take a coffee break, or a vodka break, or whatever other kind of break she needed to “think straight.”
I was used to her hiding things from me, just like she was used to me hiding things from her—but under these circumstances it felt unfair. As I opened up, she closed down. Again and again I asked what she knew, but she was a vault of secrets. And I never had the code.