The humming noise starts up again. The rocking motion lulls me back into a trance.
I tumble back into darkness.
When I open my eyes one minute or one hundred years later, I’m lying on my back in a strange bed.
The room is cool, bright, and quiet, a comfortable blur. Without my glasses, I can’t see the details of my surroundings, but it doesn’t feel like a hospital. Doesn’t smell like one, either.
The air smells distinctly of campfire and pine needles. Of dense rain clouds and wet undergrowth. Of thick green moss climbing ancient tree trunks shrouded in fog at the tops.
Of the kind of wild outdoors where no people are.
It reminds me of a camping trip near Muir Woods my family took together when I was a kid. Gathering kindling for the fire, cold nights spent tucked into cozy sleeping bags, the sky overhead a glittering blanket of stars. Sloane and I whispering and giggling late into the night in our tent after our parents had fallen asleep in theirs.
It’s one of the last good memories I have of the two of us before our mother died.
I lie still for a moment, just breathing. Trying to stitch my ragged patchwork memory back together. Only bits and pieces of things surface, brief moments of awareness between long stretches of black. Even the things I can recall are blurry and full of static.
I have no idea much time has passed.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
My voice is a frog’s croak. My mouth tastes like ashes.
Heavy footsteps draw closer, stopping beside me. I know it’s him even before he speaks. I’d know his step and his scent anywhere. That dark presence, as powerful as gravity.
“You’re awake.”
Surprise softens the naturally rough timbre of his voice. Surprise and something else.
Relief?
Disappointment, more likely.
I moisten my lips, swallow, cough. When my stomach muscles contract, it feels like someone rammed a white-hot poker straight through my gut. I cry out in agony.
He murmurs something in Russian, soothing nonsensical words, then supports my head with one hand and presses a glass to my lips.
Water. Ice cold and clear. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.
I drink deeply until there’s nothing left. He takes the glass away and runs his thumb along my bottom lip, catching a dribble.
I whisper, “Where am I? What happened? Is Kieran okay?”
The mattress dips with his weight. He leans over me, setting his hand beside my pillow, bringing his face into focus. He gazes down into my eyes and answers my questions as succinctly as I asked them.
“You’re at my home. You were shot by your bodyguard. The blond one. I don’t know if the other one’s alive. I’ll find out if you want me to.”
“Yes, please.”
He nods. We stare at each other in silence. Somewhere outside, a crow caws three times.
It seems like a bad omen, like the flock of geese murdered by the plane as we descended into Boston.
“I…I don’t remember being shot.”
He nods again, but doesn’t respond to that.
“Will I be okay?”
“You lost a kidney. And your spleen. And a lot of blood.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a maybe. How do you feel?”
I think about it, searching for the perfect word to describe the sensation of extreme weakness, overwhelming exhaustion, and throbbing, bone-deep pain.
“Shitty.”
He gazes at me in unsmiling, laser-focused silence, then says suddenly, “Soup?”
I blink in confusion, not knowing if I heard him correctly because my brain is cottage cheese. “Excuse me?”
“Do you think you can eat something?”
Now I get it. “What kind of soup is it?”
He frowns. “The kind I made. Do you want it or not?”
We’re talking about soup. This is crazy. Focus, Riley. Find out what’s going on. I close my eyes and exhale slowly. “Why am I here?”
He pauses. Then his voice comes very low. “Because I want you to be.”
I’m afraid to open my eyes, but I do it anyway. He stares down at me with a million unspoken things burning in his gaze, all of them frightening.
I try to make my voice strong. “How long will I be here?”
“As long as it takes.”
I don’t have the nerve to ask him what that means or the energy to handle whatever the answer might be. I just bite my lip and nod, as if any of this makes any sense whatsoever.
He rises and leaves.
I hear sounds from another room. Pots clatter on a stove. A door opens and closes. Water runs into a sink.