She’d saved him.Twice.
And he might’ve killed her. How was he supposed to keep living if she didn’t make it?
Chapter 23
Six hours, twenty -four minutes later.
They’d been in that sterile, over-lit waiting room for six goddamn hours. Time crawled on leaden feet like an old cassette on rewind—whining, sluggish, and stuck in a never-ending loop.
The coffee in the vending machine tasted like a mouthful of mud, but it kept them awake. The air was thick with too many cigarettes breaks and not enough answers. Everyone was jittery, wound tight as a spring.
Zel sat by the window, arms folded, eyes red-rimmed but sharp. He’d checked in with Lirian an hour ago—news had come back that the base sweep was complete. Maro was safe and winding down in his makeshift gym, and Lirian had salvaged the hard drive from Malcom’s laptop.
The NCS had tried to confiscate it, but they had finally come to an agreement after a phone call from the higherups.
“It’s all there,” Lirian had murmured, a thread of victory in his voice. “Backups, contacts, payments…routes. Kids. Names.”
Zel rubbed his reddened eyes. “I’ve got some news. I’ll be back to explain.”
A moment later, Lirian’s voice was tired, the bone-deep weariness coming through the line. “Malcolm tried to fry the drive, didn’t do it right. Bastard must’ve panicked. I pulled what’s left and have access to his cloud backups, too. It’s messy, but it’s there.”
There was a pause. Then, flatter and colder, not knowing what he was saying, “Would’ve been a clean sweep if Thane hadn’t shot the asset in the chest.”
The line went dead with a soft click. Lirian and Maro didn’t know about Faolan’s identity. There had not been enough time to explain. They were not going to take it well.
They should have felt something like victory, but rather, it felt like their greatest failure…
Dorothy…Faolan…the names seemed to coalesce in Zel’s mind.
Now he was quiet again, staring out the window.
“Faolan.” He said it slowly, tasting it. As if it didn’t sit right in his mouth. There was another name he owed everything to, a person he had built up in his head. Now he knew they were one and the same.
Thane glanced over and got up to stand next to him. They both watched the drizzle paint the dirty windowpane.
Zel didn’t look at him, just kept watching the dark glass.
“I wondered sometimes…” he mused, voice quiet. “What would it be like to meet her again? I was so jealous of you.”
Thane blinked. “Jealous?”
Zel finally turned his head. “Of what you both had. It was like you two spoke your own language.”
Thane swallowed hard and rubbed his eyes with a trembling hand. “If she’s still alive…”
The mood hit rock bottom if that were possible.
“If she’s still alive, I am not going to leave her side” he repeated, voice gravel-thick, “We’ve let her down.Ilet her down.I didn’t look hard enough. The answers…they were there, buried in our heads. We just never connected the dots.”
Zel’s jaw tightened. “Wedidlook.”
“Not hard enough!” Thane snapped, too loud. Everyone turned—even Jac stirred. Cormac shot them a look like they were unruly toddlers.
“Not hard enough,” Thane repeated, his voice low. “And now she’s lying on a table, fighting for her life. What am I going to do if she doesn’t make it? How am I supposed to keep going? I am supposed to protect her, and I was the one to pull the trigger that might end her life.”
The hum of fluorescent lights and the whirr of hospital air vents mingled unnoticed in the background.
A little while later, Callum came over.
