Repercussion: The Clandestine Saga Book 3 (20 page)

              "How.. are.. you... not a ... mess...too?" she managed to choke out. "He... was... your... best friend... for so...long."

"I know," he said calmly into her ear. "I am... devastated," he admitted. "But right now, I need to be here for you." She glanced up and caught his eyes for a moment, before putting her head back down. "I fell apart earlier, and I'll do it again. But I've got to make sure you're okay first."

              "I'll... never... be... okay," she insisted.

              "Oh, yes you will," he replied, pulling back a little, attempting to get her to make eye contact. "Come on, what would he say if he were standing here right now?"

              She took a deep breath and swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. At the thought of his ridiculous sayings, she began to giggle through her tears. "Suck it up, buttercup," she managed to get out.

              "Probably," he agreed. "Or, get your shit in one sock."

Her laughter mingled with her tears enough to allow her to catch her breath. Within a few moments, she had begun to regain her composure. Staring into those piercing blue eyes, she asked, "How are we going to do this without him?"

              Aaron shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know if I can do
this
without him. But...we'll go on. We have to."

              She nodded and slid her hand down his arm to take his hand in hers, trying not to think about the drying blood she found there. "Sam and Flynn are going to pay for this."

              "Yes, they are," he agreed.

              She could hear an approaching vehicle in the background and realized Cale had sent his team out to retrieve them on four wheelers. Before they arrived she said, "Thank you."

"For what? I didn't do anything right tonight," he proclaimed.

              She gave him a skeptical look. "This wasn't your fault," she reminded him. "But you took care of me, like you always do."

"Cadence, you took care of yourself. Like
you
always do," he replied.

              Cale's people might not have been too impressive in attack mode, but they clearly knew how to extract. Within a few minutes, they had collected the injured team members by helicopter and taken them to the hospital where Cale and other medical professionals were waiting for them. They had located Laura and taken her into custody and transported Hannah, Aaron, and Cadence back to the SUVs via four wheeler so they could transport the vehicles to Reno. Camilla was also collected and removed from the field. Cale had insisted that Elliott be airlifted to Reno as well, though by the time he reached the hospital, he had been without a pulse for almost forty minutes. Dr. Cale Ryan pronounced Dr. Elliott Sanderson dead upon arrival at 11:47 PM.

              When Cadence arrived at the hospital, she grabbed her bag out of the back of the SUV before running over to the main entrance. On the otherwise lonely drive over (three SUVs and three uninjured teammates meant they all drove alone) she had gotten an update from Phoebe regarding her wounded friends. Luckily for Meaghan, the bullet that had ripped through her thigh had exited; otherwise, she may have found herself in a similar, excruciatingly painful situation as Cadence's predicament when Laura had shot her--titanium bullets hurt. Christian needed to have a bullet fragment removed from his arm but he would recover. Jamie was rushed to surgery; the bullets lodged in his body were titanium and they would have to be removed before he could even begin to heal himself. In the meantime, he had lost a significant amount of blood. Fortunately, several of Cale's staff members were matches and were willing to donate. She had spent the rest of the trip stifling her tears just barely enough to keep her vehicle on the road.             

Hannah had caught up to her in the lobby and the women had ridden up in silence. Upon exiting the elevator on the hospital level, they were greeted with a whirl of flurry. It was organized chaos, and Archie was there to meet them. They didn't know where Aaron was; he had driven away from them pretty quickly, and Cadence could only assume he was there somewhere. He had shut his IAC off once they had left the scene.

              "Ladies, first of all, I am so very sorry for your loss," Archie said a sympathetic look on his face. "I know Cale is taking good care of your friends, but I'm going to show you directly to the showers," he informed them, eyeing Cadence in particular.

              She glanced down, seeing herself in the light for the first time. She was covered in blood. She knew she still had some on her hands from when she had tried to help Aaron stop the bleeding, but she had no idea just how profuse an amount she'd collected. Without question, she followed him down the hall. Though Hannah was not spotless, she looked nothing like the horror show Cadence represented.

              The shower was communal, but Cadence said nothing to her teammate in the next stall as she let the hot water run over her. Even after twenty long minutes and several applications of body wash, the water was still pink; she began to wonder if she'd ever remove the stains from her hands. She didn't want Hannah to hear her lose it, so she sobbed quietly to herself until she heard the Guardian turn off the shower, dress, and exit the room. Then, Cadence couldn't contain her tears any longer, and she spent quite some time lamenting her beloved companion as her tears mingled with the bloody water and slowly disappeared down the drain.

              It wasn't until she got a message from Meaghan asking where she was that she pulled herself away from the solace of the shower, dried herself off, put on what she hoped were her big girl panties, along with jeans and a T-shirt, slipped on her sneakers, and went out to face the world, hoping that she could find a way to put her despair behind her for a few hours.

              It didn't take her long to find Meaghan's room. She could tell her friend was still in a lot of pain. She gave her a gentle hug and brushed the hair out of her eyes. Meaghan immediately burst into tears, and Cadence cradled her friend's head against her shoulder, hushing her and assuring her it would all be okay.

              After a few moments, Meaghan seemed to collect herself enough to speak. "I just can't believe..." she started, but whatever the end of that sentence was supposed to be, it was lost. She tried again. "He died protecting me."

Cadence nodded "Of course he did, sweetheart. That was his job." The tears were at the precipice, ready to crest, but she fought them back. "Meaghan, I know how upset you are. Believe me, I am devastated, too. But you've got to get some rest so that you can get better. We've got a lot of work left ahead of us to track those two bastards down and annihilate them."

She nodded, the tears threatening to overcome her again. "That jackass looked him right in the eyes and pulled the trigger as Elliott begged him not to shoot me. He never said anything about himself...."

              Cadence smiled meekly at the thought of him. "He was amazing." She brushed those wayward bangs away again. "Let's ask the nurse to give you something so that you can sleep. The sooner you get better, the sooner you can get back to headquarters and see Shane."

              At the mention of his name, Meaghan's face lit up a bit, and Cadence knew she was on to something. "All right," she finally agreed, resting back. "Where's Aaron?" she asked as an afterthought.

              "He's around," Cadence assured her. She leaned forward and kissed her friend on the forehead. "I'm so glad you're all right, Meaghy. I love you. Now go to sleep."

              "I love you, too," she whispered. Cadence wasn't sure the meds would still be needed, but she decided to request them, just in case.

              She spent the next hour or so addressing issues as they arose. Eliza was on her way in from California, though Cadence wasn't sure why. She'd have to make sure Aaron was aware of that; he'd have to handle Eliza himself. She ran into Hannah in Christian's room. The tech guy was recovering very well, and so she sent Hannah to find hotel rooms for the four of them for the night; it appeared that Christian would be discharged in an hour or two if he continued to stabilize.

              Jamie was still in surgery, but Cale sent her a quick message that he was doing really well. He estimated they'd be closing within a half an hour. She didn't want to do anything to distract him during the surgery, but she did take a moment to ask why his choppers hadn't arrived when they were supposed to, and he explained he couldn't get the pilots to leave when he directed them to because they were afraid of the distant lightening. She didn't push him further, but she couldn't help but consider how things would have been different if they'd had the spotlights when they expected them. The renegades would have had no chance of getting away--if they'd even been brave enough to attempt their ambush under such close observation.

              Cadence was considering stopping by to talk to Laura, who was being held in a back office on the top floor awaiting transport back to Kansas City. She had a lot of questions, like who was the Vampire at the scene, since clearly it wasn't Giovani. Did she have any intel on Giovani at all? How did she manage to get so many Hunters and Guardians to give LIGHTS false information? In the long run, however, she decided against it. She would likely not be able to control herself, and her team needed her right now.

              There was all sorts of chatter on the IAC, and she realized Aaron, in all of his wisdom, had made a smart decision in turning his off. Eventually, she was able to gather that Eliza thought she was on her way to run the operation. She had called for a vote of no confidence against Aaron, stating he had botched the job. Cadence knew that would get nowhere. Many of the other Guardians and Hunters who were discussing the incident had already determined that Eliza must have been cooperating with Laura; she was in a sinking ship, lashing out in all directions, trying to grab on to anything to save herself. Cadence wouldn't hesitate to poke a whole in her life raft.

              Once she was sure everything was under control, she took a deep breath and went about what she'd wanted to do since she'd stumbled into the hospital a few hours ago.

***

              The view from the top of the building was spectacular, especially at night. The green, sparkling silhouette of the Silver Legacy Casino, as well as the red ambience of the two Harrah's towers, highlighted a sea of twinkling lights, glitter, and flickering star-like facades. In the distance, the mountains loomed, though they were almost impossible to make out without using night vision. Nevertheless, they were there, standing watch, their menacing beauty a cautionary reminder that looks can be deceiving.

              Aaron had been sitting there for quite some time, attempting to enjoy the silence. It had been decades since he had quieted the outside voices in his head for this long. Now, the silence seemed deafening, and he couldn't help but reflect on what he should have done differently, what he could have done to protect his teammates, to save his best friend's life.

For the first time in a long time, he resolved to let someone else worry about taking care of the masses. He knew Cale would patch up his colleagues, and Hannah was fully capable of directing everything else. He was extremely worried about Cadence, but he had no idea what to expect from her since they were clearly on Cale's turf. He was certain she would find him eventually, but if it took too much longer, he would pull himself away from his catharsis and seek her out.

              When the door squeaked open behind him, he didn't need to turn to see that it was her. Her light footsteps were hardly detectible as she made her way across the narrow distance to his perch. "Holy hell," she said, leaning over the narrow ledge he was sitting on. "Now, that's what you call a drop."

He tipped his head to the side and shrugged in agreement. "Falling would hurt," he admitted. "But it wouldn't kill me. Not much can do that."

              She didn't comment, just listened, leaning against the wall next to him, her arms crossed.

"You know, there are thousands of Guardians in the world who would love to be put out of their misery?" He glanced at her to see if she was disgusted by what appeared to be insensitivity. She looked concerned, but not revolted, so he continued, unleashing many of the thoughts that had been bouncing around in his head as he sat atop Reno. "It's not something most of us know about, or are willing to discuss, but the Leader before your grandpa tried something called 'mercy killings.' He let Guardians who had, had enough, most of them hundreds--even thousands--of years old, volunteer for euthanasia." She gasped, and he glanced at her again. "I know it sounds awful, but really, for many of them, it was their only way out. They just lined up, and any Hunter that was willing stood across from them and kept shooting until there was no more movement."

              "Oh, my God," she exclaimed just above a whisper. "That sounds horrible."

He nodded in agreement. "It does, and that's why he eventually stopped. But so many Guardians kept volunteering, he did several."

              "Why?" she asked, a tone of disgust now evident in her voice.

              It took him a moment to answer. He was pondering the opposite of that question--why not? "After so many years, I guess, they just... wanted a way out. What other choice did they--do we--have, with no way to re-Transform and no way to die a natural death?"