Reunion (12 page)

“
Cindy and Marny
stole
Wizard?” I am incredulous.
 

Hiccup.

“Technically, yes. I prefer to think of it as an ethical rescue that violated the law.”

I snort. It hurts. I stop.

“And where is Wizard?”

“At home. With me. He’s the sweetest thing. I like to think we rescued him from being turned into a damaged version of himself by that sick man.” Minnie gives me a triumphant look and pats my hand. “Just like you did, for Amy.”

Her phone rings. She answers it. Her face tightens, then releases with a flood of joy so intense I start to cry again.

“Oh! Oh!” She squeezes my hand. It hurts, but I don’t say anything.

Hiccup.

“Amy’s coming out of it! I have to get back home.” She looks at the clock and then gets off the phone, fast. “
I can’t believe it! The one time I leave her bedside and she rallies.”
 

A warm happiness fills me. Maybe it’s just relief, but it feels like more. “Tell her I’ll see her soon,” I say.

“I’ll tell her far more than that. When you’re ready, we’ll make sure you can see each other.” And with that, Minnie gives me a fast, but soft, hug. She’s out the door before I can wipe my eyes.

The guard shuts the door behind her.

A wave of utter exhaustion rolls over me.

I’m asleep in seconds, fading out to the inner glow of knowing Amy’s going to be safe.

Safe.

We’re in a field of wildflowers, the Queen Anne’s Lace poking up above the buttercups and the purple blossoms, asserting itself with authority. I’m little, running like the wind, my cotton dress billowing with the wind and the speed of my freedom.

I
am invincible.
 

Daddy scoops me up and I’m on his shoulders. He’s running, and da
n
delion seeds float on the wind, brushing against my face like tiny kisses. I’m giggling, the sounds traveling like fairy dust. Daddy’s big hands keep me in place so I can fly.

I’m safe.

I know this because Daddy will keep me safe.

He slows, the field changing, thinning out until we come to a river.
T
he river bed is beautiful, with a waterfall that shines like diamonds. The flow is powerful but also unthreatening. I am barefoot and wade in to the water below, my hands eager to find the right rock.

Daddy sits down behind me and calls out, “Skip one! You can do it!”

I turn to look at him. His blonde hair is like spun gold, his eyes so happy and content.

And then Mommy appears. She looks like me, but all grown up. I run to her and hug her knees, crushing her. She smells like cinnamon.

“Honey,” she says, bending down to kiss my head. Her soft hand strokes my hair. She meets me at eye level, her dress like mine. The wind carries it in a silky ribbon behind her, like a train on a wedding dress.

“Mommy! You’re here!” I say, laughing with delight. “Daddy! Daddy! Come look!”

Mommy lets go of my hand. She lets go because suddenly, Daddy and Mommy are hugging.

And Daddy is laughing, too.

I wake up, my skin covered in goosebumps, my bladder screaming, my mind filled with a bliss that feels permanent. The sound of my own gasps is all I hear at first. The hospital room is quiet. Even the beep beep beep of my heart monitor is off. I’m released to go home in the morning.

Home.

Wherever that is.

I look over to the chairs where my guards normally sit and am astonished to find Mark asleep in one of them.

“Mark!” I rasp, my voice still not back. It’s been over a week since I was admitted, and while parts of me are healing, I’m still pretty fragile.

His eyes open like a soldier on duty and he jumps to his feet, hand on his gun.

“Carrie! What’
s wrong?
”
His
eyes shift to and fro as his face stays close to me.
He’s scanning the room for danger. I look around. It’s just me and Mark.
 

No more guards.

Then again, he
is
my guard.

The only one I really want.

“Nothing,” I rasp.

“A dream?” He holsters his gun, shrugging his shoulders to release tension. He’s wearing a suit, his dress shirt open at the collar, the top two buttons undone. I see a tie on the arm of the chair he was resting in. It’s a sedate burgundy.
His suit jacket is wrinkled in the back.
His hair is mussed and a day’s growth of beard adorns his face.

He is
perfect
.

“Yeah.” I burst into tears. Seeing him, finally, is what I need, and yet so many emotions are stirred up by his sudden presence.

“Shhhh. Shhhhh,” he croons. I’m in his arms and he’s so careful with me.
He reaches up to stroke my hair and I flinch.
 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Not pain. It’s just...” I reach up and rub my head. A week’s worth of hair is growing in. I wonder what I look like right now. I must be hideous. One of the day nurses covered the mirrors in my bathroom. When I asked for a hand mirror, she urged me to wait another week. Between the black eye, the long scrape, and my other injuries, I figure I look like a bald Cabbage Patch doll with bruises and casts.

“It’s what?” He pulls back and looks at me with confused eyes. Then he takes me in, really looking at me. Cataloguing my injuries and absorbing the details.

“It’s this. How I must look.”

“Oh, Carrie. No.
No
. You’re beautiful,”
he insists.
 

I
snort. It hurts. I wince and grab my ribs with my casted hand. “I can’t even laugh without sounding stupid. And I am the opposite of beautiful.”

“You don’t sound or look stupid. As for the beautiful part, you’re wrong.”

I rub my head with my casted hand. “Hah.
R
ight.”

He reaches up and lightly brushes his fingertips against the peach fuzz growing on my scalp. His eyes are so full of love and worry, of concern and hope.

“I always said I liked you with short hair.”

I whack him with my cast.

“Hey! That hurts!” he jokes. I know it doesn’t
really
hurt him, but it actually did hurt
me
.

I lean back against the pillows, suddenly tired. My body can relax with him here. Maybe that’s why I had my first happy dream in three years.

Because Mark was here, keeping me safe. Loving me.

He leans in for a kiss, feather-light and on my forehead. I tip my head up and catch his eyes.

He smiles and begins to pull back.

I
am so weak
. I try, pulling him closer. I need a kiss. I want one so desperately.

Mark can tell.

He gives me what I need. Body trembling
with some emotion I can’t quite pinpoint, he hovers over me, the kiss a welcome to a new life that neither of us quite expected. As he quivers, his lips gently nudge mine open, tongue saying hello to this new, uncharted love we now share.
 

Forged by trauma and the unforgettable knowledge that we overcame evil personified, we have a love that is something new. Like alchemy, we’ve taken Mark and Carrie and combined us into a completely separate element. Parts of each other remain, but the whole of our relationship is forever changed.

He pulls back and cups my face. He traces the scrape along my cheek. “I couldn’t stop him from doing that,” he says, his voice brimming with anger. “
It fucking killed me to have that fucker plant Eric Horner’s body in my cottage and have me detained by Chief Cummings. Murphy had to tell Cummings about how I treated Horner that day at the side of the road. Made me a prime suspect.”
 

“How’d you get out?”

“I had to blow my cover,” he says in a voice that sounds like he’s chewing roofing tacks.

“The DEA had to step in? Chief Cummings knows now?” I’m shocked. That makes me more alert, for sure. Four years of being undercover destroyed by El Brujo.

“Right. He’s not exactly thrilled about it, but he had to let me go immediately. I caught up to Drew and Chase and...Jesus. By the time we got there, I thought it was too late. Then Galt stepped up and—” He makes a choking sound of grief. “And all my careful watching couldn’t stop El Brujo from getting his hands on you.
I
couldn’t stop him.”
 

“No one could.” I’ve become numb to the memory of my day of prison in the storage spot. The doctors say the terror will hit me later, after the physical injuries heal enough for me to return to a semi-normal life.

“I should have,” Mark says with a sigh. “
I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
He closes his eyes. Fine lines of veins run under the delicate skin. His lashes, a shade darker than his hair, rest against strong cheekbones. Seeing him before me, felled by my own pain, makes me love him a little bit more.

I didn’t think that was possible.

“We did what we could. El Brujo is dead. Frenchie is dead. And,” I say, hardening my voice, “you have some explaining to do.”

He groans and sits up, but doesn’t stop touching me. “Explaining?”

“I have a million questions.”

“Only a million?”

“I’m trying to keep it simple.”

He gives me a
look I can’t quite read. In the distance, a machine starts beeping fast. Footsteps pound in the hallway. Someone is in crisis.
 

For once, it’s not me.

Mark shrugs his way out of his suit jacket and stands. “Can you move over?” he asks.
T
here’s a pleading tone under the surface. He wants to be with
me
.

Maybe he even
needs
me.

Very carefully, inch by inch, I make room for him on the bed. The instant heat of his long body pressed against mine makes another layer of muscle in me relax. I cuddle up to him.
H
e loops his arm around me, cautious of the IVs and slings and casts.

“You pretty much have to be an engineer to give me a hug these days,” I joke.

“Then I’ll become an engineer, Carrie,” he replies, kissing my bald head.

I shiver. It feels weird.

“Now,” I say in a no-nonsense voice. “Explain Galt to me.”

He laughs, the kind of sound that you push out of your nose like you’re in a state of disbelief.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Try.”

“No, Carrie, I mean I’m not sure I’m allowed.”

“
Oh.”
 

“But here’s what I can tell you. Galt turns out to be, oh, man...” He’s struggling. “Galt’s not a bad guy.”

“I watched him shoot Frenchie dead, Mark. I figured that out. But I thought he was the president of a motorcycle club gang?
Wasn’t Frenchie his buddy?
And
Galt was
out to kill Chase. You had Chase and Allie moving all the time, and—”

“Galt’s deep undercover.” Mark’s words ring in the room like a bullet ricocheting off a tin roof.

“What? Like you?”

He shakes his head. “Way deeper than me.”

“So he’s not really the president of a motorcycle club?”

Mark gives me a light squeeze. “No. He is.”

I do not understand. Then, suddenly, I do. “You mean, like, how you’re a ‘cop’?”
I use my only functional hand to make finger quotes.
 

“Right.”

“
And you didn’t know?”
 

“No. Never. I had no idea.”

“He’s a DEA agent and you didn’t know?”

“
H
e’s not a DEA agent.”

I just blink a lot, taking this in. “Then how is he—”

“He works for a different agency.”

“Which one?”

Mark shakes his head.

Ah. I’ve hit the limit of what he can say.

“If I guess, will you tell me?”
A jumble of alphabet soup fills my mind. CIA? FBI? NSA? Something else?
 

Mark tenses.

“
S.H.I.E.L.D.?” I ask.
 

T
he comic book joke goes over like a lead balloon. Mark just makes a grunting sound.

I sigh. “You don’t have to say a word. So Galt’s been undercover since when?”

“Since a year or so before I was born.”

A cold chill makes my teeth rattle. “Oh, my God. All these years.
Thirty
years
?
”

“Yes.”

“
And Loogie?”
 

“Can’t say.”

“Cant? Or won’t?”

Silence.

I let out a long, long exhale. “Wow. So Chase’s mom was killed by...bad guys?”

“Something like that. Galt would like to explain it himself. After we’re settled in L.A.”

“After we’re
what
?”
I sit up so suddenly I make a little whimpering sound from the pain in my shoulder.
 

Mark’s expression changes from one of firm command to complete helplessness. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Don’t move,” he urges, using his hands to re-settle my arm so I’m not in pain.

The pillows aren’t soft enough for what I’m hearing.

“Don’t change the subject. Los Angeles? What do you mean, we’re settling in L.A.? We don’t live together.”

“Not yet.”

He’s watching me so intently. My heart races in an uncomfortable way. The room begins to sway, like a giant gust of wind sweeps through it. I haven’t felt this off-kilter since the day I was trapped.

“I...Mark. I don’t—I don’t even know who you
are
. I can’t just move in with you.”

Pure shock fills in his face, like a relief map. Those honey-brown eyes reflect pain right at me. I’m blinded by it.

“What do you mean, you don’t know me?” His voice is hoarse with emotion. He stands, removing his heat from my body.

That hurts worse than my dislocated shoulder and broken bones.

“I don’t...I don’t even know your real name. Is it really Mark?”

“Yes.”

“And is your last name Paulson?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“
I can’t be Carrie
Nolastname
some day if we ever get married.”
 

His eyes flash
with joy
. “
Married?
”