Radclyffe - Code of Honor

“She’s in bay eleven. You’ve got five minutes,” Hill murmured, “then you need to get out of here before we both get written up.”

“Thanks.”

Only two of the beds in the recovery room held patients, and bay eleven, nearest the door, was curtained off from the rest of the room. Loren slipped inside. Sky lay on a hospital bed covered by a thin white blanket. She appeared to be asleep. Her eyes were closed, her lids a bruised, fragile blue. Her lips were pale, her cheeks chalk white. Monitors beeped, a blood-pressure cuff automatically inflated and deflated on Sky’s right arm, and clear fluids ran through intravenous lines into her wrist.

Loren eased up to the head of the bed, leaned over, and kissed Sky’s forehead. “It’s Loren, Sky. You’re okay now.”

Sky’s eyes opened. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Loren’s throat was so full she couldn’t say more. Sky was alive. She couldn’t think past that.

“You okay?” Sky whispered.

“I’m good.” Loren brushed the backs of her fingers over Sky’s cheek. Everything was clear now. Sky was alive and anything was possible. “Real good. How you feeling?”

“Like that bitch shot me.”

Loren grinned. “You’re in the recovery room at Mountain Home Air Force Base. They just got done taking care of you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“What about you?” Sky’s brows drew down. “I remember blood. You were hurt.”

The beeping on one of the monitors increased, and the readouts for Sky’s pulse and blood pressure jumped. Loren leaned closer, stroked her hair. “Hey, I’m fine. I’m up walking around. It was just a graze. You know head wounds always bleed a lot.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“So…” Sky paused. Licked her lips. “Thirsty.”

Loren looked around. Saw a Styrofoam container with a straw by the bed. Figuring it wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t meant for Sky, she placed the straw to her lips. “Just a little, baby.”

Sky drank. Let out a long breath. “Thanks. How long will I be in here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t go back to Silver Lake. Too risky. Your cover—”

“Shh. Don’t worry about that. I’ll figure it out.”

Sky’s eyes sharpened. She tried to sit up and failed. “Loren, listen. Sooner or later, Ramsey will figure out someone was feeding intelligence to the feds. He’ll trace me and find out I wasn’t Lisa. And then he’ll start looking at you. You can’t—”

“There’s a lot of casualties on the mountain,” Loren said. “I’ll just have to be one.”

Sky’s eyes fluttered closed. A second later they opened again. “All right. That will work. I’ll get in touch with some of my people. Put out a cover story.”

“You’ll keep your ass in bed and get better.” Loren leaned down and kissed her. “Just worry about getting better.”

Sky was quiet a long moment. “Can you do that again?”

“Oh yeah.” Loren cradled her cheek, kissed her again. “Sky, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here until you get out.” She reached through the bars on the side of the bed and gripped Sky’s hand. “I meant what I said. I love you. When I thought I might lose you up there on that mountain, I about lost my mind. I’ve never been afraid of losing anything before, but I can’t lose you. You matter more to me than anything.”

“You know,” Sky laced her fingers through Loren’s, “I wasn’t afraid to die. I would have been pissed, but I wasn’t afraid. The only thing I regretted was that I hadn’t told you how much I love you.”

Loren caught her breath. “Yeah?”

Sky nodded. “Oh yeah. I love you like crazy. I’m sorry I didn’t say so sooner.”

Loren reached behind her, pulled a chair next to the bed, and kissed Sky one more time before sitting down. She gripped Sky’s hand again. “Then I guess you better get some sleep, because we’ve got some catching up to do. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

Epilogue

Russo stood on the patio at sunrise, watching the fiery sky break over the Bitterroots. A few days before, he’d watched flames rise in the mountains and had seen blurry images on the endless television loops of a “conflagration of uncertain origin” as reporters hypothesized about the events without any real facts. The most recent story proposed a local gun club had been storing weapons and ammunition against the day when gun regulation might become a reality, and their stockpile had exploded. He doubted everyone believed it, but the government was very good at spin, and new headlines quickly supplanted the story. And for his own purposes, the cover story would do.

The door from the house opened and Derrick crossed the flagstone patio to join him.

“Here’s your coffee, sir,” Derrick said, handing him a steaming mug.

“Thank you,” Russo said.

“Do you want your coat, sir?” Derrick asked.

“No,” Russo said. “I’m fine.”

And he was. The cold didn’t bother him. He was born with cold in his bones. And now that he’d put distance between himself and Graves’s organization, he felt confident that nothing would stand in his path to the White House.

Why wouldn’t he be fine?

*

The motel didn’t have room service, and the diner down the highway was crowded with truckers at all hours. A lone woman who looked like she’d been in a fight might stand out. She’d stayed in the single barren room eating K-rations and cleaning the wound on her thigh three times a day with antiseptic, picking out the bits of metal as they worked their way to the surface. She barely limped at all now.

The charred black duffel sat on the floor next to her bed, within easy reach. She slept with a Glock beneath her pillow. And she planned.

When she’d seen Roberts gun down her father, she’d known that everything had changed. The compound was no longer a refuge, and she was now responsible for carrying out her father’s mission. She could have gone into the mountains after Roberts and Dunbar, but she would have been outnumbered, and had she failed, she would have failed her father. She could not do that again.

She’d made a snap decision and run for the money. The biker who’d forced her at gunpoint into the back of the truck had gotten there first. He was just climbing out of the same truck with the bag in his hand when she pointed the gun at his forehead. “Why? Why attack the camp?”

He’d shrugged, as if the answer should be obvious. The gun she’d held to his head might as well have been invisible. “It’s always better to strike first when you’re walking into an ambush.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger. “What ambush?”

“We had to hit you before you hit us. We got the word.”

“Then you got it wrong. All we wanted were the guns.” She nodded at the bag. “We had the money.”

His face in the firelight was a pale red mask, but she saw his eyes clearly and they registered confusion.

“You were played.” Rage scoured her nerves and her hand shook. If he and his gang hadn’t started the firefight, she and the rest of FALA might have evacuated the compound at the first sign of the missile attack. Roberts might not have had the opportunity to escape. Roberts might not have had the chance to murder her father. Her father might still be alive. “Give me the money.”

His gaze flickered to the right and relief passed over his face—a lethal tell. He thought rescue was at hand. She shot him between the eyes and dove to the ground, twisting in the air as she fell. She shot the other biker as she landed, then rolled onto her knees, grabbed the bag, and disappeared into the dark.

On the sixth day after the firefight, she showered, washed her hair, and dressed in clean plain black BDUs from the bag she’d taken from one of the trucks on her way out of camp. The diner was crowded with men at the counter and booths, and no one gave her more than a passing glance. She ate breakfast, paid with a twenty from the roll she’d taken from the duffel, and asked for five dollars in coins. Outside, she walked to the pay phone. Most diners along the truck routes where cell service was sketchy still had them. She called the number in DC, and her brother answered on the second ring.