Page 48 of Truth or Lie

“Go,” Jax said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

I nodded, turning and walking toward the back of the ambulance like a zombie. Unsure of the proper protocol, I knocked on the closed metal door. It clanked open a moment later, and a harried woman in scrubs leaned out. She said something in a language that wasn’t close enough to German for me to make out the meaning, the sentence rising into a question. Luxembourgish, probably.

“I need to see your patient,” I said in French. “Please—I’m a family member.”

“Leo? Is that you?” The weak voice came from inside the ambulance, and my heart clenched. I swallowed hard, forcing down a sob.

The paramedic looked over her shoulder, and then back at me. She gave a brisk nod. “Get in,” she said, this time in French. “You can sit with him during the journey.”

I scrambled into the back without an ounce of grace, where I found Kam lying on a gurney with an IV in one arm and a blood pressure cuff strapped around the other. He was pasty gray beneath his olive complexion, but his eyes were wide open and aware.

“Kam,” I croaked, aware that if I broke down and started sobbing into his chest, I’d probably get kicked off the ambulance in short order.

“Odama,” he said. “Is everyone all right? I’m so sorry I scared you.”

I bit my lip hard and nodded, taking the bench seat the paramedic indicated and squeezing Kam’s forearm. “They’re okay. Just really worried. Irina’s okay, too.”

“Good.” He sighed heavily. “I won’t lie. When I saw the gas, I thought it was curtains.”

My fingers clenched convulsively. “Irina said it didn’t affect you as badly because of what was done to you both.”

“Apparently so,” he agreed. “She and Polonsky dragged me out of the auditorium. Maybe I took a bigger hit because I still have my mating gland and she doesn’t.”

It made sense. I also couldn’t have cared less about the details right now. “As long as you’re going to be okay,” I managed.

“So they tell me,” he said, as the ambulance rumbled to life and rolled forward. “It’s too bad we were so far from help when Jax got dosed in Romania. If he’d gotten atropine sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have had such a tough recovery.” He let his head roll back, staring at the ambulance ceiling. “God. What is this going to do to the talks?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I almost added that I didn’t care, either—but that wasn’t true. I did care, and we’d be dealing with that part of things soon enough. “There are going to be a lot of angry world leaders. Fairbanks’ wife and kid were missing in the confusion for more than an hour before they got reunited.”

Kam winced. “Ouch. Someone’s ass is getting fired over that, I’ll wager.”

“Probably,” I agreed. Something about that reunion was still niggling at me, but it could wait. “The question will be whether all that anger gets directed at the terrorists, or somehow comes back on us.”

He closed his eyes, sliding his arm up until I was holding his hand, our fingers intertwining. “That’s a question for tomorrow, not today. I expect the doctors will want to keep me in the hospital overnight, at the very least. Are the others following us?”

“They’ll meet us there.”

He squeezed my hand, and I was relieved that his fingers didn’t seem to be shaking or twitching. “Good.”

Silence settled, broken only by the paramedic bustling around, taking readings and adjusting the IV drip.

“Is Alex okay, really?” Kam asked into the lull.

I chafed my thumb over his knuckles. “I mean... no, not really. She thought we’d lost both you and Irina. But Irina’s okay, and once she sees you for herself, it will help even more. Flynn’s struggling, too. Jax was upset before, but now he just feels relieved.”

Another deep sigh. “God, I wish this hadn’t happened.”

“Me, too,” I said, and hesitated before continuing. “I, uh, might have cursed out our old boss directly to his face,” I admitted. “At extremely loud volume.”

Kam opened bloodshot eyes to look at me. “You yelled at Levi Fairbanks?”

“I was upset,” I said, by way of defense. “And I’m not sure any of it really penetrated, since he was busy freaking out about Jennifer and Samantha being missing at the time.”

Kam mulled that over for a moment. “Well, it’s not like he can fire you.”

“True.”

The ambulance rolled on, toward the hospital with its grim collection of gassed bodies stacking up in the morgue.

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