Gabriella staggered out into the beautiful rooftop garden again. She stopped short in the rainy night air, swaying on her feet as she dimly took in the scent of nasturtiums over the blood now running down her face in the rainwater. She still had the filthy cardigan pressed against the wound, tacky with blood and fraying threads. Amelia was in the garden too, running toward Gabriella now as the door slammed shut behind her.

“She’s gone,” Gabriella said breathlessly, before Amelia could say anything. “I don’t know if she’s gone, but she disappeared. I talked to her.”

“I know, Graham told us what happened and we’re pretty sure Bradley has the recording,” Amelia said, pulling off her jacket and putting it over Gabriella’s shoulders. “Alright, let me see it.”

“I don’t know how long it’s been.”

“I know,” Amelia said. “It’s alright.”

She walked Gabriella away from the door, steering her toward flowerbeds. Gabriella let herself be moved, her head now pounding rhythmically as she went. All the adrenaline seemed to leave her system at once as she sat down heavily on the high stone side of one of the flower beds. And the realization that a giant, jagged piece of glass had sliced into the side of her face finally settled into place.

“Oh my God,” she choked, beginning to hyperventilate as she let the sweater fall away.

“You’re okay,” Amelia said, her voice firm as she inspected the cut. “Come on though, you’re going to need stitches.”

“Is it bad? Oh my God, my face. She wrecked my face.”

“Nah, she didn’t wreck it,” Amelia said lightly. “You’re alright, just breathe.”

She moved back a little so that Gabriella could see her, then modeled deep breathing, moving her hand in front of her own stomach as she did so. Gabriella tried to mimic her as she pressed the ruined sweater back to her face, taking deep, slow breaths that smelled and tasted of blood. She didn’t feel calm after a few rounds of this, but she was able to stand up without falling back down.

“Is it horrible?” she asked Amelia as Amelia steered her toward the door back inside.

“You need to get it looked at,” Amelia said, avoiding the question in a far too obvious way. “I’ll bring you to Urgent Care.”

“They’re closed.”

“Right.” She touched her own comms harness. “Hey, guys? We need to get a wound stitched and Urgent Care is closed. I’m bringing her to the ER.”

“A wound? Why? What happened?”

Apparently James had just gotten back and missed everything else. “I’m alright,” Gabriella said, her voice betraying her completely. “It’s fine, I just got cut. I don’t have to-”

“Go to the emergency room,” James said. “I don’t care if they moan about it, you’re on the job and you’re hurt. They can pay the bill.”

She was about to say it wasn’t that bad, but opening her mouth again sent a sharp blade of pain through the entire side of her face. “Come on,” Amelia repeated. “We’ll get you stitched up, it’ll be fine.”

“Is it bad?” Gabriella asked again, as though she didn’t know the answer to that. But she didn’t seem to have full control over what was coming out of her mouth right now. “Is it going to scar?”

“Scars are hot,” Amelia said, leading her down the first stairwell they got to, one that would hopefully end where it was supposed to end. “Chicks dig scars.”

Gabriella’s whole body was shaking under Amelia’s jacket as she followed. Mindlessly followed, the nasty thought occurred to her with another stab of guilt. Last time she’d followed a leader to her near death. But this was Amelia, and she was bringing Gabriella to safety.

“Look at Madelyn,” Amelia said as they moved out of the stairwell and down the hall toward the lobby. “She’s got a scar on her face and she’s gorgeous. Isn’t that right, Graham?”

“Yeah,” Graham said from the comms without any hesitation. “She is.”

“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” James said.

“I have her,” Amelia said. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s fine, I’m on my way,” he argued, then the sound of the printer going off in the living room at headquarters interrupted Amelia before she could say anything else. The sound seemed to grind on longer than usual.

“What the fuck…” Bradley murmured over the line.

“Come on,” Amelia said, steering Gabriella through the lobby.

“They just sent us five cases,” James said, his voice a dull monotone. “Two of them are in Hillsborough, one is in Middlesex, and two are here.”

“I’ll call them,” Bradley said immediately.

“No, they’re not-” James took a sharp breath that carried over the line. “They’re…they’re not going to listen to you. I’ll just…”

“James, I’m okay,” Gabriella said.

“I have her,” Amelia repeated, her voice firm. “Take care of that, it’s alright.”

“Right, of course,” James said, seeming to snap back to himself. “Gabs, it’ll be fine. I’ll be here if you guys need me for anything.”

“My insurance-”

“Are you really worrying about that right now?” Bradley said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Crying was only going to make it hurt more. But the tears were burning in her eyes anyway.

“Do I need the hospital?” she asked Amelia as she got into the passenger seat of Amelia’s car. “Do you think I could just cover it til tomorrow?”

She lowered the bloody sweatshirt as Amelia got into the driver’s seat, then hesitated before looking in the rearview mirror. Her face and neck were smeared with watery blood, but she could see the cut underneath it, the blood flow much slower now. The wound was wide, running down her cheekbone down from under her eye to just below her lip. And the only thing keeping her from vomiting at the sight was how much more painful that would make everything.

“It needs stitches,” Amelia said, reaching into the backseat and coming back with a clean towel. “Don’t worry about it, they’re just pissy because they’ve got new contracts with some local urgent care centers. You’re not waiting till tomorrow to get this looked at, that glass was probably filthy. Here, use this to cover it.”

She handed Gabriella the towel, and Gabriella pressed it against the wound with a hiss of pain. Amelia seemed so much older than Gabriella right now, even though she knew there were only a matter of months between them. But Amelia fit into this role, she seemed like she’d been born to lead a team someday.

“Keep the pressure on,” Amelia reminded her as she pulled out of her parking spot, GPS blinking to life with directions to the hospital. “It’s a quick ride, it’s alright.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She wasn’t talking about tonight and Amelia clearly knew it, because she didn’t move to reassure Gabriella immediately. The tears that had been burning in Gabriella’s eyes were falling now, making things so much worse.

“It’s past time you let go of that,” Amelia said quietly as they moved down the main road. “You messed up, and you trusted someone you shouldn’t have. We’ve all done it.”

Gabriella was skeptical, but Amelia kept going. “I mean it,” she said. “My ex-girlfriend asked me to hold drugs for her and said she’d protect me if I got caught. I did, and she didn’t.”

She glanced over at Gabriella, then looked back at the road. “Our old boss before Robin said he’d put in a good word for James if he took all of- Christmas, was it? Two years in a row. Forty-eight hour shift each time and James didn’t get shit for it. Bradley took tax advice from some guy at the Essex County branch and nearly got audited by the IRS. Madelyn lent our old roommate five hundred dollars and never saw a dime of it back. Graham, I don’t know, but I bet there’s something.”

“I got scammed by a high school friend raising money for a sick family member that didn’t exist,” Graham supplied over the comms. “I gave him my rent money and my then-roommate was so mad.”

There was silence for a moment as they drove down the wooded road toward the highway. “I’m taking you to the hospital in Gardner,” Amelia said. “It’ll be faster, whatever Graham was stuck in on Route Two is still going strong.”

Gabriella didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded, gazing out the window at the dark trees towering over them, the towel pressed to her bloody face.

“I did get audited.”

Bradley’s voice over the comms made Gabriella jump. “What?”

“I said I did get fucking audited.”

Laughing hurt too, but it beat crying.

***

Several hours and stitches later, Gabriella was released from the emergency room. There was a wide patch of gauze over the injury and she knew it was going to hurt like hell when the local anesthetic wore off. But she walked out of the emergency room with her release papers clutched in her hand to see James sitting in one of the chairs, typing something on his phone. He looked up as she came out, then hurried over to hug her.

“I’m alright,” she said, shifting as he held her so that nothing would touch her face.

“I know,” James said. “But I just needed to see for sure. I sent Amelia home to get some rest, so I’ll bring you back.”

James looked like he badly needed some rest himself. Gabriella wanted to ask if he was alright, but he was already leading her outside.

“I got your car while you were in there,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, your spare key was on the dresser in the pink bedroom and I wanted to make sure you could get home if you wanted to. It’s parked over at Headquarters.”

Right, her shift had been over for a little while now, hadn’t it? “What time is it?” she asked.

“Two in the morning.”

So he’d been on the clock for, what, forty hours? And was heading back to work now. If she had the energy, she would have started that fight yet again. Instead, she leaned back in her seat as he pulled away from the hospital parking lot.

“Did they give you a doctor’s note to get out of work?” he asked.

“No, I can go back.”

“You’re off today and tonight, I checked.”

“But the Wildwood…”

She yawned, interrupting herself. “Amelia’s going to see what’s going on there tomorrow,” James said. “The energy readings quieted down after you left tonight, even though it was still dark.”

“I told Sarah Morgan to leave,” Gabriella said.

“Yeah? Did that work?”

“Yeah. They should promote me.”

James laughed. “You’d be better than most of them.”

“How was your meeting?”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

One of those meetings, then. Something to look forward to when she got back to work.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 15