Page 84 of Bad Blood

Dancing.

Forever and ever. No matter what.

I woke to the sound of beeping. I was lying on something soft. Forcing my eyes open, I remembered—

The poison.

The pain.

The sound of footsteps.

“Easy.”

I turned my head toward the voice, unable to sit up. I was in a hospital room. The beeping machine beside me tracked the beating of my heart.

“You’ve been unconscious for two days.” Director Sterling sat next to my bed. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”

We. I remembered the sound of footsteps. I remembered someone saying my name.

“Agent Sterling?” I asked. “Judd. Dean and the others—”

“They’re fine,” Director Sterling assured me. “As are you.”

I remembered the poison. I remembered gasping for breath. I remembered the pain.

“How?” I said. Beneath the covers, my body shook.

“There’s an antidote.” Director Sterling kept his answer direct and to the point. “The window during which to administer it is small, but you should be back to your full strength soon.”

I wanted to ask where they’d gotten the antidote. I wanted to ask how they’d found me. But more than anything, I wanted the others. I wanted Dean and Lia and Michael and Sloane.

Beside me, Director Sterling held up a small object for my inspection. I recognized it instantly—the tracking device Agent Sterling had given me. “This time my daughter had the foresight to activate the device.” He paused.

For reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint, my breath caught in my throat.

“It’s a shame,” the director continued slowly, turning the device over in his hand, “that the tracking software that would have led the FBI here had been tampered with.”

A chill slid down my spine.

“Dean,” I said suddenly. “If he knew where I was, if they’d found me…”

“He’d be here?” Director Sterling suggested. “Given what I know of Redding’s whelp, I tend to agree.”

I surged upward and winced as something bit into my wrists. I looked down.

Handcuffs.

Someone had tampered with the tracking software. Someone had cuffed me to this bed. I looked back up at the director.

“This isn’t a hospital,” I said, my heart beating in my throat.

“No,” he replied. “It’s not.”

“There’s an antidote to the Masters’ poison,” I repeated what Director Sterling had told me earlier, my chest tightening. “But the FBI doesn’t have it.”

“No. They don’t.”

The poison the Masters used to kill was one of a kind. It was, I’d been told over and over again, incurable.