Page 22 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HER

I n the end, what calmed me was watching Ivy.

My brother’s old friend may not have been at the top of her class, but she had the unconscious grace of someone who had spent her childhood diligently attending her dance lessons, instead of—like some people—bursting into tears halfway through her first one and demanding her mother take her home.

Ivy’s long fingers nimbly bunched up one of the fluffy towels from the wicker chair and guided me to the edge of the bathtub.

She lifted me out, still dripping, before my burns could meet the dry, unforgiving desert air.

But as those burns and the memory of what had made them came back into painful relief, my knees buckled.

Ivy caught me, valiantly keeping me upright and spreading a beautiful rose-scented aloe gently over my arms, turning around to slide her willowy fingers down my chest and back.

Alma had been settled in the other room and the child had finally been coaxed to bed, but Erica still stood in the bathroom doorway, arms crossed stonily, waiting for me to calm myself. But as soon as she started talking again, that calmness melted down.

“Maeve and Sloane are where ?”

“Milagros convinced me to go,” Erica said, starting at the beginning, still keeping tight control of her voice.

“Because of course she did. She felt so useless sitting there, letting you and Maeve put yourselves in danger, when we were the ones with all the experience. She figured if we borrowed a friend’s van, no one at the university would know it was us.

And then we found Maeve, and she’d found the other girls despite the bad info, and we helped get them away. Thanks to you and your distraction.”

I tried to smile. So it hadn’t been useless, after all, even though it had felt that way.

“But Resi sent one of her goons to give chase, and they ran us off the road.”

“So there really was a car accident. But?—”

“Once we realized everyone had survived, before the EMTs could show up, we made a plan to make lemonade out of lemons. We’d trick Resi into thinking her plan to kill us had worked. Since it almost did.”

“But how? How did you get that item in the news, and?—”

“It’s a bitter irony that in a society where the mainstream media cannot be trusted to tell the truth, for the sake of the greater good, I had to enlist one of the few trustworthy reporters I know to put out a lie.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what about the police, and the hospital, and—ouch. Fuck. Ivy, I don’t mean to seem like an ungrateful bitch, but what is that?”

Even under the balm, my entire body still burned as if the electric fingers had left embers that still popped and smoldered angrily underneath my skin. I hissed when she started dabbing on something from a much smaller tube.

“Antiseptic cream. Burns can get infected, you know,” said Ivy. “And no worries. I’m glad you’re bitchy. It shows you’re healing.”

Erica hadn’t answered my question. Did she have friends in the police, too? Frankly, that seemed even less likely than having friends in the media. “So they rescued you,” I said. “And took Maeve and Sloane to jail.”

She nodded. “After they looked them over for injuries.”

I gave her a look.

“They’re alive, Louisa, and I guarantee they’re safer than we are right now. And before they took them away, I made sure they both knew we were working on a plan to get them out.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, uncomforted. “I was supposed to protect Maeve. God, just when I thought I couldn’t fuck this up any worse.

Not to mention I’ve been sending messages to Ethan for three years and all the while he was…

” I shrank, keen to bury my head like a turtle into the robe Ivy was draping around me.

To disappear altogether. Out of my very body, if I could.

Right now, being in it was doing me more harm than good.

“And for that matter, what about Milagros? We haven’t even?—”

“She’s fine,” Erica cut in quickly. “Alma is who we have to worry about right now.”

Blankly, I let Ivy lead me out of the bathroom, Erica following, our footsteps light but deliberate on the marble tile as we ventured through the vaulted, Art Nouveau house with its domed living room and filigree brasswork stretching along the walls and windows, like something out of the turn of the last century.

Our destination was the curved veranda that overlooked the rest of the gardens, filled with plants in brass urns, more delicate, inlaid Edwardian-style furniture and glass everything.

Ivy clearly had other things to occupy her time than redecorating from her grandmother’s day.

The breeze carried a chorus of crickets, and the stars, at last, shone as bright as ever the clear desert sky could make them.

Too late, I couldn’t help but think.

On one of the sofas, Alma sat utterly still, in a pink robe even fluffier than mine, clutching a mug, her legs curled under her and her gaze fixed on some distant point.

Besides the older, deeper, massive chunk taken out of her shoulder, now bandaged, she had an ice pack pressed to her right wrist and a bandaged cut below her eye, a slash of blood mixed with tears, and her skin was marred with purplish bruises.

The “accident”—if one could call it that—had clearly been real, even if the news report was not.

Ivy led me to the other sofa, her touch patient and gentle as she settled me there, though we both knew there was no position that wouldn’t cause me pain.

I closed my eyes again, and for a second, tried to see if I could pretend that everything was the way it was supposed to be.

Maybe if Ivy and Ethan had stayed together.

Maybe if he had, like I had, found something, or someone, to save him. Maybe then he ? —

Well, I was crying again. That had worked well.

Ivy, as if she could read my thoughts somehow, brushed a lock of wet hair away from my face. “Hey, maybe I should just open my own no-questions-asked hospital here,” she remarked, glancing around her. “I mean, I’ve got the space.”

Erica, seemingly unbreakable, had no intention of sitting down. “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” she said. “We could really?—”

Noticing my quivering lip, she uncharacteristically cut herself off. It could wait.

And then, at last, Alma turned. When she caught my eye, I spotted the faintest trace of a smile. I won’t make you talk if you won’t make me.

I sank bodily into the sofa, happy to oblige.

“Alma’s already given an initial statement to the police,” Erica explained.

“She’s exhausted, as you can see.” She looked with concern at the other girl.

“She was really brave, and I’m proud of her, but unfortunately, Resi seems to have drugged her before and after her experiments, and she doesn’t remember as much as I’d hoped.

We’re going to try again tomorrow when she’s better rested. ”

I nodded uncertainly. “But if you went to the police, then everyone will know that you’re not?—”

“No. They won’t,” Erica said. “There’s a specific agent at the federal investigation bureau that I trust, believe it or not,” she added, recognizing my incredulous look.

“In fact, he helped arrange to send out the false news releases to put Resi off our trail. He even got in touch with Alma’s mother in San Diego first so she wouldn’t see it and think the worst. We’ve agreed that Alma will speak to him and only him, and he’s ensured absolute discretion until it’s safe for us. ”

“But does he know about Maeve and Sloane?”

“Yes. And he’s promised to do his best to keep them safe until we can get them out.”

“ He could get them out,” I grumbled.

“Maybe. But they still wouldn’t be free. And then we’d just have to find somewhere else to hide them in the meantime. Somewhere no doubt a lot less secure than where they are.”

I crossed my arms stubbornly, though it aggravated the burns on my arms. Every position did, really. “You seriously think hiding them in jail is the best thing for them?”

“Right now?” Erica sighed. “Yes.” She said no more, blinking at me from behind the wire-rimmed frames of her glasses.

The silence lingered.

Shit. It was my turn to talk, and I didn’t want to, any more than Alma did.

Erica probably already knew who had been responsible for the burns.

She knew where I’d been, after all. What she didn’t know was how—and why—it all went wrong, and what we—but mostly he—had said and done to turn it a little bit right again.

And recounting that was about as appealing as lying in a charred, smoking heap in a golf course bunker, but Erica deserved to know it.

So I gathered up every part of my brain except the one needed to tell the story and left my body.

When the words started pouring out, I was hovering roughly somewhere over my own right shoulder, weightless, watching my mouth move without moving it, hearing sound without making it.

Feeling nothing until Erica’s hand—smooth and cold, with its prominent veins and short, businesslike nails—found its way over to mine.

When the story was over, safely settled back into my body again, I watched her face.

“I want you to talk to this agent, too.”

“Oh, fuck no.” I was fully returned now. “The whole reason I’m here instead of the hospital is that I wanted to avoid the police. So why would I go to them now?”

“If they are trying to defraud your father, this is your best chance to help him.”

“But he’s a suspect.”

“Yes, and one of the prime suspects, I’d say. His name was on the lease and he was a primary shareholder. And if—” Erica cut herself off.

For a second, I peered at her, unable to figure out why. “Oh, no.”

“Louisa, I didn’t mean to suggest?—”