Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,79
the woods, the tremors would take over and she doubted her power to make them stop. She moved past him and gestured—a wave to usher him back to the house and wipe away everything he’d seen and was seeing now. Explosions. She needed to fill his mind with fire and light. “You and Dad get ready. I’ll meet you at the car in three minutes.”
They’d made it in time, barely. Standing on the roof of the hospital, where the administration gave families and patients a privileged spot to absorb the spectacle of the Minneapolis Independence Day fireworks, Nora watched Henry ooh and aah alongside Corbett’s children while soft serve cones leaked down their arms. He giggled with them, pointed at his favorites, and she could actually see all thought of his mother with the strange woman fading from his memory. No one would ask him about it. The only risk would be if he mentioned it in front of the wrong person, and that risk became more controlled by the minute. What were the dealings of adults, after all, next to fireworks and ice cream?
There were no treats when she arrived today in the now familiar waiting room, but Nora took care of that. Handing Henry a twenty-dollar bill, she sent him and Corbett’s children off to the vending machines to plunder for sugar. Aaden Warsame’s duffel bag sat open on the floor as they thundered past, unnoticed by anyone but her.
Her phone buzzed again and she saw an email from the Nassau bank with the record of nineteen million dollars leaving The Bahamas. Nora scanned the routing information and smiled; the money had been sent to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands on Monday—exactly as Logan had confessed in the woods last night. But testimony under duress from a now missing woman didn’t exactly qualify as strong evidence. The email from the bank presented a cleaner story, connecting the dots, one island at a time.
Mike and Katie updated her on the news from the surgeon, who had assured them everything had gone as planned. They’d grafted a new section of bone to Corbett’s right femur and repaired the rest of the leg with screws, pins, and rods.
“Leg surgery is a good sign,” Nora nodded, her gaze still drifting to the duffel bag. “Like moving on to the statement of stockholder’s equity. They’ve already covered the critical accounts.”
Corbett’s wife gave her a blank, sleep-starved look. Mike shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and then the nurse came out and told them Corbett was still awake, coherent, and asking for Nora.
Dozens of machines and monitors lined the hospital room, surrounding a single patient. At first Nora thought she’d been led to the wrong person because this man wasn’t Corbett. This was a grotesque wreck of a human. A metal exoskeleton ran the length of the bed, seemingly holding the body together, and every piece of exposed skin flamed in garish color. Roiling purple. Meat red. One side of his face looked raw, like it had been flayed with a knife. Or skinned off on pavement. A cast covered his nose and both of his eyelids bulged shut like a frog’s. It was only the sight of the patient’s leg, in traction with fresh post-surgery sutures running down the blotched and bloated skin, that assured Nora she was in the right room.
“Ten minutes,” the nurse said as she checked a few readings. A heart monitor blipped an unstable rhythm in the foreground. “And don’t touch him.”
“It’s okay if she pours the whiskey straight into my mouth, though.” Corbett’s voice sounded disembodied. His eyes didn’t open and his lips barely moved.
“Sweetie, I got you. Just say the word and I’ll have the feeding tube put in,” the nurse shot back without a hitch in her stride.
“Single malt.”
“You know it.” She passed by Nora on her way out, with a warning arch of eyebrow and a murmured “Nine and a half minutes.”
The machines continued to bleep. Nora swallowed and went to the door, shutting it silently and turning the lock until it clicked. Then she approached the bed, weaving her way between the cords and metal, as invisible now as she had been at the stadium. The nurses’ station was right outside the windows, but nobody saw her reach for Corbett’s tube-laden hand. A weak pressure depressed her fingers as she slid them under his.
“Ellie.”
She stared at the face, or what used to be a face, the one she’d made laugh over a pint, that