She didn’t react so he felt reasonably sure the area had no feeling. He made the incision with a steady hand, catching the flow of bright red blood with a handful of gauze. When the area was open enough for him to work, he switched to the forceps. He used his gloved fingers on the outside of her scalp to find the chip again and held pressure on the area. He slipped the forceps into the incision, located the chip and removed it with surprisingly little trouble.
The chip hit the bottom of the plastic basin with a thwack. He would clean it later. Right now, he was focused on Maisie. He irrigated the wound and tried to make his sutures tidy and neat. Eventually, her hair would grow back and cover the scar, but he didn’t want to mark her any more than necessary. She had suffered enough injuries and scars. He hated being the cause of yet another.
When he clipped the last suture, he applied the antibiotic gel and let it penetrate and dry while he prepared the tube of wound glue. He was very familiar with the product and expertly applied it to seal the wound. Satisfied with his work, he stepped around the table and crouched down until he was eye-to-eye with Maisie. He brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “All done.”
He helped her sit up and kissed her forehead. She melted into his embrace, and he rubbed her back in a silent apology for causing her discomfort. Fucking Devious, he thought angrily. What was he thinking putting a chip in her damn head?
Maisie disappeared into the bathroom, and once he was certain she wasn’t going to faint, he cleared up the supplies and began to rinse the chip. The glasses he had taken from the safe house weren’t just equipped with translation abilities. They also had built-in zooming functions that allowed him to see the ultra-thin protective covering on the chip.
Maisie emerged from the bathroom and joined him at the table. She sat next to him and reached for the finely tipped forceps from the medical kit, handing them over so he could use them to peel off the clear film. Once he had removed the film, he swore. Blood and other fluids had seeped under the seal onto the chip.
“Wait.” She gestured at him before leaving the table to rummage through the backpack carrying their things. She returned to the small dining table with the only box of rations he had kept and grabbed a handful of gauze squares. She rinsed the chip thoroughly with the distilled water from the surgery kit. Then, she wrapped the chip in the gauze and tore into the ration box, removing the meal tray and stuffing the gauze inside the bag. After activating the heating pad by snapping it in half to mix the chemicals inside the package, she sealed the ration bag with the chip inside. It would get hot enough to dry out the chip but not hot enough to damage the components.
“What do you think is on it?” she asked as he cleared away the mess on the table.
He was able to interpret almost half of her question without relying on the glasses. He looked forward to the day he wouldn’t need them at all.
“Probably something that will get us killed,” he answered honestly. “There’s a reason Devious gave this to you and not his handler.”
“Back at the safe house, I saw Devious on a screen. They had him listed as KIA. Do they have access to the same forensics that Keen showed me?”
Terror shook his head. “Probably not. I’ve worked with Keen in the past, and he’s incredibly cagey about sharing intel. He likely had those processed by someone he trusts and kept them off the main forensics database.”
“So, Pam and her colleague don’t know any more than we do about Devious?”
“They know what we know which is that if he didn’t die in that mine, he may be dead now,” Terror reasoned. “He was absolutely wounded when he escaped.”
“Right—but how did he escape? How did he get that second body there? We both saw him that night. That was Devious bleeding and unconscious. Wasn’t it?”
“I believe it was.” He shared some of her confusion. “I don’t know how he escaped, but he must have had help.”
She suddenly looked conflicted. He narrowed his eyes and asked, “Is there something else you need to tell me?”