Release Me When the Sun Goes Down (2 page)

“Are you okay?”  I watched him carefully, gratified to receive a short nod in reply.  “
Let’s find an empty room with a phone and figure out what we’re dealing with.” 

The nurse’s station was at the far end of the hall and she didn’t even look up as we started down the corridor, slipping into the first empty room we found.  The
window curtains were drawn, but it wasn’t too hard to see it was still dark out, the clock on the wall showing barely after midnight.  God, was that all the time that had passed?  It felt like it should be much, much later.  I snapped on the light and Rob recoiled from it, so I turned it back off again, settling for a smaller light directly over the bed itself, remembering well the sensitivity to light. 

“Here, have a seat, I’ll be right back.”  Leaving him on the edge of the bed, I went into the bathroom, wetting a few paper towels to help him clean off the worst of the
dried blood from his neck.  Briefly I thought about slipping into one of the other rooms to swipe a clean shirt for him, but decided against it.  I wasn’t all that stealthy and I was fairly sure we could pass muster as long as he kept the lab coat on.

Until I caught my own reflection in the mirror,
dried blood smeared all over my chin and neck.  And he’d never said a word.  Maybe Rob didn’t think twice about seeing me that way, but I scrubbed at my skin furiously until I didn’t resemble the walking dead so much. 

Rob looked like he hadn’t budged since I’d left him, staring at the stained ceiling tile
s.  “Let me get you cleaned up,” I offered, dabbing at his neck with a damp paper towel.

“Thought you had to make a phone call?”

“This’ll only take a minute.”  Maybe it made me a big fat chicken, but I wasn’t quite ready for reality to catch up with us yet.  He sat patiently while I cleaned him up, my fingers brushing over his moist skin when the worst of it was gone.  His heart beat sluggish but within human standards for the moment, and I stood there listening to the rush of blood through his veins.  “I thought I’d lost you,” I said softly, resting my hands against his shoulders when they started to tremble. 

Rob shook himself out of his daze to pick up my hand and press a kiss to the back of it.  “
Don’t take on so, it’s all over now.”

“
No, I mean it.  When you slumped to the ground and I saw the blank look in your eyes,” I said, swallowing past a lump of emotion.  “I totally thought that was it and I…”

“
Hush now, I’m here.”  All it took was the smallest of tugs and I tumbled into his lap, savoring the feel of his arms around me, strong and secure.  “I said I wouldn’t leave you again.  You calling me a liar?” 

A half smile tilted his lips and I shook my head, searching for a smile of my own
, but I didn’t find it until he tipped my head closer for a kiss.  The music blossomed between us, mingled with a sense of loss for what he’d left behind, all because of me.  But there would be plenty of time to reflect on that later, first we had to find out what we were up against. 

* * *

“Anja!  Where are you?”  Marcus demanded, plucking the phone out of Maggie’s fingers before I had a chance to say more than two words to her.  I opened my mouth to reply, but something kept me from revealing our location until I knew more information. 

“I’m safe for the moment.  Rob’s here with me, but I have no idea where Mason is
.  Please tell me he got out of there in time.”

“Ye
s, he’s up in one of the bedrooms now.  That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s okay, how is he?”  The last thing I could remember was the sight of him slumped over the dash and the car on fire. 

“They were pulling him from the wreckage when Frost showed up and took him.  He was pretty badly burned.  Even thirty more seconds and that would’ve been it.”

Knowing how combustible vampires could be, I could well imagine how close he’d come to final death.  “How bad is it?  Is Jenessa there?”  If anyone could pull him through it, I felt confident she could. 

“She got some blood into him, but he’s still passed out, which is probably for the best.”

“
Probably,” I murmured, wondering if my blood would be of help.  Not that I had much to spare at the moment, but that could be easily fixed by feeding. “What about Jakob, have you heard from him?”

“Jakob?  No, why?  What happened to you tonight?  The last we all knew you were headed to see Jakob and then we got the call from Frost about the accident.  Maggie’s been calling every hospital in town, but no one would tell her anything.  Frost brought a police scanner but by the time he got it here to us
, there wasn’t any more chatter about the accident.” 

Without the strength of the Order we were
pretty crippled in our intelligence gathering.  “It was Lodinn.  He crashed into us and…” I swallowed, unable to continue for a moment.  “Listen, Jakob was supposed to go meet Lodinn at the
Hotel Vitale
.  Try and find out if that ever went down.  I know we don’t have the right to ask them, but see if Frost will send over one of his guys to find out if that ever happened or if he’s laying low again.”

“Sure, I’ll ask him.  He’s in the parlor talking to Jenessa now.  I got the feeling he was willing to help us out after he saw what happened to Mason.”

“Good.”  I had to trust that no news was good news for the moment.  At least Hanna’s body hadn’t surfaced anywhere, that gave me hope.  “There are some things I need you to take care of for me.”

“Anything, boss.”

“I need you to send someone to the morgue at Bayview Hospital here to take care of a body so it can’t be tracked to me.”

“
Isn’t that where a body should be?  How would they know it’s related to you?”

There wasn’t any judgment in his voice which should’ve been comforting, but it made me sad
how he took it in stride.  “Because I wasn’t at all careful with how I fed from him when I woke up in the morgue.  At the very least his cause of death needs to be covered up, but I’d also like to have any record of my being brought in here removed.  Is that something we can do?”  My last trip to the morgue had brought the police to my door, I didn’t want a repeat performance.

“
It should be possible, yes.”

“
Good.  While you’re at it, I want you to find out anything you can about the man himself.  His name is Oliver Bassett.”

“
Why, is he important?”

“
He was to his family.”  Assuming he had one, but I wasn’t about to try to lessen my guilt by imagining him as an orphaned loner with no friends or family of his own.  “I want to know if he was married, had kids, where he lived, his credit report, the whole works.”

“
That might take more time, but I’ll work on putting it together for you.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. 
Also, I’ll need you to draw up papers for Rob.  We’ll worry about getting him chipped after the Order re-establishes their headquarters, but I want them in order in case there are any questions.”  I said the words with as little inflection as possible, still sorry as hell that it’d come to that, but I might as well start out with making it legal. 

“
Oh, I hadn’t realized…” Marcus paused, and I heard a few whispered words to Maggie and her sharp intake of breath.  “With you as his sponsor?”

“
Of course.”  I didn’t understand the question, who else could it be?  “There won’t be any issues with it, will there?”

“No, not at all,” he replied quickly.  “Shall I send Gunnar to come and collect you?  Are you still at the hospital?”

“No, I’m not coming back to the house tonight,” I decided on the spur of the moment.  “Lodinn could be watching it, like he watched us leave Jakob’s place before.”    He could’ve been watching us at that moment for all we knew, but I was counting on our ability to slip away unseen without the pomp of being picked up by a security team.

“Alright then, where will you be?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”  Also, I had no idea.  None. “I’ll call to check in later.  For now, focus on trying to find Jakob and taking care of this guy Oliver.  I don’t want him disappearing though.”  His family deserved more closure than that.  “You heard most of that?” I asked Rob when I was off the phone.

“
Yeah.  That Mason’s a lucky one.” 

“
I’m not so sure he’d agree if he was awake right now.”  Even with blood I was willing to bet he’d be in for a painful recovery, and knowing that Hanna was still with Lodinn had to suck all on its own.  “Listen, we can’t stay here.  It’s only a matter of time before someone finds us and we need to get you someplace safe so we can talk about what comes next.”  The last thing we needed was for him to lunge at the first open wound he came into contact with, like I had, and go into transition in the middle of a public place.  “Any ideas?”

“
I know a place.” 

“First things first, we ain’t gonna get very far you toddling like that,” Rob announced, rising from the bed with more vigor than I would’ve credited him with.

“I’ll be fine, I’m a little slower than usual is all.”

“It’ll draw attention, which we can’t afford for now.  Hold tight a tick, I’ll be right back.”  Before I could so much as open my mouth to protest he slipped out, and despite my natural inclination to stick by his side, I did as he asked.  Stayed put.  It was silly, I suppose, the need I felt to protect him.  Wasn’t he the one always protecting me?  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Rob was more vulnerable than he let on, even though he moved around much quicker than I could at the moment.

In a flash he was back, pushing a wheelchair through the door.  “In you go then,” he said, wheeling it right in front of me.

“Where did you get that?”

“I pinched it, what’d you think?  This way won’t be no one giving us the eye, we’ll slip out easy peasey.”

“You are a genius,” I smiled in approval, sinking onto the chair as he slapped down the foot guards. 

“I have my moments.”  His answering smile was smug as he maneuvered me out the door and down to the elevator, his white lab coat buttoned up as high as it could go. 

Only in the brighter lights of the elevator I could see the sallow pallor of his skin and the deep smudges under his eyes.  He was in far worse shape than he let on, as I’d suspected.  “You should be the one in the wheelchair,” I said, reaching back to cover his hand with mine.

“
I can manage.”

“It’s okay to ask for help when you need it.”

“I’m not at the end of my rope yet.  Just tired is all.  Dying will do that to a fella.”

“I remember.”

Someone else got onto the elevator then and we fell silent, staring straight ahead until the doors slid open on the ground floor.  Instead of going for the main entrance, Rob surprised me by turning into the west wing. 

“We’re not going out front to catch a cab?”

“Nah, like you said, he could be watching the place.  Better to take one of the side entrances and head straight for the parking garage.  I can get us a car and we’ll be off in no time.”

I put aside the objections I found to stealing some poor person’s car, knowing it would only be temporary and we’d leave it in good condition.  Something else crowded my tongue first.  “You still haven’t told me where we’re headed.  Is it your old place over the garage?”  I assumed he still owned the property. 

“I’ll tell you once we’re on our way.”  His eyes were constantly scanning, on the lookout for anything suspicious and I clammed up, not wanting to make it any more difficult on him.  Instead I focused on the same, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary.  As near as I could tell, nobody cared about us one way or another, but Lodinn had already proven himself far too sneaky for his own good.

To my surprise, he took us up to the third level in the parking garage, pushing us down the long line of cars as if looking for something in particular.  He finally turned and parked me next to a big red truck with an extended cab that took up two parking spaces. 

“Isn’t this kind of a flashy?” I whispered.

“That’s sort of the point.  Besides, a monster like this will withstand more if he comes at us again.”  Done explaining, Rob’s elbow came up, smashing through the rear window with a crash that made us both wince. 
So much for leaving it in good condition. 

I didn’t bother to ask him if he was okay, I knew he wouldn’t stop now until we were both safely away.  Instead I got out of the wheelchair and folded it up, tucking it away next to the car beside us while he tinkered around inside the truck
, all the while sweating bullets that the cops might turn up at any moment.  The roar of the engine made me jump, but no one leapt out yelling
hey, that’s my truck
, so I focused my energies on making my stubborn legs cooperate long enough to climb into the thing.  

Rob’s face held a
told you I could do it
look as I slid in beside him, and we were on our way as soon as I got my door shut.  We were silent until the hospital was in the rearview mirror, and he shot me a sidelong grin. “See, easy peasey.”