Page 79 of Hollow Code
He reached up and found her face with his bloody hand. He traced her jaw. "I'm right here," he said.
The sky was gray through the canopy. The birds had started singing again. Zadie's hands were warm on his skin, and that was enough.
That was everything.
Chapter Nineteen
Zadie bit down on her thumbnail and tore it to the quick. She didn't feel it. She'd already chewed through three others, and her ring finger was bleeding where she'd ripped the nail too far down.
The medical wing door, where Darwin and Wynn were working on Gideon, hadn't opened in forty-seven minutes. She'd checked her watch eleven times, and her dread compounded with each look.
Gus sat in the chair against the far wall with his legs stretched out and his hands clasped across his stomach. He'd arrived at the bunker while the team was at SYN-7—something about supply coordination and long-term planning. Instead of the quiet briefing he'd expected, he'd gotten a bloody team stumbling through the garage with a man bleeding out on a stretcher made from cargo straps and a SxS seat cover.
He hadn't flinched. He'd held the door open and helped Darwin with supplies. Then he sat down in that chair and hadn't moved since. He looked like he could sit there for another forty-seven minutes without blinking.
Shepherd stood at the end of the corridor. He’d prepared a tray of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. Nobody had asked him to. Nobody needed to.
"Stop biting your nails." Neve leaned against the wall opposite the medical wing with her arms folded across her chest and her rifle propped beside her. She still had dirt on her face and pine needles in her hair. "You're making Kane nervous."
"Not nervous, just concerned for her cuticles," Kane said. He stood three feet from the medical wing door, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his hands opening and closing at his sides.
"What’s taking so long?"
"I’d saying cleaning a wound and stitching him up." Coulter sat on the floor with his back against the wall and his legs stretched across the corridor. Fresh stitches ran along his forearm, and of course, he was the one scarfing down a sandwich.
His second one, actually.
Scout sat beside him. Cross-legged and silent. She hadn't said more than six words since the extraction. It probably had something to do with the fact that they’d seen a cop car on the ride home.
Zadie would let that one go.
"He's going to be fine," Coulter said.
"You don't know that." Zadie rubbed her hands at her side, tired of tasting dirty nails.
"Darwin's in there. Wynn's in there. If those two can't fix him, nobody can," Neve added.
"That's not as comforting as you think it is." Zadie let out a long breath.
"It’s accurate." Coulter jumped to his feet and reached for another sandwich. "Gideon’s tough. He took a knife through the side and stayed conscious long enough to kill the guy who did it. That's not a man who gives up easy."
Zadie's throat tightened. She didn’t need a reminder of what had happened, much less the visual replaying in her brain.
The minutes crawled. Shepherd refilled Gus's coffee. Kane hobbled from the door to the wall and back to the door. Neve didn't move at all.
"How long has it been?" Scout broke her silence.
"Fifty-two minutes." Zadie stood there and stared at her digital watch. Another minute ticked by before she dropped her hand to the side. "When I used to hang out with Gideon as MacGyver, I was in awe of his skills in the video game." She folded her arms and stared at the ceiling light. "I once asked him if he had any combat training."
"What did he say?" Coulter asked.
"He told me he’d answer all my questions when I agreed to meet him in person." She lowered her head and rubbed her temple. "I always suspected he had some military training. I suspected a lot of things. But I never suspected I’d?—"
The medical wing door opened, and Darwin walked out.
"Is he okay?" Zadie asked.
Darwin had taken off his glasses, and they hung from the collar of his shirt. His sleeves reached his elbows, and blood stained his forearms. "He's stable."
