Page 48 of Dichotomy

“We’re five minutes away,” Marcus said. “I’ll drop you off at the entrance, then go park.”

“Take Adrian with you,” I rasped out. “We should travel in pairs. In case this was planned to take us out.”

The silence in the car was heavy.

Alexander blew out a breath. “Fuck, I didn’t think of that. Good call, baby girl. Adrian, you’ll go with Marcus.”

“Got it,” Adrian said, shifting in his seat to look at me.

I couldn’t look at him, though. Part of me felt guilty that while I was getting my brains fucked out, Grace was lying somewhere bleeding out, and Danny was… I couldn’t think about that yet. I had to get it together.

The bright lights of the hospital’s portico entrance shone through the tinted windows of the SUV as we rolled to a stop underneath the covered area. The vehicle had barely stopped before I was shoving past Sebastian to get out. He followed me, interlacing our fingers. He didn’t try to slow me down but ran with me into the hospital.

“Grace Morgan?” I breathlessly asked the woman manning the front desk. “She was brought in here an hour or so ago?—”

“Evelyn!” Izzy called. She stood down the hallway to my right. She tilted her head back and to the right, and I rushed towards her.

“Izzy, what happened? How’s Grace?”

Izzy held a door open, and Sebastian guided me into a small conference room. Liam was already there, typing furiously on his laptop. He looked up at me with a tight smile. There was another man in the room, an older Black man with a white bushy beard. He wore a tan suit with a pinned hospital employee badge on his jacket breast pocket.

“Mr. Lawrence,” Alexander said, stepping forward and shaking the man’s hand.

“Mr. Stone. I hope the room is to your liking?”

“Yes, thank you.” Alexander ushered the man out of the room, and I turned back to Izzy.

“Hospital administrator,” she murmured. “Your boyfriend called and got us this room to work out of.” I didn’t have to ask again as she continued. “There’s no word on Grace yet. She’s still in surgery, and Mr. Lawrence was just assuring me we would be the first to know as soon as the surgeons are done.”

“What happened?” I asked, sinking into the chair Sebastian pulled out for me. “Was it the Kingfisher? The FIA?”

Izzy rubbed a hand over her face. “No. Well, I don’t know for sure. But the best Liam and I are able to piece together is this was a follow-up on the Donald Jefferson case from a few weeks ago. His frat house threw a party at the old train tracks. A last hurrah, I guess, before it gets developed. We think Grace went to observe and make sure Donald and his friends weren’t up to their old tricks and ran into trouble there. She was found by one of the partygoers, who called 911 and kept pressure on the wound till the ambulance got there. That’s all I know right now.”

“I thought we were on Ostrich protocol? And what happened to the rule of twos?” I demanded. I wasn’t angry at Izzy. Itwasn’t Izzy’s fault. She didn’t run the Archers. I did. This was my fault, but I didn’t understand how this happened. No one was supposed to be going anywhere alone.

“We are. This wasn’t official. Or at least it wouldn’t fall under essential missions. I don’t know what happened.”

“I do.” Danny’s broken voice came from the doorway. “And it’s all my fault.”

“Danny,” I breathed. I pushed myself up from the table, knees weak with relief as I stumbled to him, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing tight. “I thought you were dead,” I half-sobbed into his shirt. He smelled like beer and cigarette smoke. I pulled back and punched his shoulder. “Where the hell were you?”

Danny rubbed a hand over his ashen face, all the color drained out of it. “At O’Malleys. I didn’t realize something was wrong until Matt and Jerome found me. Fuck, Ev. This is all my fault.” His eyes were blown wide and glassy. His shoulders were slumped and his steps heavy.

I frowned. What had happened to shake my unshakeable cousin? I led him over to a chair and gently pushed him until he sat down. I kneeled next to him, gripping his hands when he went to cover his face.

“Danny, I need you to tell me what happened. All we know is that Grace was down by the train tracks following up on the Donald Jefferson case. What happened?”

“We had a fight,” Danny mumbled. “We both got angry. Said some things we shouldn’t have. She went to cool off. She had mentioned that the party was tonight, but I didn’t think she would go by herself. We’re never supposed to—If I had known she was going to go by herself… Fuck! This is all my fault, Ev.”

He breaks down sobbing, and I stand, cradling his head to my stomach as I run my hands through his hair. It was jarring to see my normally unshakeable cousin like this, and I had aninkling of what the fight had been about. But it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t Grace’s fault, even though she had gone alone. I was the leader. The fault was on my shoulders. If I had been around more, I would have seen that the unspoken connection between Grace and Danny was coming to a head, and I could have talked to both of them instead of the two exploding at each other.

“It’s going to be okay,” I soothed him, the words just as much for him as they were for me. “Grace is a fighter. She’s going to be okay.”

I had no idea how much time had passed before his sobs quieted. I didn’t let go of him, comforting him like it was the only thing keeping me upright, and maybe it was. Alexander slipped into the room, shaking his head when I looked at him. Marcus and Adrian arrived next, carrying coffee cups from the hospital’s cafeteria. Even as much as I loved coffee, I didn’t reach for the cup Adrian set down next to me. It felt wrong to take the small comfort when we didn’t know if Grace was going to make it.

There was a knock on the door, and we all looked towards it. Maya stood at the door, their eyes rimmed with dark circles. They looked dead on their feet. “Anything on Grace?” they asked.

I shook my head, and they sighed heavily, heading for an empty seat and taking a cup of cold coffee from the table. “We interviewed almost everyone at the party who would have seen something. A few people remembered seeing Grace walk around the party. She stood out to them because she didn’t appear to be drunk, but no one saw her between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. when she was found by the nursing student.”