My head throbs. I reach for it and find a hard crust of blood matted into my hair.
My head swivels to the side and I barely make out… Nathan. Little coward. Standing in the far corner. Arms crossed over his chest. A red ring of fingerprints still bright around his neck. And he has the fucking nerve to scowl at me.
“You,” I croak.
“Easy, killer.” McKay pulls me to my feet. “You took a hard hit. And it wasn’t him.”
“I’m so sorry, Adam.” Indie is all up in my face. Eyes darting back and forth, searching mine. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard. But you were gonna choke him out! And I told you, he was teasing me! That’s it! That’s all it was!”
But that wasn’t all it was. My head is pretty foggy right now but I saw what I saw. His fucking hand up her shirt. His lips on her mouth.
I direct my glare at McKay. “You’re supposed to be watching her. Do you have any idea what she’s doing over here?”
“I’m not doing anything! We were watching a movie and you came in—”
“I saw you, Indie. Kissing him.”
“Oh! Kissing him! Call the fucking FBI. Two teenagers were kissing!” She turns to McKay. “Do you believe this shit?”
“Indie.” And McKay growls her name. “Go home.”
“No! No! I’m not leaving you two here with him! So you can what, choke him to death this time? You didn’t see him, McKay! He was an animal! He was practically foaming at the fucking mouth!”
And in this moment McKay looks at Indie like… well, let’s just say the last I saw this look on McKay’s face, he was in the middle of killing someone. “Go. The fuck. Home.”
Indie stomps her foot and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not going home. I’m staying right here until this is settled.”
I touch my head again and this time my fingertips walk up the baseball-sized lump to find the gash in the middle. It fucking hurts. And then I look around and find the weapon. A silver candlestick on the floor. Dried blood on the top edge.
McKay looks down at it too. Then up at me. “She hit you.”
“No shit.”
“I had to!” Indie is still hysterical. “You morphed into a violent freak!”
McKay’s fingers come up to my head and he touches the wound. “The bleeding has stopped but you definitely need stitches and…” He trails off, but he’s just staring at my head.
I glance down at my white thermal shirt and find one whole side of it crimson with blood.
McKay looks at Nate. “Get him some fucking ice, will ya?”
“How long was I out?”
“A long time.” McKay sighs, then looks over at Nate in the kitchen, then back at me. “What the fuck happened?”
“I told you what happened!”
McKay points to Indie. “Shut your fucking mouth. You hear me? Because if you say one more fucking word, I will bend you over my goddamned knee and spank you like a fucking child.”
“I’d like to see you try.” She is defiant till the end. I will give her that.
Nate comes back from the kitchen and hands McKay a dishtowel filled with ice. McKay hands it to me, and I take it, gingerly pressing it up against my head. Then I look at Nate. “Where the fuck is your grandfather?”
He points to the bedroom.
I squint my eyes in confusion. “He’s here?”
Indie positions herself in front of me so I can’t see Nate. “He’s sick, OK? He’s been bedridden for months now. And you would know that if you knew anything about me at all!”
I look at McKay. “Did you know this?”
He nods. “I knew.”
“And you let her come over here to… watch movies?”
“Oh, my God!”
“Shut up, Indie!” McKay and I say it at the same time.
Then McKay turns to me. “Look. I get it. We need to sort this out. But I think we should just take you into the emergency room and make sure you’re OK. She hit you fucking hard, Adam. You most certainly have a concussion. You were out for almost thirty minutes. I was about to call a goddamned ambulance.”
I point my finger at Nate. “This isn’t over.”
And then I walk out—mostly by myself, but actually with a lot of help from McKay. Indie follows. And somehow, they get me back over to my own property and into McKay’s truck.
I have emergency surgery to relieve swelling on my brain, spend two days in an induced coma, then spend another ten in a hospital in New Orleans under observation as a slew of random nurses and doctors come in and out of my room telling me how lucky I am to be alive after falling off that roof.
So it’s actually two months later when McKay, Donovan, and I pick this conversation back up.
Indie has been grounded since the ‘incident’ at Nate’s house. I know she feels pretty bad about what happened because McKay tells me she hasn’t complained once about being locked up in the house.
And she’s nice to me.
I’m not saying she’s been mean to me all these years, but I am not her favorite… guardian.
Funny how there’s a legit word for a person who takes care of a random kid who is not related to them, but no good word for what that kid is to said guardian.
Ward?
No. Dependent. That was the word I decided on. But maybe protégé is more accurate?
My memory is still a little bit fucked since the ‘incident’. But I’m mostly fine. McKay shaved my head the day I came home from the hospital so I didn’t have that huge patch of baldness where they cut me open after Indie… you know.
I don’t like to think about it.
Haven’t worked since that day. But turns out it doesn’t even matter. Nick Tate was fucking serious. The Company is… well. I’m not sure such a massive global organization can just be erased, but the whole thing kind of just… fell apart.
I haven’t gotten all the details yet since it went down while I was in that induced coma. But McKay told me what he knew. And Donovan knew a little more because the auction island was raided by law enforcement in the Bahamas and the CIA. And his grandfather, Gerald, killed himself during the final standoff and Donovan was notified of that by the estate lawyers.
But other than that? Fuck if I know what happened to the Company.
Fuck if I care.
Good for Nick. I hope he and his people are happy. I have a more immediate problem to think about.
Indie.
Right now, McKay, Donovan, and I are in the TV room in the back of the house, just off the kitchen. Actually, I’m sitting on the couch that faces the wall of windows that look out onto the backyard. Donovan is sitting at the kitchen bar talking to McKay as McKay makes us tomato sandwiches.
I glance up at McKay. He’s smiling and laughing at some story Donovan is telling him about one of his girlfriends at Duke. He’s in his second year of lab rotations for some kind of clinical neuroscience PhD.
But, with the exception of a few weekend trips back to North Carolina for some exams and meetings about his research, Donovan has taken the semester off and has been here with us since the ‘incident’.
Indie has a session with him twice a day now.
I don’t like to think about it. And actually, I’m not even that worried about Indie. She’s been the model—ward? Dependent? Protégée?—since I came home from the hospital.