Chapter Five

Ever

“S ounds good,” I reply, “is everyone okay over there?”

“Yeah, we were all worrying about you and Jensen since we hadn’t heard anything for so long, but Luc’s fine.” Trick replies.

“Good, we will get this done as quickly as we can, and then we will head to the safe house so we can debrief you properly. It’s a head-scratcher, that’s for sure.”

Trick hums, “Well, now I am definitely intrigued. Stay safe, and let me know if you need backup.”

“Will do,” I reply, “love you.”

“Love you, too, Sweetheart.”

I’m smiling as I hang up the phone until my gaze lands on Jensen sitting on the floor and glaring at the doors.

“Did you fall over?” I ask because, honestly, it is the only explanation I can come up with.

Jensen snorts, “No. Not this time. I know the third person didn’t come through this way.”

I raise my eyebrow, “Oh? And how do you know that?”

“Because it locks,” he replies, tugging at the handle again for emphasis.

“Well shit,” I reply, and then ask, “are you sure it’s not just wedged shut or something? It did slam pretty hard.”

Jensen is shaking his head before I have even stopped asking my question.

“I thought that might be the case, but I was really fucking pulling it, and then I had a closer look, and you can see the mechanism that locks into place.”

“Shit,” I repeat.

“Yeah, pretty much.” He replies as he looks around at the trees surrounding us. “I guess we follow the car track and see where they lead? It should at least take us to somewhere that I can recognize, and then I can get us back to the house.”

I sigh heavily, “I haven’t had nearly enough coffee to go on a hike of indeterminate length.”

Jensen chuckles at my grumbling and grabs my hand, threading our fingers together, as we head in the same direction as the tire tracks. Thankfully, it rained recently, so the tire tracks have stuck around, which means we have something to follow back to the road.

I really hope that the road is not far away.

I need coffee; I need my vase of coffee.

Shit, I need to warn Pete that we might not be at the house when he shows up. The last thing I want to do is to make the guys think we have gone missing and trigger panic. Especially since they will still be on high alert from how long it took us to clear the house in the first place. I send him a quick text and immediately get a response that he wants us to show him the tunnel when he gets here because it sounds like something from a movie, and he wants to see it for himself.

Surprisingly, and thankfully for my sanity, we are not walking for that long before I can see the road up ahead through a break in the trees.

“Thank fuck it wasn’t that far,” I mutter.

“I’d save your celebrating for a moment; we have no idea how far away we are from the house,” Jensen reminds me.

“Shit, yeah, I’d forgotten about that,” I reply, all my earlier happiness leaving me.

I might be feeling a little bit dramatic without my coffee.

As we step onto the road, I look around hopefully and then frown, “I have no idea where we are, and I should. We are still in town, right? We didn’t transport ourselves to another dimension or something.”

Jensen chuckles, “I forget how dramatic you get when you haven’t had enough coffee and are running on very little sleep.”

“Whoa, rude much?” I reply with a grumble and a smirk, knowing that he is one hundred percent right, but I am not about to admit that to him.

His smirk widens into a gorgeous smile as he squeezes my hand and says, “Fortunately, I do know where we are, we’re quite far away from the house though. I had no idea that they owned this much land.”

“They may not,” I point out, “just because the door opens up out here doesn’t mean that they own this piece of land. Although, it would be stupid not to, considering that if someone found the doors, they would most definitely want to investigate them.”

“Exactly, so they must own the land then.” Jensen replies, as he pulls out his phone, “We can ask Luc when we see him next, but for now, I am going to call Pete and get him to come and pick us up. I am not walking any further.”

“This is why I love you,” I reply.

He chuckles and I listen as he quickly explains where we are to Pete. Even listening to Jensen describe precisely where we are to Pete, I still have no idea where we are.

“He wasn’t too far away from us, and he should be here any minute,” Jensen tells me as soon as he hangs up.

I nod and silently hope that he has managed to pick up the coffee already because that’s pretty much all I can think about right now.

I may have an issue.

“Hey guys,” Pete greets us as he pulls up beside us.

“Hey man,” Jensen replies as we get in.

Pete, being the bestie he is hands me a giant coffee as soon as I have got my ass in the seat.

“I love you,” I mutter, taking a big gulp.

Pete smirks as he pulls back out onto the road, “Me or the coffee?”

“Erm, you?” I reply.

Pete bursts out laughing, “Bullshit.” I shrug. I am not going to confirm or deny whether he is right or not, especially since everyone in this car knows full well that I was saying I love you to my coffee.

It takes us around ten minutes to get back to the house and I am incredibly grateful that Pete came and got us, and we didn’t have to walk.

“Okay, so what am I doing here exactly?” Peter asks as we head inside the house, and Jensen leads us back to the security room.

“We need you to check the cameras and see if you can recover the footage that has been deleted. We know that something has been done to the footage because the cameras didn’t pick up Luc’s mom entering the house or the third mystery person that was in the safe room either.” I explain.

Pete stops dead in his tracks and spins around to face me, his eyes wide, “I’m sorry, what? Luc’s mom? Safe room? Third person?”

I smirk, “Yeah, like I told Trick, it has been a wild ride. Come on, I will fill you in properly.”

By the time I have finished telling Pete everything that has happened, we are in the security room, and he is staring at the safe room and the stairway.

It’s silent for a moment while he absorbs everything that we’ve told him, which is understandable. A lot has happened.

“That’s a lot of blood,” Pete says as he looks at the puddle inside the door.

“Yeah, it is,” I reply with a frown, “there is a very real chance that she’s not okay.”

Pete frowns, “You are assuming that she was the one that was hurt. She has already proven herself to have more skills than we gave her credit for. Isn’t it possible that she went into the safe room, found an intruder, and then attacked them?”

My eyebrows raise. I actually hadn’t considered that at all, but it is a possibility.

“She would have to carry the person out and take them with her, and I don’t know what reason she could possibly have for doing that,” Jensen replies, thinking aloud.

“That’s true,” Pete replies, “it would be more plausible the other way around but either way that you look at it we are making a lot of assumptions, and we have no idea what actually happened. I take it that there are no cameras in there?”

Jensen and I share a look, and I reply, “I don’t know. We only managed to look at the cameras following Luc’s mom through the house and then we watched her go into the safe room and followed to see if she was still in there, so we didn’t get a chance to check any other cameras.”

Pete nods, “Fair enough. Let me see what I can find out. I just want to set everything up to transfer the footage to my laptop so I can review it properly later.”

“Awesome, thank you,” I tell him as he takes a seat and starts tapping away before he plugs his laptop in.

I have seen him do things like this probably hundreds of times before, and the things that he can get a computer to do still blow my mind. I don’t even have a vague idea of how he does it, and I have sat down with him in the past and asked him to try and show me some simple things. We got two hours in before we both gave up and admitted that computers just were not for me. For some reason, I just have a massive mental block when it comes to some of the more complicated stuff, and even when I try really hard, all the information just goes in one ear and out of the other.

Trick

We are still waiting in the hospital for Luc to be discharged, and it is giving me a lot of time to think. I glance down at my cast; I have had enough now. I have got less than two weeks left until I'm supposed to have it off, and Cash can have his off around the same. I’m barely feeling any pain. I don’t need painkillers, and I have been walking on it using the boot at home. I am done.

“What are you thinking about?” Atlas asks me, studying me closely. “The doctor should be back any minute now, and then we can get going.”

We are in the hospital, and it’s worth a shot, glancing at Cash I say, “Do you want to see if the doctors will take our casts off?”

“Fuck yeah!” He exclaims and immediately stands up.

“Do you guys really think that’s a good idea?” Rafe asks, a worried frown drawing down his eyebrows.

I shrug, “Honestly, I am so fucking fed up now and I’m not in pain, we can ask, they won’t take it off if we’re not ready.”

“Good point.” Luc agrees, he adds, “I’m looking forward to your explanation to Ever if you manage it.”

My eyes widen slightly, “Shit, do you think the doctor will give me a note?”

“Us, dude, give us a note,” Cash replies. “Come on, let's do this, we don't have much time.”

Cash and I head out the door, running into Luc’s doctor in the corridor.

“Hey, doc,” I greet with a smile.

“Hey, I was just starting Luc’s paperwork. Is everything okay?”

“Erm yeah, we were wondering if you would be able to take our casts off? We are supposed to have two ish weeks left, but we are both done now, if we can, we would love to have them off,” I ask him, not really expecting much.

He surprises me when he asks how long we have had them on for, if we have been limiting activity, and all of that kind of thing. Cash and I answer him as honestly as we can.

“I tell you what, have an x-ray done just so we can make sure that you’re healed, and I’ll take off your casts.” He suggests. “Sounds good?”

“Absolutely!” Cash exclaims excitedly and I had no idea that it was bugging him as much as it clearly is.

“Deal,” I agree.

“Great, follow me gentlemen and we will get you seen to and see what is going on. If you have been honest with your answers to me, I see no reason we can’t get them off today.”

His words make my hope soar. I know we will still have to be a bit careful and build up strength, but that is fine. We can join Jensen on his morning runs and Cash can lift some weights to build up strength in his arm. Anything is better than being trapped in these damn casts and not being able to help my family members properly.

Jensen nearly died, and he is back in it and loving it; I was not made to sit on the sidelines.

Our X-rays take no time at all since the hospital seems relatively quiet, and we both wait nervously while they look over them.

“I don’t think I’ve been this nervous for a long time,” Cash mutters.

“I know, I’m reaching the end of my tether with this damn cast now; I’m useless to the team,” I reply, a little bit more honest than I had intended to be.

“Fuck off, you could have two casts on your legs, and you would still be infinitely more useful and needed to the team; you keep us together and organize and sort everything; you think about things that don’t occur to the rest of us. So fucking quit it, or I will hit you,” he smirks as he adds, “with the cast on because it will hurt you more.”

I chuckle, raising my hands in defeat, "Alright, I hear you. I’m sorry.”

Before Cash can say anything else, the doctor walks back in, and we both shut up, staring at him expectantly.

“Both of your X-rays look good, you are going to have some weakness and possibly some aches in both your leg and arm. When that happens, that's your sign you need to rest, do not push it. You will also need to start gentle,” he emphasises the word gentle, “exercise to build up the strength but in both your cases the bones are healed.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Cash exclaims.

The doctor chuckles, “Follow me, and we’ll get them off.”

We gladly follow and end up next to each other as they take the casts off.

“Erm doc?” I ask.

He glances up at me from where he’s taking my cast off, probably hearing the nerves in my voice, “Could you write Cash and me a note, saying that it’s perfectly safe for us to have our casts removed and maybe even our X-rays so we can give it to Ever?”

The doctor and the nurse who is taking Cash’s cast off burst out laughing.

The doctor finally nods, “Yeah, I can do that.”

Finally, they are off, and I slowly stand testing my leg even though I have been walking on it, it feels so weird but honestly, it is such a relief.

“Does everything feel okay?” The doctor asks and we both nod, Cash bending and straightening his arm. “Great. If you have any issues, you go back to the doctor. I don’t foresee there being any issues you’ve both healed very well.”

“Thanks doc, you have no idea how good that feels,” I reply.

He grins, “No problem. I will go and start Luc’s paperwork and get that letter for you to give to Ever.”

“Thank you,” Cash says.

We head down the corridor and back to the room. My leg feels really weird but I’m not in pain and it’s more like it is slightly stiff, like I need to work out the kinks, which I suppose I do.

“How’s your arm?” I ask Cash.

“It feels a bit strange, but it doesn’t hurt. I am so fucking glad to get that thing off. Do you know how long I have needed to properly itch it!” He exclaims, doing just that.

“I’m just looking forward to a proper shower,” I reply.

His eyes widen, “A proper shower, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

I chuckle as we push through the door to Luc’s room.

“You managed to get the doctor to agree then,” Luc chuckles as soon as he sees us, prompting the others to start smiling.

“Yeah, he said we still need to take it easier than usual, but the bones are healed,” Cash explains.

“Good,” Rafe replies, “I know it has been bugging you both. Don’t push yourselves too far though you don’t want to end up hurting yourself or ending up back in a cast.”

I nod, “We know. Don’t worry I think I will do absolutely anything to avoid ending up back in a cast. No fucking thank you.”

“Well, it means you can get back out in the field now,” Riot points out.

“Yep, I don’t mind surveillance, but I hate not being with you guys; it’s fucking terrifying if I’m being honest, and I don’t think my nerves can handle it,” I tell them honestly.

“We noticed,” Atlas replies with a knowing smile.

“We missed you guys in the field too,” Rage says, “it will be nice to get everything back to normal.”

“That I can definitely agree with,” Luc says. He smirks, “So, did you convince him to give you a letter to give to our girlfriend, who isn’t going to be impressed that you guys got your casts off already?”

I grin smugly, “I did.”

They all burst out laughing as Rage says, “No fucking way, seriously?”

Cash nods, “Yep, seriously.”

Right on cue the doctor pushes through the door and grins, “Luc, you’re free to go.”

“Awesome, thanks, doc,” he says, hopping up from the bed, already fully dressed.

The doctor turns to us, his smile widening, as he hands a letter and two folders to me, “As requested, a doctor's letter and both of your X-rays for Ever.”

The guys burst out laughing, the doctor unable to hold it in any longer chuckles too and waves as he leaves the room.

Once everyone has calmed down again, Atlas says, “Alright, let’s head back to the safe house, hopefully the others won’t be too far behind us. I am really curious about what they have found.”

“Me too,” I reply, as we finally leave the hospital and get into the truck, Atlas behind the steering wheel because I have only just had the cast off, and he has been driving while we have been here, so it was almost automatic.

I can’t stop smiling. Finally, my leg is free. I feel infinitely lighter and happier, and I didn’t realize just how much it was weighing on me and affecting my mental health. Thank fuck it is off. Now, just to make sure Ever knows we have healed before she freaks out that we have had the casts off before we should have.