The Institute, Daddy Issues(95)

I felt some­thing warm and wet trick­ling down my cheeks and dimly real­ized I was cry­ing. But that was all right—it was what I de­served. I was the one who had driven my Daddy away—I de­served to be beaten for it. I ought to hurt and sting and cry to atone for that sin. I should— “No more!”

The harsh cry made me turn my head. I saw a tall man stand­ing over me but I wasn’t sure who he was.

“No more, Andi,” he re­peated. “I can­not hurt you like this any­more. You’re bleed­ing.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I whispered as my eyes filled with tears again. “I didn’t mean to make you go away. Please tell me what I did that made you leave—I swear I won’t do it again.”

“Andi, it’s me.”

My vis­ion seemed to clear and the tall man be­came my part­ner. I real­ized that once again I had some­how fallen into Little-space and not in a good way.

Salt’s face was no longer cold and im­pass­ive. There was an­guish now in his pale blue eyes—a look of re­gret and self-re­crim­in­a­tion so deep it made me ache for him.

“Salt?” I whispered, mak­ing an ef­fort to come back from the dark place in my past. “Salt, is that you?”

“Andi…” He threw down his belt and gathered me into his arms. “Sorry. I am so sorry, my darling,” he whispered into my hair. “I never should have hurt you in that way.”

I wanted to protest that it wasn’t his fault but everything seemed to be fad­ing. Black flowers were bloom­ing be­fore my eyes and dark­ness was eat­ing the world.

“Andi,” I heard Salt say. “Please be all right. Please, I can­not hurt you any­more. I can­not bear it.”

“You had to hurt me,” I whispered. My mind was hazy but I wanted to make that much clear. “It was…the only way other than…than fuck­ing. The only thing that could…could help.”

Des­pite my words, Salt’s strong fea­tures were still filled with re­morse.

“I still should not have—”

Sud­denly there was a splin­ter­ing sound and the thick wooden door burst in­ward.

“All right—hands up where we can see them,” barked a sharp voice. “Tampa PD—every­body just stay where you are.”

“What the hell do you think you are do­ing?” Salt de­man­ded.

The other voice seemed to be an­swer­ing but I couldn’t hear it any­more. The black flowers had grown to fill my en­tire field of vis­ion and it seemed like someone had turned the volume in the room way, way down so that the other voices around me were noth­ing but whis­pers.

“…my part­ner,” I vaguely heard Salt say. “…take her to the hos­pital now.”

No hos­pital, I tried to say—I hated those places. My mom had died in one and I didn’t want to die there too. I didn’t want…

But it didn’t mat­ter what I wanted. Everything went dark and si­lent and the world faded to black.





Chapter Six­teen

“…so we’re lucky that Vice chose that time to make a raid al­though I was pissed at the time that they’d do some­thing so clue­less. And don’t worry about that in­form­ant Berkley told you he had in the PD—that’s been taken care of.”

The Cap­tain seemed to be wrap­ping up his brief­ing, for which I was pro­foundly grate­ful. He’d kept us in his of­fice for at least an hour. Even though the lash wounds on my back­side made by Salt’s belt had mostly healed, it was still pain­ful to spend too much time sit­ting.

“Very lucky,” my part­ner growled softly. “Andi might have died oth­er­wise.”

“I would have if you hadn’t saved me.”

“Saved you by half killing you,” Salt muttered, look­ing down at his hands.

“You only did what I asked you to,” I poin­ted out. “And it was bet­ter than…than the al­tern­at­ive. It was the only way to coun­ter­act the ef­fects of the Please other than—”

The Cap­tain cleared his throat. “Well, yes. I think we can all agree De­tect­ive Saltanov did only what was ne­ces­sary.”

Salt muttered some­thing in Rus­sian, still look­ing at his hands.

“Salt…” I tried to catch his eye but he wouldn’t look at me.

Great. In­wardly, I sighed. This was the way things had been between us for the two weeks since the ab­rupt end of our time at the In­sti­tute.