Baldwin got busy pouring Fitz some water, letting him sip it from a straw before he spoke more. The coughing eased.

Taylor pulled up a chair, touching Fitz lightly on the arm.

“First, how are you feeling? What did the doctors do?”

When he cleared his throat, it sounded like fabric ripping apart at the seams. “Damn anesthesia. I don’t know. It was a bunch of technobabble to me. All I picked up was that I’ll be able to get a shiny new eye in about a month. Seems everything went just fine.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Naw. I’m still high as a kite. I’m sure that won’t last forever. Now, what the hell happened?”

Taylor filled him in on the morning’s disaster. “We didn’t have any choice but to divert you here. I couldn’t take the chance that it was some kind of trap, some unfathomable grand plan… I’m still a little bit in shock.”

Fitz whistled. “Yeah, something didn’t feel right about the whole thing. I figured it was because of the drugs, but I could swear I’d heard Sansom’s voice before. And I mean before, before, while we were still on the boat. It didn’t make sense that she would be on the boat and be at the police station. I knew she wasn’t straight, but there was no way I could tell you. I’m so sorry. If I had, maybe none of this would have happened. I was so confused…”

She took his hand.

“Don’t do that to yourself. The fake agents had a very specific plan. If you’d said something, they might have killed us all and been done with it. Now that we’re safe and sound, can you talk about what happened? I could tell you were holding back in Nags Head, I just didn’t realize why. Now that we’re on the same page, do you feel up to giving me some more details?”

Fitz leaned his head back, the cheap, thin pillow crackling a bit as he sank in. He sighed, a deep, heavy, sad noise that made her stomach hurt.

“If you’re not ready…”

“No, it’s okay. I just miss her, you know? It’s my own damn fault it all went south.” Fitz’s voice was tired, quiet. “Remember we lost our impeller down in Barbados?”

“Yes,” Taylor replied. “You called because you thought you saw the Pretender near Susie.”

At the mention of her name, Fitz winced. “Yeah. Bastard bumped into her. She dropped everything on the ground. I was watching through the binoculars. Ass hole picked up the packages, handed them to her, then turned around and saluted me. He knew exactly who I was. Then he disappeared. The engine part came the next day—we made the repairs and started sailing north. He caught up with us in Miami. There were four of them, but they wore masks, those black things terrorists wear. What are they called?”

“Balaclavas,” Baldwin interjected.

“That’s it. But these had a skull printed on them, just the lower jaw and nose. Freaky-looking—like a skull with live eyes.” He shook his head, wincing slightly at what Taylor knew must be great pain. Emotional or physical, that was the question. She was worried about him. He didn’t sound right.

What he should sound like, she didn’t know.

“It’s my fault. I left Susie on the boat, went into the port for supplies. When I got back, they already had her tied to a chair with a gun to her head.”

“Fitz,” Taylor started, but he interrupted her.

“No. It was my fault. I should have never left her alone.” He paused for a moment, then looked away. “Did they… Was she…”

Baldwin put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “No. She died quickly.”

That was enough to send Fitz over the edge. He started to cry, something Taylor had never seen him do. Tears of relief, frustration, pain, all coursing down the right side of his face. If the lost eye was crying, the tears were being soaked up by the bandage.

She swallowed hard and squeezed Fitz’s hand. He quieted, and she handed him a scratchy tissue. He swiped at his face angrily, sniffed a couple of times. She felt Baldwin moving around behind her, glanced over her shoulder at him. The naked hostility on his face startled her. He hated this as much as she did, but his reaction to Fitz’s story was visceral.

“Fitz, why don’t we stop now? You can tell me the rest later.”

“No. I want to finish. You need everything I have if you’re going to catch him.” He coughed again, the leftover anesthesia clearing from his lungs. “He wasn’t there long. He used the name Troy. The other three were really deferential. They knocked Susie on the head and drugged me. The rest is sort of blurry, just bits and pieces really. I wasn’t awake when he took my eye, just came to with blood all over me and a wicked pain in my face. He told me what to say to you then I conked out again. Next thing I remember, they dumped me on the side of the road, doped to kingdom come. I don’t know how long it had been though. A couple of days? A week? I wandered around for a bit before the cops hauled me in.”

Baldwin cleared his throat. “From what we can tell, it was at least three days from your enucleation until you were found, but we don’t know when they took your eye exactly. Susie had been dead for a while.”

“How?”

“Fitz—”

“How, goddamn it?”

Taylor swallowed, then answered him. “They cut her throat.”

Fitz blanched under his already pasty skin. “I thought so. I heard them do it, I think. I was hoping it was a bad dream.”

He pulled into himself then, and Taylor knew they needed to give him some space. She thought he might have started to doze, his mouth went slack. He looked like an old man, fragile, broken. Her heart felt shredded, and she was careful not to wake him as she got up.

She whispered, “We’ll be back soon, okay? We’re going to find him, Fitz. I swear to you. We’re going to find him, and take him out.”

They were quiet on the way back to the truck. Taylor was at a loss. This whole fucking situation was spinning out of control. She couldn’t erase the image of Fitz, his battered face, his broken heart, the loneliness engulfing him; she envisioned what he was seeing right now—the white hospital room, the sheets, the walls, all screaming at him. She didn’t know how to take on his guilt.

Losing Susie wasn’t his fault.

It was hers. All hers.

She stopped walking, the bile in her stomach rising to the surface. Baldwin pulled up short.

“Are you okay?”

She shook her head, swallowing hard. Good God. She’d spent all this time waiting for the Pretender to make a move, letting him toy with her. Look where that had gotten her. She had to do something. She couldn’t sit back and wait to see what happened next.

Baldwin was hovering. The sun would set soon, flashes of gold and red were reflecting off the buildings around them. The sky would turn to fire, and the darkness would come again.

“I’m okay,” she managed.

“Let me take you home. You’ve had a long day.”

“No, I can’t. I need to go into work. I’m so far behind, I just need to try to…to get a handle on things. I’ll bring some stuff home and work on it, okay? You go on home. I won’t be long. We can eat. Try to eat.”

“Are you sure? I need to do some work myself. I can hang there, make some calls. You’re still on leave, they might kick you out.”

“No, really, it’s fine.”

“You need to be alone.”

He said it without malice, just a statement of fact.

She worked her face into a smile, met his eyes. Tried to erase the concern in them. “You know me too well. Yes. I need to get my head straight. Seeing him so hurt, it just about killed me.”

“Paperwork will help?”

“Mindless. I just need an hour or so. Okay?”

Baldwin swept her into his arms, pulled her tight to his chest. She shivered, he was so warm. Always so warm. So good, and so right.

“Okay, Taylor. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll drop you off?”

“Sure. Thank you.”

She wanted to take the comfort of his arms and bottle it. Instead she focused on the feeling of safety, the strength in his embrace knowledge that he would do anything for her. It would have to be enough. For now.