The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Seven

"And where did you disappear to last night?" asked Alice as she fell into step beside me.  She shoved her Encryption textbook into her backpack, scrunching a handful of papers to the bottom of her bag in the process.  "You had a doctor's appointment and then you disappeared for, like, six hours."

"I was working out," I told her, sliding my own textbook into my bag, the homework for the night stuck in between various pages.  "And it was two hours."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Faith said it was six."

"Faith hasn't looked up from her computers in ten years," I reminded her.  "Did you really think it was a good idea to rely on her for the time?  Maybe if you had gotten in at a decent time last night, then you would know that Faith was wrong—speaking of getting in late, where were you last night?"

She cut me a sly look that was nearly identical to the one that she had worn when she tried to sneak through our door at such an absurd hour the night before.  "Let's just call it a... late-night rendezvous."

There was a giggle hiding behind her smile and a light in her eye that told me this rendezvous was anything but spy-related.  No sir, this escapade was entirely girl-related.  "What's his name?" I asked.

She cut a glance up at me, narrowly avoiding a crowd of frantic eighth-graders with a crossbow.  "Did you happen to write down the homework for Encryption?  I don't think I caught the assignment."

"No, no, no," I told her, because Gallagher Girls never forgot the homework.  This was evasion if ever I'd seen it.  "I, as your best friend, demand to know his name—unless it's not a boy."  I took a breath in.  "Is it a girl?  Because, you know, I might be more open to that idea than you think."

But Alice stopped in her tracks, the cold, sterile smell of hospital hitting both of us at the same time, and I knew that this was not the time to ask about the many relationships of Alice Anderson.

I saw Aunt Liz through the doorway, fussing with the piles of bandages that held Ellie together.  Alice looked at me like this was her stop and she needed to get off the train, no matter how much she didn't want to.  "Good luck," I said.

She nodded.  "You too."

Right.  Me too.  I'd need some of that.

Alice turned into Ellie's room and I continued down the ICU without my best friend at my side.  It was a much harder walk without her there, but I knew that it was a path that had to be traveled.  I couldn't avoid him forever and, to be honest, I wasn't sure that I wanted to.

I needed someone who was going to listen to me.  Maybe I just needed someone else who knew.  Knew what it felt like to be so tired all the time.

Bill didn't have anyone sitting at his bedside.

Of course, he knew who was supposed to be there, because that was the name he kept calling out.  Over and over.  Sometimes at night and sometimes during the day.  When he was crashing and when he was stable.  Always.  It was like everything was leaving him—everything was surrendering to the sleep, and he was determined to remember that single word above it all.  "Will."

No one could tell me if Bill knew that his best friend was gone.  No one knew if he was anticipating waking up to a world without his soulmate.  But I did know that, whether he knew or not, Bill missed Will.  Bill was going to be missing Will for a very long time.

Bill was set up in a private room, but it wasn't any sort of perk.  They wanted him isolated.  Alone.  Lucky son of a bitch.

He was handcuffed to the bed, even though he hadn't moved in over a month, but that didn't matter.  Bill was the lead suspect in a crime against Morgan Goode, so not only did he have the world's strongest agents working against him, but the world's strongest family was against him, too.  For now, they would keep him handcuffed because for now, he was the enemy.  Guilty until proven innocent.