Exiled (A Madame X Novel) Read Online Free

Sorry.”
    “Anyone with a gunshot wound admitted last night?”
    Tap-tap-tap-tap . . .
“Nope. Sorry.”
    I think back, and realize he wouldn’t be here. This is the closest hospital to me, not to where we were when Logan was shot.
    When YOU shot Logan.
    We were . . . where did Logan say he was taking me? I wasn’t paying attention to the streets while he drove.
    Brooklyn.
    “What is the name of the hospital in Brooklyn?” I ask.
    The woman frowns at me. “There’s, like, a dozen. Mount Sinai Brooklyn. New York Methodist. SUNY Downstate. A bunch.”
    “How do I get there?”
    She shrugs. “Go to Brooklyn?”
    “But if I’m looking for someone, but don’t know which hospital—”
    “Then you’ll have to ask at each one till you find him. NEXT!”
    I wander out of the hospital, feeling hope bleeding away. How do I get to Brooklyn? How do I find out which hospital he’s in? How do I even know he’s still alive?
    He is.
    I can just . . . feel it. He is. He has to be.
    I ask someone which way to Brooklyn, and get a response in a language I don’t understand. Ask again, get a thumb jerk in what I hope is the correct direction.
    I walk that direction until my feet ache. I don’t know how long. Until I see water in the distance.
    And then a black SUV glides to a halt beside me. A tinted window rolls down. Thomas.
    Impassive black face, dark eyes staring. A slow blink. “Get in.”
    I hesitate.
    “He is alive. I will take you. Get in.” A voice like thunder in the distance. Like rich, thick syrup. Like the bottom of a well. Thickly accented English.
    “Thomas, why would you—”
    “You want to see him?”
    I breathe my answer. “Yes.”
    “Then get in.”
    I get in. Miles in silence, and then I have to know.
    “This isn’t the first time you’ve helped me when I know you shouldn’t be. Why?”
    A shrug of a heavy shoulder. “I do not know. Sometimes, there are things a man must do. He knows. And he does them. Perhaps I have known your soul, in another time.”
    I have no idea what that means. It doesn’t matter. Thomas is an utter enigma. Frightening. The largest man I have ever seen in my life, skin so black it is shadow made flesh. A mountain of silence and darkness. Eyes that see everything and give away nothing. A senseof tightly coiled violence. But yet again Thomas has helped me, in what seems to be direct violation of what you would want.
    Thomas drives me unerringly to a hospital far, far from your world, from the enclave of wealthy Manhattan. Slides to a stop under the portico. Glances at me. “He is here.”
    “Thank you, Thomas.”
    A shrug. “Go. And Indigo . . . he will come to you again. You know this. Yes?”
    I nod. I do know it. I feel it. “Yes. I know.”
    “Good. Do not forget it.”
    I exit the SUV, close the door behind me. Watch as Thomas drives away, slow, careful, unobtrusive. For the second time now, Thomas has been my deus ex machina. I do not know what to make of it, of the man. Why Thomas, so utterly unlike Len, your other henchman, continues to help me. Len is a known quantity; vicious, violent, and utterly loyal to you. Unapologetically a killer. Thomas, however, is different.
    I push aside thoughts of Thomas and Len, and of you. The receptionist at this hospital—I do not know which, have once again failed to pay attention to where I have been taken—is an elderly white woman with tired, apathetic eyes.
    “May I help you?”
    “I’m looking for a man whom I believe is a patient here. Logan Ryder?”
    Tap-tap-tap-tap . . . taptaptap . . . tap.
“Yes. Room five thirteen.” Slides a large green sticker toward me, tosses a ballpoint pen on top. “Print your name on the visitor’s badge and stick it somewhere visible.”
    I write my name:
Isabel de la Vega.
Affix the sticker to my chest near my shoulder. Take the elevators up to the fifth floor. The hallways are wide and harshly lit with fluorescent bulbs. My heels click loudly on the floor.