The gas chokes me anyway, my chest compressing with pain, and I cough and then gag.
Pain tears at my hands, but I ignore it. I’ve pushed my head through the opening, where I take a gulp of the fresh air.
“GUNNAR!” a voice shouts from somewhere.
“STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT!” I rasp, my voice shot. I don’t know if anyone can hear me.
But then I feel hands clawing at my legs, and an anguished, muffled shout. The gas mask guy.
I kick violently, needing another few seconds alone to clear the rest of my body out of this window.
Instead, I hear the loudest gunshot I have ever heard in my life at the same moment that red-hot pain tears through my leg. I gasp, my bloodied hands slipping on the window frame.
There’s a tug of war on my body, and so much pain that it ceases to make any sense at all.
Then everything goes black.
* * *
Motion. Shouting. Pain.
Posy is speaking to me, but I can’t hear her voice. Her eyes are wide and frightened.
Her father puts an arm around her. “Come here, darling, sit down. I’ll wait with you.” His eyes have an appraising squint that has always annoyed me.
Squinty eyes? That seems important. If only I could remember why.
My father tells me to keep my eye on the catcher. He’s calling for a fastball.
My mother smiles.
“I’m waiting right outside,” Posy says.
Everything is cold.
32
Scout
It’s been twelve hours since Gunnar was shot in the basement on Prince Street. I can’t think too much about it. There’s no time for emotion. I have a mission to run.
This morning we’re sending Geoff into the nightclub for his bookkeeping gig. With Gunnar fighting for his life in the hospital, and Max crazed with worry, and the team short-staffed, the mission falls to me to direct.
Usually, I don’t run missions. I’m not a hacker or a techie. My specialty is human nature. If Max needs access to an office or a hotel room, I’m the one he sends inside. No matter how secure the location, a disarming smile from me does the trick. Bending the rules is my superpower.
In the wee hours of the night, though, I broke my own rule.
Max was out of his mind with worry, and raging at the hospital staff. He’s never lost a Company operative. And it’s breaking him that we might lose Gunnar—his college roommate and dear friend.
We’re all upset. But we don’t all show it the same way. Max shows his fear by snarling at everyone in his path, including his staff, his friends, and anyone wearing an NYU lab coat.
At the urging of Pieter and Duff, I drove his Triumph over to NYU Medical Center to pick him up from the hospital. Since he doesn’t like other people riding his bike, he came outside to give me a piece of his mind.
“What were you thinking?” he’d asked me, standing on the sidewalk looking shredded. “I didn’t ask for a lift. And I certainly didn’t ask you to ride my bike.”
“I was thinking that you’re going to be arrested for disturbing the peace in that waiting room if you don’t walk away for a few hours. Did you actually kick a soda machine? What good is that going to do?”
“They weren’t giving me the information,” he’d barked.
“Max, get on the fucking bike and go home,” I’d begged. “It’s two a.m. Get a few hours of sleep and give Gunnar a few hours to recover before you get thrown out of this place.”
Gunnar was still in surgery then. The asshole who shot him managed to nick his femoral artery. In spite of Pieter’s tourniquet, and Duff’s NASCAR driving, Gunnar almost bled to death in the back of the sedan.
He’s still unconscious. And the doctors aren’t sure yet if they’ve managed to save his leg.
I’d forced Max’s helmet into his hands. “Go home.”
“How are you getting back?”
“We both fit on that bike. Or I’ll take a cab.”
“Get on,” he’d snapped.
I rode all the way back to West 18th Street with my arms around Max’s angry, sturdy body.
There aren’t many people that I trust. But Max is one of them. If I’d been the unlucky person who got shot, I know he’d be kicking vending machines in my hospital waiting room, too.
Back at headquarters, I planned to nab a bunk in the off-duty room and crash. But Max growled at me to come upstairs with him for a drink.
At two a.m. Just the two of us.
That’s something we used to do a lot. But we don’t anymore. Not for a couple of years.
Max must have forgotten, though. Because he pressed me against the elevator wall and devoured me with angry kisses. I didn’t leave his apartment until five in the morning.
I could have said no.
I should have said no.
And not because Max is the boss, or because either of us gives a flying fuck about the optics.
The problem is that I give a lot of flying fucks about Max. And sex with him always leaves me feeling raw and vulnerable.
I don’t like feeling raw, and I really hate feeling vulnerable.
It was a failed mission, anyway. Max is still a wreck this morning as I put the finishing touches on the mission plans in a sixth-floor conference room. “No mistakes. No extra risks,” he says curtly.
“Got it,” I assure him.
“Nobody goes into that building. But if somebody goes into that building, it’s me. You’re in the van for this op.”
“Max! You’re going to the hospital. You’re not part of this mission.” Forget the sex. Now I just want to punch him for treating me like a child.
“I’m going. Not joking, Scout. Argue again and you can watch from the control room.”
Yikes. “Has there been any news?” Has there been some terrible development at the hospital that nobody’s telling me?
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m calling in some specialists.”
“Great idea.”
I’ve heard this already, though. The Company rumor mill says that Max summoned vascular surgeons from Johns Hopkins and from Harvard. He also summoned a plastic surgeon for the cuts on Gunnar’s face, where the broken window glass shredded him. He even summoned the mayor of New York.
Okay, that last thing is probably just gossip.
“Did we get anything off the cameras last night?” Max asks.
“It’s a nightclub, Max. There were two hundred people on the cameras. But nobody who looks like our guy.”
“How’s our bookkeeper this morning?”
“I’m going in to check on him right now. How’s Posy doing, by the way?”
He shakes his head. “Not good. She won’t leave the hospital.”
“You could go and take her place,” I try. Lord knows this mission will be less stressful if he leaves me in peace.
Max gives a quick shake of his head, letting me know that I’m out of luck. “I was working on him, you know.”
“Working on … Gunnar?”
Max nods miserably. “I was going to suggest he relocate to New York. God knows who I’d find to run the California office. But he could have had a life here.”
“He still can,” I say firmly. “Stop it already.” I give him a little nudge out of my way, and then head into an interview room, where Geoff the bookkeeper is waiting. Pieter has already outfitted him with a tiny camera affixed to the strap on his backpack. “Almost ready?” I ask him.
Geoff shrugs, looking terrified. He knows that two of Aga’s men were arrested last night, after our operative shot one of them in the center of his bulletproof vest. But one man escaped. And one man died trying to get out of the basement window after Gunnar.
His gas mask failed. He died by the same chemical weapon he was trying to use on Gunnar.
“Geoff, I’ll say this one more time. You don’t have to go in there. You still have a choice.”
He shakes his head, picking up a dry erase marker and writing on the whiteboard. T
he State Department won’t relocate me if I don’t go through with it.
“That’s probably true,” I admit. “But you have other options.”
If I don’t do this, they go free. And they’ll kill me anyway. Let’s go, he writes on the board. I’m tired of being afraid.
I get up and open the door for him.
* * *
Duff is behind the wheel, as usual. I’m sitting in the control seat, watching the monitors.
Max is sitting on the bench, grinding his teeth.
On the monitor in front of me I watch Geoff walk up a flight of stairs. The tiny camera is so good that I can see dust motes in the air when he walks past a window.
Come on, I inwardly beg. Let’s see a terrorist in high rez.
Geoff pushes open a door, then arrives at another one. He presses a buzzer to ask for admittance.
Nothing happens. He presses the button again.
Geoff waits, and I age about three years.
Then he reaches out and tries the doorknob. I see it turn in his hand. I’m holding my breath as he opens the metal door.
It’s brighter inside than I’m expecting. Sunlight blazes into the camera, dappling everything with a bright white light. So it takes me a moment to register what I’m seeing.
An empty room. Nothing in it. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the desks. All the file cabinets are standing open.
Geoff makes a startled noise.
Our terrorist is gone, along with all the evidence that he was ever here.
When I turn to look at Max, his head is in his hands.
33
Posy
I spend forty-eight hours at the hospital before Max orders Duff to take me home to rest.
“You don’t want to get me in trouble, do you?” Duff asks, batting his eyelashes at me. “Go home and get some sleep, or you’re gonna get me fired.”
Since I’m asleep on my feet, I succumb to this bit of trickery.
The next morning, though, I get up and shower before heading out to go right back to the hospital.
The blood is gone from the front vestibule of my building. Max’s guys swooped in and cleaned it up, along with the broken glass and the lethal poison gas in my basement.
This time I didn’t even blink when Max said he’d take care of everything.
Gunnar is in stable condition now. According to the text on my phone, his leg has good vascular flow, which is supposed to be good news. But as I step out onto the street and scan for a taxi, it’s not comforting enough.
I need to see him open his eyes, and I need to hear his voice. It’s been two and a half days since he was gassed and shot. They don’t know yet how else he might have been affected. His lungs. His eyes. His sharp mind. It’s all a big question mark.
“Posy!”
Still jumpy from the other night’s horrors, I whirl around. But it’s only Teagan, sticking her head out of the door of the pie shop. My heart still pounds as I ask, “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” she says. “But I wanted to send you off with some donuts for Gunnar, just in case he’s ready to eat today. Here.” She holds a bag toward me. “There’s a half dozen in here. Plus two very hot lattes, courtesy of the new guy that Max sent in. You can share the other one with whoever’s on duty.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“Text me if there’s any news.” Teagan is full of remorse. She feels terrible that she brought trouble to my door, and that Gunnar is fighting for his life.
And I’m trying to be civil about the whole thing. “I’ll let you know if he wakes up.”
“Please. I’ll be thinking of both of you.” She gives me a wave and disappears inside.
In between raging at the medical staff, Max sat me down and told me as much as he could about Teagan and her boyfriend’s troubles. “Geoff is at a safe house now, until I can find him a job on the West Coast, under a different name,” he’d told me.
But the terrorist they were hunting has left New York anyway. Max has a source who told him the guy slipped out of a private airport in Pennsylvania. So Teagan and Geoff are probably safe.
At any rate, Teagan insisted on coming in to work to help me keep the pie shop afloat. While Ginny is busy spending all her time with her traumatized child. Poor Aaron is still rattled.
“Aunt Posy is my hero,” he keeps telling my sister. “She got her hands out of handcuffs.”
We are all struggling. I haven’t even set foot in the pie shop either. My new barista is doing the best she can, but I’m still short-handed.
Max is helping with that, too. He flew in a famous barista—some guy from Portland. And he hired a pastry chef from the Culinary Institute of America on 18th Street to fill in for me.
The one person who’s surprised me with his attentiveness has been my father. Dad keeps showing up at the hospital to see how I am. He offered to send Aaron to therapy, and he even asked me if I needed any money to hire extra labor for my business.
It’s funny, but I never wanted his help with anything before. And I couldn’t imagine turning my back on the pie shop. But with Gunnar in the hospital, I just don’t care anymore. I’ll let my dad and Max handle whatever they’re willing to handle, just so I can spend more time with the person who really matters.
Gunnar can’t die. Our story isn’t over yet.
I stick my hand in the air and hail a taxi. “NYU Medical Center please.” I need to see my man.
* * *
When I arrive, it takes me a little while to find Gunnar’s new hospital room. It’s on a special floor for important people—with paneled walls, and a hush that makes it feel more like a hotel than a hospital.
Luckily, I’m already on the list of approved visitors. That’s probably Max’s doing.
I arrive outside Gunnar’s door, which is open. Duff sits quietly in a chair next to the bed. I can’t see Gunnar’s face, though. He has a bandage on his cheekbone, and another on his jaw. His eyes are wrapped, too. But his chest rises and falls with each deep breath, and the sight of it calms me down.
He’s still here. He’s still with me. Now he just has to wake up and be okay.
I’m just about to step into the room when my phone starts to ping with a flurry of texts from Spalding, of all people. Posy, please call me. Saroya has gone missing.
Oh please. Like I’m supposed to care about that? But the texts keep rolling in.
You were right. She was trying to harm your shop.
And she wasn’t pregnant, Posy. She lied about that.
Who lies about that?
I’m beginning to think she’s unhinged. It sounds crazy, but I’m beginning to wonder if she even sought me out to break us up. Remember how she just showed up and said she worked for my health insurance company? I just got off the phone with them. They never sent her!!!!
So that’s what it looks like when Spalding gets a clue. It looks like four exclamation points.
I don’t know what to tell you, I reply. That sounds deeply suspicious. I can’t even guess what she has against me. But this is your problem, not mine. You’re the one who decided that sticking your thumb drive into her USB port was more important than our marriage.
There’s no need to be crude, Posy.
I know it’s petty. But I take a quick photo of my middle finger and text it to him. Because I really don’t see what’s wrong with a little crudeness right about now.
Duff laughs, and I look up to see him watching me. “Rough morning?”
I’m just about to answer him, when I catch sight of Gunnar’s hand. It’s moving! He raises it slowly toward his eyes.
I let out a gasp, and Duff jerks his chin toward his colleague. “Whoa there!” he says, catching Gunnar’s hand as it reaches the bandages. “Careful.”
“Duff?” Gunnar rasps.
And I’m instantly crying. My eyes spout tears, and it’s all I can do to muffle the sob that’s escaping from my chest.
“Yeah man,” Duff says. “Hang on a sec. Let me f
ind someone who works here.”
“Why can’t I open my eyes?” Gunnar asks, sounding disoriented.
I cry harder. Silently.
“There's tape and bandages. Don't panic, okay?” Duff strides toward me, and I step back to get out of the way. I take a deep breath and try to calm down. I’m no use to Gunnar as a weepy mess.
But he spoke. He’s okay!
I cry some more, just because.
A grey-haired nurse has already come running. She bustles into Gunnar’s room and lays a firm hand on his arm. “Mr. Scott, you’re recovering from a major surgery. Try to hold still, okay? We’re paging your doctor.”
“So thirsty,” he says with a groan.
“Would you like a sip of water? I've got a straw.”
“Please,” he whispers.
“Careful,” she says, angling his head up a few degrees. “If you cough, it will hurt.”
He takes a small sip. Then he takes a bigger one, and has trouble swallowing. I hear him cough, and then immediately groan.
“Oh honey,” the nurse says. “What did we just talk about? Here's an ice chip.” She slips it between his lips when he stops coughing. “And how is your pain?”
“Fine,” he grunts around the ice.
“Then I’ll go find that doctor, and he’ll take a look at your eyes.” She hustles out again.
I dig a napkin out of the donut bag and blot my tears away. Duff catches my eye and winks.
“My throat feels terrible,” Gunnar rasps. “Like there's ground glass in it.”
“Maybe there is,” his colleague says.
“What happened?”
“Well, I don’t know how much you remember, but you got shot right before I hauled you out of that basement. You woulda bled out right there in the alley if Pieter didn’t give you a tourniquet.”
“A tourniquet …” He pauses. “… Upper leg?”
“Yeah,” Duff says, his voice husky. “You had a major surgery, and it’s gonna add a few seconds to your hundred-meter dash, let me tell you.”
Loverboy Page 26