He shrugged. “Gives me something to do.” Seeing the wastebasket, he tossed the shell into it and took out another nut. “I think he’s out, Lyd.”
She nodded, annoyed. Frustrated. “Looks like the good doctor was right.” So much for questioning Conroy now. Though Elliot had seniority, the assistant director had made her lead on this case. “Why don’t you go back to the office and see about running down some of those phone calls that have been coming in? Take Burkowitz with you,” she said, naming one of the agents appointed to the special task force. “And while you’re at it, find out if the bomb squad has found something useful.” She knew there’d been evidence galore, but whether or not it led anywhere was another story. Most of the time they were left with a plethora of puzzle pieces and no unifying tray to place them in. “No sense in both of us hanging around until Mr. Wizard here wakes up.”
She’d get no argument from him on that. Elliot was already crossing to the door. “That might be a while, Lyd. Sure you want to hang around, waiting?” He’d never met anyone who hated waiting more than Lydia. “We could have Rodriguez page us.”
He nodded toward the door and the man they had posted at the desk out front. It was one of their own now, instead of a local policeman, something the Bedford chief hadn’t been overly happy about. As always, there was professional jealousy and the matter of jurisdiction clouding things up. But at bottom, they all wanted the same thing. Not to have this kind of thing happen in Bedford ever again.
She looked back at Conroy. Unlike Elliot’s endless supply of pistachios, the supremacist was going to be a difficult nut to crack. She wanted to be sure that she got first chance at him. “I’d feel better being here.”
After four years he could pretty much read her like a book. “Lyd, the bombing wasn’t your fault.”
Logically, no. But emotionally it was another story. “Thanks, but it might have been prevented if I’d been a little faster, dug a little deeper. We ignored that first rumor.”
“Because it was a rumor, one of over a dozen—the rest of which were bogus,” he reminded her. “Hell, Lyd, we had our hands full.” He also knew her well enough to know that he was wasting his breath. “The term’s ‘special agent’ not ‘super agent.’”
The comment succeeded in evoking a smile from her. “Who says?”
Elliot had his hand on the door, and he was shaking his head. “You’re getting more stubborn every day.”
She looked at him significantly. “I had a damn good teacher.”
“Haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he deadpanned as he left the room.
Lydia heard the door close as she turned back to look at the man in the bed. He hadn’t moved a muscle since they’d walked in. The only sounds in the room were the ones made by the machines arranged in a metallic semicircle around his bedside.
He looked almost peaceful. It made her physically ill to be in the same room with him.
“What kind of a sick pervert blows up women and children?” she demanded of the unconscious man in a low, steely voice that seethed with anger.
Only the sound of the monitor answered her question.
Impatient, she blew out a sigh. “You’ve got to wake up sometime,” she told him. “And when you do, I’m going to be right here to squeeze the names of those other men out of you. You’re going down for this, my friend, and you’re not going down alone.”
She knew that would be little comfort to the parents of the teenager who’d senselessly died, but maybe it would keep others from following Conroy’s example. Lydia already knew for a fact that this kind of thing had never happened in Bedford before and she wanted to make sure that it never would again. She wanted to do more than send a message to the New World supremacy group who’d been behind this, she wanted to smash it into unrecognizable bits.
With Elliot gone, there was no one to distract her. Unable to remain any longer in the room with a man she loathed with every fiber of her being, she turned on her heel and walked out. She paused long enough to talk to the agent who was sitting at the desk less than five feet from the door.
“I want to know the second he opens his eyes, Special Agent,” she told him. “Not the minute, the second. Clear?”
The dark head bobbed up and down. This was his first assignment. “Absolutely, Special Agent Wakefield.”
Had she ever been that eager? she wondered. When she’d first come to the Bureau, had she seemed this wet behind the ears?
Somehow, she doubted it. There were times when she thought she’d been born old. At other times she knew it was her father’s death and the job that had done this to her.
Her voice softened. “Do you have my pager number, Ethan?”
He looked surprised to be addressed by his given name rather than by the neutral title the Bureau had bestowed on all of its operatives. He patted his pocket where he’d put the card she’d handed him before she’d entered the hospital room. “Right here.”
“I’m going to the cafeteria to get some coffee,” she told the man. “Remember, the second.”
He nodded solemnly.
Satisfied, Lydia walked down the corridor to the elevators. The cafeteria was located in the basement. Breakfast was probably still being served. Not that she really wanted any. She normally didn’t eat until around noon, a holdover from her college days when she’d stayed in bed until the last possible moment. Then there would only be enough time to get to class. Food took second place to sleep.
This had all the earmarks of a long day, she thought. But Conroy had to come to sooner or later. With any luck, it would be sooner. She had every confidence that he could be broken and made to give up the names of the others. The man was small-time, small-minded; he wasn’t going to want to go down alone.
One militant group down, only a million or so more to root out. When she thought of it in those terms, it was a daunting task. But a journey always begins with the first step and Conroy was their first step.
“So, did he say anything?”
Startled by the question coming from behind her, Lydia was caught off guard. She turned around, her hand to her gun before she recognized the deep, resonant voice.
Graywolf.
She relaxed, dropping her hand from the hilt of her weapon. “Are you following me?”
“You’re walking around in my hospital,” he pointed out. “These are my stomping grounds, not yours. And given that you’re hovering around my patient, I’d say the odds are pretty good that our paths are going to cross with a fair amount of regularity.” He crossed his arms in front of him. “You didn’t answer my question. Did he say anything?”
For a spilt second the image of Lukas wearing full headdress, stripped down to fringed leggings and war paint, flashed through her mind.
Where had that come from? If there was anyone who didn’t deal in stereotypes, it would be her.
Annoyed, unsettled, she shoved her hands into her pockets and lifted her shoulders in a moderate shrug that instantly reminded her she should be favoring the left one.
“You were right,” she admitted grudgingly. “He was still unconscious.”
A hint of a smile played along his lips. That had to cost her, he mused. She didn’t strike him as someone who liked to admit she was wrong. He supposed if he were being honest, he could more than identify with that.
Lukas nodded. “Big of you to admit it. And I’ll be equally big and not say I told you so. So, heading back to the office?”
“No, the cafeteria,” she corrected. Since no elevator had appeared to rescue her from this conversation, Lydia pressed the down button again, harder this time. “I figure you have to have better coffee down there than in the vending machines.”
A logical conclusion, but in this case, not a valid one. “Liquid tar would taste better than the coffee in the vending machines. Although if you really want better coffee…” He debated for a minute, then inclined his head. “Follow me.”
She looked at him, not taking a s
tep. “To where?”
Pausing, amused despite himself, he studied her. “You always this suspicious?”
Lydia raised her chin. “It’s kept me alive so far.”
The woman was definitely defensive. He wasn’t aware that he had said anything to trigger that response. “The doctors’ lounge on the first floor,” he replied in answer to her initial question. “We keep a pot of the real stuff down there.” Lukas began leading the way. This time, she followed. “How do you think we keep going all those hours?”
She shrugged indifferently. “Never gave it any thought.”
He slanted a look at her. She had almost a perfect profile, he decided. “What do you give thought to?”
He was challenging her, she thought. “Ways to keep terrorists from blowing up innocent people.”
He took her words apart. “What if they blow up guilty people?”
She sidestepped a couple coming out of a small gift shop, nearly walking into the large arrangement of sunflowers the man was carrying. “What?”
“In their minds,” he explained, then backtracked when he saw she wasn’t following his conversation. Or maybe it was disapproval he saw on her face. “Maybe they think they’re getting back at people who they feel are guilty of something.”
Was he a bleeding heart? It didn’t go with the image he projected. “Doesn’t matter what they think. They’re not supposed to act as judge and jury.” She stopped abruptly. Maybe he was some sort of bleeding heart. What a waste that would be. “You’re not defending the actions of these people, are you?”
He looked at her mildly. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. He brought her to a bank of service elevators and pressed for one. It arrived before he took his finger from the button.
“No.”
She stepped in ahead of him. He reached around her and pressed the ground floor button. “Then what are you doing?” she asked impatiently. She had no time for word games if that was what Graywolf was playing.
“Just trying to see how your mind works,” he answered mildly. “Getting a dialogue going on your home territory.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re riding in an elevator together and I’d rather listen to you talk than put up with the music the hospital insists on piping in.”
She had no idea why that made her feel like smiling. “So I’m better than a Musak tape?”
“At the very least.” The elevator doors opened and he took the lead again. “This way.” He reached for her instinctively as two orderlies guided a gurney past them, heading in the opposite direction. Lukas noticed that she pulled away. “So how’s your shoulder?”
“Sore.”
He was surprised at the admission. He’d half expected her to say that she’d forgotten all about it. Maybe she was human, after all. This time, the thought made him smile.
“It’s going to be that way for several days. I’ll need to see you again in about a week to take out the stitches.”
Lydia wasn’t pleased with the idea of having to take off her blouse around him again. She knew he was a doctor, but there was something far too intimate about the whole thing.
“Won’t they just dissolve on their own?”
He turned down another corridor. “They’re not those kinds of stitches.”
Where were they going, to Oz? Maybe this was a mistake. “Why not?”
“These hold better. The other kind we use for internal sewing.” Reaching the lounge, he opened the door for her, then stopped. “Does this insult you?”
Lydia gave him a dismissive look as she walked by him. “If you’re trying to be politically correct, it’s too late for that,” she informed him. “And no, having a man hold open a door for me doesn’t send me off into an emotional tailspin.” She tended to think of it in terms of equality. “If I’d gotten to the door first, I would have held it open for you.”
“Fair enough.” He crossed to the small island that housed a coffee machine and all the ingredients necessary to make a decent cup of smoldering caffeine. “How do you take your coffee? No, don’t tell me,” he interrupted himself. “Black, right?”
She wasn’t a purist. She didn’t drink coffee for the taste, but for what it could accomplish. “Depends on how bad it is.”
“It’s good.”
The man, she realized, was standing too close to her. She liked having space around her, keeping everyone at a decent distance. Whether it was her training coming to the fore, or her own preferences, she never bothered analyzing. The end desire was still the same.
She took a step back. “Then black.”
“Black it is,” he replied.
Skittish, he decided, noting the way Lydia stepped back from him. As a boy, he’d seen a horse like that, a mare that had been mistreated. Winning her trust had been a challenge. He wondered how Ms. Special Agent would take to being compared to a skittish mare. Not well, if he was any judge.
She watched him pour rich, black liquid into one mug, then another. She assumed that the one he took was his. Accepting the other, she looked down at it. “Whose is this?”
“Someone who’s not on duty right now.” He took a long sip from his mug. “He won’t mind. Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he assured her, amused. “He rinses it out once every fourth Wednesday of the month. That was last night, so you lucked out.”
With a shrug, she took a long sip herself. The hot liquid cut a path through her insides. But he was right, it was good.
“You always this flippant?”
“No, actually I’m not. Must be the company.” He looked at her significantly before sitting at the table to the left of the coffee station.
After a beat, she joined him. The table seated two and there wasn’t all that much room under the table once he put his long legs beneath it. “How long before Conroy regains consciousness?”
He didn’t even need to give the answer any thought. “Hard to tell.”
She put her own interpretation on the answer. “Are you deliberately keeping him drugged?”
He set his mug down on the table. “Now why would I do that?”
She took the bleeding-heart scenario one step further. “So I won’t interrogate him and possibly upset your precious patient.”
He was actually more attuned to her feelings that he was letting on. There was something about her that had him rallying to the other side just to watch her reaction. He supposed there was possibly a small boy within him yet.
“He’s my patient but he’s far from precious.” He took another long sip and waited until the liquid hit bottom. “Don’t get me wrong, ‘Special Agent,’ there’s no love lost here. I don’t pretend to cast a blind eye to what Conroy’s done, but I’ve got to stay above my emotions when I’m doing what I was trained to do. Impartiality is what keeps me sharp.” He studied her face. “I imagine it’s the same for you.”
“Sometimes.” The way he looked at her made strange things happen in her stomach. She’d faced down a shooter who’d gunned down another special agent with far less activity transpiring below her waist. “And sometimes, I can’t help feeling the way I feel. Passion is what spurs me on.”
“‘Passion,’” he repeated. He raised a brow. “Are you a passionate person, Special Agent?”
It took her a second to drag her eyes away from his lips. “Why do I feel you’re mocking me every time you say that?”
His eyes held hers. “Could be because you’re not comfortable with the title.”
She ignored the small shiver that zigzagged down her spine, telling herself it was cool within the lounge. “Oh, but I am. See, you’re not always right.”
He shrugged, the soul of innocence. “Never claimed to be.”
She redirected the conversation toward a topic she felt more comfortable with. “How long before Conroy can be transferred?”
To his ear, there was more than a little disdain in her voice. “To where, a dungeon?”
She resented what she took to be his condescending tone
. “To a maximum security holding area in the county jail.”
He finished his coffee and set down the mug. “Depends on how fast he responds and stabilizes.”
She wrapped her hands around her own mug, her eyes intent on his face. If he lied, she thought she could detect it. “In your humble, expert opinion—”
His mouth curved slightly as he looked at her. “Now who’s mocking who? And after I let you drink our coffee, too.”
She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic, or merely teasing. Lydia reserved judgment. “Turnabout is fair play. Answer the question.”
“In my humble opinion,” he repeated, “I’d say probably a week. Could be sooner.” He looked at his empty mug, debating another serving. He’d already had four cups since he’d first opened his eyes this morning. “Could be longer.”
He was giving her the runaround. She decided to goad him a little to see where it went. “Are you always this unsure of yourself?”
“I am never unsure of myself,” he corrected. “I just don’t try to second-guess my patients.” Lukas raised a brow as he looked directly at her. “Even patients with fire in their eyes.”
Lydia squared her shoulders. The action was not without its price. “What are you trying to second-guess about me?”
“Why someone who looks like you would choose to put her life on the line every day.”
Her back went up. She’d had to fight to overcome the handicap of her looks all her life. No one took her seriously at first, thinking that she’d gotten where she had solely because of her appearance. The Hollywood-perpetrated image of an empty-headed blonde was something she found herself fighting time and again.
“Instead of what, becoming a model?”
The barely veiled anger took him by surprise. And then he smiled slightly, understanding. She’d encountered prejudice. It gave them something else in common.
“That might be one way to go,” he allowed. “I was thinking more along the lines of being a teacher, maybe making impressionable young boys study harder to make points with their beautiful instructor.
She relented, but only a little. “Now you’re beginning to sound like my mother. I already told you last night, my father was a policeman. So was my grandfather and my great-grandfather.”
In Graywolf’s Hands Page 5