Maybe that was why he found himself thinking about her, why she seemed to linger on his mind, popping up during the course of the day. It made him think that perhaps she was someone who might bear further exploring, if for no other reason than nostalgia.
“In the meantime,” he murmured, aware of the time, “Mrs. Halloway’s notes aren’t going to dictate themselves.” He pressed the record button and began to dictate again.
Finished with his visits at the office and his rounds at the hospital for day, Lukas was on his way out, walking through the hospital lobby when he saw her.
Lydia had just entered the building. The phrase “woman with a mission” popped into his head again. Even with distance between them, he could see that determination was written all over her face. She’d burst into the lobby through the electronic doors a scant half a second after they began to open.
Amused, he quickened his pace and caught up to her. “What’s up?”
Lydia jerked around. She was so focused on the reason for her return to the hospital that she hadn’t seen him approach. Annoyed with the oversight, she silently upbraided herself. She was supposed to be aware of her surroundings at all times, not oblivious to them. She was going to have to work on that.
“Conroy’s conscious,” she told him, heading for the bank of elevators.
When she’d finally placed the call to Rodriguez from her car, he’d told her that Conroy had opened his eyes, but that he wasn’t really awake or responsive. She figured by the time she arrived, the supremacist would be. If not, there were ways to help him along. She’d always regarded herself as a kind, fair person. But kindness abruptly terminated when it came face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer.
This was a new development, Lukas thought. When he’d looked in on Conroy earlier in the afternoon, the man had still been unconscious.
“Maybe I’d better come along then.” There was nothing pressing waiting for him tonight beyond a program on television he wanted to catch at ten.
Lydia broke stride for a second before resuming her pace. “Why? To check up on me?”
For a woman who wasn’t overly tall, she covered a lot of ground quickly. He lengthen his stride. “No, on him. Why, should I be checking up on you?” His gaze swept over her. “You don’t look as if you’re carrying any rubber hoses or brass knuckles on you.”
She stopped at the elevator and jabbed the up button. She looked at him, annoyed. “How can you joke?”
“Because humor is what keeps us sane, Special Agent.” The elevator car arrived and he followed her in, letting her press the button for their floor. “Tell me, if I get to know you any better, do I get to call you just ‘Special’?”
She blew out a breath. Among other things, she’d done a little background research on Graywolf this afternoon, saying it was just to help fill in the gaps. What she’d learned had roused grudging respect. He’d come up the hard way, living on a Navaho reservation, raised by his mother and a maternal uncle after his father had died in less than noble circumstances. She also knew that Lukas had run with a bad crowd as a young teen before he’d abruptly turned around.
Maybe he felt some sort of kinship with the man they had in custody, something along the lines of “There but for the grace of God go I.” Whatever it was, she didn’t have time to let it get in her way.
“No,” she replied tersely, wishing someone else had gotten on the elevator with them, “you can’t.” Lydia shifted slightly. It was entirely too confining in here with him.
His eyes seemed to look deep into her being and she found herself struggling not to fidget. That he could actually create this feeling within her annoyed her no end.
“Is that because you’re not special or because I’m not privileged?”
She weighed her words carefully, pausing before answering. “A little bit of both, maybe.”
The elevator stopped on the second floor, but no one got on. Another car must have arrived just before them, she surmised. Pity.
“What’s your name?” Lukas asked her suddenly. “You flashed your ID by me so fast, I didn’t get a chance to read it.”
Why was this damn car stopping on every floor? she wondered as it opened for the third floor. Again, no one got on. “Wakefield.”
“No, I mean your first name.”
Lydia turned to look at him, debating the merits of telling him. She had no idea why allowing him this harmless piece of information felt suddenly as if she were opening a door to something. Still, she couldn’t exactly refuse to tell him. That would have been childish. Besides, it was written on her ID. “Lydia.”
“Lydia,” he repeated. “Pretty.”
Was he going to make some inane comment about her matching her name next? She stared straight ahead, willing the elevator to bypass the fourth floor and go straight to the fifth. It didn’t.
“Never gave it any thought.”
“It is,” he assured her quietly. She felt something rippling along her skin and wondered how a draft could have gotten into the elevator. Mercifully, the doors opened on five and she all but barreled out.
He kept abreast. “So, what’s the plan, Lydia?”
She spared him a cold look, this man who had been playing hide-and-seek with her thoughts today. “Plan? There is no ‘plan.’ I ask questions, you stand in the background. End of story.”
“I’m not much for standing in the background.”
His voice was low, quiet, and she had the unshakable feeling he was putting her on some kind of notice. Probably accustomed to having everything his way. Well, not in an FBI investigation.
She halted in front of the Coronary Care Unit door. “All right, stand anywhere you want, just not in my way. He’s your patient, but he’s my prisoner and as far as I see it, that takes precedence.”
He stopped her just before she pushed open the door to the CCU, placing his hand over hers. “It doesn’t take anything if he dies.”
She dropped her hand and turned to face him. “What do you think I’m going to do, torture him until he talks?”
She was standing so close, he could smell the soap she’d used that morning, catch the light shampoo fragrance that clung to her hair. And feel the heat of her anger. A woman like this would be magnificent, he caught himself thinking. Under the right circumstances.
“I’m not sure what you’re capable of, Special Agent Wakefield. But I think I’d like to find out.”
Definitely on notice, she thought. She wanted to dress him down, but found that her tongue had suddenly turned leaden and uncooperative, as had her lips. And as for the thoughts suddenly coursing through her head, they had no place here, certainly not in an ongoing investigation. A small thrill fluttered through her, stubbornly refusing to go.
Just as stubbornly, she refused to acknowledge it. Like the flu, it would leave eventually. “Then watch, if you like. But unless he goes into cardiac arrest, stay clear.”
Lukas inclined his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
He was mocking her, but she would have to put him in his place later. Right now, nothing was more important than getting Conroy to talk.
Rodriguez rose from the chair he’d been occupying near Conroy’s bed the moment she walked in, the magazine he’d been reading falling to the floor. “No change.”
Lydia frowned, looking at the sleeping figure. “I thought you said he woke up.”
“Like I said, he opened his eyes,” Rodriguez verified. “Then closed them again.”
Moving around Lydia, Lukas crossed to the bed and took readings from the monitors on either side of Conroy. “Vital signs are getting stronger,” he told her.
“Good,” she bit off. She looked at the man in the bed, his face a pale, milky white, the color making him all but blend with his pillow. “Are you awake, Conroy?” There was no indication that he heard her despite her clear enunciation. “I know about her, Conroy. I know about Sally.”
Lukas was about to tell her that just because the man’s signs were good didn’t mean he
was conscious when he saw John Conroy open his eyes and look directly at Lydia.
There was hatred in them.
Chapter 6
Color suddenly materialized in the form of wide streaks that continued to grow along Conroy’s cold, pale skin. His eyes were fathomless in their darkness as they scowled at her. Lydia felt as if was looking into the face of pure evil.
“Leave Sally out of this!”
Yes! Triumph telegraphed its way through her. She’s found a way to get to him. This had to be the key, but to what door? Watching his expression, Lydia moved cautiously—for Lydia.
“How would she have felt, knowing you did this terrible thing? That you picked a place where young kids hang out, maybe even some of her friends.” According to the information they had, Sally had attended a local school before running off. “How would she have felt, knowing that her father could kill scores of people, scores of kids without any compunction—”
“How would she have felt?” Conroy interrupted, raising his head from the pillow. His voice, sharp, angry, sounded as if it had torturously crawled up the length of his throat. “Damn you to hell! She wouldn’t have felt anything. She can’t feel because she’s dead! My daughter’s dead, do you understand?” Incensed, he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. Tubes tangled along his arms, pulling at their source. “And those kids…those kids—”
Abruptly, the tirade stopped. The streaks along his skin had turned a bright red. His eyes suddenly glazed over and he clutched at his chest. The sound coming from his lips was a gurgling, strangling noise.
“Move!” Lukas ordered. Not waiting for her to comply, he elbowed a stunned Lydia out of his way.
Lydia stumbled backward, half in response to his command, half from the force of his push. Her eyes never left the suddenly rigid features of the man who had just cursed her. The bright blue lines running across one of the monitors had all leveled out after spiking. Conroy’s chest wasn’t moving.
Lukas pressed a button beside the bed. A loud, jarring noise began echoing through the room and down the hall, declaring a Code Blue. In less than thirty seconds, two nurses, an orderly and an intern came running into the room. One of the nurses was pushing a crash cart.
The glass-enclosed room, one of twelve within the CCU, was small, with most of its space already eaten up by the monitors. It was filling to capacity.
Lydia jockeyed for position, trying to stay out of the way, but still within view of what was going on. With the others converging around Conroy, orders and hands flying, it was hard for her to see.
She could feel Rodriguez shifting behind her. “It’s getting too crowded in here. Step out into the hall,” she told the agent.
Despite all the commotion surrounding the patient, Lukas could still make out her voice. He injected a small dose of medication into Conroy’s IV to stimulate the man’s heart.
“Maybe you should do the same,” he told her, raising his voice without looking up.
Lydia didn’t waste time responding to the barely veiled order, or arguing her position. She quietly and stubbornly simply remained where she was. Watching. And praying that her zeal hadn’t pushed Conroy over the edge. She needed him. Once he gave he what she wanted, the system could have him. Despite what Lukas had said to her the other day, she had no desire to act as judge and jury. That would put her in the same category as Conroy, a space she didn’t want to occupy.
“I’ve got a pulse,” one of the nurses declared. Her words were shadowed by the blue line on the monitor that transformed into a continuous steady wave as it snaked its way across the screen.
The pulse grew stronger.
The patient was going to live. At least for now. Lukas stepped back to let the others around him take care of the details. Stripping off the gloves he’d hastily pulled on, he looked at Lydia still standing by the entrance. Though she hadn’t said a word, he’d known she was there. She wasn’t a woman who could be ordered around, even in the heat of a life-and-death moment.
Tossing the gloves into the wastebasket, Lukas made his way around the milling bodies to her side. He wasn’t feeling very magnanimous at the moment.
“That’s twice you almost killed him. Maybe you should ask to be replaced before there’s a third.”
Choice words came rushing to her lips, but Lydia forced herself to swallow them, struggling to see things from his point of view. It was better to have allies than enemies; you never knew when you might need someone’s help.
It wasn’t easy, but she curbed her tongue. It was even harder to sound contrite, especially when what she truly regretted was not getting any answers.
“You’re right.” She forced the words out of her mouth. “It was too soon, I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”
Though he was surprised at her admission, Lukas wasn’t through being angry. If he hadn’t been here, Conroy could have died. “Damn straight you shouldn’t have. I can’t have him getting excited.”
So much for getting more flies with honey. “And I can’t have him, or any of his friends, blowing up shopping malls, or churches, or hospitals just because they don’t like the people in them,” she said heatedly. “Or whatever else they get it into their heads to blow up ‘for the good of the country.’” The last phrase was a quote from the note she and Elliot had found in Conroy’s garage that had tipped them off to the suspect’s target. Beneath it had been a tirade about the drain people of color put on the country, except that the term Conroy had used hadn’t been nearly as polite.
Lukas crossed his arms in front of him and looked at her solemnly as he worked at controlling his own anger.
She had an inkling of how his forefathers must have appeared, decked out in chief’s regalia, glaring down at the white settlers in their fragile wagons as they crossed into the merciless Arizona territory.
At any other time, the irony of it all would have struck her as amusing.
“Right now, I don’t think Conroy’s in any condition to blow up a milk carton, much less anything else.”
“But his friends are,” she pointed out. “And they’re the ones who got away.”
Part of what had gotten him on the right path and ultimately off the reservation was cultivating a positive attitude. He reverted to it now, though not with a great deal of conviction. “Maybe they’ll stop here. Maybe blowing up the mall was the point.”
He was being incredibly naive, she thought. “And maybe not.” In fact, she was willing to bet on it. “I can’t take that chance. The people who live around here can’t take that chance,” she emphasized. “Besides, those so-called supremacists have got to be punished for what they did.” She thought that he, of all people, would understand that. Didn’t his tribe have some rule along the lines of the old biblical eye for an eye? “They can’t just be allowed to get away with it. The Bureau can’t say, ‘Boys’ll be boys, but just don’t do it again.’ That’ll just open the floodgates for every whacko in the country to ‘even the score,’ or to push their own violent agenda.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?” he asked her quietly.
What was he doing, nit-picking now? “Boys, men, what’s the difference?” She realized she’d raised her voice again when one of the nurses, the one who had brought in the cart, glanced at her. Lydia pressed her lips together, annoyed that this man kept making her lose her temper.
“A lot,” he answered. And something within him suddenly wanted to show her exactly how different. “But that’s not what I meant.” He saw her raise a questioning eyebrow. “What makes you think there are no women involved in this bombing?”
A ready retort faded as she first opened her mouth to answer, and then shut it again. Damn him, he had a point. That should have occurred to her, not him. Granted there was all that profiling data to fall back on, but that didn’t mean anything was written in stone. Things were only one way until they changed and were another.
Conceding the round to him, Lydia raised her eyes to his. “Want to join our team?”
“Maybe in an advisory capacity.” He grew serious again. “And my first piece of advice is, don’t kill the golden goose. You’re not going to get any eggs if you do.”
“Aesop’s Fables?” she asked in surprise. She would have expected something different from him. “Isn’t there any comparable Navaho legend to bring the same point home?”
As soon as the words were out, she bit her lower lip. That was stereotyping, something she ordinarily wasn’t guilty of. But then, he was her first Native American anything and she had grown up watching old-fashioned Westerns with her father on television. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was a reason.
His eyes narrowed. Was she checking up on him? “How did you know I was Navaho?”
She gave him the truth, knowing he wouldn’t stand for anything less. “Conroy’s not the only person I researched last night.”
Her honesty surprised him. The annoyance abated. “Afraid I’ll blow something up?”
He didn’t like having his privacy invaded, she thought. The funny thing was, she could wholeheartedly sympathize with that. But niceties had to take a back seat when terrorists and dangerous, bomb-wielding supremacists were concerned.
“No. I just like knowing who I’m dealing with. Fewer surprises that way.”
He inclined his head, accepting the explanation. “You could try asking.”
She didn’t know him, yet she knew better. “Would you have told me?”
The smile that look his lips was slow. And unnervingly sensual as she watched it spread. “Maybe over dinner. Now we’ll never know.”
“It wasn’t an in-depth search I conducted last night,” she heard herself telling him. God help her, she was flirting again, Lydia realized. But that didn’t change any of the words that followed. “There’s at least enough left to discuss over dessert.”
In Graywolf’s Hands Page 7