by LENA DIAZ,
“Because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t have a choice.” With that, he looked away, staring across the room at nothing at all.
Bailey felt his words sink deep into her soul. Because it was the right thing to do. Simple words, easily said. But he’d meant every single one of them. She could hear it in his tone, see it in his eyes, feel the censure in his body language because he was deeply offended that she might have expected otherwise.
He was right. She had. That’s why she’d asked the question. People in her world rarely acted nobly. Trust was hard-won, and once given, often thrown away in the face of expediency.
She’d never met a man like the one sitting beside her now. He’d had so many opportunities today to cart her away to the so-called retraining facility, or to call his men to do it, since he supposedly didn’t know where the facility was located. And yet, here he was, sitting with her inside the ER just because he knew she wanted to wait and hear how her friend was doing.
They could have called 911 and left before the ambulance had arrived. That would have ensured no probing questions from the police once the EMTs reached the scene and realized this wasn’t a case of someone accidentally cutting themselves while cooking dinner. He could have handcuffed her and been done with his mission, on to the next Enforcer. But he hadn’t. Could she really doubt him anymore?
He’d saved her from a sniper.
He’d saved her from the man in the bushes at his house who’d been about to shoot her.
He’d figured out that she’d follow him this morning and had planned to face her one-on-one. That was obvious to her now. He was too smart not to have realized she’d tail him. So he’d risked his life, letting her get the draw on him. All because she’d asked some questions the night before, raised some doubts about what was really happening to the Enforcers. And in response, he’d given her a chance to prove him wrong, to prove her right. Because he was a kind, decent man who wanted the truth.
Her shoulders slumped and she let out a deep sigh.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Peachy.” She crossed her arms, all too aware that he was studying her, probably wondering what she was thinking. She couldn’t exactly admit that she’d gone soft, that he’d managed to work past her defenses in less than a day. Damn it. She was better than this. How had she let this happen?
“Remember our cover story?” he asked softly. “What we’re supposed to tell the police if they showed up to ask questions?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Good. Because they’re here.”
Two uniformed officers had just stepped into the waiting room behind a man in an immaculate gray suit, not a wrinkle in sight—obviously their boss.
She stiffened as gray-suit’s gaze locked onto them and he headed their way. A nurse must have pointed them out. Then again, she and Kade both had blood on their clothes from applying pressure to Hawke’s wounds. Figuring out that they were the ones who’d called 911 wasn’t exactly an intellectual puzzle.
“Hold me,” she whispered. “I’m distraught.”
He immediately put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side.
Damn if it didn’t feel good.
Bailey wiped nonexistent tears from her eyes as the suit stopped in front of them, the two uniformed officers flanking him on either side.
“Special Agent Quinn?” gray suit asked.
“Yes, sir.” Kade pulled his arm from around Bailey’s shoulders. “Sorry, sweetheart. I need to get my wallet.”
She sniffed and nodded, mystified by the thrill that shot through her when he’d called her sweetheart. It wasn’t real. It was part of their act. Focusing on her own performance, she hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her middle.
Kade rose to his feet and handed the officer his credentials.
“I’m Lieutenant Russell,” he said as he handed Kade’s wallet back to him. “Sorry to hear about your friend. Is he going to make it?”
“We’re still waiting for an update. This is Miss Davenport.” Kade waved toward Bailey.
The lieutenant held his hand out.
She stared at him blankly as if she didn’t understand what he wanted.
He dropped his hand.
Kade flashed her a warning look and cleared his throat. “She’s . . . distraught,” he said, echoing her earlier words. “Hawke is a good friend. We were coming over to help him cook dinner and, well, you know what we found.”
“Do you have any ID on you, Miss Davenport?” Russell asked.
She merely blinked, content to let Kade handle the questions, especially since her purse was in the Mustang. And even if she’d had it with her, she didn’t exactly have ID that listed her name as Davenport. She tuned out their conversation and focused instead on the swinging double doors on the other side of the room, the ones where they’d taken Hawke.
The doors opened and closed many times, spilling nurses and doctors into the waiting room where they updated families and friends waiting for news about their loved ones. And then, finally, one of the nurses stopped beside Kade and the lieutenant, bringing their conversation to a halt.
Bailey rose and found herself reaching for Kade’s hand before she thought about it.
He entwined his fingers with hers, squeezing them as if to lend her strength.
“Special Agent Quinn?” the nurse asked. “Miss Davenport? You’re here about Mr. Hawke Jacobs?”
Kade nodded and the nurse began rattling off details about his injuries.
The lieutenant, looking none too happy at the interruption, stepped back a few feet, but not so far away that he couldn’t hear everything the nurse was saying.
So much for privacy laws.
When the nurse finished, Bailey glanced from her to Kade, then back again, afraid that she’d heard her wrong. “You’re saying he’s . . . that he’s alive? He’s going to be okay?”
“I’m saying we just got him stabilized and if he remains that way we’ll move him to ICU. As for his prognosis, you’ll have to talk to the doctor. I’ll take you on back if you want to see him.”
“Not right now,” the lieutenant protested. “I have a few more questions.”
“They can wait,” Kade said.
The lieutenant didn’t look happy with Kade’s clipped reply. But he didn’t try to stop them again.
The nurse led them through the double doors into the chaos that was the treatment area. Machines beeped, doctors rattled off orders, nurses ran around trying to make sense of the whole thing and somehow succeeded.
Hawke was being treated in the last curtained-off area at the end of the long aisle, beside a door marked Stairs.
“Wait here,” the nurse said, stopping them outside the curtain. “The doctor will be right out.” She smiled and hurried off to help someone else.
Bailey was impatient to see her friend. But she wasn’t a bundle of nerves like she’d been in the waiting room. Stable. Hawke was stable. That was so much better than she’d expected that she might have cried right then and there except that she wasn’t sure she remembered how to cry. The last time she’d cried she was ten years old.
Kade’s hand jerked in hers. She’d forgotten they were even holding hands. Her face heated as she let him go. But when she looked up, whatever she was about to say froze in the back of her throat.
Gone was the kind, gentle man she’d just started getting used to. In his place was a warrior, his body stiff, his jaw tight, his dark blue eyes blazing with an intensity that sent a chill down her spine as he stared at something over her shoulder.
“I’ll be back,” he said, his voice gritty, hard. And then he was gone, slipping through the exit door a few feet away.
Bailey whirled around, but the only thing behind her aside from the curtained-off treatment areas was a large monitor suspended from the ceiling listing patient names, bed numbers, and cryptic descriptions about their conditions.
The curtain slid back and a man in a white lab coat
stood in the opening. “Miss Davenport?”
“Yes.”
He smiled reassuringly. “You can come in for a few minutes. Mr. Jacobs is still unconscious but stable. I’ll try to answer any questions that you have while we wait for an orderly to take him down to ICU, okay?”
She glanced at the door where Kade had disappeared, then forced a smile and followed the doctor to Hawke’s bedside.
Kade took the stairs to the basement. Wasn’t that where all hospital morgues were located? He strode down the long hall that ran the length of the building, unsurprised when he saw a sign pointing toward the morgue.
Hawke wasn’t the only Enforcer that Kade had tracked to Colorado Springs. A second man was being monitored twenty-four seven by Special Agent Lamar Porter. The surveillance would give Kade the data that he needed before sending in a team to capture him. The target’s name was Henry Sanchez—the same name listed on a monitor upstairs, next to the word deceased.
It was certainly possible that there was more than one man in this city with the name Henry Sanchez, and the other man just happened to have died today.
But Kade wasn’t betting on it.
When he reached the morgue, he flashed his FBI credentials to the greasy-haired attendant sitting at a desk just inside the door, with a name tag that simply said Rob.
“Special Agent Kade Quinn. I’m in the middle of an undercover operation and believe that one of the men I’ve been looking for may be in your morgue right now.”
Rob didn’t even look at Kade’s badge. Instead, he propped his feet on top of the desk and leaned back in his chair. “And that’s my problem how?”
Kade really wanted to knock the man’s feet down. But he couldn’t afford to cause a commotion and bring attention to him or Bailey. Besides, he knew that smug look. He’d seen it a hundred times before. Rob was probably an ex-con who resented anyone to do with law enforcement. Or maybe this job was all he could get, a last resort, and he wanted to make everyone around him just as miserable as he was. Either way, Kade knew just how to deal with his type.
He pulled a couple of twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and slapped them on top of the desk. “His name is Henry Sanchez. I need a few minutes alone with the body and I also need to see his medical records.”
Rob’s brows rose and he picked up the twenties. “This’ll get you five minutes with the corpse. But I ain’t messin’ with no privacy law crap. That’ll get me hard time.”
Kade tossed three more twenties onto the desk.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Five more twenties landed on top of the others. “I’m tapped out,” Kade lied. “That’s all I’ve got.”
Rob grinned and shoved his haul into his pocket as he stood. “I reckon you just bought yourself ten minutes to do whatever you want. But I can’t give you longer than that. The ME got called in ’cause we’re stackin’ up back here. He’s on his way.”
“The records?”
He waved toward a stack of folders on the corner of the desk. “Sanchez is our newest resident. His file’s on top. He’s in drawer seven.” He grabbed a cell phone and some earphones out of the top drawer. “I’ll keep a lookout. If I tell you to get out, get out. Got it?”
Kade ignored him and flipped open the folder.
Rob mumbled some insults under his breath but stepped out of the morgue into the hallway.
Kade stood alone inside the bright white-tiled autopsy room. An empty stainless steel table sat in the middle. The whole place smelled like antiseptic and death.
Flipping through the file only took a minute. Then Kade crossed to the wall of refrigerated drawers and opened number seven.
Even though he’d never seen Sanchez in person, he’d seen enough pictures of him to know this was the same man that he currently had under surveillance. But just to be sure, he pulled the sheet back a little farther. Unless the Enforcer had an identical twin, who also had a tattoo of Jessica Rabbit on his right forearm, then this was definitely him.
“Eight minutes,” Rob called from the hallway.
He raked the sheet all the way down the body, bunching it up at the dead man’s feet. The file stated that Sanchez had died of an allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock. He’d stumbled into the ER, his lips turning blue but then he’d lost consciousness and never woke up. The only reason the hospital even knew his name was from the driver’s license in his wallet.
And the peanut-allergy medical bracelet on his wrist.
Kade knew several people with severe allergies. All of them carried EpiPens in case they accidentally ate something that caused a reaction and they were extremely careful about what they ate. Which made it even more suspicious that Sanchez could have ended up in the ER with a reaction severe enough to kill him.
It didn’t take long for Kade to find what he’d hoped he wouldn’t find—a small puncture wound in between two of Sanchez’s toes. There could be no doubt. Someone had purposely injected Henry with peanut oil, or some derivative of it, enough to send him into a full-blown allergic reaction.
Since one person couldn’t have held Sanchez down and injected him, whoever had done this had help. They must have given him the injection in a vehicle right outside the emergency room. The reaction would have been almost instantaneous, ensuring that Sanchez would use up his last breath to run inside for help. But he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that someone had purposely done this to him.
The theory made sense for someone wanting to kill Sanchez and make it look like an accident. An added plus was that the hospital would dispose of the body. And it was unlikely a hospital ME would even look for an injection in a case of anaphylactic shock. A clean, easy death.
The question, though, was why? Had the agent watching Sanchez been spotted? Was this his way of ensuring that Sanchez couldn’t alert other Enforcers and get away? Kade couldn’t imagine any FBI agents doing something like this, ever, under any circumstances. Something was very, very wrong here.
“Four minutes,” the tech called out. “I’m not even sure you have that.”
Kade covered the body and shoved the drawer shut. He didn’t need four more minutes. But he did need to make a phone call.
He headed out of the morgue and pulled out his cell phone. But the hospital’s concrete walls interfered with the signal, so he ducked into an empty office and used the landline on the desk.
“This is Quinn, calling on an unsecured line,” he said, the moment that Special Agent Porter answered the phone.
“Understood. What can I do for you, sir?”
Porter sounded the same as he always did—professional, polite, calm, as if nothing had happened. Kade wanted to demand answers. But on an unsecured line, the best he could do was talk in generalities.
“Sitrep,” he said.
“The subject is home right now.”
He fisted a hand against the wall. “You sure about that?” Because Sanchez hadn’t looked at home at all inside the cold storage drawer.
“Positive, sir. I’m in my van across the street. His blinds are open and I’m looking at him right now through my binoculars.”
Damn. There was only one explanation for Porter to lie to him. He was in on this—whatever “this” was.
“All right. Continue surveillance for now.”
“Yes, sir. Will do.”
Kade headed upstairs to the ER, just in time to hear a doctor call out, “Time of death, 17:33.”
Bailey stood in the middle of the aisle while a team of doctors and nurses began to file out of the curtained enclosure beside her.
“I’m sorry, Miss Davenport. We thought we had him stable. But he took a sudden turn for the worse. We did everything we could,” Hawke’s doctor said, before hurrying off to some other emergency.
Bailey stared up at Kade, a stricken look on her pale face.
“He can’t be dead.” Her words were choked out, barely above a whisper. She tried to shove him out of the way, but he grabbed her and pulled her closer to the exit door
.
“Let me go.” She twisted and tried to pull away from him, her nails scoring his skin.
“Bailey, damn it. Stop.” He lightly shook her until she stopped struggling.
“It’s a mistake.” Her voice sounded raw, hollow. “It’s a mistake.”
Kade pulled her against his chest, wanting to comfort her. And he was relieved when she let him. Her arms went around his waist. She blew out a shuddering breath and hugged him tight.
“He was only twenty-seven,” she whispered. “He likes the Denver Broncos and romantic comedies. And he hates ice cream.”
Kade lightly stroked her hair, letting her work it out.
“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” she whispered.
He paused, then resumed stroking her hair. Knowing Hawke wasn’t a romantic interest shouldn’t have mattered at a time like this. It shouldn’t have made him feel lighter inside. But it did.
“He was a good man,” she continued, her voice sounding stronger now. “He saved my life more times than I could count on some rescue missions earlier this year.”
“Rescue missions?”
She stiffened, then pushed out of his arms to meet his gaze. “You sound surprised. Why?”
The anger in her voice caught him off guard. Maybe this was how she dealt with loss, by striking out.
Hoping to avoid the storm, but not really sure how, he answered truthfully. “I’m not all that familiar with the Enforcers’ missions. That was on a need-to-know basis.”
“Need-to-know, huh? That’s the second time you’ve told me that. Sounds like there are a lot of things you’ve turned a blind eye to without getting all the facts. Did you just assume that all Enforcers did was kill people?”
He looked around, relieved no one was close enough to hear her. “Keep your voice down.”
“You act like you want the truth and yet you don’t ask any questions.” She poked her finger against his chest. “How many men and women have your teams captured while you looked the other way, don’t ask don’t tell?” She waved her hand toward the curtained area where Hawke’s body now lay. “You’re responsible for this, Kade. Men under your command did this. And you still think you’re one of the good guys?”