Killer Countdown (Man on a Mission)

by Amelia Autin

  The nurse stood up and started out from behind the desk. “Let me see if he wants to see you.”

  Uh-oh, Carly thought. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she demurred.

  “Yes, but sometimes the patient is sleeping or just isn’t in the mood for visitors.” She smiled at Carly, inviting her to understand. “Since you’re not on the list, maybe he didn’t want you to visit for a reason—because of the way he looks with all the electrodes attached. You know how vain men are. Especially a man as handsome as the senator.”

  Carly’s ears perked up when the nurse mentioned electrodes. Electroshock therapy, she quickly hypothesized. Now that would be an exclusive, indeed. Colorado’s hero senator—a former United States marine—needing electroshock therapy for a mental illness. She suppressed the little nudge her conscience gave her that people were entitled to their privacy and reminded herself that Senator Jones was a public figure. If he were mentally ill, that could impact his job performance, and his constituents had a right to know about it. His constituents and the entire country.

  “Hang on,” the nurse said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Carly watched as the nurse walked into 5W-10, making a mental note of the senator’s room number, then turned to make a run for it. She wasn’t Senator Jones’s fiancée—he didn’t have one, as far as she knew—and when he told the nurse he wasn’t engaged, the nurse would probably call Security. Carly would need to do some fancy explaining—if they caught her.

  She was already heading down the corridor, nearly past the outer desk, when the nurse called her back. “Miss? Miss? You can see him now.”

  Carly hesitated. Was this some kind of trick? Maybe the senator had asked the nurse to bring her back to his room, but to call Security so she could be arrested for trespassing. Either that or the senator was so mentally out of it he actually imagined he had a fiancée? If that was the case, could she snow him into thinking she was? Again her conscience gave her a nudge—harder this time. But that didn’t stop her feet from turning around and heading back toward room 5W-10.

  Carly put her hand on the door latch, then pushed. The door swung open noiselessly, and she entered the room. And caught her breath as a set of stern brown eyes zeroed in on her face. She knew what he looked like—of course she knew. Handsome as sin, with a face carved in granite, and chocolate-brown eyes that could be warm as fudge or cold as a frozen Eskimo Pie...which they were now. Six-foot-two with broad shoulders tapering to a waist and hips that hadn’t an ounce of flab anywhere. Long, long legs—of course, you idiot, he’s six-two!—that seemed to dwarf the hospital bed on which he lay in a semireclining position.

  The mesh cap covering his head—and the electrodes she could see attached to his skull beneath it—should have made him look ridiculous, but somehow they didn’t. Not when his bare, muscular legs, clad only in a pair of running shorts, were right beneath her eyes—legs that were perfectly visible because the sheet that might have been covering them had been restlessly tossed to one side. Not when his impressively muscled chest, covered only by a short-sleeved button-down shirt, rose and fell with his steady breathing, drawing her attention there. She didn’t know why he wasn’t clad in traditional hospital garb, but he wasn’t, and she couldn’t help the way her gaze was riveted on his impressive physical attributes. Then the legs, the chest and the rest of his perfect body faded into obscurity as her eyes met his again, and she floundered helplessly beneath those dark orbs.

  “Do you know who I am?” Carly blurted out, then felt foolish.

  The gravelly voice she recognized from hearing him on the Senate floor giving impassioned speeches spoke. “Oh yeah. You’re my fiancée. I didn’t quite catch the name, but...” He looked her over from head to toe...twice. His eyes lingered—obviously—on her breasts. Both times. “I have good taste.”

  It was crazy. Stupid. She wasn’t the kind to get flustered by a man. Any man. Even one as blatantly masculine, sexy and irresistible as the senator was. Carly didn’t have a shy bone in her body, unlike her younger sister, Tahra. But...she blushed under his pointed stare. The kind of thing Tahra did a lot, but Carly never did. Until now.

  She resisted the urge to cross her arms across her chest, and instead moved farther into the room, closing the door behind her with a little snick as the latch clicked shut. When she looked at the senator again, she realized with a tiny shock that he was strapped into the bed. And if she didn’t miss her guess, that was a lock on the strap.

  Electro-shock therapy. Mental illness. Violent mental illness? she wondered. She couldn’t keep the question out of the eyes she raised to his.

  To her surprise, he laughed suddenly, a booming sound that reverberated around the room. “No,” he told her, humor lightening the rather severe expression he usually wore. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” she asked quickly, her hand reaching for the door latch.

  “The strap is for my protection,” he told her. “To make sure I don’t get out of bed without a nurse in attendance. To make sure I don’t fall.” He hooked a thumb over his right shoulder, and for the first time Carly saw the harness hooked to an inverted T bar. She followed the strap upward, to the mechanical device that seemed to run on tracks throughout the room, and into what she figured was a private bathroom.

  “What in the world?” Carly had never seen anything like it.

  “It’s actually quite ingenious. And if I really needed it, it’d be a lifesaver. But since I don’t—I never fall when I have an episode, never lose consciousness—it’s a damned nuisance. But it’s hospital policy.”

  “Episode? Fall? Lose consciousness?” Carly felt stupid for repeating his words, but she had no idea what he was talking about. Her first supposition—that he was mentally ill—seemed to be all wrong. He certainly came across as being all there. Except for accepting her as his fiancée...which he knew she wasn’t. So why had he let her in his room? Never shy, she asked, “Why did you allow me in here?”

  “Because I was sick of my own company and looking for a diversion.”

  “That’s the only reason?”

  “Well...” He drew the word out. “Anyone with the nerve to claim she was my fiancée—”

  “I never actually said I was,” Carly quickly pointed out. “I just didn’t correct the nurse’s erroneous assumption.”

  His smile was cynical. “As I started to say, I figured you had to be a reporter, Ms. Edwards.” She jumped when he said her name. “And if you tracked me down at the Mayo Clinic, the only thing to do—the only smart thing to do—would be to tell you the truth and ask you to keep it to yourself. For now.”

  “How did you know who I was? I thought you said—”

  “I didn’t know. Not until I got a good look at you. You used to cover the Hill.” His eyes conveyed it wasn’t just her face he recognized, but Carly appreciated he was enough of a gentleman not to actually say her figure had betrayed her. She couldn’t help the way she looked, and she’d learned early to dress to downplay it as best she could professionally. Her private life was a different story, but she’d taken enough grief in her career over her curves, which tended to make men think of her as nothing but a pretty face with a bombshell body. Good in some ways, she admitted to herself, because men sometimes grew careless of what they said to her. And that had led to her breaking more than one explosive story.

  “But when I let you in,” the senator continued, interrupting her thoughts, “I was praying you were a legitimate member of the Fourth Estate.”

  “The Fourth Estate? I haven’t heard anyone refer to the news media by that title in forever.”

  One corner of his mouth curved upward in a rueful grin. “I’d rather refer to the members of the media by that term than a few others I could think of, including ambush journalists and sleazy paparazzi.”

  “Ouc
h.”

  “I didn’t say you were, I just said some are.” He indicated the chair set against the far wall. “Would you like to sit down? You’ll pardon me if I don’t rise.” He touched the strap belting him into the bed. “I’d have to call the nurse, and she’d have to strap me into the harness, and frankly, I’d just as soon avoid looking any more ridiculous than I already do.” He touched the mesh cap on his head.

  “You don’t,” Carly said. “Look ridiculous, that is.”

  “Yeah, right.” Disbelief was evident in his tone.

  She laughed. “Really,” she assured him before she sat in the chair, crossed her legs, reached into her capacious purse and pulled out her notebook. This was followed by her mini recorder, which she switched on. She glanced up at the senator and asked, “May I? I like to have a record of what people say. That way they can’t claim I made something up.”

  His expression turned serious again. “No, I don’t mind. But I want you to understand up front that what I’m going to tell you isn’t something I want to publicize to the world. I can’t prevent you from broadcasting it. I can only state this is off-the-record for now, and rely on your journalistic discretion after you hear what I have to say. Deal?”

  Carly considered this for a moment. “I can’t agree not to report what I uncover, not without knowing more. If it’s something that impacts your ability to carry out the duties of your office—you have to see how that would be news, Senator Jones, and I’d have no choice. It would be my responsibility to report it.”

  “Agreed. But this doesn’t have a damned thing to do with my job as a senator. It’s personal. And very private. If I were running for office...maybe it would be relevant and the voters would have the right to know. But I’m not—not yet, anyway. If I do run for reelection, or if I go public with the story, I promise you’ll have an exclusive. Deal?”

  “On those terms...deal.” She leaned forward, her mini recorder in one hand. “So can you tell me exactly why you’re here, Senator Jones?”

  He drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “One word,” he told her, and his dark brown eyes were the saddest things Carly had seen in a long time. “Epilepsy.”

  * * *

  “Epilepsy?” Carly Edwards’s brows drew together in a frown. “How is it this is the first time anyone has heard of this, Senator?”

  “Because I just found out.” Shane waved a hand that encompassed the room. “It wasn’t until I came here that I learned—” He broke off, fighting down the sudden upwelling of emotion. Guess I still haven’t quite accepted it, he told himself. When he finally trusted his voice, he said, “Apparently the head wound I received a few years back caused damage to my left temporal lobe. I knew that at the time and so did my surgeons. But no one knew the TBI—that’s short for—”

  “Traumatic brain injury,” she finished. “Yes, I know.” For an experienced reporter—which Shane knew she was—Carly’s reaction was unexpected. She’d lost all color and her eyes had widened...in what looked like shock. Shock, and recognition.

  He paused a moment, waiting for her to say something more, but when she didn’t he said, “No one knew the TBI would eventually cause focal seizures. It doesn’t happen in every case, but it did in mine.”

  “Focal seizures?” The question came automatically, but for some reason Shane felt she wasn’t really focusing on his answer...and that intrigued him.

  “The official term is focal seizure without dyscognitive features.” He grinned suddenly. “That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? All it means is that it’s a small, localized seizure in one hemisphere of the brain—kind of like an electrical ‘short’ in that area—which doesn’t cause any loss of consciousness, loss of memory or anything like that. In my case it manifests itself with a symptom that can best be described as a sudden chill...accompanied by goose bumps.”

  She seemed at a loss for words. “Is that all? Just goose bumps?”

  Shane allowed his eyes to wander from her face down to her legs—long, lovely legs, he noted—then back up again. And he felt a twinge in his groin he hoped wasn’t too obvious beneath his running shorts. “That’s all. I feel cold everywhere, as if I’ve walked into a freezer. And the goose bumps on my arms, my legs, make it very real. For about thirty seconds. Then the symptoms go away.”

  “But you don’t lose consciousness?”

  “No, and my memory of each episode isn’t affected. I can walk and talk normally while the symptoms are occurring, as well.”

  “That doesn’t sound like epilepsy to me.”

  “You’re thinking of what the general public knows of epilepsy—which isn’t a heck of a lot. I didn’t know any better, either, until the doctors here diagnosed me.”

  All of a sudden Carly clicked the button to turn the mini recorder off. She swallowed once—visibly—then said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. This is personal and private. I don’t need to hear any more to know it’s not news. Not the kind of news I report on.” She stood up abruptly, shoving her notebook and mini recorder into her purse. “I’m very sorry, Senator. Not just that it happened to you, but that you had to share this with me, when it’s really no one’s business but yours.”

  Without another word she walked out of the room.

  Chapter 2

  Shane tried to chase after Carly, but the strap locking him in the bed held firm. “Damn it,” he cursed, tugging futilely at the strap. For just a second he thought about ringing for the nurse, but he knew by the time anything could be done to prevent it, Carly would be long gone. “Damn it!”

  He lay back against the pillows, seething with frustration. He hadn’t liked being bound to the bed from the beginning. He understood why it was hospital policy. And as he’d said to Carly, if he lost consciousness with his seizures or even lost motor control, that would be one thing, because the strap would keep him from falling out of bed. But he didn’t, so he’d mentally railed against the restriction from day one. This was the first time he’d actively cursed out loud, however, and he suddenly announced to the empty room, “Sorry.”

  “Not to worry, Senator,” answered the technician constantly monitoring him from the other room. “Believe me, we understand how frustrating it can be for our patients, especially the ones who think they don’t need protection.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shane punched up his pillow, then settled his big frame more comfortably in the bed, thinking about his recent visitor. Carly Edwards. He’d never actually met her before, but he knew who she was, of course. She’d been a fixture on the nightly news as a war correspondent and then reporting from Capitol Hill on one of the major cable news networks. She’d just recently moved to another cable news channel, one that had surged into prominence recently, surpassing most television news agencies for hard-hitting news coverage. Everyone said she was the next Christiane Amanpour.

  He wondered why she’d cut their interview short. Carly had the reputation for being unstoppable where a news story was concerned. Once she got her teeth into something, she refused to let go. It wasn’t like her to cut an interview short, especially on an exclusive. And while he’d hoped she would agree with him this wasn’t legitimate news, he’d figured he’d have to tell her everything before she decided not to broadcast what he had to say. It didn’t make sense that she’d run out in the middle of an interview.

  For a minute he also wondered what she’d been doing there without a camera operator, but then realized no way would they have been able to sneak the camera gear into the Mayo Clinic, past the various stations that guarded their patients’ privacy. Not to mention Carly didn’t have a reputation as an ambush journalist...although she had used subterfuge to gain access to him. By pretending to be his fiancée.

  Shane smiled. Whether she’d intended it or not, Carly had been a bright note in his otherwise bleak week. His body hardened in a rush as he let himself f
antasize about what it would be like if she was his fiancée. If he could peel that jacket off her, the one she wore that was not-quite-good-enough camouflage for a body that would tempt a monk. And Shane was no monk.

  * * *

  Carly was already in her car in the parking lot before she lost it. Before memories of Jack swamped her, bringing unaccustomed tears to her eyes. God, oh God, who knew?

  She stared down at her engagement ring, the brilliant diamond shimmering through the haze of tears. When Jack had asked her to marry him more than eight years ago she’d been the happiest woman in the world. They’d been in love. Not just the crazy, Tilt-A-Whirl kind of love, but the solid, let’s-make-this-last-a-lifetime kind of love, with dreams of children in the not-too-distant future and grandchildren far down the road.

  In mind-numbing slow motion the memory of the car accident replayed in her mind. The drunk driver weaving head-on into their lane. Jack’s desperate swerve to avoid the collision. Sliding sideways on the treacherous, ice-slick road. The sudden impact and the side air bag that failed to deploy. Jack’s head making sickening contact with the window—numerous times—as his body was flung side to side.

  After a year of mourning, she’d taken off Jack’s engagement ring and placed it in the back of her jewelry box. Never to be worn again...until today. Until she’d used it as a prop to sneak into Senator Jones’s hospital room.

  Carly didn’t believe in omens, good or bad. And she didn’t believe in fate—life was what you made of it. But guilt overwhelmed her now, as if by wearing Jack’s ring for a purpose he’d never intended, she’d somehow brought this whole sequence of events about. As if she was responsible for what had happened to Senator Jones the way she was responsible for Jack’s death.

  * * *

  Shane picked up his cell phone and hit speed dial for his executive assistant in Washington, DC, a grandmotherly type who reminded him of his own mother—not surprising since she’d been his mother’s best friend as long as he could remember. He still had difficulty calling her by her nickname, especially since she insisted on calling him Senator now instead of Shane. He was more inclined to call her Mrs. Wilson as he’d done growing up, but when she’d first gone to work for him when he was running for the House, she’d flatly told him to call her Dee-Dee, so he did...reluctantly.