by Heather Gray
The interview had been interesting enough, but Lily was glad it was over. She waited for the Secret Service agent running the camera to give her the go-ahead. Then she stepped up to Mr. Taylor, released the brakes on his wheelchair, and wordlessly pushed him from the room. Dr. Matsui fell into step behind her, and Agent Whitehall came after him. The other agents would escort the two reporters back down to the lobby after they received their flash drives. Only time would tell what spin they’d put on things. It helped that Taylor’s campaign would get a copy, too.
Lily was in the process of helping Taylor into his bed when a vibration reached her ears. Agent Whitehall took out his phone and glanced at it.
He bit out an expletive.
“What?” Mr. Taylor sat on the edge of his bed now.
The agent ignored him and entered a number into the keypad of his phone with enough force to make a lesser screen crack under the pressure. “It’s Whitehall. Plan Delta is in effect. I repeat, we’re a go for Plan Delta. When will you be at the rendezvous point? … I’ll be there with the package.”
As soon as he disconnected the call, Whitehall walked over and closed the room’s door. Then he swung to face Mr. Taylor. Lily got caught in the crossfire of his intense gaze. “We might have a lead on the assassin, but if we’re right, you’re in bigger trouble than you know how to handle. You’re under Secret Service protection, and you’re going to let us do our job. At this point, any attempt you make to argue will be ignored. You will do as you’re told. Period.”
The color drained from Mr. Taylor’s face, and he acquiesced with a dip of his chin. “What’s Plan Delta?”
“That’s classified.”
“I have clearance.”
“Not for this.”
Agent Whitehall turned to Lily. “He’s leaving this hospital in fifteen minutes. You won’t change my mind. Neither will a doctor. Taylor won’t be signing any forms, either, understand? No against-medical-advice documents. No paper trail showing he’s left the building. Someone else is going to come in, climb into that bed, and pretend they’ve been shot. If you can’t handle it, say the stress of the media got to you and take a couple days off. I need him in that wheelchair and ready to go.”
Lily was tempted to quake at the imperial command, but she’d seen enough of Agent Whitehall not to take his tone personally. “He needs medical care. Insisting on taking him out of the hospital is bad enough, but removing him from trained staff that can monitor his recovery is something else altogether. You’ll do the assassin’s work for him.”
The agent pulled a backpack out from a drawer next to the bed. “Put in here everything he’s going to need for the next twenty-four hours. A doctor is waiting for us on the other end, and a combat medic will be traveling with us. Taylor will be in my care without medical personnel for sixty minutes tops, but load up anything you think we might need. Write down his medications.”
“I… I can’t access his meds in the time you’ve given me. The pharmacy won’t fill the order that fast.”
Agent Whitehall shoved a piece of paper at her. “List them. I’ll relay the meds to the medic, and he’ll get what we need.”
One thing was clear. Mr. Taylor was leaving the hospital, and she couldn’t do anything to stop him. Lily brought up the med schedule on the screen and hit the print button. She also printed out the most recent ten pages of his chart, showing all his vitals and detailed wound care. She rushed out of the room and collected the papers from the printer as Dr. Matsui crossed the threshold.
His eyes showed no surprise, and she began to wonder how many secrets the hospital harbored.
She returned to the room with the printouts, but the doctor and Agent Whitehall were gone. Mr. Taylor lay there, the picture of unflappable calm. Lily could see why he’d done so well in politics. Either nothing got to him or he was a good actor.
The backpack still sat on the foot of Mr. Taylor’s bed, so Lily put the chart in it and set to work emptying medical supplies from the cart into its various pockets. She couldn’t send the prescriptions, but she would make sure her patient had everything else he might conceivably need.
The second the agent returned, she handed him the med list. Then she nodded to Mr. Taylor, who eased off the bed and settled back into the wheelchair he’d only minutes ago vacated. He was strong and in good health other than the bullet wound. In fact, if it weren’t for the high-profile nature of the case, he never would have been admitted to ICU. She’d been running into that a lot lately. So much for ICU being reserved for those patients who actually required intensive care. The hospital needed to revamp their security protocols before that would ever change.
“Take care of yourself and don’t overdo it. If you want to live long enough to be able to run for president, you can’t be your own worst enemy. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am. And thank you, Lily, for all you’ve done. I know the media attention has complicated your life, and having to deal with this guy all day…” He waved at the Secret Service agent. “Well, that’s not a walk in the park, either.”
She gave him a smile. “Just doing my job. I wish you a speedy recovery and safe travel to wherever it is you’re going.”
Agent Whitehall stopped her from pushing the wheelchair through the door. “I’ll take it from here. You’re officially relieved of duty.” He held out his hand to her. “Maybe we can catch up sometime under more ordinary circumstances.”
Lily took his hand. “Be safe.”
The two men veered left outside the hospital room. The normal exit was to the right. She resisted the urge to spy on them and instead began straightening up the room.
Arms loaded down with dirty linens, she rounded the foot of the bed and almost ran into a new Secret Service agent pushing a wheelchair into the room. “I’m returning Mr. Taylor to you.”
Lily peered at the man in the chair. There was some resemblance, she supposed. Same hair, a similar skin color, but…
She shook her head. “Give me a second to make the bed.”
Dr. Matsui entered the room with a purposeful step as she completed the task. He conferred with the agent before turning to Lily. “You can finish out your shift or leave. The choice is yours.”
“I would have to take his blood pressure and temperature and do everything else and enter it all into Mr. Taylor’s chart?”
The doctor eyed her shrewdly. “Of course. He is, after all, Mr. Taylor.”
Lily met the doctor’s eyes. “Will I be in trouble if I leave?”
His smile was brief but genuine. “Not at all.”
“Won’t everybody else on the unit know there’s been a… uh… change?”
Dr. Matsui shook his head. “Your patient was taken for a stroll by one of his agents. Nothing else occurred. However, if you choose to leave, we’ll be short-handed, and a replacement will be brought in from the float pool to care for Mr. Taylor here. A float pool nurse who hasn’t worked on the unit anytime in the last week ought to do nicely.”
For the first time since she’d come to live in this bustling metropolis, she wished her job didn’t keep her so close to the nation’s capital. At least she wouldn’t be around to listen to the gossip. “All right, then. I believe I’ll go home.”
“Of course.”
Caleb had prepared himself for a long day, but within minutes, all five teens crumbled. A couple of items had been in the trunk when they took the car, most notably a rifle in a case, a Taser, and a Sig Sauer P232. The idiot kids only knew the kind of handgun because the name was etched on the side of the barrel. They’d pawned the gear to buy the drugs they were high on when they sped by him out on Lee Highway.
One of the kids remembered the name of the pawn shop, and uniformed officers went to go question the owner and — hopefully — take the items into custody.
“So…” Captain Browning exhaled the word. “What does this mean?” These weren’t the sort of cases their division of the state police typically dealt with. She had been handling patrol o
fficers for years, and the eagerness to break a bigger case gleamed in her eyes.
“Did the lab find prints, too?” The last time Caleb queried Malik, the tech had hung up on him.
The captain grimaced. “Those kids made a mess of the car. Over a thousand prints collected, most of them smears and smudges left by our joyriders. They got a few clear ones that don’t belong to any of them or to the car’s owners. No hits in CCRE. One possible match to an old print in IAFIS. The lab is running it against international prints as we speak.”
The Central Criminal Records Exchange — or CCRE — was Virginia’s own database. No match meant whoever’s prints were in the car either hadn’t committed a crime before in Virginia — or hadn’t been caught.
IAFIS, the FBI’s fingerprint system, pulled from records nationwide. It covered a lot more territory, but “possible match” was at best iffy.
“What did you learn about the crime that IAFIS linked to that print?” The answer was within their grasp, and when she hesitated before answering, he was even more certain about it.
Two other troopers had been sitting in on their little powwow, but the captain told them to leave. Once she shut the door behind them, she wheeled to face Caleb, energy sizzling in the air around her. “A decade-old assassination in California.”
His stomach dropped like a roller coaster after the final big climb. “Political?”
She shook her head. “A Silicon Valley mogul.”
“Murder for hire?” Caleb withdrew his phone, the urge to call Lily overwhelming.
The captain glared at him. “Not a word leaves this room, are we clear? The computer gave our print a 20% probability of matching the one from the California case. That’s not enough to be actionable. It’s not even enough to be reliable. We wait for the international check to come back.”
“How long till those results come in?” Caleb ground his teeth.
Captain Browning tapped her fingers on the desk. “The call should have come in an hour ago.”
The shrill sound of her desk phone filled the air. She grimaced and yanked the receiver to her ear. “I told you not to disturb me unless… Very well… Put him through.”
Caleb needed the name of the guy killed in California in order to research the case. He wondered if he should alert Nick. His old friend might be able to pull some strings and get them the complete file. The FBI would likely be unwilling to turn it over to them.
The captain slammed her phone down and stared at him.
“What?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. The vein on the right side of her neck began to visibly pulse. Her clenched jaw only confirmed his suspicion. The captain’s temper was barely under control, and whatever she’d been told on the phone was the culprit.
“Were you ever going to tell me you’re working for the attorney general’s office?”
Ouch. Good thing he’d already submitted his final report since his cover was blown.
“How’d you find out?”
“None of your business.”
He conceded the point with a nod of his head. “Sebastian was babysitting me instead of the other way around, wasn’t he?”
The slight flare of her nostrils gave him the answer.
She gritted her teeth and ground out the words. “Give me one good reason not to throw you out of here this instant.”
Caleb didn’t plan to let her try. His gut told him to stick with this case, and that was what he aimed to do. “Your name came up during the course of an investigation into somebody else. The attorney general’s office wanted to find out if the link was anything more than tangential. They needed to know where all the bodies were buried before they brought a case against the other person. No stone was left unturned. I just happened to come on the scene at the right time, and I got the job of investigating you and your station.”
Her lips thinned. “I didn’t hear a reason anywhere in your monologue.” She picked up the phone. “Send the sergeant in.”
Caleb held up his hands. “My final report’s been turned in. Throwing me out won’t change anything in that report, but it will put you a man down with a critical investigation heating up. Besides, I got permission to stay on until after the transportation hearing.”
The sergeant opened the door, but the captain waved him off. “Give us a minute, but don’t go far.” Her eyes didn’t leave Caleb’s face as she spoke. Once the door clicked closed again, she demanded, “Why would you ask to stay on?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Sneaking around my station was never the right thing to do.”
He needed her to be reasonable. Not that he would be if their roles were reversed. “If you were in my shoes, you’d have done the exact same thing. In any event…”
Caleb’s phone rang then, and they both jumped. A quick glance told him the call was from Agent Whitehall. He didn’t bother to ask permission before answering. “This is Graham.”
“Listen. You’re in the middle of something. I don’t owe you this call, and it’s not professional courtesy. This is because I don’t want your lady friend yelling at me if she finds out I had knowledge of what’s coming and didn’t warn you.”
His eyes on the captain, Caleb demanded, “Spill it.”
“Your signature is on a request for a fingerprint check. That print matches an international assassin on Interpol’s most wanted list. The FBI is on their way to you now. For all intents and purposes, this case will be out of your hands as soon as they arrive. Secret Service is going to be working jointly with them — as jointly as we can, anyway. Your station will be swarmed in less than ten minutes, and the feds will want every single note, conversation, and scrap of paper that exists in relation to the print you ran.”
Caleb nodded, even though Whitehall couldn’t see him. “Thanks for the heads-up.” International assassin… It had to be about Taylor. “Lily?”
“I have eyes on her and an agent in her building until this is resolved.”
That would have to do for now. If the clock could be believed, she would still be at the hospital, which meant she was safe. “Is there anything else?”
“The FBI might ask for a liaison to local law enforcement. Make sure you get yourself appointed. I put in a good word for you.”
“Understood.” Caleb clicked the disconnect button on his phone and tried to repair the damage he’d done to the captain’s trust in him. “International assassin, possibly related to the Taylor shooting. FBI and Secret Service should be here in minutes. The moment they arrive, we’re off the case.”
The captain surprised him with a smile. “Those kids stole the car before the job was finished. The timeline doesn’t match the assassination attempt, so maybe our guy was scouting.”
“What if there was a first attempt nobody knows about? Can we find out where Taylor was when the kids grabbed that car?” The possibility didn’t sit well.
The captain grimaced. “Either way, the shooter never got the chance to clean the car up. We may have stumbled across the only lead in Taylor’s shooting. That gives us a bargaining chip. The feds won’t hijack this case away from me without a fight.”
Caleb stood, rested his hands on her desk, and leaned in just enough to make his point. “My final report to the attorney general will be available to you within ten days. I found nothing of note. You run a tight ship, and you keep it clean.” It might smooth things over if he told her the transportation chief hadn’t come out smelling quite so good, but that information was still privileged. She would learn about that along with everybody else. When charges were brought. Captain Browning might even be called in to testify against her brother-in-law.
Caleb pressed her. “Let me stay with this case, and let me do my part at the transportation hearing.”
She’d been under investigation without knowledge of it. It smarted, and he knew it. He wouldn’t be any happier if he were in her shoes. At some point she would accept it as necessary, but he needed her to spee
d up that process and get to grudgingly-okay-with-it sooner rather than later.
“I’m not making any promises, but we’ll table this discussion for now.”
It was better than he’d hoped for. He’d take it.
Lily collected her things and was on the way to the elevator when Maddie chased her down.
“I thought I’d run into you in the break room, but it seems you’re leaving early.”
She tried not to mumble. “Yeah.”
“Guess what?”
Lily looked at Maddie. Her friend was glowing. Something was up. “What?”
“Holden asked me to marry him.”
Envy bit at her, but that didn’t make sense. She was happy for them. “Congratulations! I mean, you said yes, right?”
“Duh.” Maddie laughed. “So what’s up? Why the early exit?”
Lily shrugged. “It’s been one of those days.” As explanations went, hers was filo dough thin, but she hoped her friend fell for it. “I have to go, but I can’t wait to hear all about how he proposed.”
Maddie smiled as the elevator doors opened. “We’ll get together sometime and I’ll give you the scoop. Right now a pile of paperwork is waiting for me. Both my patients are scheduled to go off-floor for tests.”
Lily gave a small wave as the doors closed between them. She didn’t envy Maddie. Most people had no idea how much work went into taking an ICU patient out of the unit for any kind of test or procedure. If the paperwork alone wasn’t enough, all the portable equipment had to be put into place, the transport staff notified, the requisite respiratory tech acquired — especially if the patient was on oxygen — and, depending on the patient’s condition, a resident might even be required to accompany them down. Coordinating so many people and moving parts ate up time.