Silence stretched on the other end of the line for several beats.
“Wait,” Raffi said finally. “Which neighbor?”
“The one I told you about over lunch last week. The one that’s been missing—”
“Fuck.” Raffi dragged the word out. “Greer Wilde?”
She started. “How’d you know?”
“I know the Wildes through my brother. Gabe’s worked with them before.”
She gripped the phone tighter and stared at her neighbor. “So Greer’s like…black ops?”
“I don’t ask Gabe for details. I just know they have a working relationship.”
“Can Gabe come help?”
A beat passed. Then another. “No. He was almost killed on a mission back in January. He’s out of the hospital finally, but he’s going to be recovering for a long time.”
“Oh my God, Raffi. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He hesitated. “It’s…complicated. A lot of shit went down with my family after he was injured and, to tell you the truth, I’m still trying to cope. It’s not something I’ve felt like talking much about.”
Her heart ached for him. She knew he was close with his brother, and if Gabe had nearly died, Raffi must have been a wreck. “When you do feel like talking, you know you have me, right?”
“I know.” A smile returned to his voice. “Saint Tally, always wanting to right the world’s wrongs.” Before she could scoff at that, he added, “Let me call the guys on Gabe’s team, see if I can get Greer some off-the-grid help. I’ll get back at you within the hour.”
She nodded even though Raffi couldn’t see her and the line had already gone dead. This was unbelievable. And Raffi was talking about it like it was just another day in the life. Who knows? Maybe it was for him. She’d always thought he was on the periphery of his brother’s top-secret world, but now she wondered. Was he more involved?
No. She shook her head. No way. This was Raffi she was thinking about. The guy who liked fashion more than she did and who changed his hairstyle every other week. He didn’t conform, so there was no way he could be some super-secret soldier-spy like his brother. That was just ridiculous.
Then again…
She glanced at Greer. Her neighbor was apparently a super-secret soldier-spy, so at the moment anything seemed possible. If eighty-year-old Mrs. Chan two doors down suddenly revealed she moonlighted as a topless dancer, Natalie didn’t think she’d bat an eye. She was that far down the rabbit hole.
And what in God’s name did Andy have to do with any of this?
Since the phone was in her hand, she tried her nephew again but didn’t get an answer. Not that she’d expected one. He was in full-blown avoidance mode. She tried her brother but wasn’t the least bit surprised when she didn’t get an answer there, either. If Matt was on a binge, he’d be out of touch until he came down from whatever substance was his current favorite fix-all.
Worry gnawed at her belly. This wasn’t like Andy. He was a computer nerd, not a gangster. And he certainly was not a killer. She had to find him, but she honestly had no idea where to start looking.
She started to set the phone down, but it rang again, Raffi already calling her back.
“Good news,” he said when she answered. “The team’s medic is in town to check up on Gabe, so I gave him your address. He’s headed over now.”
The back of her neck prickled. Was she okay with letting a complete stranger into her home to care for the semi-stranger currently unconscious on the floor in front of her couch? Better question, did she have a choice? “How will I know him?”
“For one thing, he’s probably the only guy in DC wearing a cowboy hat. At least he’s the only one who can pull it off without looking ridiculous.” When she wasn’t able to muster the laugh he’d obviously been aiming for, Raffi’s voice gentled. “He’s good people, Tally. You can trust him. If you want, I’ll drive down—”
“No.” She shook her head at herself. She was being paranoid. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You weren’t asking. I was offering.”
Tempting, she had to admit. She’d love to see a friendly face right now, but Raffi worked on Broadway and was gearing up for opening night of a new show. She knew how hectic that could be and didn’t feel right about monopolizing his time. If he said she could trust this medic, then she shouldn’t need more reassurance.
“No,” she said more firmly. “I’ll handle this.”
“All right. But if you need me, I’ll be there.”
“I know. And I appreciate it.”
Twenty minutes after she hung up with Raffi, there was a knock at her door. She didn’t usually bother with the peephole, but this time, she felt it was warranted. Sure enough, the man on the other side was wearing a cowboy hat. Raffi was right—he could pull it off.
She opened the door a crack. “Raffi sent you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Oh, he even had the drawl to complete the sexy cowboy package. He swept his hat off his head before holding out a hand in greeting. “Name’s Jesse Warrick. I’m a…colleague of Raffi’s brother. And a friend of Greer’s. May I take a look at him?”
She eyed Jesse. He didn’t look like a James Bond spy type. His dark hair curled at the collar of his leather coat, and his face had a rugged edge to it, shadowed with a couple days worth of scruff. Despite his modern clothes, everything else about him screamed authentic cowboy, like he’d just stepped off the range. He looked more like a rodeo star than a medical professional, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure about letting him near Greer. “Are you a doctor?”
His easy smile remained in place, but she noticed a tightening around his eyes. “I don’t have the MD after my name if that’s what you’re askin’. Never got around to med school, but I was a combat medic in the Army. I’ve treated Greer on multiple occasions.”
At the news, she relaxed a bit. “So he’d be okay with you examining him?”
“Hell no,” Jesse admitted and grinned. “Because like so many of the guys I treat, he’s a stubborn bastard who hates admittin’ he’s not invincible.”
Natalie decided right then she liked this guy. His words had a ring of truth to them. A lie would have been faster, and she appreciated that he hadn’t glossed over her concerns. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure why she still had concerns. Raffi had vouched for Jesse, and on any other occasion, that would have been enough, but she was feeling very mother bear protective over Greer for reasons she couldn’t begin to name.
She opened the door wider to let him in. “Greer’s on the floor in front of the couch. He fell off and I can’t lift him.”
“I’ll get him.” Jesse set aside his hat and the bag he’d been carrying, then knelt down next to Greer. “Hey, buddy. What the hell happened to you?”
She watched him effortlessly lift Greer into a fireman’s carry and deposit him back on the couch. “He said he was mugged.”
Jesse snorted, which only confirmed her original suspicion that the mugging story had been a lie. He straightened, grabbed his bag, and fished around until he found a forehead thermometer.
After a beep, he frowned at the small screen on the device. “Jesus. He’s burnin’ up. I’m thinkin’ he got an infection from one of these gashes or…” His eyes widened as he pulled off the new bandage square she’d placed over the gunshot wound. “Dayam. That’ll account for it.”
“I cleaned it with antiseptic pads.”
“Yeah, might not have mattered. Infection already had its hooks in him by the time you got to him.” He studied the hole for a moment, probing it gently with his fingers. “It’s a fairly clean entry wound. That’s good.”
Jesse seemed to be talking more to himself than her, so she remained silent.
“Small caliber, not enough punch to go all the way through him or cause much damage. Looks like he already dug the bullet out.”
“Wait.” She stared at the angry wound and bile surged into the back of her throat. “You mean, by himself?�
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“Mmm,” Jesse said. She wasn’t sure if it was an affirmative answer until he straightened away from the couch and added, “He did a fair good job stitchin’ it up, too—at least until the stitches popped open. He probably didn’t have clean tools handy when he did it and that’s where the infection came from, I’d wager. I’ll start IVs for fluids and antibiotics. He’ll be right as rain after a massive dose of both. Until then, we need to get his temperature down before he fries.” He nodded toward the dining room space in front of her bay windows, which she had converted to a makeshift dance studio with several mats and freestanding ballet barres. “I see you’re a dancer. I assume you have ice packs for injuries?”
She nodded.
“All right. Get ’em, wrap ’em in washcloths, and put ’em under his arms. It’ll help bring his temp down.”
They worked in silence for several minutes, her with the ice packs, him with the IVs. He then tended to the gunshot wound, closing the hole with a neat line of stitches. When he finished, he hung the IV bags on a lamp, then stood and stared down at Greer, hands on his slim hips.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now we wait.” He aimed a smile in her direction. “I’d like to stick around for a bit if you don’t mind. Make sure those antibiotics are doin’ the trick. He might need another dose.”
“Oh, sure. Of course.” She cringed at the thought of having to make small talk for the next couple hours, but he was probably right to stay. If the antibiotics didn’t work, she’d need his medical expertise. She got up from her seat on the couch beside Greer and headed to the kitchen. “Would you like anything? Coffee, tea?”
“Coffee would be great,” he said with a suppressed yawn. Only then did she notice how exhausted he looked, how shadowed his blue eyes were.
“Long day?”
“Long year.” He started packing up his medical kit. “And, Jesus God, it’s only April.”
“April Fool’s Day,” she said.
“Yeah, well, this whole year’s been a prank, and I’m not laughin’.”
She measured out the grounds from a canister on her counter, then closed the lid of the coffeemaker and started the drip. “Raffi just told me about his brother. Will Gabe be okay?”
“Yeah,” Jesse said on a sigh. “It was touch and go for a while, but he’s a tough bastard. He’ll be back on his feet. Might take a while, but he’ll get there.”
“That’s good. Raffi would be devastated if he lost Gabe.”
“As would we all. Gabe’s a good friend. A good leader.” As he spoke, he checked the IVs one last time and watched Greer with the assessing eye of a medical professional. He blew out a long breath and shook his head. “I wish my friends would stop tryin’ to get themselves killed. It’s gettin’ old.”
How did she ever doubt his credentials? Because right now he looked very much like an overworked doctor frustrated by his patient.
“You’ve known Greer for a long time, right?” she asked and grabbed two mugs from a cupboard.
He left Greer’s side to join her in the kitchen. “About twelve years now, yeah.”
“Can you…” She hesitated, unsure if she was overstepping her bounds. Then she figured what the hell, the man was unconscious on her couch and she’d seen him puke. They were way past normal neighborly boundaries at this point. And she needed information if she had any chance of figuring out how Andy was involved. “What can you tell me about his parents?”
Jesse shifted on his feet and shot a glance back toward the couch. He seemed to carry on an internal debate, then apparently came to a decision and sat down on one of the stools at her breakfast bar. “I don’t know much, except that they were killed when Greer was 15. He applied for emancipation from the state of Virginia, won it, and spent the next several years taking care of his brothers until Jude was a senior in high school, then he joined the military.”
Oh. The poor kid. No wonder he’d turned into such a hard man. He’d had no other choice. “He protected them.”
“Yeah. He does that. Protects,” Jesse added when she looked a question at him. “It’s hardwired into him.”
How could that be true? It didn’t jibe with the man she met yesterday, the one who seemed so dead set on getting revenge. Though, now that she knew a bit more about him, she couldn’t blame him for wanting it. Still didn’t agree with it, but couldn’t blame him.
Heart in her throat for the kid Greer used to be, she turned to pour the coffee. Last thing she wanted was for Jesse to see how upsetting she found the image of Greer as a lonely, frightened teenager left to raise his brothers. She handed Jesse his coffee. “Do you know how his parents were killed?”
He waved away her unspoken question about cream or sugar and took a drink. “No. It’s not somethin’ he’s ever talked much about.”
She glanced over at the couch. The event had obviously scarred him. How could it not have? She couldn’t imagine not having her parents while growing up. And she knew a thing or two about protecting one’s siblings. She’d been trying to protect Matt from himself for most of her life.
She sure hoped Greer had been more successful protecting his brothers than she had hers.
“Jesse?” She looked at him. “If Greer ever found the person responsible for the deaths of his parents, would he have it in him to kill them?”
Jesse’s brows shot up in surprise. “Why do you ask?”
She hesitated. Should she tell him about Greer’s plan? No, she decided. It wasn’t her place, and she didn’t know for sure that it hadn’t been his injuries talking. But now that she’d cracked open this can of worms, she had to say something. “He’s, uh, talked a little in his sleep, and I just get the feeling he would if he had the chance.”
Jesse watched her for several seconds. He didn’t believe her half lie. She saw it in his eyes.
“It’s just a hypothetical question,” she added.
“Yeah, sure it is.” He muttered a curse and took a drink from his mug. “Hypothetically, if Greer found the person responsible, he could and would kill them.”
Natalie’s heart plummeted. That had not been the answer she’d wanted to hear. She looked at the man so peacefully unconscious on her couch. “What should I do, Jesse?”
“Truthfully?” He set his mug down and met her gaze. “If I were you, I’d stay the hell out of his way.”
Chapter Four
Where the hell was he?
As consciousness flooded back, Greer bolted upright and glanced around. This definitely wasn’t his apartment. Too much color and light and…girly stuff. It was a very female living space. He didn’t recognize it…and yet he did. The apartment’s layout mirrored his own.
“Oh,” a female voice said softly from the foot of the couch he was lying on. “Hi. You’re awake.”
He snapped around toward the voice, and his head spun. Whoa. Too fast. Way too fast. He closed his eyes, breathed through the dizziness.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked again.
He opened his eyes and focused on her again. Short dark hair—a “pixie cut” it was called, though he didn’t know how the hell he knew that—framed dainty features. She was curled up in an oversize armchair with a book balanced on her knees and her feet tucked under a large gold dog, which took up more of the chair than she did. She wore a long-sleeve T-shirt over leggings and had a gray shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The fringe on the shawl whispered as she unfolded from the chair and moved toward him like one would approach a cornered animal.
Where did he know her from?
Had he picked her up somewhere, spent the night at her house?
But, no, that wasn’t his usual M.O. He never stayed. For him, sex was just another basic bodily function, like taking a piss or eating when hungry. Nothing more than a need that occasionally had to be fulfilled in the quickest, easiest way possible. It was all wrong for him to be waking up in a woman’s house, feeling like he had a massive hangover. This was more like something his youngest bro
ther Jude would have done before he was married.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked again. “How are you feeling?” She wasn’t acting like they’d spent a night together. In fact, she looked like she was tucked in for a cozy weekend home alone.
His neighbor, he realized slowly. It was starting to come back now. The clusterfuck that had been Syria, getting jumped in a bar parking lot by three kids while chasing down Richard Mendenhall. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten home but did recall she’d helped him when he’d collapsed in the hallway. He searched more of his memory but couldn’t come up with her name.
Had he ever known it? Probably not. Although he’d lived in this building for five years between deployments, he preferred to keep to himself. He didn’t know any of his neighbors except for the old Korean lady next door, Mrs. Chan, who insisted on babbling endlessly every time she bumped into him.
This woman was definitely not Mrs. Chan. Thank Christ.
She was watching him, waiting for an answer, so he mumbled something along the lines of, “Not good,” which was the understatement of the year. Everything in him ached, and his head felt stuffed with cotton. And he was pissed at himself for being so focused on the man he suspected had killed his parents that he let a group of punks get the jump on him. If he ever got his hands on those kids—
“I bet,” his neighbor said, breaking through his thoughts. “You took quite a beating…and, uh, by the looks of things, you were already pretty badly injured.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“The…” She hesitated and her gaze dropped to the fresh white bandage taped to his chest. “The bullet wound in your side.”
Incoming!
The memory hit with the same force the bullet had.
Position compromised. Firing from the window at the tangos swarming the dirt road around their building. The bullet hitting him. He hadn’t felt the pain at first because he was more focused on one of the assholes outside aiming mortars at them. The first fell short, blasting out a chunk of concrete, rocking the building. He’d glanced over at Dustin Williamson and had seen the knowledge of death on the guy’s dirty, bearded face.
Too Wilde to Tame (Wilde Security) Page 3