“Do you know how long your fight with him went on?” she asked me.
I shrugged, once again confused by her abrupt conversational segue. “I dunno. Ten years? It sure as hell felt like forever.”
“A little over a minute.”
“Huh. Seemed like a lot longer.”
Allison regarded me solemnly. “From the time he got on top of you to the time you put an end to it, it was a little over a minute.”
“How do you know that? Was someone counting?”
“Your mike was keyed the entire time, so we could hear everything. And the radio transmissions are time-stamped at the duty desk. You know that.”
“And you called them to ask?”
Allison nodded. “I did. Because I wanted to be able to tell you exactly how close you came to dying.”
Guilt burst inside my chest the way a chocolate-covered cherry spurts in your mouth when you bite into it, only the taste lingering on my tongue now was dark and rancid, like spoiled meat. “I’m sorry I put you through that. You have to know I didn’t intend to.”
Allison inclined her head in a gesture that could’ve meant I was forgiven, or it could’ve meant absolutely nothing. She was silent for a time.
“It wasn’t completely your fault,” she said eventually. Her voice was hard, her tone bitter.
“What do you mean?”
Her expression was once again dark. I could tell she was still angry. I just wasn’t sure at whom. “Since I was so far away, I was one of the last agents to reach you. Or should I say to get to where you were.”
“Okay.”
“But I shouldn’t have been the first one to move to help you.”
“Sweetheart, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know our motto: minimum to the problem, maximum to the protectee.”
I nodded. Of course I knew it. I’d thought about it earlier today in the middle of everything. “That’s how it should be.”
Allison made a face. “That’s what happened today, Ryan. That’s why you almost died. Everyone else had moved to either Hurricane or to Rory. No one else on set moved to help you. No one was even looking at you. No one. It took me almost a full minute to even reach a point where I could see you, let alone get to you, and I was the only one who even thought about helping you.”
Ah. Now I understood why she was so upset. I might’ve even understood why she was taking her frustration out on me instead of blasting the other guys who’d been there. Because how would it have looked if she’d gone off on them for doing their job and letting me do mine? But she obviously needed to yell at someone. I tried not to smile at her protectiveness, but it did such wonderful things to my insides, it was hard not to let it show.
“Allison, they did what they had to do to keep Rory and Hurricane safe.”
“Someone should’ve kept you safe.” She looked down at her hands, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I should’ve kept you safe.”
Now I did smile. “Come here.”
Allison shook her head. She was adorable when she was petulant. My smile grew wider.
“Allison, please.”
After a long moment of hesitation and much obvious reluctance on her part, Allison rose and made her way around the hospital gurney so she stood behind me. As carefully as possible, I lifted my arm off my sleeping sister and rolled onto my back so I could look my girlfriend in the eye. Or try to anyway. She wasn’t making it easy, what with her fixating on the railing that framed the bed.
I reached out to her, wordlessly asking for her hand. She took a moment before granting my request. I ran the pad of my thumb over the back of her hand, allowing myself a few seconds to marvel at its softness.
“Allison, you have to let it go.”
Allison’s head snapped up, and her eyes locked onto me. “You almost died, and not one of your coworkers moved to stop it. How the hell can you be so calm?”
“Maybe I’m used to it by this time,” I joked.
“That’s not funny.”
“No. You’re right. It isn’t. But you have to cut them some slack. It wasn’t their fault. With everything else going on, can you blame them for focusing on Hurricane and Rory?”
“Yes.”
I laughed and tried not to wince, not to let her see how much I was hurting. “Do you remember the first operation you and I went on together? Right before you left, when I was still in Credit Cards?”
Allison cocked her head to the side and favored me with an expression two parts curious, one part wary. “Vaguely.”
“It was a counterfeit buy-bust. You and I were there only to provide additional manpower support.”
“I remember.”
“Do you remember how when it came time to do the takedown, everyone ran to arrest the suspects?”
Allison’s eyes flooded with realization. “And you were the only one of us who even thought to go to the undercover.”
I nodded. “Yes. And only because I remembered them making that particular point to us in training because we’d botched it on one of our practice scenarios. If no one had gone to the UC, it would’ve looked really bad. He would’ve gotten burned, and with that group, he could’ve been killed.”
“This isn’t the same thing.” Allison tried to argue her point, but we both knew her protests were weak.
“It’s exactly the same thing. Everyone gets tunnel vision during these types of operations. It sucks sometimes, but it happens.” I squeezed her hand. “And I’m fine.”
“This time,” Allison muttered bitterly.
I tugged on her hand to pull her closer, and when she complied, I crooked my finger at her to get her to lean down. She rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh but did as I asked. When she was within reach, I stretched up so I could rest my palm against her cheek.
A soft knock on the door to the room interrupted our moment, and Allison and I both looked to it as though that action alone would clue us in as to who was on the other side. When it didn’t, I glanced back at Allison. “Can you get that?”
“Sure.” Allison opened the door and then stepped out of the way so someone could enter. It was Dr. Wexler, the head of the Trauma Department. He appeared a bit tired but otherwise okay. What was he even doing here so late?
“Agent O’Connor.” His eyes darted from me to Allison and back again. “May I have a word with you in private?”
The question made me nervous, and I swallowed. “Uh, that’s not necessary. We can talk here.”
Dr. Wexler hesitated, looking like he was trying to decide whether to push the issue. “I wanted to talk to you about getting an HIV test.”
I squinted at him as I tried to figure out where he was going with this. “Okay.”
“You have a split lip, some cuts on the insides of your cheeks, and several other small abrasions on other parts of your body, and you came in here with a fair amount of blood on you that I assume wasn’t yours.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“You need to make sure you get tested.”
“Okay. I will.”
“I’m absolutely serious about this. I know how you agents are when it comes to medical advice, and this isn’t something you can blow off. You have to get this done.”
My heart sank and hardened into an icy ball that was melting in the vicinity of my stomach. “Are…Are you saying Walker was HIV positive?”
Dr. Wexler took a step closer to me and fixed with a pointed stare. “I should have no way of knowing that. Besides, HIPAA laws would prevent me from disclosing that information even if I had somehow managed to get it.”
I bit my lower lip and shifted my attention to the floor in the corner of the room so I could work this out. His words echoed in my head over and over again as the feelings they stirred up sloshed around inside me like water inside a bucket when you’re running. They played through several times before I caught on. He’d said he should have no way of knowing, not that he didn’t know. I inhaled sharply. My eyes snapped
back up to meet his.
“You need to make sure you get tested,” he said again. “You both need to get tested. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded, which appeared to be the only way I could convey to him that I comprehended. Dear God. Was he serious? As if the nightmare of what Walker did to Rory weren’t enough, now she might have to live with a constant reminder? My stomach shuddered, and I glanced around for the bedpan in case I got sick.
“Do you want me to tell her when she wakes up?”
“Huh?” I shifted my attention to Rory then and watched her for a long moment, my mind a sea of turbulent thoughts. How was I going to break this to her? She really should hear it from me. Shit. How would she react? My chest was so heavy.
After a moment, I realized the doctor was waiting for an answer. I blinked, cleared my throat, and looked back at him, shaking my head. “No,” I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper. “I’ll tell her.”
His expression softened, and he reached into the pocket of his white lab coat and retrieved a card. He handed it to me, and I took it with trembling fingers.
“My direct contact info is on there. Call me when you’re ready. I’ll do the test myself.”
My ears were ringing. “Thanks,” I whispered.
Dr. Wexler favored me with one last sympathetic look before he turned and left. Allison and I drifted in silence for a while.
“Did you know?” Allison asked.
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t. I mean, he told me he did drugs, and we talked about which ones he used, but I never thought…It—it didn’t really impact us because we almost never touched him and certainly not when he was bleeding, so why would it even occur to me to…” I looked to her helplessly as it hit me that not realizing he had the capacity for such calculated violence wasn’t my only colossal failure today. “I should’ve asked.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. It obviously didn’t occur to anyone else to ask either.”
I shook my head again and allowed my eyes to drift around the room. “I should’ve asked.”
“Would you have done anything different tonight if you’d known?”
That was the second time since her arrival that she’d asked me that, and I had the same response as before. “Probably not.”
“Then does it really make a difference?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But somehow it feels like it does.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Since I wasn’t really all that hurt, and the doctors couldn’t do much to treat my injuries except give me some Tylenol, I was released from the hospital only a few hours after I arrived. The doctors had planned to keep Rory overnight for observation—though whether that’d been their idea or hers, I wasn’t certain—and I’d just decided I’d stay with her when Allison informed me of an after-action meeting at NYFO. As annoyed as I was that they were planning to do this at midnight, there didn’t appear to be anything I could do about it.
The ride over to the field office was eerily quiet. Although Allison looked at me several times and opened her mouth as though she were about to speak, she appeared to be having trouble coming up with the right words. I, on the other hand, simply didn’t feel like talking.
I knew that nowadays people with HIV lived full, normal lives, and I could do the same. I also knew perhaps I hadn’t even contracted the virus, and all my fretting would be for nothing. That logic didn’t stop the emotional NASCAR race I was engaged in, though.
We arrived last, and every head in the room turned to stare at us as we walked into the room. It was like something out of an old 80s movie. I almost wished a record scratch had announced our arrival. That, at least, would’ve explained the unusual amount of interest we’d garnered.
I took a deep breath and pressed my hands together over my abdomen, trying—and failing—to quiet the angry swirling in there. I looked for an empty seat. During my search, my gaze fell on Meaghan, and I blinked, surprised. I had no idea what she was doing there.
Meaghan caught sight of me about a second after I’d noticed her, and she looked relieved to see me, but once she spied Allison entering the conference room after me, her expression grew cold. Meaghan still hadn’t forgiven Allison for the way she’d broken my heart years ago, and she clearly didn’t intend to even pretend to hide her grudge. She flashed me a tight smile, gave Allison what we regular field agents had dubbed “the PPD nod,” and turned to head toward the front of the room where the podium held an open laptop. I would’ve smiled at her overprotectiveness if I weren’t so wrapped up in my own head space.
Allison and I chose seats on the edge of the room and sat down. She reached over to take my hand in hers, and I involuntarily flinched. She shot me a wounded look before she clenched her hands into fists on the tops of her thighs.
I let out a tiny huff and closed my eyes. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. I just wasn’t comfortable with her touching me. Not when the HIV virus might be ravaging the cells of my body even as we sat here. That was a foolish thought. She could hold my hand, whether I had it or not, but I was still having a hard time convincing myself that it really was okay.
My dad’s voice broke into my musings. “Okay. Let’s get started.”
The low hum of voices that’d permeated the room tapered off. I opened my eyes and focused all my attention on the front of the room. Dad was standing next to Meaghan looking tired. Had he had a chance to call Mom to let her know that Rory was okay? Maybe Mom could go to the hospital to keep her company. I was reaching for my phone to text her when Dad spoke again.
“This is a preliminary meeting to disseminate some additional information necessary to complete the follow-up investigation. The actual after-action review of the operation itself will take place sometime next week. I’ll contact everyone via email with the specifics once I have something scheduled.
“In the meantime, Special Agent Meaghan Bates from the Protective Intelligence Squad will bring everyone up to speed on what’s been going on here at the office. Agent Bates.”
Dad stepped aside and took a seat at the head of the table, swiveling his chair so his back was to the rest of us and his attention was fixed on Meaghan. She nodded at him politely.
“Thank you, SAIC Flannigan. I want to thank all of you for coming on such short notice. I promise this will be brief. We’ve all had a long day, and the sooner we can get this over with and leave, the better for everyone.”
Meaghan looked to the other end of the room. The lights in the room dimmed, and a PowerPoint presentation lit up the screen that covered the majority of the front wall. I tried to suppress a groan of frustration, but I must not have been very successful because several people turned to look at me, and Allison slapped my arm with the back of her hand. I grumbled and folded my arms across my chest like a scolded child.
Meaghan stepped closer to the screen so she was standing just to one side of it. Her expression was difficult to read in the semidarkness. I slouched in my chair so I could rest the edge of my jaw against the heel of my right hand and allowed my eyes to glaze over.
“While you were all out conducting the operation, several of us were back here tying up some loose ends.
“According to interviews agents of this office had with his doctors, Adam Royce Walker was released from the hospital six days ago. They had no explanation for why we weren’t notified, although examination of his intake file at the psych ward did reveal that Agent O’Connor submitted the necessary paperwork to request that we would be. They admitted that they dropped the ball on that score.”
Meaghan pushed the button on the remote she held, and the slide changed from the usual PowerPoint presentation cover slide. Now we were all looking at several columns of numbers that were way too small for me to be able to read from where I was sitting.
“This is the cell-site history for Walker’s phone for the past six days.” Meaghan clicked her remote again, and a map covered with dozens of red dots replaced the columns. The dots marked a ro
ute of some kind, but with that much of a concentration, it was tough to tell exactly where it led. The path between a few main points was obvious enough, but I just couldn’t decipher what those points were. Another click and the majority of the extraneous dots disappeared, leaving spots centered around two main areas. The slide changed again and this time was zoomed in to one of the two locations.
“This is a map of the area immediately surrounding the field office,” Meaghan said. After her words, the office’s exact location was circled. “As you can see, Walker spent a great deal of time in the vicinity over the past few days. We believe he was here trying to locate Agent O’Connor. This is a logical explanation. He would’ve been unaware that, due to her assignment to the JTTF, she didn’t normally work out of this office. He also would’ve been unaware that she was on light duty until yesterday and technically should not have been reporting to the office at all.”
The map blinked off, replaced by a grainy still photo of a street. I squinted at it as I tried to figure out exactly where it was in relation to the office. It looked familiar, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it. I relaxed my gaze and sat back in the chair, tiredly rubbing my eyes.
“Once we realized Walker had been casing the office,” Meaghan said, “we canvased area businesses to determine if any of them had video footage that would help us figure out exactly what happened with Walker and Dr. O’Connor.”
Meaghan gave the remote in her hand a series of clicks to display several still shots of the streets around the office. When she finally reached the one she wanted, she stopped. A little red dot appeared on the screen, indicating an area of particular interest.
“This is Red Hook Place, right around the corner from the office. It’s tough to see clearly in this picture, but here”—the red dot moved in a circular motion—“parked across the front of this loading dock is a nondescript white panel van. According to the guys who work in this building, it had been sitting there for the majority of the day. They assumed it was there for some sort of delivery and didn’t pay any attention to it.”
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