“Language,” I said as if our aunt was within hearing distance. I glanced to the south stairwell where Pellery and the bodyguard had gone and saw more FBI milling around and through the door. Then what he said registered.
“You knew where Tyler was?” Good thing he’d taken the gun, because I felt like shooting him.
He shrugged. “I told you that we got this handled. Good thing I knew you weren’t listening. Hey, Rick.”
Completing my stupefaction, Rick Jarrell, my client and Tyler’s uncle, circled around me. He also wore an FBI vest.
“Charlie.” Unsmiling, he nodded at my brother. “That guy looks bad.”
Confused I glanced at Tyler who was getting to his feet and then it hit me. Harm calling for help. Charlie calling for ambulances.
I whirled, seeing Dante on the ground surrounded by Harm, Ang, and FBI agents. A pool of blood around him. Then I was on my knees next to Harm who pressed his sweatshirt against Dante’s chest.
Jarrell was right. Dante looked bad. His eyelids fluttered and his skin was grey. I’d never seen so much blood …
Good thing emotion centers had been damaged in my brain. I took a shuddering breath.
“Dante? Can you talk?”
“He can’t, Ms. Graff.” Harm’s voice choked with tears.
I lifted Dante’s wrist that felt as cold as the concrete. I thought I felt a faint pulse but couldn’t be sure.
“Stay with us.” My voice sounded strong. Ang nodded in agreement.
A geological epoch passed before the EMTs arrived. Harm prevented me from slugging one of them when she wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance with Dante.
“We’ll take the van,” Harm said. “Ang drives fast, so we’ll arrive before them.”
Ang was that quick. He ran every light and broke every speed limit, which might have made me nervous except for my worry and those damaged emotions. I leapt from the van at the emergency entrance before it stopped rolling. I paced back and forth on the sidewalk till I heard the sirens screaming, then tried to stay out of everyone’s way and still catch sight of Dante’s face. When I did, I wasn’t reassured. Seemed impossible, but he looked worse. I could see his skull beneath the skin.
“He’s still alive.” Ang exhaled with relief.
A reason to hope? We followed the gurney till an efficient-looking nurse stopped us.
“Are you family?” Her clipboard and the business-as-usual tilt to her pen annoyed me.
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Ang said. “Ma’am, he ain’t got no family. We’re the only ones who can tell you about him.”
His confederates apparently didn’t know about his dad, the college professor, and his mother, the Irish poet. His brothers. Someone should call them.
“Does he have insurance?” she asked. “Drug allergies? Any medical conditions?”
I walked away. I couldn’t fill out her forms. Not while Dante was dying. As I turned the corner, I looked back. Harm and Ang leaned toward the woman and her clipboard, earnest expressions on their faces. Let them deal with her.
I entered the first unlocked office I found, two floors up. It belonged to a staff physician. After bolting the door, I broke into his computer, past its firewalls, and onto the server of the high school where I once worked. I figured the FBI could come up with the phone numbers I needed, but this way was faster. Plus I wouldn’t ask the FBI, aka my brother, for a favor.
Because of Dante Ruiz, I could hack this computer. I now used that knowledge to mine data about him. The information was more than ten years old, but they hadn’t changed the phone number.
“Dr. Ruiz? My name’s Pam Graff. I was Dante’s Physics teacher in high school. I’m sorry to tell you …”
Dante’s mother was in New York at a conference. The professor said he’d leave now for the hospital. I urged him to call Dante’s brothers and drive together. No matter what choices Dante had made in his life, he’d remained close to his family. If the worst happened, they deserved the chance to say good-bye.
After telling the nurse that Dante’s family were on their way, I found Harm and Ang in the emergency waiting room. It must have been a slow night. Except for an old man sleeping in a wheelchair, we had the place to ourselves. We pooled our money together and kept ourselves hydrated with coffee for Harm and me and hot chocolate for Ang.
After fifteen minutes, Rick Jarrell showed up with Tyler and left the kid with us while he got a status update on Dante. I checked my watch again. Professor Ruiz was still about an hour away.
I rounded on Tyler. “He’s not your uncle, is he?”
“Who? That FBI guy? No way.”
Confirmed. Jarrell was a liar. All the cute ones were.
“Spill, kid. Why did you run away? What were you doing at the garage?” I hesitated, my mind a muddle, too worried about Dante to make sense. And the kid might be a hallucination. I was due one.
Abruptly, I turned to Harm. “He’s Tyler Hinshaw, right? The one Dante had you tracking?” My voice cracked on Dante’s name.
Ang answered instead. “That’s right, ma’am. He’s that kid, plain as day.” In an undertone to Harm, as if I couldn’t hear him, he said, “Dante says she’s got brain issues, on account of an accident she were in. Sometimes she sees things that aren’t there, so’s you gotta tell her what’s real and what’s not.”
I love when people talk about me. Make me feel as if I’m the delusion.
“That true?” Tyler demanded. “You can’t think right ‘cause of what happened?”
Again the odd phrasing. As if he knew about the accident. He had been nearby twenty months ago when it happened. Maybe …
I opened my mouth to ask, I’m not sure what, when another nurse hurried into the waiting room.
“Someone here is a relative of Dante Ruiz?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Waiting between good-byes and death
I shot up. “That’s me. May I see him?”
“They’re taking him to surgery now.” She seized my arm. “Hurry. You can walk with him as they take him up.” She shook her head at the others as they started forward too. “Sorry. Family only.”
Lies were useful tools. She didn’t even blink that a middle-aged blonde, white woman claimed to be related to a twenty-six-year-old black man. She’d seen about everything in her line of work. As a teacher, I had too.
We intersected with the gurney moving at a good clip as it reached the elevator. While the attendant punched the button, I rounded the head of the gurney and took Dante’s hand. He looked marginally better. Whatever they’d done for him had helped. Bags of blood and glucose lay next to him, tubes inserted into both arms. Blood seeped through the gauze taped to his chest.
“Dante?”
His breathing changed, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“Your dad’s on his way. And your brothers. Hang in there, okay?”
Maybe I should have let Harm see Dante. I was lousy at this.
His lips moved and impossibly, he spoke. “Ms. Graff?” The three medical people surrounding the gurney perked up.
The nurse frowned. “Ms. Graff?”
I beamed. “He’s always called me that. Sweet, right?”
I bent close to Dante. “Think about those folks in the Midwest hankering for your fish tacos.”
The elevator doors slid open, and they pushed the gurney inside. I started to follow, but the nurse pulled me back. “I’m sorry, hon, but that’s as far as we can go.”
I heard Dante mumbling as the door closed and stepped closer. “What was that?”
Puzzled, one of the doctors said, “I think he said ‘with a side of hell.’” And then they were gone.
Patting me in a way meant to be soothing, the nurse said, “I’m sure that’s not what he said.”
I felt a tear trickle down my face and my brain didn’t clue me in whether I should sob or cheer.
“He heard right. Tacos should be served with a side of hell.”
When I retur
ned to the waiting room, Tyler had disappeared. I was too tired to care. I didn’t see Jarrell either, so I assumed he’d taken the boy.
Another hour’s wait while our pile of money for coffee and hot chocolate dwindled. The man in the wheelchair was taken away by a young woman who scolded him till they were out of earshot.
A few minutes past the hour, Dr. Ruiz arrived with two sons, one that I recognized. I jumped up as they approached.
“How is my son doing?” The family clung together, expecting the worse.
“In surgery, sir.” Turning from his tear-stained face, I said, “Harm, tell them that Dante’s father is here.” Harm sprinted for the nurse’s station.
“Sit down, Professor,” I said. “I know little, but maybe the nurse will tell you more than what they’ve told us. Good to see you, Robert.”
We remained standing. I could feel them aching to hear about Dante.
“Nice to see you too, Ms. Graff.” Nine years older than Dante, Robert had taken my Physics for Business majors’ class as Dante had. The two brothers couldn’t have been more dissimilar. About thirty-seven, his hair already peppered with grey, Robert was short, burly, and shy. Even now, he ducked his head when he said my name. Hard to believe he was a CEO of a power grid company with corporate offices in El Segundo.
“This is my oldest, Aidan.” Dr. Ruiz gripped the taller son’s arm.
Aidan clasped my hand. My vision suddenly fogged. Except that he was older and had green eyes, Aidan reminded me of his youngest brother—the same confidence and easy charm.
“Dante talks of you often, ma’am. We were, are, so grateful for your influence in his life.”
If they only knew … How soon before someone told them that Dante had been hurt because of me?
“Please sit,” I said again. “The nurse should be here soon. Dante talked to me briefly before he went into surgery an hour ago. No one’s given us an update since then.”
“You said he’d been shot.” Dr. Ruiz’s voice turned husky. “Had he …?” He stopped as if he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer.
Since I didn’t know what he was asking, I couldn’t help him. Surprisingly, Ang understood.
“Dante wasn’t in no gang, Mr. Ruiz. He don’t shoot people. He’d never do that.” Ang accompanied his words with vehement head shaking.
Dr. Ruiz and his sons stared at the big man with some reservation, so I jumped in with “He’s right, Professor. The FBI …”
“The FBI?” Aidan shot me a complicated look. “The FBI’s involved with … What did Dante do?”
His family undoubtedly remembered when the FBI had interviewed Dante extensively for the Physics project he’d done in my class. Unbeknownst to me, he’d gone operational with it from one of the school computer labs and a local aerospace company’s radar test range, neither of which he had permission to use. He’d been two weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday. I’d been interviewed also. My sublime teacher façade stood me in good stead as I projected both disbelief, outrage, and profound determination to punish the lad. Inside I felt immense pride.
I had nothing to lose in telling them the truth—as much as I knew. Until I could corner my brother, there were large gaps in what I’d understood happened today.
“Did Dante tell you that he sometimes assists me in my casework with missing children?” All three nodded. “I was scheduled to meet with a politician that might have been connected to a teenager that disappeared almost two years ago and the kidnapping of two infants. I wasn’t expecting trouble …” Not entirely correct, but Ang didn’t give me away with even a twitch, “…but I did want a witness to our conversation. The politician asked to meet in the courthouse parking garage. He said it would be a quick talk as he had a flight to catch…”
I was explaining too much, but his family leaned toward me, soaking in every word. Awkwardly, I added, “Dante had Ang and Harm wait in a van nearby in case there was trouble.” Ang nodded sagely when the brothers glanced his way.
I swallowed. “Gunnison never showed. A man named Pellery did, with two others, all obviously criminals. When one of the men pulled a gun, Dante called for backup and put himself between me and the shooter.” I swallowed again. “That’s when he was shot.”
“The FBI.” I thought Dr. Ruiz was prodding me about how the FBI was involved, but looking up, I saw Charlie standing at the waiting room door, still wearing his FBI vest.
“Dr. Ruiz, this is my brother Charles Graff. He’ll have to explain why the FBI was there. Charlie, this is Dante’s father. His brothers Aidan and Robert.”
Nodding at Dante’s brothers, Charlie shook Dr. Ruiz’s hand. “Your son’s a hero, sir. We’re all pulling for him.”
When Charlie called his brother a hero, Robert straightened and something eased in his expression. Dr. Ruiz and Aidan weren’t as pacified.
“We’d like more answers,” Aidan said. “I think Pam would too.”
Charlie eyed me. I raised my eyebrows.
In my peripheral vision, I caught sight of Harm and a nurse finally returning. I abruptly stood as did the others when they saw the nurse.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” The nurse looked about twelve years old and the tablet in her hand trembled. “Mr. Ruiz, you should have checked in with us when you arrived.”
“It’s Dr. Ruiz,” I said.
“I apologize, Dr. Ruiz. We …”
“Tell us how my son is doing,” the professor said. He sat down again as if expecting the news to fell him.
She consulted the tablet. “He’s still in surgery. The bullet did more damage than the initial scans indicated. The surgeons are repairing vessels, spleen, and the right lung as quickly as they can. They’ve stopped the blood loss, but it took time to do so.”
I suddenly had to sit too. I’m sure the others thought me squeamish. I knew better. What had knocked me down was guilt.
Why hadn’t I noticed that Dante had been shot when he tackled me? How much could I really blame that old teacher instinct to protect Tyler first? Why had it taken so long for me to check on him or Harm and Ang? I’d expected them to protect me, but wasn’t I equally responsible for protecting them? I’d cared for Dante as a student and later as a colleague. Was I really so damaged that I would treat him so lightly?
Just because I’d put him in the Dead Before Thirty bucket didn’t allow me to dismiss him as temporary help. If anything, I should have tried harder to keep him safe.
As I listened to the nurse finish speaking and take Dr. Ruiz away to fill out more paperwork, devastation overwhelmed me. It went beyond guilt. It even went beyond grief.
Something must have shown on my face. Aidan touched my elbow. “Don’t worry. My brother’s a tough guy.” He exchanged a look with Robert that brimmed with their shared family history.
They missed the glance between Charlie and me. We’d seen the same thing when the nurse read her report. She hadn’t connected with the family. That meant only one thing. She didn’t expect Dante to live.
“If I could borrow my sister?” Charlie didn’t wait for an answer as he pulled me from the room.
“You’re hurting my arm,” I said as soon as we were out of earshot.
He grunted, loosened the pressure a smidge but didn’t release me. He marched me down the hall till he found an empty conference room and shoved me inside.
“Sit.”
I did. Not because he ordered me to, but because my legs still felt rubbery thinking of Dante in a cold surgical theater. And, because for a change, Charlie didn’t seem to be bullying me as he usually did. He acted concerned, though an outsider might not believe it. I knew he was either giving me a break from the waiting room or giving Dante’s family some time alone.
“Ivy’ll be here in about fifteen minutes,” he said.
His frown usually meant he was revving up to tell me something that I didn’t want to hear.
“Why’s she coming here?” I heard the guarded tone in my voice and saw his glance at my clenched hands.<
br />
He combed through his light brown hair with tense fingers. For the first time, I saw the sprinkling of gray in his hair and the crow’s feet at his eyes. It didn’t make me like him any better.
“Because that’s what Ivy does, Pam.” Now I heard the edge in his voice. “She’s where people need her. Who’s Pellery?”
If he thought he could surprise me with that question, he thought wrong. I had no reason to lie or stall but thought for a minute just to make sure.
“I don’t know.”
“So you never met him before today?”
His steady gaze and FBI demeanor made my hackles rise, but I said mildly enough, “He said I did, and I knew his name.”
“Nothing else?”
I shook my head. Which made it hurt, and I saw sparkles along the conference room walls. “Did he have something to do with my accident?”
“Did he?”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. He sounded like my psychiatrist. Dr. Jo also answered my questions with questions.
When I opened my eyes, the sparkles were still there.
To get his attention off me, I shot back, “I’ve been leaving messages with Frank since yesterday and he hasn’t answered any. Is he okay?”
He twitched and then broke eye contact. “Our brother Frank?”
“No.” I laid on the sarcasm with a shovel. “Frank Sinatra. Hoped I could get him to sing Fly Me to the Moon for Ivy’s birthday, ‘cause that would make me her most favorite kid ever.”
“That’d be a good trick, seeing how Sinatra’s dead.” Charlie didn’t do sarcasm. He checked his phone. “Yeah, Frank’s okay.”
I made a half-hearted feint for his phone, but he held it out of reach. “He’ll call when he can. Be patient.”
“I needed him.”
Charlie shot me another of his penetrating looks. Maybe because Dante was dying upstairs, his voice softened.
“You got me instead.”
Feeling the need for altitude, I stumbled to the window, aware of my brother’s gaze following me. I sucked in a deep breath. People in the quad below moved like small ants in a fairy book land of teeny trees and benches. Nausea swept over me. The building seemed to sway and I grabbed the window frame. I couldn’t catch my breath. What idiot architect had thought heights safe for sick people?
Egrets, I've Had a Few (Deluded Detective Book 2) Page 9