by Dale Mayer
“Maybe,” Jax said, “but you’re never really done when it comes to food. Could be all kinds of things that you’ll need later.”
“Maybe, but that’s later,” she said. “I can’t do anything more now.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll finish yours too.” And he snagged the half piece of fish and the last few chips off her plate.
She chuckled. “Well, I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better.”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
“No,” she said. “Obviously not. The thing is, we still haven’t heard from anybody searching the hospital’s security video to know who hit you.”
“Not quite true,” Beau said. “It was your Benjamin.” He picked up his phone, brought up a screenshot that he had been sent, and held it up for her. And there was Benjamin dressed in a white doctor’s jacket with a stethoscope around his neck.
“How cliché,” she murmured. “You can still hide the devil doing the angel’s work.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but our world and our entire purpose right now is to make sure we take down this guy. He attacked one of us. He doesn’t get away with that again.”
“Maybe, but he already did once.”
“I know,” Beau said, “but we’ll get him. The hospital has been alerted that he’s already inside and that he has attacked somebody.”
She nodded, her face grim. “Doesn’t mean it’ll change anything though.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Beau said.
“No,” she said. “I know this guy. And he’s something else.”
“Maybe,” Beau said, “but you must admit Jax and I have kept you safe so far.”
“But maybe I should be keeping Jax safe,” she said with a smirk.
“How about we both look after each other?” Jax asked, his temper rising. He leaned over and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “I’d hate to leave you now.”
“True,” she said, getting melancholy. “You guys have done a great job looking after me.”
“So let’s stay strong,” he said.
“I will,” she said, “but I think Beau needs to look after both of us.” With that cheeky comment, she got up, walked to the food bags, and pulled out bottles of water. “Look at this. The only thing we’re missing is some coffee.”
“If you’re ready for coffee,” Beau said, “we can order it. I wanted to make sure you got food in you first. The last thing you need is a caffeine hit on an empty stomach.”
“Are you sure? Still, my stomach is so far from empty right now …”
Just then Danny’s pager went off, and he held it up and said, “I’ve got to go to the OR. I want to see what they’re up to. I asked them to tag me when we got to this stage.”
“Good,” she said. “Do you want me to come?”
He shook his head. “Better you stay safe,” he said. “And keep these guys out of trouble.” He laughed and headed out.
She frowned and hopped to the door, Jax getting up behind her as she stood in the hallway and waited until Danny and his MI6 guard safely turned in the direction of surgery. “I want you to go after him,” she said. “Make sure he gets there safe.”
“That’s nice,” Jax said, his arms across his chest. “I’m not going anywhere. The next time you go to the bathroom, I’m going inside with you.”
She gasped. “You can’t do that.”
He turned, gave her a hard look, and said, “Watch me.”
And Jax meant every word. Abby would not get more than four inches away from him again. He couldn’t believe he’d been taken out, and it would piss him off for a long time. The fact of the matter is, the guy had every opportunity to kill him and hadn’t. And why not? Had Benjamin been disturbed or could he have just left a line of women in the hallway? What was it he wanted to use Jax as? Collateral to keep her compliant? He didn’t know what the reason was, but he would make damn sure that this guy wouldn’t get a second chance. He knew Beau could feel the seething anger underneath his skin, whereas she appeared to be completely oblivious to it. And maybe that was okay too. But it was Jax’s job, and the fact is, he’d been taken out and that was something that would never, ever go over well.
“Ease up,” Beau said. “I’ll walk down and make sure that Danny arrived okay.” His long legs ate up the hallway until he turned and followed Danny’s direction.
Abby sighed and turned to look at Jax. “I shouldn’t tease you because the bottom line was that, while Benjamin was busy taking you out, he couldn’t be taking me out. For that, I’m grateful and very sad that you got hurt.” And she reached out, cupped his face gently, and kissed him on the lips. Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
Instantly his arms came around her, and he held her close. “I’m just so damn pissed that he got me in the first place,” he muttered against her hair.
She nodded, strands of long chestnut hair flying loose from the clip and floating across his face. “I get that,” she said. “And it didn’t seem to matter how much I ever did to hide from Benjamin. He always seemed to find me. And that’s what he’s done again now.”
What he heard here was a sense of defeat already and a sense of victimization, as if knowing that she could do nothing to get away from Benjamin. And with Benjamin taking Jax out himself once, it just confirmed her belief that this guy was better than anyone, if not a little bit supernatural in his methods.
“We’ll get him,” he said calmly. “Don’t you worry about it.”
“I know you believe that,” she said. “And I really want to too. But he’s just not quite the same as the rest of us.”
“No,” Jax said, still holding her close. “He’s broken. There’s something wrong with him. But that doesn’t mean he can get away with doing this shit.”
When Beau hadn’t come back by now, she turned, looked down the hallway, and said, “Surely nobody will go after him. Will they?”
Just then Jax’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and found a message from Beau.
Am I bringing coffee back?
He hit Dial and put it on Speaker. When Beau answered, Jax said, “I figured she needed to hear your voice. She was worried when you didn’t come back right away.”
Beau’s beautiful laughter rolled through the phone. “I’m fine,” he said. “You might want to consider that somebody’s got to be my size to cause the same damage he did to Jax. It’ll take another really big guy to bring me down.”
“No,” Abby said sharply. “A bullet will do the job in a nanosecond.”
Silence. “Wow, you got a point,” Beau said. “But do you want coffee with cream or sugar?”
“I want a latte,” she said. “No sugar and make it as large as you can get.”
“Done. Back in five.”
“And stay safe,” she snapped sharply into the phone at Beau as Jax held it up.
“I will,” Beau said gently. “You look after him.”
And on that note, he chuckled and hung up.
Jax rolled his eyes.
“He’ll really get a lot of mileage out of that, won’t he?” she asked.
“No way he won’t.”
“Good,” she said. “It helps to keep things a little bit lighter right now.”
“True,” he said. “At the same time, we can’t have things so easy that we forget.”
She nodded. “We can’t return to the hotel tonight, can we?”
He shrugged.
Just as they stood here, a man strode toward them.
Jax said, “Oh, oh, don’t look now but here comes the head of security.”
“That asshole,” she said, separating from Jax and turning to look. She stiffened, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared at the man as he approached.
He just looked at her, dismissed her as not important, then glanced at Jax. “I hear you were attacked,” he said smoothly.
“Funny how word gets around like that,” Jax said. “So, where were you?”
The man�
�s eyebrows shot up. “Down with Abdul’s father and his mother. There are video cameras everywhere that will clear me.”
Unfortunately there were. Jax just didn’t have word as to who’d been cleared and who hadn’t yet. Jax nodded and said, “Hopefully they will. And we haven’t forgotten that you shot those people on the cruise ship.”
“And again, at my brother’s orders,” he said smoothly.
“Why are you here?” Abby asked.
“Abdul’s father, my brother, would like to talk to you.”
“Why? I told him that it was arsenic poisoning and that somebody was trying to murder Abdul.”
“Yes. Obviously he wants to discuss that further. But, more than that, he wants to know who tried to kill his son.” When she didn’t move, he added, “Now,” and promptly left.
Chapter 15
Abby so didn’t want to talk to Nahim. He was the man who had orchestrated the takeover of the cruise ship, all to get at her, and she would never forgive him for that excessive use of force—killing four innocent passengers—when a simple and commonsense request could have been made instead. She looked at Jax. “What do you think?”
He reached an arm around her shoulder, tucking her up close.
She appreciated his instinctive knowledge of how she felt because it sucked. Like, it really sucked to always be afraid.
He nodded and said, “I think it’s time that we had a talk with Nahim.”
She didn’t really agree, but it was probably the best thing to do in the circumstances. She didn’t always agree with the way things were handled. What else was new? Together, they all walked to where Nahim waited for news from the work being done inside the OR. He stood, his facial expression very different from the first time she’d met him. In that initial face-to-face with him, she felt as if she were some rare specimen to crawl out from underneath the carpet. But, right now, his focus on her was more direct. “My son is slowly being murdered?” he asked. “What do you know of this?”
“I know that arsenic was fed to him slowly and steadily over time,” she admitted readily. “As to who, I have no proof.”
Nahim looked down at his wife. “Very few people are close to him.”
“So you immediately accuse your wife?” she asked, her voice steadfast. Jax had kept his arm around her shoulder, silent in his support. And she appreciated it. He wasn’t trying to disagree with her viewpoint or tell her not to do her thing but just stood here, letting her talk to the father.
“I am not blaming her,” Nahim argued. “But she’s responsible for his food.”
“Sure,” Abby said. “But many other people have access, including yourself.”
Immediately his nostrils flared, and his voice sharpened. “You think that I would hurt my son?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Would you? Do you have life insurance on him? Maybe you already know that she carries a second son, so the first one’s a spare.”
His ire rose, as his fists clenched tighter. He took a step forward.
Only Jax was waiting. “You will not come any closer,” he said quietly.
Nahim’s gaze darted in Jax’s direction, then back at her. “You cannot expect to accuse me of murder or trying to hurt my son like that and not expect me to respond.”
“I’m glad you responded as you did, with emotions, maybe with honesty,” she said simply. “Maybe you are not responsible. But it doesn’t change the fact that someone administered the poison. Over three consecutive months. Whether that was you, your brother, or somebody else, like his medical physician”—she paused long enough so that Nahim could really assimilate her words—“isn’t for me to decipher. But I won’t allow you to blame your wife.”
“How was that not for you to decipher?” he asked. “You cannot throw around accusations like that.”
“I don’t care to,” she said. “I am much more concerned about the fact that your little boy is suffering, and he doesn’t need to be, and this must be stopped.”
Nahim shook his head. “On what do you base these charges?”
“They’re not my charges. The medical tests prove it,” she said. “All I can tell you is that your son was systematically fed arsenic. It’s up to you to determine who closest to you is trying to hurt you through killing your son.”
He stared at her and tilted his chin, as if finally considering her words, and then glanced at Jax.
Jax waited.
She asked Nahim, “Who has the most to gain if your son dies? Who has the most to gain if you die without an heir?” His gaze widened, and she nodded. “Who has the most to gain if something in your family blows up like this? Outside of causing you and your wife massive pain, what else does it do?”
“It disrupts the lineage,” he admitted. “The power would return to my brother.”
“Return?” Jax asked.
“I’m the second-born son, but Father deemed me to take over for him.”
“But only if you die, correct?”
Nahim nodded.
The head of security stepped forward. “I don’t like you implying that I would kill my brother to take his place,” he snapped. “We made peace over this many years ago. He is my boss and always will be.”
“Until he’s not here anymore,” she said quite calmly. “But it may not have anything to do with you, Nahim, or your brother. You might also want to consider why I was supposedly brought in to help treat your son.”
“You were the best, the doctor said. Although I don’t see how this is. You are a woman. And you are young.”
She snorted. “I’m the best at what I do,” she said. “Your son does not have cancer. So that doctor already misdiagnosed Abdul’s condition. There was no need for me to look after your son.”
“So you’re saying that he’s a poor doctor? This, I was wondering.”
“Because your son wasn’t getting any better?”
“And, in many ways, he was getting worse. Nothing seemed to help stop his downward slide.”
“Did Dr. Windberg see your son before you hired him as the full-time doctor for you and your family?”
Nahim nodded. “I interviewed several doctors, and each of them did a full exam of Abdul.”
“So it’s possible that Dr. Windberg could have administered some arsenic at the time, making your son greatly ill. Then, when you brought Windberg back on, your son was already very sick, and he just helped his condition deteriorate to this point.”
“And yet, there is no reason for that,” he said.
“Except for the fact that you didn’t bring in Dr. Windberg as your first choice, did you?” she asked. Because now she wondered about something else.
He looked at her, frowned, and then said, “You can’t know this.”
She nodded slowly. “Dr. Windberg thought for sure, his ego being what it is, that you would immediately bring him back as the primary physician for your family. At that point in time, he might have done much to help your son. And maybe the condition that Abdul suffered from earlier wasn’t all that bad. I can’t know because I’m not privy to all that’s gone on. But, if Windberg administered arsenic at the time of his interview, thinking he’d be back within a few days, he could have easily helped your son recover. But, when you didn’t bring Windberg back immediately, I think his attitude changed. He knew that you had another first choice for your primary physician—or a second or even a third. And likely he kept administering the arsenic as a punishment to you.”
“That makes no sense,” Nahim said with a wave of his hand. “You’re not giving us any proof. These are fabrications and lies.”
“Could be, sure,” she said. “My theory could be wrong because I don’t have a complete and true set of facts here. And, yes, I want it to be Dr. Windberg because I have a predisposition to hate him—rightly earned as he attacked me and put me in the hospital. But I also don’t want you to be taken in by his lies.”
Nahim frowned at her. “What does this mean?” He looked at his head of security and ba
ck at her. But Jax stepped up and explained the scenario.
Nahim’s eyes widened. “I know nothing of this,” he exclaimed. “That is not allowed in our culture.”
“It’s not allowed in ours either,” she said. “Windberg needs to return to the US, where they’re waiting for him, but instead we’re here in England.”
“And he is here too.”
“I know,” she said. “I saw him. And I think he is watching me. I wonder if this whole thing wasn’t to bring me back into his clutches.”
Nahim studied her up and down and then shrugged, as if to say it made no sense to him.
She didn’t want to take it as a personal insult, but it was such an odd feeling to know that she had been checked over and dismissed as not even worthy. She laughed. “I’m grateful for your response, but I wish Benjamin had the same.”
“I will ask him,” Nahim said. “But it is highly unlikely he would do anything like this for a woman. Women are easy and cheap.”
“Sure,” Abby said in a dry tone. “In your world. I wonder how your wife feels about that.” She glanced over to see the woman.
Her face was carefully blank as she sat on a chair, having nothing to say, of course.
He glanced at her and then back at Abby. “We still must know the sex of the child.”
“And you will know the sex of the child when it’s born,” she said carefully. “I won’t encourage your prejudices as to whatever sex is the child she’s carrying.”
He glared at her.
She shrugged. “Neither will we chintz on the care of your son, as you think that maybe it’s okay for him to die because a second son may be on the way.”
He just shook his head. “I would do no such thing.”
“Right,” she said. “I do believe you about Abdul.” But she stood here and stared at him with such disdain on her face that she knew he got the message.
He drew himself up to his full height and said, “I do not like you.”
“I do not like you,” she retorted immediately.
He looked shocked at that. “Why?”
“Because you treat your wife like dirt. Because you allowed people to hurt your son. Because you used brute force to engage my services when a simple phone call would do. And, even now, all you care about is making sure you have another son on the way.”