“And I understand you were there last night? When it happened?”
I could tell she was being deliberately vague. She was handing me a sanitized version of whatever had been relayed to her by the attending nurses that had wheeled Kaylan back hours before, they themselves getting the information from the officers that had escorted us up from the scene. Not wanting to assume anything, it was almost like she was an attorney, offering open-ended questions, intending not to lead my responses in any way.
An approach I could appreciate, even if I was in no mood for it.
“I was,” I answered, shoving the words out quickly, making no effort to hide the underlying sigh that came with them. “Is she okay? Can I see her?”
Pressing her lips down tight, the doctor regarded me for a moment. It was clear there was so much more she wanted to ask, details from the night before she was aching to have, but to her credit, she didn’t press.
An amount of self-restraint there was no way I would have been able to display in that moment.
“She is,” Whitney began, “or rather, will be. Right now, she has second degree burns on her face and hands, and a linear fracture along the back of her skull.”
Lifting my face, I felt my eyelids lower, my hands curling up into fists. Whatever angst I’d felt a moment before managed to climb even higher, mixing with the weak caffeine in my system, threatening to send me straight through the ceiling.
The burns would have been from the initial blast. If the smoke I’d smelled was any indicator, they were almost certainly chemical, meaning scarring would be likely.
The fracture would have been from being blasted backward, landing on the frozen porch. Already burned and lifted into the air, she’d been unable to do anything to break her fall, her entire weight coming down hard on her occipital lobe.
“We also treated her for a variety of cuts and contusions, dug out a tremendous amount of wood shards and splinters. For the time being, we have her sedated and will be keeping her for observation.”
By the time she was done speaking, my shoulders were mere millimeters beneath my ear lobes. Every muscle drawn up tight, I held the pose a moment, clenching, wanting so bad to scream at the ceiling, before slowly pushing it away.
Already, it was clear what the doctor thought of me. No matter what the story that had accompanied Kaylan might have been, the woman was a professional, had probably heard every possible tale there was about how someone ended up in the emergency room with such an assortment of injuries.
Getting angry, making a scene, would only galvanize such opinions.
And more importantly, do absolutely nothing to help my friend.
Peeling my eyes open, I tilted my chin downward, meeting her gaze. For a moment, I said absolutely nothing, letting her see the gamut of emotions passing through me.
“Thank you, doctor,” I whispered. “Is there any way I can see her?”
Chapter Fifteen
Like a naughty child being led to the principal’s office, for some reason Dr. Whitney felt the need to escort me back to Kaylan’s room. Doing so in complete silence, she stayed a step or two ahead, everything about her making it quite clear she still didn’t know what to make of me.
Which, I suppose, was a valid stance.
Since leaving my sister-in-law and her family in Nashville months before, I hadn’t done a single bit of grooming. Not on the inch-thick tuft of beard that protruded from my jaw. Certainly not on the hair that now hung in shaggy loops over the tops of my ears and across my forehead.
With my coat and boot now pieces of evidence shot full of holes, I was down to the backup attire dug from the storage bin mounted in the bed of my truck. Mud-streaked and ragged, they didn’t exactly help to offset the shaggy appearance.
Nor did the stray droplets of dried blood still splattered across from my chest, remnants of my encounter with the man now locked up across town.
Even for Montana, I was a sight.
Keeping one step ahead and one step to the side from me at all times, she steered us through a series of turns. Covering more than a hundred yards in less than a minute, the journey ended abruptly outside a recovery room.
“Like I said, the patient is sedated right now,” Whitney said, both arms clasped across her torso. “Please don’t try to wake her or bother her in any way.”
What the woman thought I was going to try to do, I didn’t have any idea. Reflexively, I felt a pang of anger rise, the frustration I’d experienced in the waiting room resurfacing, before slowly ebbing away.
My fight right now wasn’t with this woman. She was just doing her job.
And even if it was, she was here to help my friend. That had to take precedence over any wounded pride I might be harboring.
“Yes, of course,” I managed. “Thank you for letting me see her.”
Lifting her face just slightly, Whitney’s gaze met mine. Her jaw sagged, as if she were about to respond, before closing, a simple nod her only response.
Shifting her shoulders to the side, she motioned for me to enter.
My first impression upon stepping into the room was that it strongly resembled the one I’d been housed in after being shot in Tennessee. And the one that I had visited a friend in down in Southern California.
And a thousand others around the country, all made by the same companies, all following the same basic parameters.
Small and rectangular in shape, the total space was no more than a dozen feet in length and a little over half that in width. Dominated by a standard hospital bed, the full array of associated monitors and apparatuses lined the far wall.
Across from me was a window with blinds closed, a shade pulled down three-quarters of the way, ensuring no small bit of early morning light penetrated.
In front of it sat a single plastic chair, the kind that was hell on the back and butt, meant to make visitors as uncomfortable as possible.
And - by extension - keep any time spent to a minimum.
Each of those details I took in with merely a quick glance. Even if I did have the intention of sticking around, it would have to be in the waiting room. That much the doctor had made clear already.
Instead, my focus went straight to the bed. To the back angled upward to forty degrees and Kaylan resting atop it, her hands encased in thick gauze, the same for the majority of her head.
From where I stood, the only parts of her that even remained visible were concentric ovals around her mouth and eyes, everything else wrapped in white.
Taking a step forward, I felt the air slide from my lungs. In my adult years, I had seen my share of injuries. Battlefield wounds and damage much, much worse than what she had suffered the night before.
But much like the shock of watching the front door of my office explode outward, those were within certain contexts. I knew when my FAST team and I went on a mission that things could happen. It was understood that when a Navy patrol was out in hostile waters, we could take on casualties.
And so it wasn’t quite as jolting when those things came to pass. No less severe, but there was a certain desensitization to it.
Forewarned being forearmed, and all that.
Even though the doctor had given me the full litany of her injuries, had told me what to expect, I was not at all prepared to see Kaylan splayed out in such a state. Not the woman that just ten hours before had been bemoaning how miserably full she was.
The same one that considered walking from our office down to the sandwich shop on the opposite end of the strip to be her daily exercise.
My legs seemed to go numb as I eased forward. Approaching the foot of the bed, I extended a hand, my every reaction to reach out, to touch her, to provide some form of solace.
Making it to within a few inches of the white bedding enveloping her, I pulled up short. Palm balanced above her knee, fingers spread wide, I held the pose, staring down at her, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
There was no reason for Kaylan to be here. Not at all, and
certainly not in the state she was in. Whoever had rigged that front door had meant for it to be me. They had hoped to catch me off-guard, render me helpless, and then finish me on the front porch.
No advanced warning. No pretense of a fair fight.
Damn near an execution, performed right beneath the sign that bore my very name.
Who they were, why they had done it, just two more questions I didn’t have answers to.
“But I will,” I whispered. For the first time since arriving, I felt resolve begin to seep in. Move past the frustration, the confusion, the shock of the last hours.
Letting it push through, I watched as my hand began to tremble. As thoughts, feelings, that I so often managed to keep tamped into place began to rise.
“You have my word, K.”
Chapter Sixteen
My phone was vibrating against the plastic cupholder in the middle console as I jerked open the door to my truck. Going straight for it, I slid inside, slamming the door shut behind me.
It was enough to stop the frigid morning breeze from penetrating, but did nothing for the interior temperature hovering at most a degree or two above freezing.
Of everybody in the world, there wasn’t but a handful that had the direct number to my cellphone. Of those, one was now laying in a hospital bed eighty yards from where I was sitting. Most of the others were still asleep, as they should be at such an hour.
That left only a precious few, none the type to be calling unless it was important.
“Tate,” I said, thumbing the phone to life. Pressing the button on the side to send it to speaker phone, I balanced it across my thigh.
With both hands, I dug into the pockets of my coat in search of the truck keys. Each breath shot out before me in a white plume, ethereal zeppelins connecting me and the steering wheel before dissipating.
“Oh, thank God,” a male voice said, shoving the words out in one quick bunch, underscored by a heavy sigh.
Just as fast, whatever relief there was evaporated. “Where the Hell have you been?!”
My search for the truck keys came to a momentary pause, a cleft appearing between my brows as I stared down at the phone.
The voice was one I would recognize anywhere. For years, it had been piped directly into an earpiece, providing me with intel and oversight on every DEA operation I ever took part in.
What didn’t fit was the words he was saying, for tone as much as substance.
“Pally?”
Responding in kind, my stomach drew in tight. For more than a decade – a stretch both preceding and outlasting my time with the Administration - Mike Palinksy had served as the best ops man on the government payroll. A technological savant, there wasn’t a security camera he couldn’t get access to, a blueprint or schematic he couldn’t dig up whenever we needed it.
Not once did he ever lace up a boot or fire a weapon, but that didn’t make him any more dispensable than the rest of us.
Even after getting out and migrating to the private sector, I knew he still kept tabs on all of us. Forever his guys, he had certain indicators set up throughout various systems, flags meant to alert him should anything arise with one of us.
What I didn’t know was how he could have possibly already gotten word about what happened at the office the night before.
Or how that would be enough to make him open with mentions of both God and Hell, two entities I knew for a fact he didn’t believe in.
“Sorry,” I muttered. In my haste to get inside last night, I hadn’t even thought to grab my phone. “Left my phone in the truck.”
“Son of a...” he muttered, his voice trailing away. “What have I told you about that? You finally get a twenty-first century model and you leave the damn thing in the truck?”
It was true that the man had scolded me many times for my indifference to most forms of technology. Just as Kaylan had. And most of my clients.
What didn’t fit was why he was choosing this moment to berate me on it.
“Look, I was a little distracted when I got here,” I spat back. With every word, each of the competing, disparate emotions I’d been carrying just moments before surged upward, all wanting to be heard at once. “Besides, hospitals don’t let you take the damn things in with you anyway.”
In response to my outburst, to the vitriol I was flinging back, the line went quiet. Outside, a rusted Ford pickup spewing an uneven tail of exhaust rolled up. Choosing a spot on the far end of the row I was on, it pulled to a stop.
Thinking better of climbing out just yet, the driver sat in place, content to remain in the warmth of the vehicle.
“You’re at the hospital?” Pally eventually asked. Gone was the previous angst in his voice, as was the rush of relief and concern.
In their place was the same calculating calm that I had come to know.
“Are you okay?”
“I am,” I replied, peeling back whatever hostility had been in my voice to match. “Kaylan is in bad shape, though. Tried to duck into the office last night to take a piss, had the damn front door explode in her face.”
Most people would react to such news with something. Some form of a follow-up question, or an admonishment, or condolences. Concern, perhaps.
All I got back from Pally was silence.
“But that’s not what you were calling about,” I said, my mind piecing things together.
“No,” he whispered. “I’m calling because Martin is dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
For as clichéd and overwrought as movies got almost everything about the prison experience, Junior Ruiz couldn’t help but feel a bit of déjà vu as he walked down the narrow concrete sidewalk toward the front gate. It was as if he had seen this part before, Hollywood depictions surprisingly accurate on this tiny detail.
Behind him stood a trio of guards, still close enough he could hear their voices, a vain attempt to pretend their eyes weren’t boring into his back. That their position had nothing to do with where he was or what he was doing, their focus on making sure he got out without incident.
And maybe a lingering glance on who arrived to get him, that serving as data to be written down, entered into some government database, one more piece in his file no doubt.
A file that, if Jones and Smith were to be taken at their word, was about to disappear forever.
Tight to either side of the sidewalk corridor were the omnipresent chain link walls that had insulated him for so long. Rising well above his head and lined with razor wire, one wasn’t sufficient. Instead, a strip of gravel had been inserted between two, enough space to ensure that if anybody was to decide to try going up and over, they’d still have to do it a second time before getting out.
Gaze locked straight ahead, Ruiz made a point not to look in either direction. He’d seen enough chain link to last him a lifetime, had witnessed sufficient faux camaraderie from the guards for much longer than that.
Focus locked on the gate before him, on the final barrier standing between him and what he’d craved for so long, Ruiz kept his pace even. He forced his features to remain neutral, not to reveal the tempest of thoughts and emotions swirling within.
One step at a time, he cut the distance from fifteen yards down to ten. From ten down to five.
As he drew within the last few steps, his pace slowed just slightly, the good folks at United States Prison Lompoc granting him one last indignity. One final bell toll to remind him of his time spent with them.
The automatic release of the metal latch on the gate. The same sound that had started and ended his every day. A noise he had heard more than fifty-five hundred times.
Echoing out into the cool early morning air, it preceded the door swinging wide. Spring-loaded and pressure-released, it burst out to a ninety-degree angle. Waiting at attention, it remained fixed in place as Ruiz passed through, never once slowing his pace.
A march that continued until he heard the door swing back closed behind him, the clear din of metal slamming against meta
l filling his ears.
Only then did he stop, raising his gaze toward the sky. Filling his lungs with the first free air he’d known in ages, he stared toward the heavens, the last gasps of stars just fading out in the face of encroaching morning.
A sight that more than once he didn’t know if he would ever live to see again.
Damned sure not at this point, just days past his forty-sixth birthday.
“You expecting me to carry you the rest of the way or something?”
Tinged with just the right amount of shrill, the voice cut through the enormity of the moment. Landing deep in the cortex of Ruiz’s brain, it aligned with memories from long ago, matching up perfectly, a sound he would know anywhere.
A smile pulled one corner of his mouth back as he lowered his face and shifted his attention to the side. Scanning fast, he spotted the black Chrysler with the fresh wax and polished grill sitting in the first stall.
And more importantly, the short woman with wide hips and glossy dark hair standing beside it. Backside resting just above the front tire, she stood with arms crossed, bright red lips pursed.
“Esmera.”
It was true that his last condition before agreeing had been given just the night before. Meant to be taxing, the purpose of it had been twofold, Ruiz both wanting to set the men to scrambling and to test what they were truly capable of.
The answer - if her presence before him now was any indicator – being quite a lot.
When the topic of who would arrive to fetch him had first arisen, she was admittedly well on down the list. Focused almost entirely on the business side of his operation, Ruiz’s first thought had been maybe one of his former lieutenants, perhaps one of the guys from shipping or even the fields.
Never would he have imagined them dipping into his family.
Much like he had brushed aside their wanting to wait until noon and bring in the cameras, they had done the same on this point. A none-too-subtle way of letting him know that while the majority of their heavy lifting was now over, it was not to be forgotten how strong their reach could be.
Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6) Page 6