by Dale Mayer
But, as long as he lived true to himself, everything else wasn’t his problem. As he looked down at Gizella, he had to wonder. What had she done for the last five years? Had she gone on to do whatever it was that she had planned to do, and he couldn’t even remember what that was. How bad was that? The thing is, the longer he spent in her company, he remembered a lot of the other things in life. Feelings, the emotions she’d evoked, that sense of freedom and companionship. They were all pretty special.
Sure, she’d been hot as hell too. But that hadn’t been what he’d been looking for at the time. He couldn’t even remember why at first, but then he realized that he was just coming out of a relationship back then. He nodded at that. He also wasn’t somebody who jumped from one to the other. Maybe it just hadn’t been the right time back then.
As he looked at her now, he wondered at the forces of nature that brought them together again. He wasn’t superstitious, and he certainly didn’t spend much time thinking about that kind of stuff, but it often made him wonder if the universe had a plan that he didn’t know about. A map that he followed instinctively without ever consciously seeing the road signs and the turning points in his life. Because this would definitely be one of them.
He sagged back and waited for Mason to get hold of him.
When he did, he said, “The father will pull through. The bullet went high and missed anything major.” Mason sighed. “The mother, on the other hand, she’s conscious, but just sitting there. She’s refusing to be checked over, saying that she’s just fine.”
“Which presumably isn’t true,” Baylor said.
“We’re checking with her doctor back home,” Mason added, “but, as long as she’s refusing to be examined, not a whole lot we can do here for her.”
“I suspect there’s nothing we can do at all,” Baylor said. “I’m afraid this wasn’t supposed to be a goodbye voyage in terms of celebrating the end of chemo. It would be a goodbye voyage period.”
“That’s kind of depressing too,” Mason said, “and I hope you’re wrong.”
“I hope so too.”
“How is Gizella doing?”
“She seems fine and is sleeping right now,” he said. “They say sleeping will help her a lot.”
“Okay, as soon as she’s awake, get her out of there. Take her back to the safe house and keep her there. We don’t even know if the guy who gave her the drugs is one of the ones we took down.”
“Yeah, and I guess, if he went to the lengths he did, we can’t trust that he’ll just walk away now.”
“Nope, we can’t at all. We also don’t know who is behind this whole kidnapping scheme. Our sources are telling us it was a higher-up job.”
“It’s got to be,” Baylor said. “Too much manpower and money has been involved in this kidnapping otherwise.”
“Agreed,” Mason said. “We need to find out who’s pulling the strings.”
“That’s what we don’t know. She did confirm that the man she sketched was on the yacht.”
“Well, that’s good,” Mason said, “and that also gives us the Russian tie-in.”
“Exactly. But she also says she didn’t see him on the riverboat cruise.”
“No? Well, I guess that would make sense too. He was there to capture them. Why would he need to be there afterward, if she’s just under guard at that point in time?”
“Exactly.
“Okay, I’ll check in later,” Mason said. “We’re still running intel on our end.”
“Well, I’m sitting here, babysitting,” he joked.
“Sounds like it’s where you need to be,” Mason said in all seriousness.
After they hung up, Baylor turned back to the bed to see bright blue eyes staring at him. “Hello there,” he said gently. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered. Then she yawned unexpectedly, and a grin peeked out. “Actually I’m feeling better than I have in a while.”
Chapter 5
Gizella’s smiled brightened even more when she realized that she really would leave the hospital now. With Baylor’s assistance she made her way onto her feet and slowly walked to the bathroom. “See? I’m feeling much better.”
“Liar,” he said, not pulling any punches.
She glared at him. “You could at least leave me to my delusions.”
“It doesn’t do any of us any good,” he said. “We’ll get you back to the safe house, and hopefully you’ll be feeling better soon for real.”
“I’d like to go back to sleep,” she admitted. “I don’t sleep well here.”
“Not everybody does,” he admitted. “Hospitals aren’t for everyone.”
“Honestly I don’t know why they’d be for anyone,” she said. “People die here, you know?”
He snorted at that. “People die everywhere.”
“Sure, but they all congregate in one place called hospitals.” At that, he burst out laughing. She tossed him a grin. “See? I’m feeling much better.”
“If you say so.”
Forty minutes later they’d already done the paperwork and were walking out the front door. “I’m also hungry,” she announced.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll have food for you when we get back.”
“Good,” she murmured. Outside in the fresh air, she stopped and took several long, deep, slow breaths.
“Have you ever spent a long time in the hospital?” he asked curiously.
She looked up at him, her expression shadowed. “Not me,” she said, “but a girlfriend of mine. She was anorexic and ended up dying,” she said. “We had several really bad sessions when she had to be hospitalized. It looked like she had turned the corner, and then, well, she hadn’t. And then there’s my mom.”
“I’m sorry,” he said in surprise. “We don’t tend to think of anorexia as being fatal.”
“No, we don’t think of it,” she said, “but those who don’t get help certainly will die. It was really hard to watch.”
“There was nothing you could do, I presume.”
“I tried,” she said simply. “It was heartbreaking to find out that what we thought had been a positive turn had ended up being too little, too late.”
“And, of course, you blame yourself.”
“It’s not that I blame myself as much as I found it hard to be so helpless. It was too late to turn things around. I was watching somebody die who seemed to have—how do I say it?—a death wish,” she said quietly.
“Although to us, on the outside, it almost seems that way.”
“It’s hard to understand the mentality, isn’t it? She was so beautiful,” she said simply. “Like seriously stunning. But she couldn’t see it. Literally all she saw was fat. She thought she was way too big, and yet she was so thin that her skin was translucent, and we saw the tissue underneath. It was just sickening.”
“How long ago?”
“Long enough that I should have dealt with it and yet not so long ago that I’ll ever forget it. In other words, eight years,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “Some things we aren’t supposed to forget,” he said, “and, at least in that way, your friend will be remembered.”
“I like that,” she said with a gentle smile.
He pointed to a vehicle off to the side where Hudson waited for them. “You ready?”
“Very,” she said. “I’m so tired and so stressed.”
“A couple days of rest will help that,” he murmured.
“I hope so,” she said, as she got into the vehicle, looked at him and asked, “So back to the safe house?”
“Yep, unless you plan on passing out on me again.”
She winced at that. “I wasn’t planning on it the first time.”
“But you did, so telling me that you’re fine now is a little suspect.”
“They pumped my stomach just in case, and they ran something through my blood to help dilute whatever it was,” she said. “And I’m feeling okay compared to before but still a little light-he
aded. It’s as if my mind wants to move forward but is struggling.”
“Give it time,” he said. “Some of these drugs can take forever to wear off.”
“True. Still, it is what it is,” she said.
He laughed. “I like how we always say that when there’s nothing we can do to change anything.”
“Right,” she said. They pulled up in front of the safe house, and she was quickly escorted inside. “Do you ever worry about us being followed?”
“All the time,” he said, “which is also why this vehicle will be taken out for a ride again.”
She stared at him in surprise and turned back toward the vehicle, but some other male now drove it out onto the other side of the road. “Interesting,” she murmured.
“We have to do these things to make sure the bad guys are always on their toes.” He led her up to the apartment and inside again.
She yawned, as she sagged down on the bed. “Gosh, I’m really tired.”
“You could have stayed in the hospital,” he said.
Immediately her spine stiffened, and she glared at him. “No,” she snapped. “I had enough of that place.”
“So, maybe lie down and just rest for a while,” he said.
“Are you doing anything yourself?”
“Not at the moment.”
“I didn’t get to see my mom,” she said. “That was hard.”
“We can take you back in the morning.”
“That might be better,” she said. “She won’t want to leave my father’s side.”
“No, and she also refused medical treatment herself.”
At that, she stopped, looked around, and asked, “Does she need any?”
“No way to know,” he said. “She won’t allow them to check her over.”
She frowned again. “She is kind of stubborn,” she murmured.
“And possibly hiding something?”
“In what way?” she asked.
“I don’t know, and I’m sorry to ask this, but have you considered that this trip may have been more of a last trip than a celebration trip?”
“I wondered about that,” she said. “It just added to my impetus to join them. I wasn’t planning on coming. My father didn’t want me to come either because I’m always that negative dissonance in the air, you know?”
“Deliberately?”
She nodded. “Hmm, yes, for the longest time. But now, over the last couple years, I knew it upset my mother to have that kind of conflict in the house, so I did really let some of that go. But my father knew how I felt. His opinion was that I wasn’t old enough to understand,” she said, with a roll of her eyes.
“Which really means that you don’t understand where he was coming from.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to.”
“You were also coming from a position where you were upset, not only for your own beliefs and trust being dismissed but also because you were worried about your own mother being hurt.”
“Very much so,” she said. “I could have handled so much if he hadn’t hurt my mother so badly. I personally believe that stress and the sense of abandonment contributed to the rapid decline of her health.”
“I wonder if they ever do any studies about trauma and stress and things like the recurrence of cancer or even the first bout of cancer.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it’s a pretty obvious thing in many cases. I had a friend who had cancer. She beat it, and she went on to start marathon training. She was so triumphant that she beat the cancer that she actually ran a marathon, but, after she finished, only maybe three weeks later, the cancer was back.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I think that all that training was a huge stress on her body. Like maybe that in itself rendered her immune system unable to suppress it. She ended up with another reoccurrence of the cancer.”
“That would be pretty darn sad,” he said, “particularly when you think of all the unhealthy ways that people engage in to celebrate beating cancer.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But we always forget that any stress—physiological, mental, and emotional—has an incredible debilitating effect on our health.”
“As you well know.”
“Yes,” she said, “as I well know. I got quite sick after my girlfriend passed away. More than just fatigue, depression. I would eat and vomit up meals. It was almost like, if she couldn’t eat, I would eat for her, and then I’d almost imitate her reaction, and I upchucked it all. I talked to a shrink for a while to get my head back in the game. It was really just guilt.”
“Guilt because you couldn’t help her?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Guilt that I didn’t see something, guilt that I didn’t say something, guilt that I didn’t call somebody,” she groaned. “And none of it makes any sense.” She flopped herself on the bed, then shifted slightly to make herself more comfortable. Yawning, she then curled up, her head on the pillow. “I wasn’t kidding about food,” she said. “But right now I think sleep is the priority.”
“Sleep then,” he said. “You need it.”
“After that, maybe we can contact my mom?”
“We can certainly do that by phone, if you want.”
“That would be good. If she wants me to come down, we can. Otherwise, I’m not too sure I want to go back.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t get in to see your father while you were there.”
“I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize his health either,” she said.
“Are you thinking that seeing you would make him worse?”
“I don’t know about that,” she said with a frown. “But maybe. Just the stress in our relationship can’t help.”
“Then maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t see him. He needs a chance to heal as best he can too.”
“I know,” she said. “Something like this always seems to surmount the other issues. It’s just not fair.”
“Meaning that he has been attacked and that’s now the priority, so his bad deeds get swept away?”
“Something like that.” She yawned yet again. “It’s too much of a moral discussion,” she said. “I can’t get my head around it, so I’ll have a nap instead. Good night,” she said abruptly.
*
Baylor stepped out of the room but left the door open. He didn’t know if she would really drop off to sleep that fast, but, if she did, it would be really good for her. It was amazing how fast she went out, but, hey, he was good with it. Just as he walked out, he heard Hudson answer a call. As soon as Hudson was off the phone, Baylor looked over at him expectantly. “Problems?”
“Her father’s condition is worsening.”
Baylor froze. “Shit,” he said. “We couldn’t get in to see him while we were there, but I didn’t hear anything about a downturn.”
“I just heard myself,” he said. “They don’t think he’s terminal at the moment, but he may have to go in for more surgery.”
Baylor nodded slowly. “What about the mom?”
“She’s by his side and still keeps diverting all the attention back to him,” Hudson said.
“Right, and we still have no more on the guys who kidnapped them, do we?”
“Nothing new, no.”
“Great, but we’ve still got guards on them, right?”
“Yes. Even more so now because of the downturn in his health condition.”
“Why?”
“There was a suggestion that maybe it was a ruse.”
At that, Baylor stared at him in surprise and slowly nodded. “That’s not a bad way to go,” he said. “Make it sound like it’s way worse than it is and rush him off to the OR, then move him out somewhere else. Trouble is, the good guys or the bad guys could each want to do this, for their own means.”
“That was the thought.”
“Hard to do an exchange if you don’t have the people you need. If that’s what this is all about.”
“Exactly,” Hudson
said. “Probably why our orders are to escort her home tomorrow.”
“Interesting,” he murmured.
Hudson looked at him in surprise. “What’s interesting about it?”
“Just that we’re going home so fast. We haven’t solved any of this.”
“I don’t think solving it is what they’re concerned about. The hope was to get all three of them back to US soil.”
“But, if the father’s condition is worsening, he can’t be moved.”
Hudson’s phone buzzed. He read the incoming text. “Which is why we’re on hold at the moment,” he said, shaking his phone.
“I’d really like to find the guy who drugged her,” Baylor said.
“Because of personal or professional reasons?” asked Hudson in a dry tone. Baylor shot him a look, but he just shrugged. “Hey, I can see that you care.”
“Hell no, don’t go there,” Baylor said, and this time Hudson made a funny sound in the back of his throat. Baylor widened his stance and adjusted his hands on his hips. “Seriously?”
“Seriously?” Hudson said in a mimicking fashion.
“Come on. Get a life,” Baylor said, irritated.
“It’s obvious, man.”
“Hell, I knew her years ago, long before she was in trouble. Now I helped rescue her. That’s the end of it.”
“Good enough,” he said, “unless of course Mason wins this bet.”
“What are you talking about?” And then he remembered Mason’s “challenge accepted” comment. He groaned. “Ah, jeez. Serves me right for even talking to Mason about women. All I said was that all the good women were taken.”
“Comments like that,” Hudson said, “have a way of coming back around and biting you in the ass.”
“You’re not kidding,” Baylor murmured. “Still, I’m not too bothered.”
“Good,” Hudson said, “because, at the moment, we have more than enough to deal with.”
“I’d still like to find that guy.”
“I know. Which is why I’ve just been hacking into the cameras at the harbors.”