Countdown: Steele

by Boniface, Allie

  Nothing. And everything.

  She’s like me, he thought, in ways he couldn’t even understand. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. If they got through this mess, he’d take her out. Buy her dinner someplace where no one would bother them. Make her laugh at stupid jokes and hold her hand across the table. Then he’d take her home—wherever home was— and make love to her until the sun set and rose and set again.

  With a lump in his throat, Steele strode to the intercom. “Simon?” Static buzzed for a long minute. Then the guard answered. Steele wasn’t sure what words he uttered into the faceless box, but it was enough that two minutes later, a dark, sleek car pulled up to the front door, and they hurried Kira into it.

  “I’ll take her to the clinic,” Simon said. “If we leave fast enough, we might shake the press. You coming?”

  Steele couldn’t follow fast enough.

  5:00 a.m.

  They made him wait in the lobby, a tiny gray room with two chairs and a plant. Miles sat dozing in one corner. Steele didn’t bother to wake him. Twice he dialed his father’s number. Twice he hung up without completing the call.

  He’d followed Simon’s Cadillac over back roads, avoiding the center of Napa Valley until they got to this country hospital in the middle of nowhere. Two news crews had followed them despite their best efforts. Now the vans sat parked at the edge of the clinic’s lot, waiting. A light flickered overhead and Steele caught himself nodding. He stumbled to the reception window and rapped against the glass. Beyond it lay an empty office, though the sweater thrown across the back of the chair suggested that someone had just left. He rapped again.

  A woman in scrubs hurried through the door at the back. She put a finger to her lips and frowned as she slid open the glass an inch. “May I help you?”

  He glanced at the subtle wooden sign behind her. “Meadham Clinic. Private.” Anyone walking in from the street wouldn’t be able to tell whether this place sold real estate or treated stars with addictions. Clearly that was by design.

  “I came here with Kira—ah, Isabella Morelli.” He wet his lips. “I just—I need to know how she is. Francesca, too,” he added. “Her grandmother.” He knew the town wasn’t that big. Hell, Hollywood wasn’t that big. The nurse knew exactly who he was talking about.

  “HIPAA laws,” she said, shaking her head. “Can’t tell you anything.”

  He pointed at the clipboard that lay in front of her. “I came with Simon. He said—”

  She ran a finger down the cream-colored sheet of paper. “Steele Walker?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to see some ID.”

  He pulled out his driver’s license, leaving his press badge in his wallet. She scanned it, made a note on the clipboard, and pushed it back through the glass. “You can have a seat. If the doctor has anything to tell you, he’ll come out here.” She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t go wandering around.”

  Frustrated, Steele walked outside. That lobby was too damn small. He rolled his neck and watched the sun peek over the horizon. One of the news vans had left. Good. The other remained motionless, windows tinted and engine off. The decals on the side indicated a local news channel, and he wondered how long they’d stay. He checked his phone. No new texts. And none of the news stations was reporting anything about Edoardo.

  Two other cars sat in the lot, a black SUV with the plate “MD2STRS” and a Honda hatchback with plastic duct-taped across one rear window. Beyond the parking lot, purple hills rose into the sky. Faint mists of green, acres of wineries, surrounded them. He ached for his camera. A pair of headlights blinked around the corner. Thirty seconds later, they turned into the lot. Steele’s throat tightened. His father’s SUV. And Brian Randall, the paper’s star photographer. Of course. They’d found out where he was without him telling a single person.

  David Walker appeared as one lean leg after another, perfectly pressed khakis that slipped from the front seat of the SUV and straightened to an imposing seventy-five inches of toughened journalist. Despite the early hour, despite the fact that Steele knew he hadn’t slept a wink, his father looked refreshed. Composed.

  Steele smoothed his own hand over his shirtfront and realized he’d lost his belt somewhere during the night.

  “Where are they?”

  He moved to his left, a subtle six inches that blocked the door to the clinic. “Inside.”

  “Both of them?” David Walker waved a curt hand to the photographer, who struggled with an armload of gear.

  “Hey, Steele,” Randall said as he approached. “Heard you had the best seat in the house for the action.” Unlike the editor in chief, Randall’s face was grizzled with stubble and he wore a button-down shirt and jeans. “Nice shiner,” he added. “You get that from the girl or the old lady?”

  Steele folded his arms. “They won’t let you in.”

  His father brushed without a word.

  Steele seethed, but he followed them inside. The nurse had returned to her chair behind the window. He could see her shaking her head. “I don’t care,” she said, her voice louder this time. “HIPAA rules apply up here same as down in the city. You can take a seat and wait for the doctor to make a statement.”

  Steele watched the back of his father’s neck tighten, the only clue that she’d ruffled his composure. “Go outside and get a couple of shots of this place,” he barked. Randall nodded and yawned. Steele remained near the door, knots in his stomach. How long he’d have to stand here without knowing something, he couldn’t guess. But he ached to see Kira, to hold her, to tell her he’d do whatever he could to make her life okay.

  “Hey. How’re you doing?”

  Steele blinked at the question. His father never asked him that. Ever.

  “You look wiped.” David Walker cleared his throat. “You’ve had one hell of a night.”

  “Not as bad as either of them.”

  Something shifted in the older man’s eyes, and Steele wondered if he was feeling sorry for Francesca, for the woman he’d known and courted all those years ago. He’d never thought about his father having a heart or a soul, but he supposed a tragedy like this could bring one out in even the stoniest of men.

  “True,” David Walker agreed. “It’s a horrible, horrible thing.”

  “Have they ID’d the remains?”

  His father shook his head. “I didn’t hear a confirmation before I left the office.” He folded his hands together. “You’ve got one hell of a story here.”

  Steele’s jaw tightened. He knew. It overwhelmed him. If he could only put it all together into something that made sense. A story. A big break. An award-winning exposé, even. But where Isabella Morelli and her family dynamics left off, and where Kira March and the want she stirred inside him started up, he couldn’t begin to sort out. How did he write a story when he couldn’t see the beginning and couldn’t conceive of the ending?

  “Mr. Walker?”

  They both turned at the same time. But the nurse pointed at Steele as she swung open the door. “She wants to see you.”

  Hope leapt into his chest. He didn’t even ask which “she” the nurse meant, he was so glad to escape the lobby. Without a glance at his father, he followed her through the door and down a maze of hallways. They passed a half-dozen closed doors, a lab of some sort, a nurses’ station, and a room marked “Radiology”.

  “It doesn’t look this big from the outside,” he said under his breath.

  “That’s the point.” She stopped before Room 21, her hand on the knob. “She’s weak and tired. We have her hooked up to a saline drip, because she was pretty dehydrated.”

  “But she’ll be okay?”

  “With some rest she’ll be fine.” She paused. “Don’t stay too long.”

  “I won’t. Thank you.”

  She stepped away, and he was left to open the door himself. The first thing he thought was that he’d never seen a hospital room like this one, with custom curtains, pale blue furniture, classical music, tasteful artwork on
the walls. The second thing he thought was that he was in enormous trouble, the way his heart stutter-stepped out of his body when he looked at her. Kira sat up against a stack of pillows, her face pale. An IV ran down to a needle stuck in the back of one hand.

  She smiled when she saw him.

  In the dim light he could see the glint of her eyebrow ring, the sharp curve of her cheekbones, the dip in her upper lip. All scattered pieces of a whole, they resembled a Picasso painting that was beautiful because of, or maybe in spite of, the way the parts made little sense until you stood back and took them in all together.

  “Hey.” He was afraid to touch her. Instead he contented himself with standing close to the bed and placing his hand on her shoulder. Electricity jumped at the point of contact, and he had to stop himself from leaning down to kiss her.

  “Is it true? What the news said?”

  “About your father? They haven’t confirmed it yet. I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything.” He started to say that his father hadn’t heard either, but he wasn’t sure she’d want to know that the chief editor of the biggest paper in San Francisco was waiting in the lobby.

  Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Oh, God, I screwed up. I hadn’t talked to him in years.” She ran the back of her free hand across her face. “I was so—so—” She hiccupped. “I was horrible. I said horrible things to him.”

  “Shh.” He wanted to gather her up in his arms and take her away, just jump in his car or, even better, catch an international flight and leave this place behind them, as if somehow physical location could change everything. “He knew you still loved him. I’m sure he did.”

  She shook her head and cried harder. “I said awful things to him the night I left. I told him I hated him. That I wished he’d never been born. Or that I hadn’t.”

  “Families fight. I’ve said some pretty lousy things to my own dad.”

  She stared up at him. “You don’t know,” she said simply. “You don’t know the truth.”

  “Then tell me.”

  But she shook her head and looked away. “I can’t.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Instead he looked outside. The sky was beginning to brighten. Looked like they were in store for a clear, brilliant morning after last night’s rain.

  Kira gripped his hand and stole him from his thoughts. “How is she?”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Francesca. Did the nurse tell you anything?”

  “No. Do you want me to try and find out?”

  “Please. I need to talk to her.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Be right back.”

  But he couldn’t find his way to the lobby. The numbers on the doors blurred. The signs above him made no sense. He stopped at a corner and balled his hands into fists. Why was the universe making it so hard for him to find his way? More than anything, he wanted to be with Kira. He didn’t care whether it was in a hospital room or a cold stone estate or the green hills of a vineyard, making love among grape leaves. He grinned. Actually, he’d opt for the last one. The thought of pungent red juice mixing with the scent of her beneath him nearly drove him out of his skin.

  He did an about-face and retraced his steps, following a different hallway until he realized he was still heading in the wrong direction. Before he realized it, Steele came upon the office behind the lobby and skidded to a halt. Somehow he’d made his way to the front of the clinic.

  He could see his father pacing the room with one ear glued to his cell phone, scowling. Steele ducked his head and reversed direction. I know what you want. Story of the year. And I can’t give it to you. Not this time. He couldn’t find a nurse or a doctor, so he wandered through hallways until he found his way back to Kira’s room. He opened the door slowly, so as not to startle her. But she was waiting for him with legs hanging over the edge of the bed. She smiled when he walked in. “Hi.” They’d taken off her clothes upon admittance and dressed her in a long cotton nightgown.

  “Do I look stupid in this getup, or what?”

  “Definitely ‘or what’.” He raised one brow in flirtation. “We could take it off and solve the problem.”

  Her smile widened. “You’re a pig.”

  “Then tell me to leave. Tell me to get the hell out of your room, the way you’ve been doing all night.”

  But she didn’t say another word. She just leaned into his kiss, opening her mouth to him and winding her fingers through his.

  “Kira, you’re hooked up to an IV. And the nurse said you’re supposed to be resting. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’re not.” Her breath, hot and ragged, made him weaken, and he might have pushed her back onto the sheets and violated hospital policy right there, if the door hadn’t opened behind them.

  “Excuse me.” A man in a lab coat stood in the doorway. His gaze moved from Kira to Steele and back again. “Isabella.”

  “Dr. Meadham, this is Steele Walker.” She kept one hand in his. “He was at the house before. He helped Simon bring Francesca here.”

  The man’s gaze moved over him, taking in Steele’s black eye, his wrinkled shirt, his khakis with the coffee dribble on one knee. “I’m sorry,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t have good news.” He tented his fingers together. “Francesca suffered a stroke shortly after she arrived here.”

  Kira gasped. “No. I thought she was going to be fine. You said as long as we got her here, she would be fine.”

  “I’m sorry. The wrist wounds weren’t life-threatening, but tests show that she’s probably suffered a series of small strokes over the past couple of years. It’s something that’s impossible to predict, impossible to diagnose unless she’d been to a doctor soon after they happened.”

  All color left Kira’s face. “Is she going to die?”

  The doctor’s expression never changed. “Right now she’s still unresponsive. We’re watching her, but it’s something you need to be prepared for.”

  Kira reached for Steele’s hand. She felt like ice.

  “I do need to ask. I haven’t seen her here in years. I can’t say the last time she even had a physical. Does she have DNR paperwork prepared?”

  “DNR?” Kira’s voice shook.

  “Do not resuscitate,” Steele filled in. He hated that acronym. His mother, organized down to the envelopes of grocery coupons and alphabetized collection of takeout menus in the house, had filled one out years before the accident that stole her away from the Walker family.

  How fortunate, the doctors had said. She really thought ahead. Unusual for a young mother. But fortunate wasn’t the way fourteen-year-old Steele would have described taking his mother off life support.

  He shook away the memory and forced himself to pay attention. Kira’s hand pulled on his with a death grip, and he had to reach down to pry her fingers loose. He sat on the bed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” she was saying. “I don’t know if she has any of that.”

  “You may want to go through whatever files she has at the house. I already called your attorney. He didn’t have a copy on file. And we do not have one here.” He paused, then turned to go. “I’m very sorry about your father.”

  Kira closed her eyes. She said nothing, just leaned into Steele’s shoulder. The door closed with a soft click. They sat there for five minutes, maybe longer. He watched the light move across the floor, from the bedpost near his foot to the chair, six inches away. He wondered if she’d fallen asleep against him.

  But just as he leaned back to try and see, she sat up. Taking fistfuls of his shirt in both hands, she leveled her nose with his. The grief in her eyes bore into him. “Can you go back to the house for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know where it would be,” she whispered. “The form. If she filled it out, I know where she put it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She straightened. “Yes. It’s where she keeps everything important.”
>
  For a moment, he thought she was going to warn him to keep one eye shut as he leafed through the Morelli family documents, or vow to keep any secrets he did unearth to his grave. But she must have changed her mind, because she didn’t. She only told him in a steady, deliberate voice exactly where to find the key and the papers. Only her eyes communicated the words she didn’t.

  I trust you to do this for me. Discreetly.

  Steele ducked out the back exit rather than chance running into his father in the lobby. He circled through the parking lot, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and headed back to the Morelli estate for the third time in less than a day. He would do this. Not for the story. Not for his father, or for the high it gave him, or even to put himself in Kira’s good graces. He would do this because it was the right thing, and because a woman he was quickly falling for had looked into his eyes and trusted him to.

  6:00 a.m.

  “I can’t believe I’m letting him do this.”

  Twenty-four hours ago, Kira hadn’t even known Steele Walker. Now she was relying on him to go through the Francesca’s most private papers. Was she insane? She fell back onto the bed and put one arm over her eyes. She didn’t have a choice. And if she was being honest with herself, she was tired of pretending. Tired of worrying about the moment of discovery. If it was going to be tonight, then so be it. Maybe, subconsciously, she’d even wanted him to be the one who found her secret. Steele was a decent guy with a body that could make a girl think wicked thoughts. There were far worse men she could take a chance on.

  Kira closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come.

  STEELE HEADED FOR THE house as fast as he could. On another day he might have wished for his camera, but the glowing sunrise had little impact on him now. All he could see was Kira. A mile away, he slowed. He had no idea whether any paparazzi were still waiting outside. Whoever was working security wouldn’t know enough to open the gates for him ahead of time. He ran Kira’s words through his mind again. The office. The key is in the top drawer of her desk. You can check the file cabinet, but it’s probably in the bottom drawer of the tall Japanese cabinet in the corner...