Tabi stared at the men in shock. “No, no, no,” she said. “You have to be wrong. I was enjoying my holiday out on my boat and picked you up and took you to the naval ship. Nothing else there.”
“By now, whoever tried to kill these men has already found out that these two are alive and that one was talking on a cell phone and that you went to visit him,” Cain said. He shot her a direct look, his eyes more smoky gray than anything but ringed in thick dark lashes. “Didn’t you?”
She frowned, slowly nodded, and said, “Of course I did. My phone was used to connect you two.” Her gaze went back and forth from one to the other.
Cain nodded. “Exactly. So, whoever did this has already found out that you spent time with Ryland.”
“But that doesn’t mean Ryland was talking.”
“No, but it does mean that the culprits have already connected with military personnel on that ship, and they already know that you two spent time together and contacted someone via cell phone.”
“Does that mean somebody on the ship is bad?”
“Good and bad, it’s a very hard distinction here,” Cain said. “It could have been a simple question, passing in the mess hall or in the hallway. Whether the one guy survived, and would they make it? Somebody from the medical unit could have just mentioned in a conversation that one guy is up and talking, and the other one is not.”
She sagged in her seat, as she stared at him, her mouth gaping. “Dear God,” she said faintly. She stopped for a long moment, as she thought about it, and realized how it could be construed. “But doesn’t that mean that everybody on that ship is in danger?”
“Possibly,” he said, “but not likely. Doctors don’t typically spend much time talking with patients. It would be whoever is back and forth, particularly in a scenario like this, because having rescued them, obviously you’ll care about their future.”
“Well, I cared about their immediate treatment.”
“Also nobody can be sure whether you were injured or not,” he said. “So that would be one of the other questions.”
“Wow,” she said. “I’m not sure I like the world you live in.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “But it is where we all live, and there’s really no way around it.”
“So how much danger are we talking about?”
He thought about it and shook his head. “The immediate danger is of more concern,” he said. “I’ll say it’s probably a 60/40 chance.”
“Wow,” she said. “Not even 50/50?”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m erring on the side of caution.”
“Well, in that case, could you just make it 100 percent that I’m not in danger?”
“Well, I could,” he said, “but is that really what you want to hear?”
“What I want,” she said, “was for none of this to have happened.”
“That’s a given,” he said. “I’d like to have Bullard here with us, giving us shit for talking to you about this at all. But that isn’t exactly happening either.”
At the reminder of their missing friend, she felt terrible. “Making me feel guilty because I’m not your missing friend won’t help,” she announced.
Ryland laughed. “I really do like the fact that you fight back,” he said, chuckling.
She glared at him. “I wouldn’t have been nice to you if I’d realized you would cause me this kind of headache,” she snapped. But she didn’t mean it. And, of course, he knew it. She groaned and said, “What am I supposed to do? I mean, I have five more days off, and then I return to work.”
“I don’t know that five days is enough,” Cain said.
“It damn well better be,” she said.
Ryland said, “Realistically it could take a couple weeks.”
“I’m not taking a couple weeks off work,” she snapped. “Unlike some people, I have to work a regular job for a living.”
“We do too,” Ryland said, with a smile. “It’s just that our line of work ends up putting people into your line of work.”
“That seriously sucks too,” she said, “because my line of work is already swamped.”
Both men gave clipped nods. But they didn’t say anything more, and she studied them for a long moment.
“There’s this odd sense of waiting that’s around you,” she said. Ryland looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “It’s as if you’re waiting for something, and you’re almost like a rubber band, pulled back as tight as it can go. Then, as soon as something happens, whatever it is you’re waiting for,” she said, with a wave of her hand, “you’ll spring forth, like an arrow from a bow.”
“That’s not a bad analogy,” Cain said. “We’re waiting on news of Garret.”
“What difference does it make?” she said. “He’ll get his best care right here.”
“And we’re not leaving, until we know what his status is.”
She understood that, at least partly. “As long as you don’t think that your presence here will get him any better care.”
Cain’s lips twisted, as if there were something to that.
“We don’t take people into emergency and sort them by whoever is waiting around outside,” she said in a quiet tone.
“No, that’s true,” he said, “but the squeaky wheel does get the most care.”
She frowned at that because she certainly had seen many doctors switch patients around just to get rid of somebody troublesome. “Sitting in the cafeteria is hardly being a squeaky wheel.”
Ryland just chuckled. “Just wait until the doctor sees us when we go back.”
She frowned at that and wondered. “Well, it’s been almost an hour.”
“Good enough,” said Cain, as he stood.
She hadn’t realized just how tall he was, until she was sitting here and he was standing. She slowly made her way vertical and said, “I would love to go home.”
“Nothing is keeping you here,” Ryland said. “If you want to go home now, you certainly don’t have to wait on us.”
“It’s not a case of waiting on you, as much as it is trying to figure out if I’m safe,” she muttered. “Did you mean to put the fear in me?”
“We meant for you to take extra care,” Cain said.
“And how am I supposed to fight off someone who blew up a plane?” she asked.
“We don’t expect you to,” he said, “but we do expect you to take care with your personal safety.”
“Taking care is a whole different story,” she said. “I can take as many precautions as I want, and that necessarily won’t improve anything.”
“Understood, but, at the same time, maybe it will,” he said. “If you notice anybody following you, looking at you suspiciously, hanging around—even when you walk into your apartment—if anybody’s in a hallway, loitering, someone you don’t know or don’t recognize,” he said, “you call us.”
She frowned. “Call you on what? So far, Ryland has been using my phone.”
At that, Ryland pulled a phone from his pocket.
She looked at it and said, “When did you get that?”
“Cain brought one for me,” he said and held it so she saw his number.
She pulled hers out and quickly added it. “Fine,” she said. “So I’ll contact you. Then what?”
“Then we’ll do something about it,” Cain said smoothly.
She looked at him sharply, but a knowing smile was in his eyes. She shook her head. “Not likely. You’ll be off doing whatever little revenge mission is on your mind.”
“Not necessarily,” Ryland said. “Obviously we’re going back after answers. We need answers, and there’s only one way to get them, but we won’t forget you. You saved the both of us.”
“Hardly saved,” she said. “I just fished you out of the water.”
“Did you see any other boat around?” he asked. “Garret wouldn’t have hung on too much longer.”
“He was floating,” she said. “You don’t know how much longer he would have made it.”
“I won’t argue the point,” Ryland said, his tone mild, “but we will look after you.”
“Unless I get kidnapped on my way to the car,” she snapped. She settled back and said, “Go on. Just do your thing. I’ll grab a cab and go home.”
“Or you could wait five minutes for us to check on Garret,” Ryland said, as he stood. “I’ll be a whole lot slower than Cain, and we have a rental that’ll be here by the time we’re done. Then we can drive you home. That way we can at least get the lay of the land and see how safe you are.”
She hated to even understand the implications of what he suggested. “Do you think it’s really necessary?” She knew she’d be a fool to not accept their help if they thought she was seriously in danger, but the whole thing really made no sense to her. “Isn’t it a big stretch for anybody to consider me important in this fight you guys have going on?”
“I guess it depends on how big of a stretch they think it is, right?” Ryland replied. “If somebody had information you desperately wanted, and you could get it by grabbing them and knocking them around until they talked, what would you do?”
She frowned at him. “I hardly have any information that’s important,” she snapped.
“How will they know that until they knock you around a bit?”
She just glared at him and turned to head out of the cafeteria. Cain was a good six paces ahead of her, and Ryland was bringing up the rear. A position she realized was not an accident. She turned as they got to the doorway. “You’re injured,” she said. “You’ll hardly be in a position to fight an attacker off.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, his voice hardening. “When it comes to self-defense or self-preservation, we do all kinds of things that you don’t think we can do.”
*
Ryland didn’t want to scare Tabi, but, at the same time, he didn’t know exactly what was going on. It had only just occurred to him that she could be in danger. He thought about who knew how they’d survived and what they might have said. That had led him down a dangerous rabbit hole because it was one thing for her to be murdered, shot in cold blood, raising an investigation, but it was another thing entirely for her to die in “an accident.” In that case, nobody would question anything, and she would become just another accident victim. That’s something he couldn’t live with.
She’d gone out of her way to keep him and Garret alive, and that was more important than anything. She’d already shown who and what she was on the inside, and he could do no less than help to support her now, knowing that things could get ugly. He didn’t really want to fill her with fear, but she needed to be aware that some serious danger could be attached to her life at this point.
He wished she could take a month or two off work, but, of course, she needed to earn a living too. He pondered the problem as they walked back into the ER. Tabi walked in ahead of Ryland and Cain, and the doctor looked at her and smiled, but his gaze faltered when he saw the two men, and his friendly demeanor immediately stiffened into something much more formal.
“Results are back,” he said. “Your friend will survive this. He’s in a coma, and he’ll wake up when he’s ready. He’s got significant bruising on the brain, and that’ll just take some time to heal. Obviously he has several other medical issues that have all been attended to, and a few more that we’ll keep an eye on, but we want to keep him here, under observation, rather than transferring him to another hospital.”
Cain looked at him and nodded. “We’re fine with that,” he said. “Providing he gets the best care possible.”
“That’s a given, and I believe he’ll recover,” the doctor said quietly. “Unless anything new comes up.”
At that, Ryland stepped forward and handed the doctor his card with a phone number on it. “Contact us with any change.”
The doctor took the business card and nodded. “Will you guys be in town?”
“Somebody will be,” Cain said, his voice hard. “It doesn’t matter if we’re right here or not. You can always contact us at that number.” He walked to Garret’s bedside and grabbed his buddy by the hand. Leaning over, he whispered something in his ear.
Ryland understood because his time would be next. He knew that the other two were watching Cain. When he straightened, looked down at his friend, his face getting harder with fury before he controlled every nuance on his face, he then turned and stepped back, facing Ryland.
Ryland walked up, gripped Garret’s hand, and, leaning over the other side, said, “Buddy, we’re here to look after you. You heal up while we go after the ones who did this. When I get back, I want to see you sitting up and laughing. No other outcome is acceptable.” He took a long look into the face of his friend, then turned and walked away. He looked at the doctor intently and said, “Any change.”
The doctor nodded.
Ryland slung an arm around Tabi’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”
“And if I don’t want to?” she muttered. Her voice was low, so nobody but him heard it.
“Sweetheart,” he replied, “we are well past being refused. That just won’t work.”
She looked at him, and he saw a change in her expression. An awareness of how her world had just shifted.
“Is this what happens when you do something nice for other people?” she asked, but no bitterness was in her voice, as if she were resigned to this ending.
“No,” he said. “Not normally. But I for one really appreciate the fact that you did.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to end up dead over this.”
He squeezed her shoulders gently and tucked her closer to him. He rested his head against hers for a moment as they walked down the hallway behind Cain. “Listen. I will do my utmost best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”