Chapter Twenty-Four

“What’s the prognosis?”

“Fractured rib, punctured lung, dislocated shoulder. The rib should heal on its own. Traction to reset his shoulder…complications. Some of the fibrous tissue…severely stretched. There may be nerve damage.”

“Whatever they gave him, he’s really out of it.”

Words blurred together, but Deck easily identified the voices. Brett, Evan, and his boss, ASAC Rivera.

He tried opening his eyes, but they stuck together as if someone had glued them shut.

He managed to squint. Images wavered then slowly took shape. His friends sat in chairs on one side of the bed, his boss in one on the other.

“There he is,” Brett said. “Sleeping Beauty awakes, and we didn’t even have to kiss him.”

“Sleeping Beauty, my ass.” Evan elbowed Brett’s shoulder. “He might have been pretty once. Now, he looks like shit.”

“I can hear you.” Deck grimaced as he shifted on the mattress, anticipating lightning bolts of pain. All he felt was a dull throbbing in his torso.

He looked at the IV line taped to his hand. He had no idea what was dripping into his veins. Back in the park, he’d been in excruciating pain. It killed him to admit it now, but he wasn’t really in any pain now.

A block of ice lodged solidly in the pit of his stomach. Tori had been about to give him fentanyl. Not just an opioid, but one of the ingredients in the very drug they were trying to track down. He didn’t remember all the details of what had gone down, but he remembered that as if they’d just had that conversation seconds ago.

That block of ice wedged more firmly in his gut. She would always give meds because that’s what she believed in, and he’d never be okay with that.

“Is Tori okay?” he asked. More details came to him in pieces. Getting slammed by the truck. Denver PD swarming in. Thor growling—

Numbers on the monitor by his bed soared. “Where’s Thor?” He snapped his gaze from Brett to Evan then to his boss.

“Relax.” Brett rested a calming hand on his good shoulder. “He’s fine.”

“In fact,” Evan added, “he was in rare form and spitting mad. He practically attacked the PD when they tried to get near you.”

“Where is he?”

ASAC Rivera cleared his throat. “He’s staying with Evan until you’re discharged and well enough to take care of him.”

“Thanks.” Thor was more than his partner. He was family.

Evan gave a curt nod. “You’d do the same for me. For any of us.”

He would. If necessary, he’d take a bullet for his friends, and they’d do the same.

Brett yawned, covering his mouth with his fist.

“What time is it?” Deck asked then realized the ridiculousness of his question. He was so doped up, he didn’t even know what day it was or how long he’d been out.

“Two in the morning.” Brett yawned again.

“Thought you went down to the Springs.” Deck noted the dark circles under his friend’s eyes. After the last big case Brett worked—the one in which he’d been badly burned—nightmares kept his friend up, preventing him from getting any real sleep.

“I did. When Evan called and told me what happened, I hauled ass back up here.”

“You didn’t have to. But thanks.” Something lodged in Deck’s throat, and he blinked rapidly. Great. Besides dopiness, tears were a side effect of opioids. “What hospital am I in?”

“North Metro,” Rivera said.

Tori’s hospital. Hearing footsteps and voices outside his room, he glanced at the open door. If she was here, she hadn’t made an appearance. Then again, until a few minutes ago, a herd of buffalo could have stampeded through the room without him knowing it.

Following his train of thought, Evan said, “She stopped by earlier to check on you.”

Deck closed his eyes. Part of him wanted to see her. Part of him didn’t. At least, not right now. He remembered the fear in her eyes, in her voice, and the words they’d said to each other. True, he’d been angry when she’d been ready to stick him with that needle. But when she’d said she couldn’t take seeing him in pain, he’d had to give her the out she needed.

As a DEA agent, he could be hurt or killed. That was the job. He accepted the risks, but she’d never signed up for that. Daring to hope she could put up with the dangers of his job when her world was dedicated to saving others was too big of an ask. So he’d let her go.

“Think you’re up for discussing a little business?” Rivera asked.

“Always.” Even laid up in a hospital, he was still all about the job. He was good at stowing away his personal crap. For now, anyway.

Rivera tipped his head to Evan, indicating he should close the door.

“Evan and Brett interviewed Dr. Sampson,” Rivera began. “We also have preliminary reports from the responding Denver units. They didn’t see the whole thing but were able to corroborate most of what Dr. Sampson said. I’d like to hear your perspective on what went down.”

An unsettling feeling came over Deck as he recounted what details he could remember, beginning with the call from Aidan and ending with him blacking out. “Any sign of the kid?”

Evan shook his head. “The PD searched the entire park and a surrounding ten-block radius.”

All but confirming Deck’s original suspicion. “I was set up.”

“Looks that way,” Rivera agreed. “We put a BOLO out for him.”

Deck dragged his hand down his face. There’d come a point where he’d known he was getting played, but his need to help addicted teens had overruled his common sense. Maybe Tori was right. No matter how hard he tried and no matter how much he wished otherwise, he couldn’t save everyone. Some people didn’t want to be saved.

He could still remember the cop who’d come to his house the day they’d found Marianne’s body in that alley. Had she really spiraled so far down there’d been nothing any of them could do for her? Maybe all the guilt he’d carried around with him had been a waste. He would never know for certain.

“Did you tell him?” Rivera looked from Brett to Evan.

Brett shook his head. “While you were napping, the PD talked to the guy Thor took down in the park. That dealer in Loveland was tipped off by someone called ‘the doc.’”

Deck’s brows shot up. The doc? “As in, a real doctor?” What the dealer’s hired muscle had said at the Loveland warrant came back to him. “The Big D,” he murmured, locking gazes with Evan. “Sammie didn’t find anything in the databases on the Big D, but maybe the D stands for ‘doctor.’”

“Yeah, and something else.” Brett frowned, telling Deck whatever was coming next would suck. “This ‘doc’ ordered the hit on you. Word on the street is that the doc set you up because you’re taking down too many of their dealers.”

“You and Thor took a major bite out of their business,” Evan added.

“Did you get any specifics?” Deck asked. “Like where this doctor works?”

His boss exchanged a quick look with Brett and Evan before focusing on Deck. “You said you got a text from an informant about a leak in our operation, and that was how Jack knew about the warrant in Loveland before you hit the place. You’ve been working closely with Dr. Sampson. Is there any possibility that she’s involved? She has no criminal history, but that doesn’t mean—”

“I know what it means.” He couldn’t wrap his brain around the possibility that she’d tipped off a drug dealer. But he was personally involved. Back at her house—in bed—he’d practically blurted out how crazy he was about her, so how could he possibly remain impartial? “I don’t think she’d tell anyone.”

“You need to be sure about this,” Rivera said. “It’s important.”

“Don’t you think I know how important it is?” he shouted, instantly regretting it as the dull throbbing in his shoulder and ribs worsened.

“Could Dr. Sampson have tipped them off?” Rivera asked quietly.

Could she? Yes. Did she?

Deck had witnessed for himself how strong her desire was to help people. If she were the leak, what would have been her motivation?

“Deck?” Rivera asked again.

He shook his head, more to himself than anyone else in the room. Was it possible her hatred of the DEA was so bad that she’d done it out of revenge? He’d thought they’d gotten past that. Maybe he was wrong.

God, his head hurt.

Deck squeezed his eyes shut, knowing his boss and his friends were watching him closely, waiting for the response he had to give and didn’t want to.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

…

With her heart in her hands, Tori took the last steps to Deck’s room.

Would he even remember what happened or the things they’d said to each other?

It was possible that the extreme pain he’d been experiencing might have impacted his memory. Not that it mattered. She’d been given a ringside seat to what being part of his life would entail, and she was too much of a coward, even to hold on to something she so desperately wanted. Him.

All she wanted was to see with her own eyes that he was really okay, then she’d leave. Thinking he might be sleeping, she began pushing the door open as quietly as possible but stopped when she heard Brett and Evan discussing someone called “the doc.” With the door cracked, she listened a moment longer. Apparently, someone had tipped off that drug dealer, Jack, about the Loveland warrant. Another man, one whose voice she didn’t recognize, asked Deck if she could have tipped Jack off.

Tori held her breath, waiting for his answer.

“I don’t know.”

Her jaw dropped, and she let the door fall back into place. It wasn’t possible. I must have misunderstood.

Her first inclination was to kick the door open the rest of the way and vehemently deny the allegation. But if Deck thought so little of her, cared so little about her that he could possibly think such a thing, then she had no intention of wasting her time defending herself.

Smacking the palm of her hand on the door, she shoved it open so forcefully that it banged into the wall. Immediately, all conversation ceased. Four sets of eyes focused on her, but the only one she cared about was Deck’s. Things were over between them, but damn him for thinking she could have ratted him out.

His color was back, so that was good. An ACE bandage encircled his rib cage, and the shoulder he’d dislocated was wrapped snugly in white bandages with his right arm immobilized against his bare chest. A drainage tube was taped to the other side of his chest.

For a moment, his expression was utterly blank. Then his eyes became guarded. Was it because he thought she’d tipped off a drug dealer or because she’d tried administering opioids to him? Or both? Either way, the heart she’d held in her hands dropped to the floor with an audible splat.

“Good morning,” she said, looking at all of them and recognizing the other man in the room as Deck’s supervisor, ASAC Rivera. Nobody answered. She went to the rolling computer to re-read Deck’s chart. His friends, men she’d thought liked and respected her, tracked her every move.

As if I’m a criminal.

Reading his chart wasn’t necessary. She knew every word that was in it and every dose of medication that had been administered. Since the moment he’d been brought into the ER, she’d personally supervised everything that was done to him. He just didn’t know it.

It took every ounce of strength not to go to him, to hold him and kiss him. “How are you feeling?”

“All things considered, fine.”

Tori shoved her hands in her coat pocket, fisting them tightly. She couldn’t take his reticence a moment longer. She hadn’t planned on it, but after what she’d overheard, they needed to talk. “Gentleman, could you give us a few minutes?”

The atmosphere in the room went ice cold. Except for a quick glance at Deck, Brett and Evan didn’t budge, and neither did Deck’s boss.

“It’s okay.” Deck hitched his head to the door.

Deck’s friends threw her a cautionary glance then started for the door. ASAC Rivera went with them.

“We’ll be in the hall if you need us.” Evan threw her a look that said it all. They no longer trusted her.

They hadn’t said a word about their suspicion, but it was there just the same, hovering in the air like a thundercloud ready to cut loose with a barrage of rain, hail, and lightning.

She gripped the bedrail with both hands. “I didn’t tell anyone about the warrant. I would never betray your—”

“Trust?” His lips twisted as he spat out the word. “You were about to.”

“No, I—” But he wasn’t referring to the warrant. She drew in a calming breath. “Giving you fentanyl would have been the right call. You were thrashing about so much you could have worsened your condition.”

“That was my decision to make.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t give it to you. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right call.” She took a step toward the side of the bed, stopping as she caught sight of Evan and Brett in the corridor. Both shot her warning looks. “You’re so obsessed over what happened to your sister and with saving the world from opioids you can’t even think straight. I wasn’t trying to give you something to hurt you. I tried to do it because I—”

Quickly, she looked away. She hadn’t realized what she’d been about to say until she’d almost blurted it out.

“You what?” Deck asked quietly.

Love you. Saying it wouldn’t change a thing. It would only make this more difficult. “Because I couldn’t stand by and see you in so much pain when there was something I could do to stop it.”

If her heart weren’t already lying on the floor in a pile of mush, she would swear it was breaking. “Even if you didn’t suspect me of providing information to a drug dealer, I can’t take wondering if one day you’ll leave for work and never come back,” she said, swallowing hard and doing her best not to shed a single tear. “It was a mistake to think this could have possibly worked between us.”

She waited for Deck to say or do something, to at least tell her she wasn’t a suspect in his mind. Instead, he remained maddeningly silent.

“I agree,” he said finally.

Sorrow nearly took her to her knees. It really was over. After today, she’d never see him again. “Well then. I’ll leave you to get some rest. Good luck with…everything.”

She went to the door, nearly bumping into Brett and Evan on the way out. Keeping her back straight and her head held high, she brushed past Deck’s friends. “And for the record,” she threw over her shoulder loudly enough for all of them, including Deck, to hear, “I don’t have any drug dealers on speed dial. I would never betray you—any of you.”

She made it to the doctors’ lounge just before the floodgates opened. Wil stood at the coffeemaker, mug in one hand, carafe in the other.

“Tori?” He set the mug down and returned the carafe to the hot plate. “What’s wrong?”

She covered her face with her hands. Wil’s arms came around her, and she clung to him, sobbing silently.

“Shh,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”

As much as she wished his words were true, they weren’t. It would never be okay.