by Hammond, T.
“I’ll go with the nice EMTs without protest, if you ask Bas to show you the pictures on his phone first,” I negotiated. A new skill I had just picked up from Gil. Handy.
My man was a smart cookie, but the long pause as he considered my request and, most importantly, my probable reason behind it, told me how upset he was. Surely he should know that all the blood in the kitchen signifies I probably have other injuries besides a bumped head? “How badly are you hurt?” He finally asked.
“Cuts, bruises, apparently a concussion. Nothing broken, Love. He got the worse end of the deal.”
Someone stood in the doorway behind us. Bastian, was my guess. Still keeping his voice down, David said, “I understand you have some pictures she wants me to see.”
Bas laughed in response, “You’ll still be pissed off, but the photos do help.”
David sighed and reached a hand back to grab the cell phone. I could hear little beeping noises as he paged through the pictures. “Geez Babe, you kicked his fuckin’ ass. Good for you.”
“Broken nose, snapped his clavicle, possible broken or dislocated jaw,” Bas catalogued. “One of the medics said something about a major concussion, bleeding from an ear, and never fathering children.”
“I stomped his instep too,” I added, as if it would give me extra credit. I took a steadying breath and looked up at David.
“Oh, Babe.” His voice was full of empathy and tenderness. As he brushed fingertips gently over my face, I could barely feel them. I knew the exact moment he noticed the necklace of bruises across my throat. Anger practically vibrated off him and the arm, still wrapped around my shoulder, trembled with suppressed rage. “I will fucking bury him,” David vowed.
“David, I don’t need you to fight this battle, Sweetheart. I already took care of him. If it will help, we can blow up one of the cell phone pictures and nail it to a tree. An old tree, or a dead one. Then you can drive drones into it at ninety miles an hour and watch his face explode.” Just as I had with Bas, I lifted a hand to his face to try and soothe away the anger. “He was trying to get into the basement, David. I’m betting the Colonel will be involved. His life, as he knows it, is over.”
“Let’s get her in an ambulance, David. The EMTs are waiting, and she needs to be checked over,” Bas said.
Chapter Seventeen
The hospital kept me for two days. It would have been longer, but I was a horrible patient and on the edge of mutiny. Bas had been liberal with sharing the pictures off his phone (gloating would be an accurate description), which no doubt motivated my doctor to make the right choice. Between wake-up checks every hour or two for monitoring the concussion, needle pokes, pills, orange Jello, and those friggin’ blue gowns that leave your butt hanging out, I’d had enough. I wanted real coffee, damn it! Pots of it, not little plastic cups that barely held two gulps of the flavorless brown water they were serving.
I was tired of the constant parade of strangers, and the stoic presence of soldiers who stood outside my room, unless a nurse or doctor came in - then, I had a couple inside the room with me to make sure I was safe. It turns out, the military felt it had a vested interest in me, because someone was after David and Bas’ basement secrets. And they thought I was the weak link? Obviously, some people didn’t get the memo. You know - the one with the attached pictures of an ass kicked villain?
Red stayed beside my bed both days. If I had an x-ray, he would trot alongside the wheel chair to the appropriate room. Ditto with the MRI, and the cat-scan (I’m sure you can imagine Red’s reaction to that). Yesterday, he attempted his first tentative visual link since the attack. I am happy to say that I only had a mild headache afterwards, rather than the overwhelming nausea from the day before.
David and Bas were constantly in and out of my room. During Bas’ last visit, courtesy of Red, I got my first glimpse of the pictures Gil took. Score! Devon was a bloody mess. I was quite proud of myself. The guys tell me he didn’t gain full consciousness until later that evening. They still haven’t gotten the story from him, so we remain clueless regarding what he was after about getting downstairs.
Bas did find some sort of tracking device on the vehicles which solved the mystery as to how Devon knew their ETA to the house. David and Bas were already working on ways to prevent that from happening again. My ex hadn’t counted on Gil.
It was a stroke of luck that Gil wasn’t at work; he was at the grocery store when the alarm text came through. Since he didn’t know who Devon was, he found the message sufficiently strange enough that the shopping trip was immediately aborted in favor of driving by and checking on me. He was a quarter mile from the house when first Bas’, then David’s, texts alerted Gil to the fact I was not answering my cell.
Gil told me when he first blasted through the front door, he had propelled himself far enough into the foyer he didn’t see me in the corner by the alarm keypad. All he saw was blood splattered over the kitchen and a hand stretched out beside the counter. He was calling for backup when he heard me in the corner, and saw I was covered in blood. He told me I scared the hell out of him, and I was never allowed to do that again.
Fine by me.
Gil knew that either Bas or David would arrive within minutes, so he did his best to assess my condition without moving me. I remember, when Gil tried to brush my hair back, requesting in a detached, overly nice way to be left alone during my little breakdown. The violence exhibited in the room served well in convincing the good detective that he should wait for backup before trying to approach the crazy woman. Bas, being Bas, simply counted on the fact he could take whatever I dished out. Brave man, our Bastian.
“Hey, Lover,” David greeted, as he came through the doorway. “Your release papers are almost done. We are waiting on the doctor to poke and prod you one last time then she will sign off on everything.” Considering how bruised and battered I was, David’s words triggering the naughty thought that it wasn’t the doctor’s poking I wanted, caught me by pleasant surprise. Yup, I was going to be just fine.
David found me sitting on the edge of the bed lacing up my sneakers. Bas left five minutes ago taking Red on a potty break; they would meet us downstairs with the vehicle. David gently examined my hands. There had been some concern that I broke a pinky when I connected with Devon’s jaw, but it was just badly bruised and swollen; more damaged than my face, actually. He brushed my hair back, and tilting my head so he could examine the bruising across my cheek. I was fortunate Devon had used an open hand instead of his fist. My worst injury was the least dramatic: a bump on the back of my head, from getting my skull bashed into the fridge a couple times. I had been sick one additional time after leaving the house, all over the front of an intern trying to get me to take some oral medication after I explained I was too nauseous. Ha! That will teach him to listen to his patient next time.
“You were so lucky, babe,” David said, enfolding me gently in his arms, as if worried I’d break.
“Not lucky, Lover” I protested. “You and Bas have been adamant that I learn some basic self-defense. Muscle memory, desperation, and good training played major roles in my little drama. I had the confidence to fight. You gave me that.”
I pulled away enough that I could run my hands up his chest and cradle his face in my palms. There was a slight abrasion of facial hair that let me know shaving hadn’t been a priority- or maybe, he decided to grown a short beard for me? The hair was at a prickly-soft stage I found fascinating. “Did you decide to try a beard and mustache for me?” I asked. I didn’t try to subvert the hopeful lilt in my voice. I was definitely intrigued to see his face covered in sexy stubble. My mind wandered again, briefly, imagining the sensitive places that texture might torment. Definitely time to go home
Under my hands, I felt the corners of his mouth kick up in a grin, answering the devious one on my face. My thumb brushed his cheek, seeking that cute dimple of his. “Yeah, we’ll give it a week or so, and you can let me know how you like it. It’s actually easier for me;
as we grew beards when we were going native on some of our assignments.”
I drew his mouth to mine for a soft, questing kiss, slipping my tongue between his lips so I could taste him: coffee and mint toothpaste. I canted my head to the side to make a firmer, deeper fit of our mouths and lost myself in the pleasure of kissing him. The taste of real coffee was just an added bonus. Really. His lips opened, releasing some of the passion that always seemed to be a heartbeat away when we were in the same room. A tentative tap on the doorframe broke us apart. My breathing was a little ragged, but I’m happy to report David sounded a bit breathless too.
“I understand someone wants to go home today,” the doctor announced. “Maybe we should wait a moment before checking your pulse and heartbeat.” Dr. Fairlaine was maybe five-feet tall if she didn’t slouch. With a blonde pixie haircut and large dark eyes, that I assumed were brown, she looked like an underfed waif instead of a doctor. If she was over thirty years old, it wasn’t by much. She seemed a little hyperactive, which probably contributed to her very slender frame.
“Come on, Doc. If you had a gorgeous hunk like this in arm’s reach, would you pass up an opportunity to lay a smooch on him?” I laughed.
“Mmm, I see what you mean. He is awfully pretty,” the good doctor teased. “Out of the way, good looking, let me give her a final look, and you can take her home. Although, I would recommend that you wait a couple days before swinging from any chandeliers.” Her manner became professional and efficient as she placed hands on my shoulders and proceeded to check my heart and lungs. “You received a good-sized knot on the back of your head, Ms. March, so you should stick with the more sedate activities right now. Slow and easy should be your mantra, for everything, over the coming week.”
“Damn! There goes wild sex on the tire swing when we get home,” David joked.
The doctor continued, seeming to ignoring him, “There’s a list included in your release paperwork of things to look out for, as well as activities to avoid while you recover from a concussion. For example, you may still have some dizziness or nausea from bending forward or moving too quickly. Unfortunately, that rules out tire swinging. Be sure to call your personal physician for an appointment in about two weeks to get checked over.
Dr. Fairlaine, still muttering to herself, flipped through my patient chart, before running her fingertips over the tender bump at the back of my skull. It felt a lot better after a day and a half of ice packs and pain relievers. “Good, the swelling has gone done considerably,” she murmured. A quick check of my eyes and ears, then taking a moment to ensure David and I had no questions, she pronounced me ‘good enough to go home.’
Predictably, there was a wheelchair (per hospital policy) to take me to the patient loading zone, where Bastian and Red waited anxiously in my getaway vehicle. Red was already secured in his normal place in the cargo area. David helped me into the backseat, and slid in beside me. At my earlier request, Red agreed to hold off on sending me visual feed while he was outdoors, as the brightness may still be too overwhelming for my delicate stomach. However, we made no such restriction on him talking to me. He hit me with a never-ending stream of chatter as soon as I was in range. “Teresa, I’m so glad they’re letting you come home. I can tell you’re still in pain though. Maybe you should go back and stay for another day? They are serving turkey for lunch.”
“I am not going back in the hospital so that you can get turkey leftovers, Red.” I said firmly. Dogs! Always thinking with their stomachs. “I think Ken said he’d be roasting a chicken for dinner tonight though,” I offered, as consolation.
“I like chicken,” my dog confirmed. “That would be great. Maybe with some gravy?”
“Don’t press your luck, furball. You know that getting hospital food was a special treat. It’s back to kibble, dog cookies, and the occasional scrap of leftover meat for you.”
“Aww, Teresa.”
“Don’t ‘Aww’ me, you scoundrel. I know darn well the guys guarding the door were feeding you extra helpings. There’s a reason you liked the morning crew best. I heard one of the guys talking to you as he was feeding you dog biscuits dipped in mashed potatoes.”
There was a moment of silence, “They were very small biscuits,” he said, simply.
He has a point. We only buy the smaller-sized dog treats, my philosophy being, it is a reward, not a meal. Apparently my guards did not agree with that perspective so felt the need to compensate for the clearly malnourished shepherd’s benefit. No, that might be overly sarcastic. More likely? My dog played them like the teenage boy he is. “Speaking of guards, what happened to the uniforms that were at the hospital? Did you remember to thank them?” I asked David.
“They went back to the base, but two other guys are going to kinda… hang out with us for a while,” David was being unusually evasive.
I processed that for about five seconds. “Define ‘hang out’ for me, will ‘ya?”
David shifted, then took a deep courage-building breath. You know, the one right before you leap off a really high diving board? “While you were in the hospital, Bas and I got on the phone and had a little chat with Colonel Spencer. We made a group decision, initially, to add a couple more guys to the mission in San Francisco. However, when we thought more about our vulnerabilities, well, they are already at the house. We wanted to run it by you before we tell them about you and Red, but we definitely want them in place as added security at home, too, until we get the next software upgrade done.”
I thought it over, but they already guessed how I’d feel, or they wouldn’t have taken the liberty of setting the new guys up in the house. I was okay with any decisions they made regarding security for their work, and I trusted their judgment about who could be added to our ‘circle of friends’ when it came to knowing about Team Red. They knew this. “I’ll support whatever you two want, you know that,” I said, giving them the confirmation I knew they wanted. “If the men are trustworthy, in your opinions, then let’s show them what Red, and I, can do. My only question is, do we only tell them about the mind speak?” This was a valid question, considering Colonel Spencer was in on the original discussion to have the men sent here as security. We had opted not to reveal the vision sharing to the colonel, but how did that translate to a couple of guys who would actually be involved in the mission with us?
“Fritz and Dex are men I know really well. They are retired Navy Warrant Officers, like me. Bas and I are inclined to let them in on the vision sharing, but maybe not right away. We want to tell them about the mind-speak, but we want some assurance they will be loyal to Team Red, not the military, before we consider letting them in on the vision sharing ability.”
“I assume the military is paying them?” I queried, pretty confident in the answer.
“Yes, definitely. They are private contractors, like Team Red is. I was adamant that we don’t want a military presence on our property, but I would agree to a security team. These men are part of a security group based in San Diego, created by a bunch of retired Mustangs.”
Bas added, “I also know these two guys specifically, and I trust in their integrity and discretion. The down side is that they may feel they owe it to their employer to divulge what they learn about Team Red.”
“I’ve mentioned Mustangs before. Do you remember what they are?” David asked.
“Some kind of retired sailor’s club, right?”
Bas’ snort could be heard from where I sat behind him in the backseat.
“Okay,” I amended, “I didn’t mean to make light of it. But David mentioned it only briefly, and I will admit, I don’t understand its significance.”
David chuckled and bussed me on the tip of my nose. “I know babe. I mentioned it once in passing. I have a tendency not to dwell on my rank and stuff like that.”
“Since Mr. Modest here will probably downplay the significance, let me give you the scoop on Mustangs,” Bastian volunteered. “First off let’s do a Navy Rank 101. Do you know what a Warrant Offi
cer is, as opposed to a Commissioned Officer, or even and NCO?”
“I have to tell you guys, I really don’t know much about ranks at all,” I acknowledged. “You are both retired, but you never even talk about the Navy or what you did for Uncle Sam.” Wow, I can’t believe we had never talked about this. Both men were career sailors, but it’s as if they threw a wall up between their civilian status and their life in the Navy.
“Quick and dirty on ranks then. There are NCO’s, those are non-commissioned officers. Bas was an NCO, a guy that works his way up through the enlisted ranks. Bas was an E-8, or Senior Chief when he retired. An E-9 is the highest NCO rank, but our Bastian preferred being in the field. He barely made the time to test for his E-8 rank, Lazy Fucker. There was no way he’d take the E-9 and be chained to a desk,” David teased.
“Now Wonder Boy here,” Bas butted in, “he started as enlisted and fast tracked up to E-7. After twelve years in service, he was eligible to apply for a Warrant Officer position.”
I interrupted Bas to ask, “Is that like a regular officer?”
“Nope,” Bas continued, “There are exceptions, but in most cases, Commissioned Officers go to an Academy or college to get their rank. Warrant Officers start out as enlisted men, but they are technical specialists. Although David had to apply to a selection board, warrants are selected by their peers, based on technical expertise. With David’s specialty in intelligence as an imagery analyst, he was practically guaranteed a spot. Warrant Officer’s a special commission by the President, and these guys are selected for their hands on experience, to act as mentors and technical trainers.
