by Cat Connor
“Well done, Conway. I see you are returning faster than expected,” Kurt commented. “You have a traumatic brain injury.”
“You said spleen and ribs.”
I’m pretty sure I’d remember if anyone had mentioned head injury. Or would I?
“I didn’t tell you everything,” he replied. “Go ahead, shoot me.”
“I would but someone took my Glock.”
Dad spoke, “If you two kids are done …”
“Are they always like this?” Mitch asked, turning toward Dad.
“Pretty much,” Dad replied. “At least he isn’t wearing bruises this time.”
“You’ll need to explain that,” Mitch said with a small laugh.
“Later,” Dad said. “Let’s get Ellie settled first.”
I am settled. Sounds like I’ve been settled a while. Time to shake things up.
“I need clothes.” Experience told me mine were now rags, and I’m not really a grunge person. The bag lady look didn’t impress me much either. “Also, someone get Caine in here. I want to know what’s happening with my investigation. Where’s my phone?” I inspected the tube in my arm. “And this thing here … it can go. I’m capable of drinking … I don’t need IV fluid.”
“That’s true,” Kurt replied. “But you’re receiving more than fluid, so it stays.”
I grumbled under my breath. “Don’t be like that. I need to work.”
“Don’t make me sedate you,” Kurt replied as he leaned in close. “Because I will.”
“I need to work this case. Sam and Lee aren’t here. This is on me.”
“What am I? Chopped liver?” Kurt replied.
Mitch cleared his throat. “Enough. Come on.”
Kurt threw his hands in the air. Surrender. “Mitch is right.” Kurt used his special calming Ellie’s-going-to-lose-it voice. “I’m not arguing with you anymore. We’ll go up to intensive care and we’ll talk about how much you think you can do froma bed.”
Mitch’s head made the slightest shake from side to side as I readied a response. I swallowed it and behaved. Not easy but he knew that.
I smiled as our eyes met and I heard his thoughts. Better than you know yourself.
My only thought was a comment on his very fine backside. Smartass.
Half an hour later, which seemed like days, I met the intensive care staff and moved to one of their beds. I’m not going to say that went smoothly. Because it didn’t. It hurt. Ribs hurt. A lot.
Mitch’s parents came to visit me. They were allowed to stay a whole ten minutes Mitch walked them down to the front foyer but was back in double quick time. Work needed to happen. Terrorists weren’t going to wait around for me to be fully functional again.
“I still need my phone and laptop,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do I even still have a laptop and a phone?”
Kurt topped up the pain relief while he talked, “I believe you have both. Neither will be used in here. You’ll to have to wait, Conway.”
“People are dying. This is not a waiting situation.” A groan escaped as I tried to move. Moving wasn’t happening.
“You were nearly one of them,” he replied. “You will allow your body time to recover.”
“I’m okay. Just let me try.”
“Conway, you’re not okay and you will rest.” Kurt was serious. He looked at his watch. The room floated. Damn. What the hell did he give me?
“What’d you do?” I asked as he floated up to the ceiling.
“Topped up your pain relief,” he replied from the light in the middle of the room.
“Bastard. You gave me something else as well.”
He smiled at me as he swam across the ceiling. “Promethazine hydrochloride. So the pain relief doesn’t make you sick. You don’t want to be sick with fractured ribs and an injured spleen.”
Sounded like a good reason. Promethazine hydrochloride? It was familiar. It had another name. Phenergan. Ah crap! This was sneaky sedation.
“Okay. I hate this …” I looked at Mitch, he swayed in and out of focus.
Phenergan combined with pain relief. Dammit.
“What do you hate?” Mitch asked pulling a chair closer to me.
“I can’t focus. He gave me Phenergan.”
Kurt smiled at me as he swam back across the ceiling.
“Your brain still works, Conway,” he said as the light glowed behind him like a halo.
Mitch rubbed my arm. “Sleep. Close your eyes. I’ll be here you when you wake up and we’ll talk. Everything is moving forward in the investigation. I promise. Now please, sleep.”
“For someone who wanted me to wake up you’re awful quick in wanting me to go to sleep again,” I mumbled as my eyes closed.
“How’d you know?” Mitch whispered.
“I heard you telling me to wake up,” I replied, listening to my words slur. “It was dark and you seemed a long way away but I could hear you.”
And I never got a ham sandwich.
“Sleep.”
Dad’s voice cut in as I drifted. I wasn’t asleep but I wasn’t capable of joining the conversation. Anyway, it was more fun to listen and let the words create images in my brain.
“It sounds like you two can hear each other’s thoughts,” Dad said.
“I think we can,” Mitch replied. “More than that though. I see what she sees if she lets me.”
“Explain.”
I really wanted to hear the explanation. Part of me hoped Mitch had figured out what I couldn’t, how and why it was happening.
“Before the Navy Yard explosion, Ellie saw the street fill with smoke. So did I.”
“How often has that happened?” Dad asked.
“A few times over the last week.”
“Anything else?”
“I hear the same music as she does.”
I couldn’t see, but I imagined Dad nodding sagely. As he always did when my craziness surfaced. But it wasn’t just my craziness now. I’d spread it around. Mitch caught it. Maybe it was viral?
Kurt’s voice joined the conversation. “You ever have a head injury, Mitch?”
Typical Kurt, looking for a medical explanation. Couldn’t just be a thing, oh no, had to have some kind of brain issue behind it. Can’t we just be on the same wavelength?
“Yes. When I was teenager.”
“Notice anything like this before, this thought sharing, song hearing, and hallucination thing?”
“No. Only when Ellie and I became close …” His voice lowered. Harder for me to hear. I had to listen. “More noticeable since we, um, got together.”
Oh, he didn’t want to say anything else in front of Dad. I hoped I hadn’t smiled. I wanted them to think I was sleeping so I could hear the interactions and work out what was going on. Because something was. Fighting sleep and brain fog made following the conversation a little more entertaining that it would otherwise have been.
“Extraordinary,” Kurt replied. “You’re sure you didn’t hit your head in the last week?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, good. We can rule out head injury then.”
“So what is it?”
“A connection,” Kurt replied. “A very strong one.”
No one spoke for a few minutes. In the silence, I wondered what would happen if I thought specific things, directed at Mitch. So I tried.
I can hear you talking with Kurt and Dad about us.
He looked at me. How did I know he was looking at me? I could feel him.
“You’re not asleep,” Mitch said. I heard the smile in his voice. “Enjoying the conversation?”
I smiled but kept my eyes shut. I was sleepy, just not sleeping.
“Okay, that’s it. She needs to rest. We’re taking this outside,” Kurt said.
No. Don’t leave me, Mitch.
“I’m staying. I’ll sit right here and be quiet,” Mitch said. I heard Kurt try to argue.
“She can communicate with him no matter what, Kurt. It really doesn’t matter if h
e’s in the room or not. Or did you not grasp that?” Dad said.
“I got it,” Kurt replied. “Where’s her phone?”
“Here,” Mitch said.
“Right, I’ll take it and check on the investigation. I’ll be back in an hour. Encourage her to rest.”
“I will,” Mitch replied.
The room felt different. Less crowded. Dad had gone with Kurt. Just me and Mitch now. I let myself fall through the clouds and into real sleep.
Twenty-Four
Unwell
Mitch and Kurt sat by the wall when I woke up. I could see their legs without turning my head.
It occurred to me that Mitch should know I was awake.
Why didn’t he know? Or did he?
I couldn’t trust my voice. My throat was still raw and dry. Instead of speaking, I moved my hand.
“El, you okay” Mitch asked. He was watching. He was always watching.
“Mm.”
“Drink,” Kurt said. “She needs a drink.”
A straw touched my lips. Cool water. Nice.
Made it easier to talk. “Thanks,” I said to Mitch.
He smiled and just like that, the world brightened.
“All right?” he asked.
“Yes.” I was. I felt pretty good considering the fog in my brain. Trying to think through a Phenergan hangover; not fun. I rallied my thoughts and concentrated them, stopping them from wandering away while I tried to get them in order. Thinking, I could manage, maybe. Moving, not so much. No one needed to know that.
“Take it easy. You sure you’re okay?” Mitch said, putting down the glass.
Absolutely. I’m not about to run a marathon. My mind wandered to our last run, early morning along the Potomac. The sensible part of me knew that wouldn’t be happening again for quite a while. The rest of me wanted to go now.
Concentrate on what you can do. Questions. I had plenty and no answers.
“Tell me about today. What happened to the helicopter? Where’s the pilot? Any more explosions?” I took a few shallow breaths. Cracked ribs and breathing didn’t go well together. “Where are Danni, Trudi, and Susan? Did they carry on as planned today? Anything from Sam and Lee? Where’s Renegade, is he safe? What about Troy?”
“Conway, slow down,” Kurt said.
“I’m in bed, this is slow,” I replied with careful enunciation. “This is slow. Time is ticking. We need answers. “Can I use my phone and laptop in here?”
“Wait, please. Just wait a bit longer before you launch yourself into orbit working.”
I saw the look on his face. I saw the look on Mitch’s face. I knew they wanted what was best for me. I couldn’t just switch off. Answers. I wanted them. My job required me to find those answers.
I measured my thoughts to one question at a time. Slow. Calm. Considered. “Where’s the pilot?”
“Died at the scene,” Kurt replied.
I refused to let myself think about his family, there would be time for that later. With a shove, I closed the door on the human tragedy aspect.
“What happened to the helicopter?”
“Crash investigators are still working at the scene. Eyewitnesses reported a flash and smoke from the ground seconds before they saw flames and smoke coming from the helicopter.”
“A flash?” What did I remember? Nothing. I closed my eyes. I remembered taking off; that was it until I woke up in hospital.
“Rocket launcher of some description,” Kurt muttered. “Could even be a homemade thing. We’ll know more once they’re finished with the wreckage.”
“Where was the flash seen?”
“Reports came from near the Mall.”
I thought about the possibility of someone using a Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon in the National Mall. Dangerous to use, they required a lot of clear area behind the weapon. The Mall had plenty of area but it was usually full of people. A well-used space.
“Backblast,” I said and it wasn’t easy. Pain – coming back in spades. Breathe. “It can be lethal to ninety-eight feet. That’s a big fucking area. Someone would’ve been killed or badly injured. Any reports?”
“No,” Kurt said then tempered his answer. “Not that I know of.”
Mitch spoke, “A soft launch would diminish the backblast.”
I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them Kurt and Mitch were watching me. I swallowed.
“You talking about a Predator?” I asked Mitch.
“Yeah, a Predator Short Range Assault Weapon. It’d fit the bill with its fire-and-forget system. It has fire-from-enclosure capability.”
I smiled. Everything hurt all of a sudden but I still smiled. I loved that Mitch’s expertise extended to the field of weapons.
“Can we find out if there are any SRAW’s unaccounted for nationwide?”
Kurt made the call before I’d finished the sentence. I let my eyes close for a few minutes. I think it was minutes, might have been seconds, could’ve been an hour.
Kurt’s voice cut a passage through the murk in my mind. “I sent out an alert to all agencies and the armed services asking them to check for reports of any missing short-range missiles.”
“Good.” I was fighting a thick gray cloud and still had questions. “If a Predator hit the chopper, why am I alive?”
“Because you have nine lives, Conway, but I swear they’re running out.”
Good point. Time to be more careful with the few I have left. Yeah, because that was an option? It’s not as if I do these things to myself. I attract aberrations and often they want to drastically shorten my life.
“People need to stop shooting at me.”
“Agreed,” Mitch and Kurt said.
“Phone and laptop, can I use them in here?”
“Yes, you can. This is an isolated room,” Kurt replied.
Well, that was clever of him. It occurred to me that asking if I could use them was a long way off being capable of doing so. That frustrated me. I was still wearing sensors and still had an IV. Annoying. I had a feeling if I complained too much I’d end up asleep again, though part of me considered that might be a good idea. Breathing hurt. The longer I fought to function, the more pain I felt.
“The women?” The effort to speak was exponentially greater than before.
Mitch moved his chair closer. “Caine asked me to keep tabs on the three women. They arrived in Rosslyn, crossed Key Bridge on foot and last I heard they were walking up M.” He looked into my eyes and shook his head. “El, you all right?”
I nodded, a little nod, and found more words. “Any more explosions?”
“Yes, while you were in surgery. I don’t know where. Kurt?”
“Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.”
A shiver ran up my spine. An image of a woman under a blanket sprang into my mind. It seemed out of place but it had to be something. Give it a minute. I let my thoughts settle.
“Kurt, that woman we rescued, where is she?”
“I don’t know. ICE took custody. She’s an illegal.”
“Is she being returned to … where was she from?”
“Croatia and I presume the intent is to return her.”
“Find out … when … has she left?” My heart raced. Pain surged through my rib cage. She wasn’t what she seemed to be. She wasn’t. What was she? A bomb. No, it would’ve exploded by now. Or would it? She wouldn’t have left, not yet. She’s connected.
“Conway, you need to calm down,” Kurt warned. He was watching the monitor by my bed and shaking his head.
“There is something wrong with her … too easy to find.” I knew I needed to calm down. I also needed the pain to stop so I could think properly and breathe effectively.
“Chill … now … or I sedate you again.” Kurt’s voice took on a stern tone. I didn’t care for it.
“What if she’s a bomb? Get me Iain!”
“She would’ve gone bang by now …” Kurt said. He didn’t sound convinced.
I stared at him.
“Not if she wasn’t a bomb but now is …”
“Jesus!” Kurt exclaimed. “You’ve just woken up. You’re injured. How could you know?”
I gave him a look. “Really, you wanna ask me that now?”
Kurt suppressed a smile. “Yeah, maybe not. But will you calm down, please?”
Mitch called Iain Campbell and handed me the phone.
“You’re still with us, Ellie, good, pleased,” Iain said with a smile in his voice.
“Yeah, I’m great. That woman … the Croatian. Where is she now?”
“Being held by ICE, I think. I’ll check.”
“Please do, also find out who has visited her …” I paused giving myself breathing space. “And how long they were with her.” Not as easy as I thought to talk. “She’s not a prisoner? She’s a victim, yes?”
“I think so.”
“So less security?”
“Yeah.”
“Iain, find her … I need that information on visitors.” Slow breaths. “Also, any requests she’s made for asylum or anything else.”
“You sound bad, Conway, try resting. I’ll get back to you in twenty.”
I hung up and gave Mitch the phone. He put it in his pocket and sat back down next to me.
“To what end?” he asked.
“The woman being a bomb?” I queried.
“Yes.”
“More destruction.” I took a few shallow breaths before speaking again. “It depends on what she’s asked for, how much damage she could do.” Kurt looped tubing over my ears and positioned a nasal cannula in my nose. “I can breathe,” I grumbled.
I’m not great at it but I’m doing it.
“The oxygen level in your blood is dropping. You’re not breathing well enough,” Kurt replied. “You need to calm down and rest.”
“She could’ve … been meant to explode … in our building,” I said looking at Kurt as he adjusted the oxygen flow.
“Then someone got it wrong, we’re not ICE.”
“Yeah.” I thought about it. You wouldn’t get that wrong. Maybe she isn’t about us. “We need to know … who she is.”
“Conway, this could be drug-induced ramblings,” Kurt cautioned, but he didn’t believe it, I could tell by his tone.
“Could be … get Sam on the phone, Kurt, please.”
“Sure.” He used his cell and called Sam. After a quick conversation in which he explained I’d been in a helicopter crash, he handed me the phone. “Don’t be long. Keep calm. Breathe.”
