by Cat Connor
I sucked up the urge to flip him off and spoke to Sam, hoping my voice didn’t sound as pain-filled as I felt.
“You two okay over there?”
“Chicky babe, good to hear your voice. We’re good. Not entirely sure why we’re here.”
“Delta was requested.” I needed a few breaths before continuing. “Some of the heads were American?”
“Oh, all of them are. It is a shipment of heads destined for cremation.”
“Say what?”
“Yep, we ran the biometrics and they are all from donated bodies and were supposed to go to Chicago from a research facility in South Korea. Some joint American-South Korean research project.”
“Donated bodies … South Korea … sure, that makes sense.” Not.
“Yep.”
“Why and how did they end up in New Zealand?”
“Ah, Chicky, the million-dollar question. I’m not kidding. Someone paid a crew member damn near a million US to make sure this box was in the cargo and not on the manifest on this ship when it left Indonesia.”
“Who and by whom?”
There was silence for a beat before Sam said, “We’re coming home. We’ll brief you in person. No phones, no electronic communication.”
Ah, crap. That was bad.
“How soon can you be here?”
“Booking flights now, see you in about twenty-four hours. Will you still be in hospital?”
“I don’t think … I have much choice. Stay safe. Thank Faye for me.”
I tried to hand the phone to Mitch but missed his hand. He caught it before it hit the ground. A combination of the crash, surgery, pain, and what I knew was a fairly decent concussion, took their toll.
I hurt. My head swam. Failure hurt. It hurt more than any physical pain. Physical pain ended. Sooner or later it stopped. The pain felt from failing to exact justice never left.
A door opened and someone came in. I couldn’t see who it was. Panic set in, then Mitch’s voice inside my head said, ‘Open your eyes.’ I tried but they wouldn’t open.
The person introduced himself to Mitch. I knew his voice. Leon Kapowski. My long-suffering neurologist.
Blinding pain shot through my head.
Twenty-Five
Raining Blood
Voices.
Low murmurings and quiet conversations. I knew they were close. One of them was Mitch. I felt his presence. He was closest. Probably within arm’s reach. My eyes wouldn’t open. Probably a good thing. I moved my hand. Mitch’s hand covered mine and squeezed. I still couldn’t see. Disobedient eyes.
“You’re waking up,” Mitch said. “Good. It’s been a few hours.”
Hours? That didn’t seem right. Hours? My eyes struggled to open. The light was dim but still hurt. The other voices murmured a few more times and vanished.
“How many hours?” My voice sounded wrong, husky. Oxygen. It’s drying.
Mitch held a straw to my mouth.
“This will help. Iced water.”
He was right. “How many hours, Mitch?”
“Almost an entire day. El, your body is a bit broken. You need to mend. Too much too soon, not good.”
It was a little easier to breathe and talk, maybe sleeping had helped. I was still wearing sensors but the IV had gone. I just had a port in my left hand. Progress.
“All right?” Mitch watched me.
“Any more explosions?”
“No.”
“Good. Did they find the Croatian woman? Sonya, I think that was her name.”
“Yes. Kurt’s interviewing her here. He left just as you woke up. She was admitted with abdominal pain an hour or so ago.”
“Here?”
“Uh huh.”
“Do you know if they did an ultrasound before Kurt got near her?” I could feel something horrible brewing and it was hard to keep that from my voice. “Mitch, did they?”
“I don’t know. I’ll call him, right now.”
Mitch pulled my phone from his pocket and called Kurt.
I held my hand out for the phone as soon as Mitch said hello. “Hey, don’t go near her,” I said. A fine red mist filled the air. “Don’t, Kurt. Don’t.”
“Conway. It’s fine. She’s sick. I’m just going to have a conversation with her.”
“No! She’s not sick. Kurt. Please!”
“Calm down.”
“Stop.” I took a painful breath and controlled the shaking in my voice. “Come back.”
“Conway, put Mitch on.”
“Doc, please. Come back.”
Mitch took the phone when I held it out to him. Seemed like a good opportunity to try to sit up. My hand hit a something in the bed. Controls. I sat the bed up. Pain coursed freely through my body. I felt nauseous, swallowing hard and hoping I didn’t throw up. Throwing up would hurt. It would really hurt.
“Kurt, I saw what it was that upset Ellie. Red mist in the air,” Mitch said. For some reason it sounded less insane when Mitch said it than when I did. “She’s trying to get out of bed.”
All of a sudden, Mitch thrust a white plastic container into my hands. I vomited. The room spun. The back of the bed moved down a little. I wasn’t going anywhere. Large black dots floated in front of my eyes.
“Enough, Ellie. You have to rest,” Mitch said, taking the container. “No more moving.”
He was serious.
There was a knock on glass and the door slid open.
“I’m back. Explain,” Kurt said walking over to my bed. “While you’re at it, explain what the hell you thought you were doing.” He glanced in the container that Mitch showed him. “That’s not good.”
“Did they do an abdominal ultrasound before you went to see that woman?”
“They were waiting on a radiologist. I was going to have a quick word before she went to radiology.”
“Why?”
“She asked for you. She wanted to see the agent who saved her.”
My blood turned to crystals. “You knew I thought she could be a bomb—”
“Yes. I did. I also have a list of her visitors and how long they were with her. She’s been in custody. ICE aren’t in the habit of letting people walk into their facilities carrying explosives.”
“We don’t either,” I replied as another wave of pain crashed over me. “We don’t either, Kurt, but it happened.”
He had no comeback. Instead, he took his phone and made a call and put it on speaker. I listened.
“This is SSA Kurt Henderson. I need a Bomb Squad to Inova Fairfax hospital. A-sap.”
“Kurt, it’s Tony. I’m on the way.” He whistled.
I knew what followed. He had their attention, now it was instruction time. He’d circle his index finger in the air. Rally up. “What are you dealing with?” I could hear movement. Feet on the floor. Doors opening and closing. A truck starting.
“Possible suicide bomber.”
“Crap-a-doodle-do. I hate that shit.”
“Not my favorite either.”
“Tony, ETA?” I said.
“Hey, Conway, glad you’re still with us. Thirty minutes. Precautionary measures until then. Get the potential threat isolated.”
“I’ll meet you, Tony. At the entrance to Emergency,” Kurt said.
“See you then.” The call disconnected.
Kurt looked over at me. “Happy now?”
I couldn’t nod and speaking wasn’t great. “Isolate her.” I paused for breath. “Get ICE to do it. I need you here.”
He didn’t argue or question why. He just made another call, paced the room, then hung up and spoke quietly to Mitch. So quietly, I couldn’t hear. I concentrated on Mitch. Nothing. What? Kurt still talked to him, preventing any shared images from configuring. Clever. But it also meant they didn’t want me to know something.
Not cool.
“Secrets. Rude,” I muttered under another upsurge of pain.
Kurt was right there. “On a scale of one to ten, Conway, ten being worst possible. How bad is t
he pain?”
I contained a grimace and let a small smile replace it. “Five.”
“You’re done. I’m getting Leon in for another consult and looking at stronger pain relief.”
Mitch frowned. Kurt noticed.
“She said five?” Mitch said. “Doesn’t seem like five from the outside looking in?”
“That’s because it’s Conway. Her five is a normal person’s nine.”
Mitch smiled. “That’s not surprising.”
“No, it’s not.”
My head hurt, my ribs indignant, and the stupidity of trying to move caused fiery pitchforks to jab me. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t much like hell. Hopefully, that’s not where destiny would lead me. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Leon was in the room.
“What made you vomit?” he asked.
“Moving,” I replied. “It was a reaction to more pain.”
Maybe five wasn’t quite right.
“You’re certain? You didn’t feel sick before you tried to move?”
“No, I was okay.”
I was awesome, ready to go for a run.
“How’s the head?”
“Sore.”
“What year is it?”
“Nineteen eighty-two.” It wasn’t easy keeping a straight face but I did.
“And you are a wiseass as always. Name?”
I sighed.
“Gabrielle Conway.”
“Where are you?”
I sighed again, a little too heavily, and the fiery pitchfork was back. Instead of fighting it, I went with the pain. Breathe. Aware that Leon, Kurt and Mitch stood watching and waiting for me to speak, made me uncomfortable. Breathe. As the pain subsided, I glanced around the room, a small smile lurking on the edges of my lips.
“Looks like a space station.”
Leon shook his head. “Play along.”
“Hospital. Are we done?” I paused to steady my breathing. “Twenty questions is not my favorite game. So unimaginative. Just accept I’m not suffering ill-effects from a head injury.”
That may well happen, but it ain’t a thing yet.
Leon smiled. “She’s fine. Go ahead and increase her pain meds. Sedate if you need to.”
“Thought you were supposed to be on my side?” I said. And saw his little torture light in his hand. “You can put that away. No light.”
“I’m your neurologist. Do you have any idea how much fun that isn’t?”
“There is still no need for you to suggest sedation.”
How rude.
“When you’re feeling better I want to run through the Epley maneuver with you again,” Leon said. “I’ll wait until you can move. BPPV is probably going to be an issue again. The sooner we get it treated the better.”
“Okay.” Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. I was well used to that unpleasantness but was pleased he didn’t want to attempt the Epley maneuver now.
“Also, there’s something going on with you. We’ve witnessed non-verbal communication. There could be an underlying trauma issue responsible.”
A smile trickled into my voice. “No, it isn’t. I’m just observant. Nothing more.”
“And Mitch as well?”
“Yes. That’s why we get on so well.”
Telepathy? No. That didn’t feel right. We definitely had some kind of cerebral connection happening though. Empathic accuracy was a good description. Yes, that fitted. We could accurately infer each other’s thoughts and feelings. I leaned my head back. How did I know what it was? Before the crash I had no idea. I just knew I knew stuff and not just about Mitch. I have always been able to sense when people were holding back and able to pull information from places untapped by most people. It didn’t explain the hallucinations. It didn’t explain how Mitch could see what I saw.
How could I project images like that? Or open my mind so he could walk in? How did I see Chance and how did he help me know things?
Accept it, don’t think about it.
My eyes closed without my bidding. Mitch’s voice flowed over me.
“We’re close. We sense things about each other,” he said. “It’s our thing. Don’t make it something it’s not by trying to give it a name.”
“Pain relief,” Kurt said, putting a kidney-shaped dish on the bed, containing two full syringes, one bigger than the other and a silver packet. He ripped open the silver packet and cleaned the port in my hand. I watched with interest as he took the needle cap off the smaller syringe with his teeth. He held the port with one hand and the syringe in the other. “This might be a little uncomfortable.”
I didn’t notice if it was or wasn’t. When the syringe was empty, he recapped it and dropped it into the dish before picking up the second syringe.
“What’s that?”
“Saline flush. I want the medication in your blood stream, not in the tubing.”
Fair enough.
“All done. Ten minutes and you should be a lot more comfortable.”
“You didn’t mix any Phenergan in this time, did you?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“I used a different anti-nausea medicine, doesn’t have a sedating effect. Don’t make me regret it.”
The room went quiet. Mitch sat close enough that he could touch me. Our fingers linked. His voice chased away the pain as he talked to me, telling me how Kurt had gone to meet the bomb squad and that Dad was having a coffee. The last thing I remembered hearing as I drifted into a pain-free ether was him saying everything would be okay.
Twenty-Six
The Number Of The Beast
I moved the back of the bed a little, enabling me to see more of the room and feel more like an active participant in anything that happened. Mitch said I’d slept for four hours. The day was over. In some ways, that was a blessing. Kurt topped up my pain relief and said Doug was coming in to talk to me.
I figured I must be almost fully recovered judging by the amount of sleep I’d had since my arrival in hospital. Shame my body didn’t agree.
Doug’s hulking figure ambled through the door of my room. He was one of the most seasoned Delta C agents. Mitch stood up, his eyes flashed from me to Doug. I smiled.
“Doug this is Mitch, he’s my …” I looked at Mitch for help. We hadn’t defined us. It was all new, we’d moved from best friends to this new thing.
Mitch grinned and shook Doug’s hand. “The word she’s looking for is ‘beau.’”
Such an old-fashioned yet fabulous word. Yep, beau. That worked.
Mitch and Doug exchanged greetings. Mitch sat in a chair by the door, allowing Doug access to me.
Doug sat heavily in the closest chair. “It’s mad out there,” he said. His voice rattled like a freight train arriving at a station.
“Not great in here either,” I replied.
“Your two-man protection slash surveillance team is still in place watching those women. We’re liaising with the Transit team who are watching Troy. It’s one helluva juggling act to make surveillance happen in the current climate.” He pulled out his phone and checked the screen, then he stopped and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You worked the Hawk case, yeah?”
I nodded. Funny how it will always be the Hawk case even though we knew the real identity of Hawk. Do we really need to go there again?
“How’d he blow out the back of that young woman’s head?”
Do we want to go there again? Do I?
I skimmed the image forever chiseled into my mind and answered quickly. “C4. He’d filled a hollow metal hair barrette with C4 and added a small remote detonator. It was enough to turn her skull into shrapnel.”
Doug’s foot hit the chair leg. I jumped. My heart raced. Everything came back into focus. I was in a hospital bed, not a stadium. Somehow, that wasn’t overly comforting.
“You all right?” Doug asked.
“Uh huh, why the question?”
Kurt migh
t be closer to the truth than I’d care to admit with the PTSD comments he’d been making for the last year or so.
“You didn’t seem to be with me here,” Doug said.
Well, I can’t be everywhere at fucking once, can I? Seemed smart to keep that observation to myself. I saw Mitch move closer. He frowned and shook his head a little. I knew that look.
Mitch leaned toward me. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m okay.” I wondered if he saw the explosion because I went there again. The look in his eyes told me he did. I wanted to hug him and tell him I was sorry. It would have to wait.
My attention reverted to Doug. “Why’d you ask about the woman in New Zealand?” I didn’t want to say her name. But I couldn’t help but think it, Gloria.
“Because one of those musical cards arrived at the office the morning of the explosion, addressed to you,” he said.
“And?”
“It contained enough C4 to kill you and make a hole where your desk was.”
There is a hole where my office was.
He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and handed it to me. I read the front of the envelope and noted the name on it was mine. Supervisory Special Agent Conway, but the address was care of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, followed by the street address. It didn’t stipulate Delta Team, criminal investigation division. Whoever addressed it either didn’t know how to get it directly to my desk, or didn’t care.
The bomb in a musical card was clever. Hard to detect, wouldn’t show up as anything suspicious on the X-ray, just a musical card. I had thought about ways to smuggle explosives into our building after the explosion. Musical greeting cards. God. I willed my heart rate to return to normal as I concentrated on what Doug said.
“The return address caused suspicion. Know anyone in the Czech Republic who’d be sending you a card at this time of year?”
“No. I don’t know anyone in the Czech Republic.” I looked at the writing on the envelope. “I guess the return address is fake?”
“Yes.”
“And no, I don’t even know anyone currently traveling in Europe who’d send me a card.”
“That’s what SAC Grafton said. He called that Russian you work with.”
