Running Blind

by Cindy Gerard

  “Her body needs time to heal itself.”

  Coop turned his head toward Rhonda.

  She looked pale but composed as she continued, her attention fixed on Eva. “Sleep’s not a bad thing. As long as her vitals stay stable and they can stave off infection and keep her nourished and hydrated, sleep is her best friend. It helps her body heal.”

  The way she said it, as if she’d either heard it or said it many times before, had him studying her face sharply.

  No emotion there. No way to guess what she was feeling.

  When she realized he was watching her, she moved back just enough so Mike’s shoulders blocked Coop’s view of her.

  “How about I go to the cafeteria, get us all something to eat, and bring it back here?” Rhonda suggested. “We can sit in the hall, there’s a bench right over there, so you can see her, and she can see you if she wakes—”

  Mike suddenly bolted toward Eva’s door.

  Coop raced into the room after him, his heart pounding. He sensed Rhonda moving up behind him as Mike’s ragged whisper filled the hollow fear enveloping the small room.

  “Chica. It’s me. Chica,” Mike repeated hoarsely, holding Eva’s painfully limp hand in both of his. “You opened your eyes. I saw you. Please, please, open them again. For me, babe. Please open your eyes.”

  All three of them waited; Coop’s breath caught.

  Nothing. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing, until Coop was convinced that Mike’s exhaustion and hope had played a cruel trick on him.

  But then Eva’s eyelids fluttered—so little movement at first that Coop thought he’d imagined it. Then they fluttered again and finally opened.

  Mike lowered his lips to her hand. His throat convulsed. “About time you came around, Mrs. Brown.”

  Coop heard the tears in Mike’s voice and felt some rise to his own eyes. Beside him, Rhonda squeezed her eyes shut tightly but not before Coop caught the misty gleam of moisture.

  When Eva finally focused and painstakingly turned her head to meet Mike’s eyes, Coop thought Mike would totally lose it.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” he said so gently, and with so much love, that Coop felt a staggering ache, deep and full of longing.

  He wanted that. What they had together. And until this moment, when he saw Mike shower love and adoration and hope on his wife, he hadn’t even known it was what he wanted.

  Stunned, he watched as Mike touched a hand to Eva’s hair, bent down, and tenderly pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  Then he backed away, as did Rhonda, letting Mike and Eva experience this miracle in private. And this time, when Coop looked over at Rhonda, she was staring at him, instead of the other way around.

  For a long moment, their eyes held, and damn if he didn’t see the same thing in her expression that he felt. Mixed with her joy, he saw loneliness, emptiness, and longing—and he sensed it was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him.

  Then she smiled—a tentative and achingly vulnerable smile—and nothing could have stopped him from reaching for her hand and pulling her into his arms.

  He kissed her.

  He hadn’t meant to do it, but it happened. And it felt absolutely right.

  Eva had almost died today. They could have died today. And by the time his common sense kicked in to remind him that his reaction was about life and death, not desire, it was too late.

  Too much raw, exposed emotion was in play between them. And too much heat once she was in his arms and their mouths melded as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. As if he’d done it a thousand times.

  Her mouth opened beneath his, warm and welcoming, and he took the kiss all the way home. Damn if it didn’t feel like coming home.

  And then suddenly, she was gone.

  Eyes wide, breathing hard, looking horrified, she pushed slowly away from him, clearly shaken.

  So was he. He staggered back a step, then heard Mike say his name.

  Mike. Shit. He’d forgotten about Mike, who, thank God, was still focused on his wife.

  Coop ran an unsteady hand through his hair and backed another step away from Rhonda, needing the space as much as she did. “What do you need, bud?”

  “Go let the nurses know that she’s awake.”

  Without looking at Rhonda, he hotfooted it out of the room as if his tail was on fire.

  Holy hell. What can of worms had he just opened?

  9

  Eva’s room immediately became a beehive of activity. As staff rushed in and out, Rhonda eased into the hall to let them tend to business. Unfortunately, Cooper came with her.

  She needed some distance—and chocolate—to help her figure out what had just happened.

  “Smart. Really smart,” she muttered under her breath.

  “You say something?”

  Her gaze shot to Cooper, who regarded her with uncertainty. As if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she said. As if he might need as much room from her as she needed from him.

  “I said I’m going for chocolate. You want anything?”

  “No. Thanks.” He turned his attention back to Eva’s room, where the staff made notes on charts and checked monitors.

  She headed down the hall toward the waiting room, where she’d spotted a vending machine before.

  What had happened back there?

  A mistake—that’s what happened.

  “Hindsight,” she muttered, feeding coins into the snack machine. “Where is it when you need it?”

  She ripped the wrapping off the candy bar and bit into the chocolate. The first sweet bite didn’t do much to calm her down.

  All right, so they’d kissed. It was a human thing to do after the day’s experiences. The uncertainty of life was never as obvious as it had been today. And yes, she’d had a physical reaction. He was hot, and she had a libido.

  But overriding the chemistry had been her fear for Eva, intertwined with old but still-raw memories. Her relief at Eva’s awakening had tipped her over the edge and into letting her guard down. So a celebratory hug was a reasonable reaction.

  The kiss . . . not so much.

  Their chemistry had been there since the first day she’d met him, which was why she generally refused to give him the time of day. Because that way lay trouble.

  Even more trouble than she’d imagined, if she’d correctly read the look in his eyes after she’d pulled away. She’d seen the exact same things she’d been feeling.

  Surprise. Interest. Heat.

  Longing.

  She’d felt way too comfortable in Cooper’s embrace. Felt herself trusting the feeling a little too quickly. Responding to the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin, and kissing him back, though all she’d thought she needed was human contact.

  Boy, had she been wrong.

  “Crap, crap, crap.” She tossed the half-eaten chocolate into the wastebasket and headed back to Eva’s room.

  When she reached the door and saw Mike’s smile lighting up the room like floodlights, his happiness overshadowed every thought but the one that counted: Eva was going to be okay.

  • • •

  Cooper still stood out in the hall.

  “How’s she doing?” she asked without meeting his eyes.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “I see they took the vent tube out.” That was an even better sign.

  “Yeah. She even managed to give Mike a little grief before all the activity wore her out, and she fell back to sleep.”

  For a long moment, they stood there, ignoring the elephant in the hall.

  “Rhonda, look,” Cooper said, then paused, and she got the very distinct feeling that he was wrestling with what he wanted to say to her. Which meant that she certainly wasn’t going to want to hear it.

  Thank God, Mike spotted her then and waved them in. />
  “Mike wants us.” She shouldered around Cooper and into the room.

  “Hey,” Mike said softly, so as not to wake Eva. “Glad you’re back. I wanted to tell you both what the doc said.”

  “Go for it,” Cooper said.

  “They were reluctant to take the tube out at first,” Mike said. “Wanted her vital signs a little more stable and the sedation to wear off a little more, but she wanted it out. And she wanted the restraints off.”

  “That’s our Eva,” Cooper said, smiling.

  “When she proved that she could breathe on her own, they agreed to pull it.”

  Rhonda knew that ventilators were invasive, and the goal was always to get them out as soon as possible. Sometimes a patient never got off the vent—­another place she didn’t want to go now.

  “Her prognosis is still guarded,” Mike said, “and she has a lot of healing to do and a long way to go, but he’s highly optimistic that barring any unforeseen complications, she’s going to be fine.

  “She’s not going to be well for a long time, though,” he cautioned quickly, “and she’ll be in here a long time. After that, extensive rehab. But she’s going to make it!”

  “Best news ever, man.” Cooper wrapped Mike in a big bear hug, which Mike returned with the same gusto.

  Rhonda’s smile widened until her cheeks ached.

  When Mike released Cooper and reached for her, she gave in to his infectious joy. She hugged him back as he swung her around in a circle before finally setting her down.

  “Look who’s awake.” Cooper smiled gently at Eva, who was watching her husband.

  “Wouldn’t have . . . thought you’d have . . . the strength . . . to manhandle . . . another woman. And . . . in front of me . . . no less.”

  “That’s my girl.” Cooper leaned down and planted a tender kiss on Eva’s forehead. “Give that man a ton of grief.”

  Mike nudged Cooper out of the way so he could get closer to Eva. “No. That’s my girl. Awake, talking smack, and mean as a snake.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. The tenderness in his touch made Rhonda’s eyes misty.

  “And to think I was looking forward to hearing your voice again.” He leaned in close. “If you ever scare me like this again, I swear I’ll—”

  “What?” Eva’s barely audible whisper sent relief as loud as a brass band ringing into the room. “You’ll . . . do . . . what?”

  A tear trickled down Mike’s cheek. “I’ll lock you in our bedroom, where any good wife belongs.”

  When the corners of Eva’s mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles, it felt as if the sun had come out.

  “Yeah,” she managed to rasp, “that’ll . . . happen.”

  Rhonda suddenly felt like an intruder in the midst of the very deep, very fiery love her boss and his wife shared. “Maybe I’d better leave, before Mike ends up in more hot water.”

  “Good idea.” Cooper leaned over again and pressed another kiss to Eva’s forehead. “Feel better, darlin’. You give me a call if Mr. Personality here gives you any trouble, okay?”

  He got a sweet, brief smile for his efforts.

  “I’m so glad you’re back with us.” Rhonda squeezed Eva’s hand. “A whole lot of people are going to be celebrating the good news when they hear it.”

  “Make him . . . get some . . . rest,” Eva whispered, and closed her eyes again.

  “You heard the woman,” Cooper said pointedly.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Mike followed them down the hall. When they were out of earshot of Eva’s room, he got straight to the point. “Have you got any leads?”

  Now that he felt confident that Eva would recover, he was all business. He wanted answers. He wanted his pound of flesh. And the longer they went without finding the shooter, the less chance there was that they ever would.

  “Working on it.” Rhonda stuck to the plan and kept her mouth shut about the calling cards the shooter had left behind. It went against the grain to withhold information from her boss, but she agreed that Mike didn’t need any more weight on his shoulders right now.

  “So are the FBI, the local PD, and DOD. DCIS, to be exact,” Cooper added.

  Rhonda was still learning the terminology and acronyms, but she knew that the DCIS was the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

  “Working on it how?” Mike demanded.

  She’d want details, too, if she were in his position. “With very little to go on, I’ve had to work with generalities to start a rough profile of the shooter. To start, it clearly wasn’t his first rodeo. He knew we’d be at the restaurant this morning. He knows how to shoot.”

  “And a shot at that distance,” Cooper added, “says he has the goods. He had to have had a high-power scope. Long-range rifle. Skill.”

  “Right,” Rhonda agreed. “And that said ex-military sniper to me. So I started running searches for any current or former military who might have a bone to pick with anyone on the teams.”

  It was a big field, considering she was searching through a million active- and inactive-duty names.

  “I cross-referenced a variety of databases—the Army Military Occupational Specialty for enlisted snipers and the Marine, Air Force, and Navy counterparts—­attempting to narrow down the list. Then I searched class rosters that list both the graduates and the washouts, men or women who may have learned enough to be snipers but didn’t make it to graduation. Those same class rosters and military records should take care of ninety-nine percent of the possibles, including mercs, private contractors, and known assassins.”

  With no witnesses and no rifle, it made her search criteria pretty broad, as was her profile.

  “While I’m not totally ruling out a woman, until I get more detailed intel, I’m playing the odds and looking for males thirty-five or younger, single, no kids, known loners, into weapons, with formal military training and experience. Specifically, military with urban combat and sniping experience or qualifying as expert with a rifle. It’s the best I can do right now.”

  When Mike nodded his approval, she let out a relieved breath.

  “In the meantime, while my systems continue to search, I ‘borrowed’ backdoor access to DCIS and FBI data banks. Local PD, too.”

  She half-expected a reprimand—hacking between government agencies was a big no-no—but a whisper of a smile tipped up a corner of Mike’s mouth.

  She continued, “They’ve compiled a list of all the patrons and employees who were in the restaurant this morning. So far, nothing suspicious has surfaced. No connections to organized crime, no arrest records, nothing that raised any red flags—but it’s early yet.

  “Oh,” she said, remembering something else, “and I also reviewed DCIS’s recorded interviews of everyone who was on site. If there was a gambler in deep with his bookie, a lover scorned, a gang feud that spilled over into suburbia, anything that might suggest someone other than Eva or the team was the target, nothing’s popped up yet.”

  “Good work,” Mike said. “Keep at it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mike turned to Cooper. “Did you find the hide?”

  Cooper shook his head, and Rhonda bit her lower lip as she listened to him lie. “Not yet, but we figure it was far enough away and high enough that both the sound of the shot and the muzzle flash would be negligible on the streets.”

  “Ballistics should give us a lead on the rifle. What’s happening there?” Mike looked grim. Worry and exhaustion had carved lines in his face that Rhonda had never seen before.

  Cooper was a bit slow to field this one. “The bullets they dug out of the wall and floor at the restaurant are at the lab.”

  “Whose lab?” Mike asked sharply, picking up on Cooper’s hesitance.

  Cooper breathed deep and braced. “The state’s.” That part was actually true.

  Mike swore under his b
reath.

  “It’s been handled,” Cooper assured him. “One of the cops on the scene dug the slugs out of the walls, bagged ’em, and, overzealous at working his first crime scene, labeled and sent them in to the state police lab. That was before DCIS took over.

  “As long as they’ve got them, we’re letting them have a crack at ’em.” Cooper shoved his hands into his pockets. “Maybe they’ll get lucky and find some rifling marks. Help us ID the type of gun.”

  “When are we getting them back? We need those bullets. A federal employee was targeted and shot.”

  Cooper glanced at Rhonda before shrugging. “We won’t know for certain until we find the hide and ballistics gets a read on trajectory and angle, wind conditions—­you know the drill.”

  “There were a lot of Black Ops people in the restaurant this morning,” Mike said with a thoughtful nod. “Any one of us could have been the target. And that means someone knew where we were going to be and when we were going to be there.”

  Again, Cooper remained evasive. “So it would seem.”

  Jaw clenched, Mike looked away from Cooper and back into Eva’s room. “I should be leading the investigation.”

  Cooper shook his head. “No way in hell would DOD let that happen. You know the protocol when a family member is involved.”

  “Besides, you need to be exactly where you are.” Rhonda touched a hand to Mike’s arm. “With her.”

  “And you will be,” Cooper cut in. “Right after I take you home for a shower and a shave and a few hours of shut-eye.”

  “I’m not leaving her yet,” Mike said. “You two get going. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. In the meantime, Rhonda, would you call Peter so he can let everyone know Eva’s going to be okay?”

  “Absolutely.” Rhonda dug into her bag for her phone. “I’ll be happy to deliver the news.”

  10

  She sat in the dark, smoke-stale room with the curtains pulled shut. A flashing motel vacancy sign bled through the thin drapes. The only other light in the room was a tiny red dot from the fire alarm mounted above the door.

  A fire could only improve this dump, she thought darkly.