by Fiona Quinn
Chris moved further into view. “Hey, Lynx.”
“Hey yourself.”
“Thanks for the vacation. These are some pretty swanky digs,” Chris said.
“Are they? I haven’t looked around yet,” I said.
“You will. Your physical therapist is out front waiting for you. I bet she’ll want you out of this bed soon.” Chris was dressed identically to Andy, but where Andy had a nimble feel about him, Chris was more of the squat, big-necked brand of husky wear.
“What’s the story the PT was told?”
“Your injuries were sustained in a car accident,” Striker said. “Back when you were a teen, you had a bad hospital experience, and now the smell of hospitals makes you break out in hives. You insisted on going home to recuperate, but home was problematic because of logistics. Your dad, Bill Henderson, is on some board with Jimmy Johnson, the guy who owns this place. Your family is rolling in dough. Anything you need, you just snap your fingers, and it appears like magic.”
“Awesome. I need a toothbrush,” I snapped my fingers.
“In a minute.” Striker put his hands on my ankles. I wondered if he was trying to ground me so I could focus. “You know nothing about Johnson; you’ve never met him. You’re here because Jimmy’s doing a favor for your dad.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Andy and I are private, for-hire nurses,” Chris said. “We don’t work for any company; we do independent, individual contracts for long-term cases. Johnson recommended us. We helped him out after his stroke last year. So again, your dad’s name is Bill Henderson, and the owner’s name is Jimmy Johnson.”
“Bill Henderson. Jimmy Johnson. And me?”
Chris waved my medical file at me. “You’re Anna Louisa Henderson. People call you Annie.”
Striker crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder into the wall. “You’re 27, birthday April Fool’s Day - you’ve been ribbed about that all your life. You’ve lived all over the US. You call nowhere home. You’re an aspiring writer working on her first book – a thriller — there’s a plot against the US government from inside the Pentagon. Right now, you’re in the research phase. You like to talk to my team. We’re answering your questions about how the military works, and you’re learning our vocabulary so you can make your dialogues believable.”
“Believable dialogues are essential to a great thriller. Okay, that explains me, but how do I explain the team?”
“We’re veterans home from Afghanistan. We’re working on developing a reintegration program for returning vets with various disabilities,” Striker said. “The program is sponsored by the Johnson Family Trust, and Jimmy’s putting us up until we get the project’s wheels in the air,” Striker was speaking slowly and clearly, which I appreciated. It helped the details form into a clear picture in my mind. “We live in the east wing of the house, so if you’re walking around with Laura — Laura McCaffrey, the physical therapist — then you’ll decline going into that area. The rest of the house and grounds are at your disposal. You ready?” Striker wiggled my toes.
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
Striker moved closer and gave me a kiss. “I’m going to go. I have a case that needs some direction. I’ll come back in and have dinner with you later.”
“Is the case something interesting? Do you need a second set of eyes?”
“Nope. You aren’t on this assignment. Your plate’s full. Don’t be greedy.”
Striker’s face was close to mine, hovering there after the kiss. I looked into his eyes only paying half attention to his words. I loved Striker’s eyes. Mossy green, flecks of gold, concern, filled with affection. I missed his eyes…mmm, and his spicy, warm cologne. Yup. Greedy summed up how I was feeling. A little smile played over my lips. He kissed me again, gave me a wink, and left through my French doors.
Chris went out through my hall door and was quickly back. “Annie, I have someone I want you to meet.”
A tall woman moved towards my bed. “Hi, Annie. I’m Laura. I’ll be the one who makes you cry every day.” She held out her hand. I could see that she bit her nails. Her only jewelry was a sturdy watch. No mark where a wedding ring would go.
“Do I have to cry every day?” I asked and shook her hand.
“I won’t feel like I’ve done my job unless I wring at least one tear out of you.”
“Fair warning.”
Laura was in her mid-thirties, dressed in loose scrubs, and had the feel of practicality that was painted over with ebullience. Weird word “ebullience.” I didn’t get to say it often. I didn’t get to think it often, but that was the word I wanted.
Even though Laura was grounded and solid, a professional from the chin down, there was this quality of bouncy cheerfulness about her face, where her freckles chortled across her nose and forehead. It was as if Mr. Potato Head had the big pink lips and the mustache on at the same time. It was an odd mishmash of energies. A good mishmash though. Laura wouldn’t be the prying gossiping sort; she was here to do her job. I liked her immediately.
“Alrighty then, let’s get started. Chris, I’m going to let you take out Annie’s catheter. She won’t be using it anymore.” She turned her attention to me. “Today you’re going to walk to the bathroom.” Laura cocked her head to the side. “What’s your pain level?”
“I’m ignoring my pain level. I want out of this bed.”
“Give me a number anyway.” She raised her eyebrows and tapped a no-nonsense young lady pen on her file.
“Four. My pain meds are still doing their thing.” Okay, really more like a six or seven, but I wanted to get up.
Laura put her hand on my mattress. “You’re on a Clinitron. That’s going to be problematic.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your bed. It’s state of the art. The silicone beads blowing around are absolutely fabulous to protect you from getting bedsores. But we have to follow sternal precautions with you. You can’t pick up more than five pounds. You can’t lift anything up over your head. And we can’t let you use your hands to get momentum.”
I guess I looked confused because she explained, “You have to sit up without your hands. On this kind of bed, it’s going to be hard to use your stomach muscles alone. . .” Laura looked me over, then opened the file in her hands, glancing through the pages. “Your accident wasn’t that long ago. There’s nothing in here. . .” Laura flipped through the papers again. “There’s no condition listed here to explain your weight.” She looked at me to fill in the blank.
“I was way underweight when the accident happened. I’d been at a low point in my life and wasn’t eating properly. I have a high metabolism, so the weight fell off.”
All of the merriness extinguished from of Laura’s eyes. “Is this an ongoing issue? Your progress depends a great deal on your motivation levels.”
“The problem I was facing is resolved. My motivation levels are extremely high. I’m ready to work night and day. I need to be strong again.”
“Okay then. Let’s get started.”
Thirteen
“Today must be Wednesday – chicken soup is Nana Kate,” I said when Striker set the tray on the table in my room. I’d been sitting there in a straight-backed chair since Laura had left for the day. The effort of staying upright made tiny beads of sweat tickle under my nose. An IV kept me hydrated and kept my electrolytes even.
“Yup. Good old, all-American, it-will-cure-anything-that-ails-you chicken soup.” Striker set the bowl of golden broth and slippery noodles in front of me. “I bet you missed being in the kitchen,” he said.
“I missed everything when I was in prison. But thinking about my Kitchen Grandmothers helped keep me sane.” I twittled my spoon in my fingers and watched the steam rise from the bowl.
“How so?” Striker handed me a napkin and sat in the chair next to me.
“Master Wang once told me about his imprisonment in the re-education center in China. He said that having a daily routine gave rhyt
hm to his days and helped him make it through. He also said it had been important for him to have little changes.”
Striker nodded, his face impassive. It was hard for me to think back to Honduras. My prison days were open, seeping wounds in my psyche. I could tell from the way Striker’s muscles tensed and his pupils contracted that we had this in common.
I forced a smile to show him I was okay. “What could be a better way to have both continuity and change than to follow my teenaged pattern for visiting the Kitchen Grandmothers?”
Striker seemed to buy into my everything’s-okay charade. “I explained your Kitchen Grandmother traditions to the cook. He’s going to do his best to follow along. I thought that would make you feel more at home.”
I smiled at him. “Home is where the heart is, Striker. I’m fine as long as I’m with you.”
“That was cheesy, but I’ll take it.” Striker leaned across the soup to kiss me. It was a nice kiss. A really nice kiss. But he broke it off when his phone buzzed on his belt. Striker looked down at the display. “It’s Axel.”
I nodded and scooted back in my chair. Striker’s face was closed off – he was in soldier-mode. He pressed the end button and put his cellphone back in its case. I waited.
“Axel says that Jamal Patton, a.k.a. T-Bone, was killed by a Hellhound gang member one hour after Hector was moved from their cell.”
“Does Axel know anything more?”
“Yes.” Striker hesitated. “Hector’s body was found in the showers forty-five minutes ago. He had a bar of soap shoved down his throat.”
I blinked. What? “I know it would be a HUGE stretch of the imagination. But is it possible that these were gang targets, and they have nothing at all to do with his case?”
“Hector’s tattoos marked him as El Primo, but Axel said that T-Bone was a Hellhound member.”
Electricity flashed over my skin making the hairs stand up on my arms. Two murders with one degree of separation? That was outside the scope of coincidental. But why?
“Striker, can I get a timeline from the prison? Hector said he moved after he met with the DA. I wonder if he meant immediately after?”
“I’ll make sure we bring all the data in-house that has anything to do with T-Bone or Hector.”
I sat frozen, staring out the French doors with unseeing eyes. When I looked back, Striker was watching me patiently.
“Is Command certain Omega has a legitimate contract on me?”
“Iniquus lawyers looked into the authenticity of the warrant. They found it valid, but court sealed. We don’t know the charges or what agency brought them. Command contacted Omega with a request for information, including the agency that hired them. Omega sent back word that all information concerning the India Sobado case was classified.”
I swiveled my spoon through my soup. “I thought I was a pawn. But I’m not.”
“How so?”
“This isn’t chess. It’s more like Chinese checkers, isn’t it?”
“Keep going.”
“At first it was me and Maria. Was she working for herself, or someone else? If it was someone else, then whom? We speculated it was Markos Sylanos, but that would be a working assumption, something that needed more evidence.”
“If he weren’t already dead,” Striker said.
“Right.” My fingers drummed the table. “After the ransom letter came through, it looked more like Maria was working for her own ends.”
“But you think looks are deceiving?” Striker leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. He shot me a steady gaze.
“There are more choices. Assume Maria wasn’t on her own — did she act by consent? Or was she also an unwitting counter? Someone might have been threatening her or her husband — that could be anyone really. Now add Hector to the plot. He looked like a mule. Sounded like a mule. Just a guy for hire. Why would Hector be moved to his own cell?”
“To make him safer? To keep him from talking? To make him feel privileged so he would talk?” Striker had his fingers steepled under his chin. His thinking position.
“Maybe it was to get him alone for a take out? No to the last one. Hector was in the showers, a public space when someone got to him. Whatever the reason, having a single cell had to initiate from an order from someone pretty high up, I would think. Hector had to be important to someone with clout.” My gaze locked onto Striker’s. “With the prisons grossly overcrowded, giving a kidnap/possible murder one case a cell his own? All to himself? That’s weird. I don’t get any of that.”
Striker shook his head. He didn’t get it, either.
“Maybe there’s something on the first interrogation tape that Hector didn’t tell Axel about,” I said. “I’d like to hear the conversation between Hector and the DA.”
“I’ll have Axel work on that.” Striker pulled out his phone, looked at the screen and put it back away.
“The DA told him to keep his head down and this would all go away. Weird.”
Striker wrote on his notepad: timeline, DA interview tapes.
I pushed my bowl to the side. “Then we have Hector looking smug, thinking he’s safe from Hellhound, here in DC? That’s pretty damned bold. So Hellhound must be involved, or at least someone with enough power to pull their strings or put out directives. That’s a lot of power. I even think that’s beyond what Sylanos could muster up. Nothing in the lines of the Markos Sylanos cartel that I puzzled out for Iniquus had anything to do with Hellhound.”
“You haven’t worked that case in two years. Things can change.”
“Hmmm. . .no, I don’t think so. If Sylanos had gang leadership, or was on his way towards leadership, I would have seen some connection”
“Does it matter? Sylanos is dead. He couldn’t give the order to Hellhound from the grave.”
“You know his being dead makes everything just that much more complicated,” I huffed out an exasperated sigh.
Striker chuckled. “Lynx, you’re going to short wire your brain if you keep this up.”
“I need to make a diagram so I can think. Striker, can I get a whiteboard to start drawing this stuff out?”
“Not in here. We have a puzzle room set up for you in the east wing, where Laura and the house staff are off limits. You’ll have to go over there to work. We don’t want to have anything around that might pique anyone’s interest.”
“Understood.” My brows knit together. My brain was off at a gallop again.
Striker took a bite of the sandwich that was part of his dinner. I didn’t get one. I was still on mushy foods.
“Go ahead and say it out loud, Chica. You look like holding it in is taking too much effort,” Striker said.
“There has to be some US government involvement. Some agency that believes I’m tied to something. They could think I was conspiring with the Sylanos cartel, but that would have been CIA. We had the case before they put Omega in control. Striker, do you think they pulled the case because of me?” Before Striker could answer, I plunged on. “I can’t see that as a possibility because I was on the team feeding them the intelligence. If I were culpable of something, the CIA would have addressed it with Command immediately. So not CIA. Who then?” I screwed my lips together tightly to help me think. “A different agency. An agency that may or may not have anything to do with Maria, Hector, T-Bone, or Hellhound. Oh my god. This is crazy. I can’t sit down to think this through. I need to pace.”
“Soon enough,” Striker said between bites. “I’m having trouble keeping your thought lines straight; they’re tumbling all over each other. Eat your soup, Chica. You need the energy.”
“FBI.”
“FBI?” Striker slid my bowl back in front of me.
“Frith was FBI; you said he left to go to Omega. Could he have known about me because he had heard my name in conjunction with a different case contracted with the FBI? I still don’t understand how Frith knows I work for Iniquus.”
“Lynx, eat. That�
�s a command.”
“I’m not in your line of command. Listen Striker, can someone ask Frith if he heard my name at the FBI? God, I wish I wasn’t dead. I really need to talk to Frith. He’s the key to this whole mess. I know it. Striker, will one of your FBI contacts talk to you off record?”
“I’ll check. Eat your soup.”
I put a spoonful obediently into my mouth and tasted nothing. My hand moved from bowl to mouth in a mechanical motion. I was in my head groping around.
“You know what, Striker? It just occurred to me. . .” I waggled my spoon at him.
“What’s that?”
“This is bigger than Maria wanting her husband out of prison. People were dying to protect some piece of information, or crime, or something. Hellhound was involved and willing to eat their young. There was money – is money, a lot of it — pumped into Omega so they can find me. I’m worth enormous amounts to someone. But it couldn’t be one group, now could it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Frith says that Omega, paid for by god knows who, was trying to get me away from Maria. And from what you told me about Axel and Randy in Honduras, you’re speculating that it was Omega operatives who were trying to find me at the prison, right?”
“Yes. We made that assumption based on the timing of the Americans’ appearance in Honduras, and the timing of the first Frith interview with Command. No one thought that there might be a third group looking for you.”
“In any case, Maria got to me first, and then Omega got the contract. If it had been the other way around, then I’d be in an Omega cell – or dead. Here’s a crazy thought.”
“Another one?” Striker lifted a brow.
I made a face, childishly sticking out my tongue. “I’m serious. Maria kidnapping me saved my life. Wow. That makes my head spin a little bit.” I grabbed at the table. Striker reached out to put a steadying hand under my elbow.
“Striker, I think I need to get a T-shirt made that says ‘Everybody Wants Me.’”
