“They were so close,” I admit, my voice dropping as I fight the tightness in my throat. “Too damned close.”
Harry’s eyes go unfocused, the light shining on them. “None of that matters now. We have to deal with the situation at hand.”
Something in his words makes the skin around the base of my spine tighten. “What does that mean?”
“Lindsay’s up. Her reflexes are fine. She can answer yes/no questions. But she’s refusing to speak.”
“Did she have a brain injury?”
Harry shakes his head and blinks rapidly, shoving a hand through his hair. “No. Nothing that would explain this. According to the doctor who attended to her two hours ago, she made it clear she won’t talk. Not that she can’t.”
“What? Why?”
“We don’t know,” Monica whispers. “Shock? Trauma? She was kidnapped, hurt, stripped naked...” Her voice fades out, eyes hardening. “And then paraded all over every cable news channel, covered in blood and...well, you know the rest.”
I certainly do.
“The trauma from that would rattle anyone,” Harry rasps. “We’re hopeful she’ll ease her way into talking.”
That tightening in my back turns to a tingling warmth that sets off a hinky meter inside me. I think eight steps ahead, projecting what they’re saying.
“I’m sure she’ll recover quickly,” I say, more to myself than them. “A gunshot wound is no small experience.”
“You’ve been shot before?’ Harry asks.
I shake my head. “I’ve been damn lucky, but I know plenty of people in the field who have been. You don’t just magically heal. It’s a different kind of injury. Give her time.” I make eye contact with them both, pressing a point I can’t say. “Lots of time.”
“We’ll try, but the jackals are everywhere.” Harry looks pointedly down the hall, where camera crews crush the double doors leading to this ICU wing. “They’ve had two people slip in pretending to be medical staff already. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep her safe.”
“She needs time.”
“She needs privacy.”
“Silas and Mark are doing a great job,” I insist.
A tall doctor with brown hair, brown eyes, and the build of a hockey player appears. He has a nasty scar on one eyebrow, and he’s wearing scrubs, a lab coat, and a name tag that says JONAS in big letters.
“Dr. Jonas,” he says, reaching for Harry’s hand, then Monica’s, shaking them with great ceremony. “We’ll take you in to see Lindsay now.”
They go into the room. As I look around them, I see her on the bed, her right arm immobilized, her body covered in pure white sheets and blankets. Machines beep with soothing regularity, tubes connected from IV bags to her arm.
My phone buzzes. I damn near jump out of my own skin at the sensation, but shove my hand in my pocket and check, my broken finger forgotten momentarily. Gingerly, I use my other hand to find the phone. It’s Paulson.
Be at the hospital shortly. Have new information.
Silas approaches me with a tray of coffees, motioning with his chin for me to take one. I grab a white cup and sip, not caring what I drink. It’s black coffee. My tongue burns with the hot liquid, but I don’t care. Sensation of any kind that distracts me from Lindsay’s condition is good.
“Heard you signed yourself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders,” Silas says, setting the tray of coffees down, taking one for himself. Clearly, the other two are for Harry and Monica.
“You’re nosy.” I slug down more liquid pain.
“Just doing my job. My boss is a stickler for detail.”
“Which boss? Paulson or me?”
“Both.”
I raise an eyebrow and drink.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t get there faster, Drew.”
“You did fine.”
“A few more seconds and we might have saved Lindsay from being shot.”
“No. A few more seconds and John might have grabbed her and played hostage with her. Those seconds before you crashed the place were unpredictable.”
“I saw the footage.”
“Who in the world hasn’t seen the footage?”
He shrugs. The entire nightmare has been played on international television for the past day. Post-mortem analysis follows the same basic news cycle script. It all becomes pretty simple once you know who was trying to destroy whom.
Nolan Corning decided four years ago, when Harry was making his bid for a second Senate term and also clearly shoring up a path toward the White House, that this would not do. For all of his political career, Harry had been a Teflon man, impervious to scandal.
Corning needed a news story so big it would bury Harry forever.
How he reached out and found Blaine Maisri is anyone’s guess, and I know we’ll find out in the coming days and weeks. Killing all three attackers was, in retrospect, terrible for investigating what happened, but in the life-or-death heat of the moment, you don’t pause to consider the future.
And Lindsay’s moves against Stellan were self-defense. The video makes that clear.
Even if the knife plunge made every man who’s watched it sit with his legs crossed.
Silas snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You there?”
I ignore him and drink half my coffee, staying quiet.
“That video Jane released to the media, the one with Blaine, John and Stellan not wearing masks? It’s been proven to be legit. She hacked into John’s hard drive and got it somehow, along with some coded notes between Blaine and an aide in Corning’s camp. The rest will fall in place as the search of all their electronic records unfolds.”
He’s trying to reassure me.
I can’t stop staring at Lindsay’s door.
“Drew?”
“Heard you. Good. I want the least bureaucratic mess for Lindsay. Her recovery is more important than media time or interrogations.”
“Investigators have to interview her eventually.”
“Not without me present.”
“You’re still not cleared yet,” says a deep voice from behind me. Paulson appears, wearing a crisp suit, a well-ironed shirt, a dark purple tie with gray accents, and a look that says he wants to kill me or give me a medal.
Could go either way.