“Eb has a counterterrorism school here in Jacobsville. It’s well-known in defense circles. He trains all sorts of people. Even,” Sari added with pursed lips, “it’s rumored, people from our own government. He has state-of-the-art everything. He’s a retired merc. So are most of the people who teach at his school.”
“I hadn’t heard of it. On the other hand,” Ren sighed, “I keep to myself. The ranch is pretty isolated from the real world. We mostly watch movies on DVD or pay-per-view.” He hesitated, smiling, his eyes faraway. “I had videos of branding cattle on the ranch. Meredith was watching them while she knitted. Surprised me. She doesn’t look like the sort of woman who could bear such things. She’s fragile, in a way. But very strong in others.”
“She’s tough,” Sari said. “Daddy would never let us near the bloodstock. We rode rocking horses around the ranch.” She laughed at Ren’s expression. “Old horses, not purebred ones. He did raise a few quarter horses for sale, but not for long. He fired the only employee we had who knew how to breed them. After that, he went back to Thoroughbreds. Paul and I have revived the quarter horse breeding here, though.”
“We keep a lot of saddle horses. It’s a big ranch, and we have to have several strings of quarter horses to herd cattle,” Ren replied.
“You run Angus, don’t you?” Sari asked.
“Purebred Black Angus,” he agreed. “Just herd sires and cows and heifers. No beef cattle. I love beef,” he added. “But I don’t like to raise it.” He smiled a little sheepishly. “Hard to eat something you raised from a calf.”
Sari smiled at him with real warmth. He smiled back.
Paul checked his watch. “I have to run up to San Antonio, just for a few minutes,” he told Sari. “A couple of projects I have to check on. Will you be okay?”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ren promised him.
Paul relaxed a little. “Okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” Sari assured him. “I have to go by the office on my lunch break and check in with Mr. Kemp.” Kemp was the district attorney.
“I’ll stay with Meredith,” Ren said quietly.
“I’m off to bed,” Mandy said wearily as she finished her eggs and bacon and sipped coffee. “I’m sleepy.”
“Thanks for sitting up with her, honey,” Paul said. “You’re the best.”
She smiled at them all. “I’ll be up in time to cook supper, don’t you worry.”
*
JUST AS REN and Paul walked into the hospital, Mikey met them near the front entrance.
“How’s it going?” Paul asked.
He grimaced. “Not so good.” At Paul’s frozen expression, Mikey said, “No, no, not baby doll. It’s your guy in Houston, the one with the pickup truck.”
“Mikey...” Paul began angrily.
“It wasn’t my guy who did it,” Mikey interrupted. “Somebody hit the perp in his cell at Houston PD.”
“How?” Paul asked.
“They’re still debating that. He had asthma real bad. So he drank something that they think was doctored with a substance that he was allergic to. He had a violent reaction to it and they called for a doctor. The guy came in, saw the asthmatic symptoms and gave him a shot of epinephrine.”
“That’s what they always did for a pal of mine who had asthma,” Paul said.
“Yeah, well this guy had an arrhythmia. So the epinephrine sent him into cardiac arrest. They couldn’t save him.”
“We had a case like that here,” Paul said. “Cash Grier’s secretary had asthma. She had an attack right in his office, and Carson Farwalker, who was a merc at the time, as well as a former army medic, checked to make sure she had no heart problems before he injected her with it. He said if she’d had a heart rhythm problem, epinephrine would have been fatal.”
“Smart man,” Ren remarked.
“Very. He actually had his license as a physician, but he didn’t tell anyone until after he married Carlie,” Paul said, chuckling. “He was a bad man before that.”
“You should tell the captain here about the crocodile thing,” Mikey told Paul, jerking his thumb toward Ren.
“What crocodile thing?” Ren asked.
“A man named Rourke and Carson fed a man who’d tortured a young woman to a crocodile in Barrera, overseas. Rourke later married the woman. They live here now.”
While they were telling him the rest of the story, Sari got up. “I’m going to check with the nurse’s desk,” she said, smiling as she left them to talk.
“I’m Sari Fiore. Meredith Grayling is my sister,” she said to the floor nurse. “Can you tell me how she’s doing?”
“She’s doing fine, just fine,” the nurse replied with a smile. “We’ve moved her out onto the floor already. She’s in room 230. You can go right in.”
“Thank you!” Sari said with heartfelt relief. “It’s been a very long night,” she explained.
The nurse smiled. “I can imagine.”
Sari went back to the others. “She’s out of ICU and in a room!” she said.
“Which one?” Ren asked immediately.
“Two-thirty. Go ahead,” Sari said gently. “It’s okay.”
He gave her a weary smile. “Thanks.”
*
THEY’D JUST FINISHED bathing Merrie. She was sitting up with a towel over her front, her bare back to the door, when Ren walked in. He stopped dead and turned around.
“Sorry!” he said. “I’ll come back later.”