Chapter Three
After Sam sent Nick off to work with promises of a proper thank-you for the car later, she took a call from their assistant, Shelby, who’d been felled by severe morning sickness.
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Shelby said tearfully. “Don’t pay me for this week.”
“Don’t be silly, Tinker Bell. You get sick time.”
“I’d feel guilty getting paid for doing nothing but puking and sleeping.”
“Is Avery with you?”
“Yes, it was so bad today that he called out of work to stay home.”
“I hope you feel better soon.”
“I do, too. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Take the week off. I’m here and can handle anything that comes up. Rest up and feel better.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Thanks so much, Sam. That’s a huge relief. I can barely move, so I wouldn’t be much good to you.”
“What’s the doctor saying?”
“Perfectly normal, but they’re keeping an eye on me so I don’t get dehydrated. Good times.”
To Sam, it sounded like the best of times, but she refused to dwell on the unreasonable jealousy she felt anytime someone around her got pregnant. “Hang in there, and let me know how you’re doing.”
“I will. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Doing better every day. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Sounds good. Bye, Sam.”
She put down the phone and poured herself a rare second cup of coffee.
Sam wasn’t proud of the jealousy, but she couldn’t help it, especially when it would soon be a year since the last time she’d been pregnant.
Minus a few months on birth control, she’d had a lot of months to conceive again, but it hadn’t happened.
It certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying.
The part she found so difficult to understand was that she and Nick had successfully conceived once before.
Why wasn’t it happening again? She blew out a deep breath full of the frustration she’d experienced for years now when it came to her checkered fertility history.
After her last miscarriage, the doctors had all agreed—if she’d gotten pregnant once, she could do so again.
Nick had wanted to pursue fertility treatments, but she didn’t have it in her to go through that again after having done it before with her ex-husband. The side effects of the treatments were too much for her, especially with no guarantee of a baby at the end of it.
“You need to find something to do that doesn’t involve dwelling on this shit,” she said. On the counter was the handwritten card she’d received after Stahl’s attack, from her new chief of staff at the White House. She picked it up and re-read the kind message for at least the tenth time.
Mrs. Cappuano—please accept our heartfelt best wishes for a speedy recovery from your injuries. You are in our thoughts and prayers, and if I can be of any assistance to you whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Sincerely,
Lilia Van Nostrand.
She’d included her direct line at the White House. Sam stared at the number for another minute before she picked up her phone again.
“This is Lilia,” she answered in the crisp, professional tone Sam remembered from the only other time she’d spoken to the woman.
“Um, yeah, this is Sam Hol… Um, Cappuano.”
“Oh! Mrs. Cappuano! How wonderful to hear from you.”
Sam cringed and held the phone away from her ear. “I, um, I wanted to thank you for your note and the flowers from the staff. That was very nice of you all.”
“It was our pleasure. I hope you’re on the road to recovery.”
“I am.”
“I’m delighted to hear that. Is there anything I can do to be of assistance to you?”
“Since I’m out of work on medical leave, I thought this might be a good time for that meeting you wanted to have with me.”
“How’s today at two?”
“Wow, you don’t mess around, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“This is embarrassing to admit, but how do I get in there? I’ve only ever been with Nick, er, Vice President Cappuano.” She still wanted to giggle when she called him that. Her husband, the vice president of the United States.
“I’ll send a car for you. You’ll be at home?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. The car will be there at one thirty if that’s convenient.”
“That’s fine. I’ll see you soon.”
“We’ll look forward to it.”
Taking her phone with her, Sam ran upstairs to take a shower and figure out what to wear to meet her White House staff.
The cuts to her arms and legs from the razor wire had mostly healed but remaining scabs on her legs had her choosing a black pair of pants and a red blazer that she matched with one of the silk blouses Tinker Bell’s personal shopper friend had bought for her.
Replacing an entire wardrobe took some time, and after her ex-friend Melissa took a machete to her closet, Sam had half of what she’d had before.
She put on the diamond key necklace Nick had given her for a wedding gift as well as her rings, which she only wore when she wasn’t working.
A pair of silver hoop earrings and a bangle bracelet finished off the outfit.
As she put on black high-heeled ankle boots and took a critical look in the mirror, she decided she wouldn’t embarrass herself or Nick.
With thirty minutes to kill before the car arrived, she went downstairs, sat on the sofa and practiced the deep breathing techniques her sister Tracy had taught her in the days after the attack. She’d found the breathing and meditation helped to calm her mind and ease her anxiety.
People were saying she wasn’t herself. She could understand the concern, but she wasn’t sure how to be anyone other than who she was now, after the fact.
Something had changed in the Springers’ basement, and it might take a while to figure out who she was now.
In the meantime, she continued to breathe.
Gonzo sat at Sam’s desk and reviewed the reports submitted by the third-shift detectives working the knife assault case. He read the statement taken from one of the victims who’d been lucky enough to survive the attack.
William Enright been walking on a quiet side street in the Gallaudet neighborhood, on his way home from a night out with colleagues when the assailant approached him from behind, grabbed his arm, swung him around and stabbed him in the abdomen.
Luckily, the victim had remained coherent enough to fight off the attacker and call for help, but in addition to the life-threatening abdominal wound, he’d suffered significant lacerations to his hands and arms in the battle.
The description of a tall, muscular man wearing a hat pulled down over his face and a black coat fit the description they’d been given by another victim who’d been attacked on the other side of the city in the Glover Park area under similar circumstances.
“Knock knock,” Captain Malone said from the doorway.
“Hey, Cap, come on in.”
“Settling in here?”
“Not even kinda. She can come back anytime now.”
“That’s why I’m here. I saw her this morning, and I don’t think she’s coming back soon.”
“Where did you see her?”
“She was here for her appointment with Trulo.”
“And she didn’t even stop by the pit to see what’s going on? That’s not like her.”
“None of this is like her. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light.”
“I got nothing. She doesn’t return my calls and when she texts, it’s cryptic, one-word stuff.”
“We may have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that she won’t be back.”
“No,” Gonzo said, shocked and amazed that the captain would say such a thing out loud. “I refuse to prepare myself for that. She’ll be back. She’s too invested in the job to not come back.”
“I don’t know… She’s got a lot of other stuff going on now with Nick’s new job. Maybe this thing with Stahl was some sort of wake-up call that she doesn’t have nine lives and she needs to be more careful with the one she has.”
“You can’t honestly believe that.”
“You read the report. You heard what it was like for her in there. She lived for hours preparing for him to kill her while he beat and tortured her. Who’d want to come back to this bullshit after that?”
“Sam Holland. That’s who. She’s not a quitter.”
“No, she isn’t, but she’s as human as the rest of us underneath it all, and she took a bad, bad hit on this one.”
“I took a bad hit not that long ago.” He gestured to the still nasty-looking wound on his neck that served as a daily reminder of how close he’d come to losing everything. “I came back. Hell, I came back before I was allowed to.”
“I’m not, in any way, diminishing the impact of what you went through. But this was different, Gonzo. He tortured her. That messes with people’s heads.”
“And nearly bleeding out during a gunfight with a murdering psychopath while thinking about the fiancée, son and family I expected to never see again doesn’t?”
“Fair enough,” Malone said with a deep sigh. “I didn’t come in here to debate who had it worse. I hope you know that.”
“I do, and I get what you’re saying about her. What he did… I think we’d all like to get our hands on him for what he put her through.”
“Indeed. But for the time being, you’re in charge here, and I’m available for anything you might need. We appreciate you stepping up the way you have, but don’t hesitate to call on me if need be.”
“I won’t. Thanks, Cap.”
“So where are we with the knife guy?”
“Same place we were this time yesterday. We’re working the case, following up on leads and tips. Got a new interview from a vic that I was going over.” Gonzo handed the page to the captain who read it carefully.
“The guy’s got a bit of an M.O. Attack from behind and go for the jugular or the gut if the vic puts up a fight.”
“Right. The ones who live get ‘lucky’ that he doesn’t connect with any major arteries or organs. Dr. McNamara reported that the two who died bled out very quickly. Both were dead before EMS arrived.”
“Any connections among the victims?”
“Not that we’ve been able to establish—yet. We’re working on it, and now we’re working on it without two of our best detectives.”
“I know. We need to make some sort of statement to the media about what we have so far.”
“We have next to nothing.”