CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The breakfast was better than hospital food had any right to be and may have actually been the best food he’d had since coming to Savannah—which said nothing bad about Savannah, rather how hectic his schedule had been.
He’d been given scrambled eggs, toast, coffee that was weak but hot, and a little tub of yogurt.
His jaw had been x-rayed and pronounced unbroken a few hours ago.
The aerosol exposure had been assessed as minor given the partial contact.
His eyes had been flushed, and they’d given him a spray for his throat and sinuses.
His skin irritation had been documented as superficial.
He was finishing the eggs when Vic came in.
She had grabbed coffee from somewhere outside the hospital and, God bless her, she had two.
She set one on the tray table beside his own cup without comment.
She pulled the chair close and sat down, giving him a smile that was just tired enough to suggest she’d not slept last night.
Miles had dozed on and off between three and six while he’d been waiting for results from all of his tests and was feeling surprisingly refreshed.
"You look much better than last night," she said.
"Thanks, but that’s a pretty low bar."
"Yeah, but it still counts." She settled back in the chair and sipped from her coffee. "Pruitt's team has been working Cord since seven."
"How's that going?"
"It isn't." She frowned and tilted her head severely, as if she was trying to get her neck to pop.
"He hasn't said a word since they put him in the room. By the way, he’s here, in the building.
Two broken ribs and one cracked. Anyway…
he has said nothing. Not one word. He sits there and looks at the wall and doesn't answer anything. He’ll speak to the nurses and doctors, but not the cops.
" She sighed and said, "Well, except twice. "
“And?”
"The first time was when one of Pruitt's detectives mentioned the riverfront display. Cord laughed. Actually laughed. Said it was the most transparent thing he'd ever seen and that he'd watched the whole thing from a rooftop two blocks away. He was teasing us."
Miles set his fork down.
"He was there the whole time," Vic said. "Watched the display, watched us work the crowd, and then came for you." She took another long sip from her coffee and said, "He wanted us to know that."
"What was the second time?"
"When the detective asked him about other potential victims. Whether there was anyone else he had been preparing for.
He said his work had been stalled. That's the phrase he used.
Stalled. He said he had a list but that he got distracted, and that there was no one else he had, and I'm quoting, worked on. "
"Meaning no one else has been exposed."
"That's what he's claiming. But let’s be honest…how the hell are we supposed to trust him?”
Miles considered it for a moment and shrugged. “Well, if he was boasting about being there to see the display, you’d think he’d make a point to rub our faces in it if there were more people out there close to death.”
Vic nodded and tipped her cup in his direction.
“That’s a good point. And you know, if you think about it, the distraction part tracks.
He diverted from his original mission to come after you.
And that means he had to know who you were…
that you were here and you were one of the agents responsible for trying to find Kane.
That you were the agent who put Kane behind bars.
And if he knew that, maybe you were the distraction. ”
“What does Pruitt think?”
Vic laughed a bit and shook her head. “That woman is a machine. As we speak, she’s breaking that list of hers down into succinct sections.
Starting with the ones that are the most obvious, like painters and other florists and gardeners, and mural artists, too.
Staring today, a group of teams will be going to each of them and checking in. ”
“She’s going to run through the entire list like that?” Miles asked, stunned.
“She says that’s her plan.”
They were quiet for a moment. Outside in the corridor a cart rolled past and Miles could smell more breakfast. He supposed it was a good thing that he was finding himself so hungry.
"Cord did say something else," Vic said. "But not while being interrogated. When he was wheeled into his hospital room, he looked right at me and said, ‘Kane is so far ahead of you that you’ll never catch up.’ He said it quietly, not as a taunt. More like he genuinely felt sorry for us. It was creepy, to tell you the truth.”
Miles thought about that. He also thought about Cord sitting on a rooftop and just waiting for their sorry little display to be over. He’d had them figured out even then.
"He's probably right that Kane is ahead of us," Miles said. "He's been ahead of us for eleven cases."
"And yet here we are on case eleven with Cord in custody."
"Yeah. But Cord came to us." Miles looked at his coffee. "That's not the same as us catching him. How long would he have remained out there, free and on his killing spree, if he hadn’t decided I needed to be taken care of?"
"You did sort of catch him, though. He came to kill you but you stopped him. With a blow to the jaw and a face full of chromium aerosol. I'd call that catching him."
Miles didn't answer immediately. Instead, he thought about that anger that had nearly taken over completely and what it had taken to not keep hitting the man past the point of necessity.
"When I was on the floor," Miles said, "before I got the cuffs on. For a second, I really wanted to hurt him. Not subdue him. Hurt him. I kicked him in the ribs twice when I didn’t have to and…Vic, I wanted to keep going."
Vic was quiet. He feared he’d made her uncomfortable. But at the same time, hadn’t she been asking if he was okay? Hadn’t she been trying to get him to open up to her?
"I didn't, though," he said, as if it would soften what he’d just said.
"I know you didn't."
"But I wanted to." He looked at her. "That's been happening more. The anger. It's closer to the surface than it used to be."
She held his gaze. "You should tell your therapist that. Dr. Mitchell, right?"
"I have."
“Have you and Sarah talked about it?”
“A bit. Not in depth.”
She nodded and said, “Thanks for telling me.”
She looked at him for a moment longer, and he could see the moment she chose to let the matter rest. This was a very specific quality he valued most in her...
the ability to say a hard thing once and trust that once was enough.
She didn't circle back and she didn't soften it after the fact.
She said it and moved on, trusting that he was capable of handling it.
And really, that was its own form of respect.
"Discharge soon?" she said hopefully.
"Yeah, actually. They’re going to make sure the irritation in my throat and sinuses are gone in about an hour. If it’s all clear, I’m good to go.”
"I'll drive you back." She stood and picked up her coffee. "Pruitt wants to debrief this afternoon when you're up for it. No rush on the timing. And we’ll need to call Hayes as well, naturally."
"Sounds like a plan. As for you…I think you need to get some rest before that debrief."
“Maybe,” she said. And then she scooted the coffee she had brought him closer. “You take this. I can’t stand the idea of someone living off of hospital coffee.”
He picked the cup up and drank from it—dark with a bit too much sugar just like he liked it. Through the window, the hard blue Georgia sky looked almost too bright. It was surreal, in a way…and he couldn’t help but think Russell Cord would appreciate it.