Chapter Four
Rian
Since we lost Moira, I’ve been meticulous about health screenings. Bullets don’t scare me, but diseases do. We have a doctor on payroll, one who stitches us up when need be. He’s been with our family for as long as I can remember.
He’s trustworthy, but older, and the truth is, he won’t be around forever.
Also, while he can do a lot, there are some things he can’t do, which is why I’m at the hospital, late at night, getting a clean bill of health after having tests run.
This is one of the things I keep to myself. Sure, I drink, smoke sometimes, and don’t do the best job of taking care of myself, but I have an irrational fear of getting sick and dying—of leaving Cillian the same way his mother did.
“Everything looks good, Mr. O’Shea. You’re an incredibly healthy, forty-eight-year-old man,” the physician assures me.
“Had to remind me how close I am to fifty, did you?” I tease and earn myself a chuckle in return.
“You would be healthy for a thirty-eight-year-old man, too. Does that help?”
“It does,” I reply, even though it really doesn’t.
“I’ll see you in six months,” he says, because yes, I do this twice a year. If Moira had been checked sooner, maybe she would still be here today.
He leaves, and I get dressed. All of this is off the books. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of my life, it’s that money can get you nearly anything.
I leave the room, then walk down one of the hallways of the hospital. There’s a guy in front of me, walking in the opposite direction. He’s tall, about my height, but not as broad, with red hair, shorter on the sides than on top.
I glance his way, but he has his head down, looking at his phone. He’s wearing a white jacket, telling me he’s a doctor.
Just before we pass each other, he puts his cell to his ear, then looks up, giving me a courteous smile. The second he does, I feel it—the tingles at my nape—while at the same time, it’s almost like a calmness washes over me.
My hand shoots up, and I immediately swat at the back of my neck, like there’s a spider or, hell, any bug there.
The doctor doesn’t seem to notice, just continues walking in the opposite direction.
My hand massages my nape, and the feeling dissipates just as fast as it arrived.
I have no idea what that was. I swat at the back of my neck again for good measure as the doctor walks around the corner, disappearing from view.
I imagined it. I had to have, I tell myself, then I continue on my way again.
*
For the second night in a row, I’m at the hospital.
I have no medical reason to be here this time, no reason that makes any kind of sense at all. I just know that I’m curious about the doctor. I haven’t stopped thinking about the brief encounter—if you can even call it that—since last night.
And you can’t…call it that. Not really. The man walked by me in a hallway, and now I’m stalking him? This is so out of my wheelhouse, so fucking foreign to anything I’ve done or thought I would ever do that I’m not even trying to make sense out of it.
How can I find sense where there is none to be found?
I don’t even know if the man is here again, or what his specialty is, or a million other variables…
But even more importantly, I don’t know why I care.
Last night, he had turned down the opposite hallway from where I’d come. As I retrace his steps, I find that amongst other departments, it leads to surgery, so I decide to start there.
There’s no receptionist in the waiting room, which I assume is because of the time. As far as I know, surgeries aren’t scheduled at night unless it’s an emergency.
I peek over the counter, trying to catch a glimpse of something—anything—that might help me figure out who the man is. I don’t know what I expect. It’s not as if there’s going to be a flashing neon sign with his name and photo on it.
Feeling frustrated with myself, I slip out of the waiting room and continue down the hallway. ICU is at the end, with a locked door and an intercom you have to use to get in.
“I’m losing my fucking mind,” I whisper to myself, before continuing the way I came.
Still, I don’t leave, following the signs for the cafeteria. I know this area of the hospital by heart. I spent plenty of time getting coffee from here and pretending to eat when Moira was sick.
My gut twists the same way it used to when I step inside.
The cafeteria isn’t far from the cancer center where Moira spent so much of the last year of her life.
Where she would get sick from her treatments, but still somehow managed to always have a smile for Cillian and me, trying to be okay for us.
Dizziness hits me, a frustrating wave of weakness as I reach out, steadying myself with a hand on the wall.
I take a few deep breaths, then open my eyes, though I don’t even remember when I shut them, and straighten my suit jacket again.
The cafeteria is dim, only a few people scattered around here and there—some in scrubs, likely on a break, and others dressed in street clothes, taking a moment for themselves while here caring for loved ones.
I go straight for the coffee machine first, filling a paper cup with what is pretty close to black sludge. I don’t bother with cream or sugar, preferring it bitter—one of the only things I don’t like sweet—before heading toward the small, square, two-person table where I used to sit before.
Once I’m settled in, I take a sip of the coffee before setting the cup on the table. There’s a chip in the corner that hadn’t been there before, or hell, maybe it’s not even the same table.
“You’d laugh at me right now,” I say softly to my dead wife.
Staking out a hospital because I got fucking neck tingles is a Moira O’Shea thing to do—not a Rian one.
She believed in weird stuff like fate, destiny, that what’s meant to be will always find a way, and that kind of thing.
I used to tease her about it, tell her I make my own fate, that no one controls me but me, and again, she’d just give me a knowing smile, one that made me feel like she was in on a secret that I wasn’t—like maybe she was right and the universe had shared more with her than what I knew.
I sit in the cafeteria so long my coffee goes cold, shifting in the uncomfortable seat, the room having emptied—one person left about an hour ago, then another forty-eight minutes ago, and another a few minutes later, on and on, until they left me alone.
I’ve learned over the years to always pay attention to my surroundings, to know who’s in a room with me, where all the exits are, how many windows and doors, because you never know when you’ll need that information.
Which is why I hear the soft sound of footsteps before the person enters the room. My gaze flickers toward the door, and just as he rounds the corner, I shiver. That motherfucking feeling back at my nape—one second, two, three, four…and then it’s gone.
But I know it was there. Why the fuck was it there?
I watch as my doctor walks over to one of the fridges and pulls out a sandwich. He gets a bottle of water next, then walks over to the lone employee standing at the register.
As the two of them talk, I stand, pick up my paper cup, and then amble over, lingering by the premade food as though I’m going to buy any of it.
“Busy night?” the cashier asks.
“Yes, it was a busy one. I just have to finish my dictating, and then I can go home, though. How about you?”
I listen as the cashier replies to him, the doc asking questions and holding a conversation with him as though he cares what the man has to say.
You can tell when people just talk to a person because they feel like they have to—or at least I can—and that’s not the situation here.
He’s asking because he’s interested—this man, who is up in the middle of the night, after performing surgery, is curious about this man’s daughter going off to college and his wife having hurt her back.
When they say goodbye, I set the pack of gum in my hand back on the shelf, as though I’ve changed my mind, then follow behind the doc as he leaves.
His hair is slightly messy, like he’s run his fingers through it a few times.
I toss my coffee into the trash. His shoes make a soft clicking sound with each step he takes.
When he gets to the sliding doors that lead into the surgery department, my gaze flicks toward him again while he presses a code into the keypad.
I don’t know how long it will take him to dictate, or what I expect to gain by continuing to follow him tonight, but I’m going to. I just…need to understand what’s going on, why my body is misfiring the way it is around him.
I sit in the surgery waiting room. It’s over an hour later when the sliding doors open again, and I can tell by the cadence of the walk that it’s him. He passes by, and I wait until the sounds of his footsteps turn around a corner before I get up and head in that direction.
He moves toward the ED, which I think has the only doors open at this time, making it easy for me to keep a distance from him.
He stops to talk to someone outside the emergency room, making me wait by the bathroom, pulse speeding and showing my irritation.
She’s a woman, an emergency doctor by the sounds of it, and she asks about a patient from a car accident earlier that he operated on.
He speaks to her the same way he did the man in the cafeteria, despite the fact that he’s been up all night and likely just wants to go home.
There’s not a drop of impatience to his tone, nothing to suggest he doesn’t want to have either of the two conversations I’ve witnessed from him.
I’m impatient, though, and it takes everything inside of me not to step in before they’re saying goodbye and he’s leaving…again.
He’s parked farther than I would have thought—the surgeon not looking behind him, or checking his surroundings at all.
It would be so easy to…well, do whatever the fuck I wanted to do to him right now, if I were the kind of man to do something like that—hold him up, hurt him, kidnap him.
He doesn’t know the danger that’s lurking so close to him, because even if I don’t have any desire to attack him, I could. My hands have been the ones to bring about more death than he’s likely ever seen.
I frown when he turns down another row of vehicles, and I keep my distance, focusing on staying in the shadows. Shouldn’t he be parked closer to the front? And in an area of the lot that’s not quite so dark?
When he rounds the front of an SUV, the surgeon suddenly stops, whirling around to face me. I automatically pull my gun from the holster beneath my suit jacket, pointing it at him.
“Why are you following me?” His gaze shoots down to my gun, then back at my eyes. “Jesus, what the hell? Take what you want.” He lifts his hands so I can see them.
I don’t speak at first, honestly surprised that he clearly knew I was there, and then decided to confront me. Probably would have been smarter for him to do it closer to the hospital, but still.
“I don’t carry much money on me,” he adds. His voice is deep, with almost a melodic cadence to it.
“Your money is no good to me. I have my own,” I say. “I’m not a thug.”
“You look like one to me.”
“Well, that’s not very nice,” I counter. “How long did you know I was following you?” Had he known while we were still in the hospital? If so, why did he wait so long to say anything?
His brows draw together. “How long have you been following me?”
“I’m the one with the gun, so maybe you should be the one answering the questions.” The feeling isn’t there…the one I had before, the familiar tickle at my nape. I would think I’d imagined it, but I’d felt it twice.
“About two or three minutes? What do you want? Because if you don’t plan to rob me, maybe you’ll let me go home. It’s been a long night.”
I nearly have to bite down on the inside of my cheeks not to smile, which then makes me frown instead.
What is it about this man that’s so intriguing?
“I thought you wanted to know why I’m following you?
” I don’t know why I’m standing here entertaining him, but then, I don’t know why I’ve done any of the things I’ve done tonight, so it’s par for the course.
“Are you going to tell me? And my arms are getting tired. Either kill me, rob me, or let me go home.”
I watch him then, as he lowers his arms. I wouldn’t allow this from anyone else, but then, I hadn’t planned on holding the surgeon at gunpoint tonight, either.
He takes a step back, then another, and another.
I allow that too, just watching him watch me, trying to figure out what I expect to happen, what I want to happen.
Did I think my neck would tingle and suddenly I’d have some sort of answer?
Just as he’s about to reach for the door handle of the SUV that I’m assuming is his, a sharp squeal of tires pierces the morning. My gaze darts up just in time to see a car come barreling toward me. I dive between the surgeon’s vehicle and another, tackling him to the ground beneath me.
“Come on!” I pull him, both of us scrambling to get behind the SUV just as gunshots ring out.
“Holy shit. Who the fuck is that?” he asks, voice panicked.
“Shh.” I hold my finger to my lips. He’s shaking, pupils blown wide, the blue of his irises practically disappearing, as the car idles in front of his vehicle.
He pulls out his phone, trying to get his hands to cooperate so he can dial, but I rip it from him. “What are you doing?” he mouths.
I roll my eyes as if that should be obvious. Do I look like the kind of guy who calls the cops?
Before he can question me further, one of the would-be assassins asks, “That’s him, but who the hell is the other guy?”
“I don’t know. Go fucking check on them,” another guy replies, just before the door creaks open. These are definitely not seasoned professionals. Why the fuck would they come after me?
“Stay,” I mouth to the surgeon, crouching low as I move to sneak around his vehicle.
His shaking hand reaches out for my jacket, but I pull free, ignoring the fear in his gaze. We’re not the ones who will die tonight. The Bellini brothers have highly underestimated me if they think I’m this easy to take out.