Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Puke splattered the toilet bowl.
The sandwich had gone down recently enough that Javi could still pick out the smell of mustard and gravy. It made him retch again, bile stinging the back of his throat.
There was a discreet knuckle tap on the door.
“Are you OK?” someone asked gently. Rubber-soled shoes scuffed on the floor as they stepped closer. “Do you need—”
Javi reached back to brace his hand against the door. “I don’t need anything,” he said. His voice sounded harsher than he’d meant. So he cleared his throat, the taste of mustard and sick sour on the back of his tongue, and tried again. “Sorry. No. I’m fine.”
There was a dubious pause.
“OK,” the concerned Samaritan said, drawing the vowel sound over their tongue. “If that changes, let me know. This is a pretty good place to get help.”
Not the sort that Javi needed. He straightened up, flushed the toilet, and leaned back against the toilet door as he waited for the nurse to piss, wash, and leave.
If nothing else, he could testify to the hygiene standards in the ward.
The man washed his hands twice and hit the anti-bacterial gel pump three times before he left.
Once the door swung shut behind him, Javi let himself out of the stall.
He washed his hands on autopilot and only risked a look at his reflection at the very end as he shook the water off his fingers.
His nose looked worse than he’d expected—scabbed across the bridge and swollen enough to change the outline —but his eyes weren’t as bruised as he’d thought they’d be. He could just pass for tired.
Which he was.
Really? That’s what I’m thinking about?
Javi braced his hands on either side of the sink, porcelain cold against his palms, and let his head slump forward. The buzz of a fluorescent light about to burn out rattled around the edges of his attempt to pull himself together.
Not…
The creak of the door opening interrupted his train of thought. Agent Benson stuck his head in around the door, his face reflected in the mirror set somewhere between petulant and apologetic. A cowlick of blond hair had escaped his attempt to gel it down and stuck up at his temple.
“Sir…I mean, Agent Merlo,” he stumbled awkwardly over the first words.
“Try Javi.”
Benson pulled a face at the idea, then caught his reflection doing the same thing and flushed a patchy red. He coughed and reached up to try to flatten his cowlick back into his hairline.
“Limehouse wants to talk to you,” he said. His mouth pursed a little sourly as he added, “He was kind of a fucker about it.”
Javi grabbed a rough paper towel from the dispenser and wiped his hands off. He balled the damp, disintegrating tissue up and walked over to tap his foot on the metal bracket of the pedal bin.
“Clyde Limehouse is the spouse of an injured SSA and a fellow federal agent,” he said. “Don’t run your mouth where people can hear you.”
Benson raised a sandy eyebrow as his gaze tracked over Javi’s face. He jerked his chin up.
“Isn’t he the one who did that to you?” he said.
Javi let the bin clang shut. “I didn’t say you were wrong,” he said as he motioned for Benson to get out of his way. “Just not to say it out loud. Where is he?”
“In Tracy’s room,” Benson said.
They turned in that direction. “And who’s on guard duty?” Javi asked. He didn’t need to; he could see the empty chair at the door. Being officious was familiar and easy, a pattern of behavior he could use to keep things normal.
Benson hesitated. He started to break into a jog to get back to his station, then changed his mind and stuck to Javi’s side.
“I mean, Limehouse is with her,” he said. “Like you said, he’s law enforcement, too.”
“And you know he wasn’t involved?” Javi asked.
Benson looked aggrieved. As they reached the doors, he ducked back into his station. While he overcompensated by glaring at orderlies, Javi let himself into the hospital room. It smelled like every other hospital room, bleach and latex layered over bodily fluids and that sickly adrenaline smell.
The stepdaughter had retreated to the seat in the corner of the room, sleeves pulled down over her hands and chin tucked into her collar. Limehouse perched clumsily on the side of the bed. An ungenerous part of Javi thought it looked posed, like what Limehouse thought a worried husband would do.
As he closed the door behind him, Limehouse looked up.
“She looks like shit,” he said. That seemed genuine.
Javi couldn’t see it. Compared to how she’d looked in that sour little bathroom, Joel looked good.
The only injuries that could be seen were a few bruises on her face and the neat gauze strips on her arms. Other than the slow, measured clicks and beeps from the machines monitoring her, she looked almost peaceful.
Limehouse started to stroke Joel’s leg through the sheet and then pulled back. “Did they…”
His eyes flicked to his daughter, and he trailed off. Javi knew what he meant. The kid probably did too.
“No,” Javi said. “The doctor can tell you more.”
Limehouse nodded. He’d not shaved since he got off the plane. Ginger stubble, flecked with gray around his mouth, was maybe a day away from a beard. It hid most of the bruise on his jawline.
“Hey, Tom,” Limehouse said after an awkward second. “Go see what’s in the vending machine?”
The request was ignored.
“Please?”
Tom sighed, pulled herself up, and sloped her way out of the room. She paused in the doorway. “I’ll get her the peanut M&M’s,” she said, almost defiantly. “She likes them.”
“Good idea.”
Once they were alone, Limehouse took a deep breath. “That guy, the one outside,” he said. “He said his husband was missing, too. Why?”
“We don’t know,” Javi said. His lips felt stiff. It wasn’t a lie—not exactly—but it felt like one. “Did she ever mention a Miles? Miles Sandoval? Lassiter? Anything?”
Limehouse shook his head. “No,” he said. “You think if she had, I’d have put my PI onto you?”
“Did she talk about work much—”
“No,” Limehouse said harshly. “We’d agreed that. Early doors. No work talk. When there was so much she couldn’t say, I’d rather she didn’t say anything. You get that, right? All the secrets you guys have to keep?”
Javi hesitated on an answer. The lie he’d told to Cloister earlier sat heavy in the back of his mind. Before he had to settle on how to reply, the door opened and a doctor stepped through. “Mr. Limehouse?” the woman asked as she glanced at her clipboard and then at Javi.
“That’s me,” Limehouse said as he stood up.
The doctor’s gaze shifted to him. She tucked a corkscrew curl behind her ear with a pencil and nodded. “Of course,” she tipped her head toward the door. “Now you’re here, we need to talk. There’s a room we use—”
Limehouse mumbled his agreement, and they left. Javi stayed where he was. He pulled a chair over, legs scraping across the floor, and sat down next to Joel. It felt like he should be in motion, that he needed to act, but he didn’t know what way to go.
Javi rested his elbows on his knees and stared at Joel’s bruised face.
“Did you know? And when?” he asked. His voice was low, but it felt loud.
He could see the image of the photo that he’d taken from Reid Lassiter in his mind.
The familiar smile, the notch of an old scar at the edge of an eyebrow, and the way he stood in the photo to make his shoulders look broader.
That had always been his insecurity. Javi kept trying to doubt himself, but he remembered that face better than most people in his life.
Guilt did that. It set things. Javi leaned forward to look closer at Joel’s face, for any flicker of an eye or twitch of a mouth that would mean she could somehow hear him.
“Was it when you came to Plenty, or before that? When you assigned me to scut work, was it because you blamed me for getting Eric killed, or because you were scared I’d find out he was living ten miles from me?
When did you know Miles Lassiter and Eric Granov were the same man? ”
His voice cracked as he tried to throttle the anger of that question back down into his throat. He leaned back in the chair and pressed his steepled fingers to his lips. Joel had no answers for him. She’d given him all she could with, “They took him.”
The only other person who could answer those questions was the one who’d lied about them in the first place.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There had been one other person who had to have been in the know. But he’d died instead of facing the music.
Javi tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he strode across the yellow-boxed lines of the parking lot.
He remembered the last time he’d been here.
It had been a hostage situation, with a dirty cop and a girl who’d already gone through enough.
Javi hadn’t felt in control then either.
The bad association he had with hospitals got more ammo with every visit.
“I need to talk to Kincaid,” he said.
“Nice to hear from you, too,” Sue said tartly. “How’s SSA Joel?”
“Alive,” Javi said. “Not the current problem. Kincaid?”
Sue huffed a sigh and told him to wait. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and hit the fob as he approached the car, the mirrors unfolding as the doors unlocked. The muffled sound of keys clicking and Sue turning down an offer of a coffee carried down the line as he got into the car.
“He’s not updated his location,” Sue said. “And he’s not answering either phone. He could still be in transit with the prisoner.”
Javi had ridden to the hospital with Joel in the ambulance. Whatever agent—probably Benson—who’d been sent to fetch his car had shorter legs than he did. He reached under the seat to adjust it.
“Well, when he checks in, tell him he needs to call me,” Javi said shortly. “It’s important.”
He didn’t need to see Sue to imagine the lift of her eyebrow. “I’m not sure he’ll care,” she remarked. “I can pass the message along, though. Did you get the phone records I sent you?”