Chapter 3 #2
Ahead of him, the man asked about painkillers. Received a vague We’ll get to you answer. He sighed and moved away, and North filled his spot.
He pulled out his phone, thumb sliding over the screen to find her picture.
Selah, laughing at something off camera, her head thrown back.
He’d taken it in Mariposa, before everything went wrong.
The sun had caught her hair, turning the blonde strands to gold, and her eyes…
Oh, those eyes. They held something fierce and tender at once, could cause a storm in his heart and heal it, maybe both at the same time.
“Hi,” he said to the very tired woman at the desk, who looked at him with barely concealed impatience. “I’m looking for this woman.” He flashed her the picture. “Her name is Selah. Selah Silver. She was on the train.”
The woman gave him a grim look and turned to her computer. “What was her name again?”
“Selah.” He spelled it. Then, “Silver.”
She shook her head. “No one has registered under that name.”
“Is it possible she came in as a Jane Doe?” And the words, spilling out of his mouth, turned him sick, his gut a fist. Because then she would have been unconscious. Maybe unrecognizable. Maybe from a fire…
He put his hand on the desk, his knees buckling.
The woman rose. “Okay, sir, you need to sit down.”
He held up a hand. “I’m fine. Can I show this picture around to your staff?”
She pinched her mouth. “I’m sorry, sir. Look around. If she’s here, she’s being taken care of, I promise.” Her voice had softened at the end, but she flicked a glance past him.
He turned, spotted a couple local cops in the lobby. Right. The last thing he needed was trouble.
“Feel free to show the picture to anyone in the lobby,” she said.
He nodded and held up his phone, started around the room. “Has anyone seen this woman?” Most barely looked up, a few glanced at his phone, so many just shook their heads. It wasn’t a large room, so it didn’t take long.
He stood, staring at the ER door, debating—
“North.”
He turned, and it took a second to place the man striding toward him. He hadn’t seen York Newgate since the craziness in Lauchtenland, when the Russian Bratva tried to deploy a dirty bomb over a football stadium as part of a bigger, tangled plot to drag America into a war.
York wore a canvas jacket, dark pants, boots, and fatigue on his face. His blond hair was dark with sweat, his face etched with the kind of exhaustion that came from hours of searching through wreckage for survivors.
“Tell me you found her.” The words scraped North’s throat.
York’s jaw tightened. “I arrived an hour ago. We’ve been through every admission. Every room. She’s not here.”
“Is she…how about…” His voice cracked.
“No, North. Not under a sheet.” York put a hand on his shoulder. “Although there are still people caught in the rubble.”
“Survivors?”
“We hope so. But the fire…it spread to the cars. There’s…it’s not good. At least thirteen people dead.”
North’s legs threatened to give. He grabbed the wall, institutional paint rough under his fingers. The fluorescent lights suddenly seemed too bright, too harsh. “Then I’ll go back to the crash site. Maybe we missed something. Maybe—”
York caught his arm as North pushed away from the wall, phone already out to show her picture again. “North. Stop.” York’s grip tightened. “You need to sit down before you fall down.”
He was right. North’s body trembled with exhaustion, with too much gas-station coffee, with the hollowing sense of helplessness. He didn’t do helpless. Not well.
York took a look in the waiting room, then guided him down the hall toward a coffee-shop area, although the shop was closed. More people sat in the hallway, others just giving in to slumber.
He guided North to a chair. “You should get some sleep.”
North looked at him. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”
York’s mouth tightened. “Okay then.” He sank into the other chair. “I’d give that coffee shop a thousand dollars to open up right now.”
North leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He sighed. “We had a fight.”
York said nothing.
North sat up. “It was stupid. I was angry and she was…I don’t know. Traumatized maybe. We were in Mariposa, working, and she went to this village to help. She does that—finds the broken places, the people everyone else forgets. Tries to help them.”
His throat tightened. “That’s one of the things I love about her. She sees people. Really sees them. Makes them feel like they matter.”
“But something went wrong?”
“By the time I heard about it, she had a good head start. I was probably already wired, but when I arrived, I spotted a body outside town, a local. I knew they were in trouble. And they were. A gang had shown up and robbed them at knifepoint, and I walked in to some thug with a machete practically to her throat. Didn’t sit well.
We had a bit of a dustup. One of the gang members ended up in the morgue.
It was…well, he was little more than a kid, really. ”
“He had a weapon and he planned on using it.”
North held up his hand. “Did use it. But…I don’t know. The whole thing set me off. There were rules on the island about…okay, everyone knew the gang was trouble and…I never get mad, but right then, I might have said things.”
York sighed. “Yeah. I get that.”
He didn’t know much about York. Just that the man had worked in the clandestine services at one point and now operated with the Caleb Group, a private-intelligence service under the purview of President White.
But York wore experience in his blue eyes, and his mouth pinched. “We’ll find her, North.”
“Yeah.” North scrubbed his hands down his face. “The thing is…I started thinking about all this on my drive here—and I don’t know. I might have triggered some PTSD response. She was taken hostage in Nigeria—”
“Wait. That op that Fraser Marshall and Colt Kingston were on?”
“The very one. She seemed to come out of it okay, but…she saw a lot. People died—people she cared about.”
“Did she get trauma counseling?”
“Yes. And she seemed to be fine. When she came down to Mariposa after the landslide last year, she seemed herself again.”
“Trauma sits in our bones. And the smallest thing can surface it,” York said.
“She hates violence.”
York cocked his head.
“Yeah. I see right there that could be our problem.” North wove his hands behind his neck, kneaded a muscle. “She looks at broken things like they could be made whole again. And she helps even if it puts her in danger.”
“The reason you love her.”
He nodded. Blew out a breath. “The reason she terrifies me.”
A half smile lit York’s mouth. “Yeah. I have one of those. I live in the fear of her big save-the-world ideas.”
North nodded. “Every time she walks away, she takes my heart with her.” The words spilled out, and maybe he was tired, too tired, but, “I love how Selah fights for people. How she sees beauty in everything. How she makes me want to be better, to do better.”
York was silent for a moment.
“Excuse me.”
North looked up to see the man from before, bandage on his forehead, holding his gut. “I heard you say the name Selah. Are you talking about Selah Silver?”
North stilled. “You know her?”
“Yeah. She and another man helped me get to the Urgent Care in Cashmere. That’s where they bandaged me up. I caught a ride here with one of the doctors.”
“Start from the beginning,” York interrupted, his voice gentle but urgent. “What’s your name?”
“David.” He settled into a chair with a wince. “I was in the train crash—dining car. Everything happened so fast—the explosion, the screaming. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, a piece of metal in my gut, my head bleeding. And then…she just showed up.”
“Was she hurt?” North said.
“Not that I could see. She and this other guy got a truck, and they helped this guy with a collapsed lung and his family get to the hospital. Took me with them.”
That was Selah. Always caring for others, even in a crisis. North’s chest ached with the familiar mix of pride and fear that thought always brought.
“She saved my life. Her and James.”
“James?” North said. “Who is James?”
“Tall guy. Dark hair. Businessman. He found the truck, helped save Grant—the other guy.”
York went still beside him. North glanced at him.
“Could you describe James again?” York asked. “Any distinguishing features?”
David thought for a moment. “Maybe early forties? Good-looking in that movie-star way. Smooth talker.” He traced a line across his forehead. “And a scar, right here.”
“Did you catch his last name?” York’s voice had gone carefully neutral.
“No. But he seemed pretty unflappable. Like he knew what he was doing.” He winced, leaning back in the chair.
“You’re still bleeding,” North said, seeing it now through his shirt.
“Yeah. They took out the object at the clinic and packed the wound, but it needs…attention.”
And that’s when he passed out. Just turned gray and keeled over. North caught him before he hit the ground.
“C’mon,” York said and grabbed the man’s arm. North took the other, and they dragged the man back to the ER.
York walked them right up to the ER doors. Glanced over at the receptionist. “If you don’t want another fatality, open the door.”
Her eyes widened and she hit the button.
The doors opened and they dragged David in. An orderly was cleaning off a bed, and they scooped him up and set him on it.
“York.” North turned to his friend. “You think—”
“Yes.” York’s voice dropped low, meant for North’s ears alone. “Yes. It sounds like Alan Martin.”
“How?”
“He’s suave. Even when we started working together, he had a sort of James Bond debonair smoothness. Very disarming for the ladies.”
“Not Selah. She’s not—”
“On the rebound and hurting?” York raised an eyebrow.
DON’T HIT HIM!! North actually shouted it in his head.
“Listen, I’m not sure how he’s tangled up with Selah, but he’s…”
“Dangerous.”