Chapter 5 #2
Closing the door behind me, I move into the room and towards the bed, stopping several feet from it. “How are you doing?” A beat later, I realize the insanity of what I just asked. Of course she’s not good. How could she be?
“Um.” Bea digs her teeth into her lip. “Not great, honestly.”
“Can I take a look at you? Just to check your pulse, reflexes, pupil response—nothing intrusive.”
She stares at me, her brow furrowing. Then the lines in her forehead smooth out. “Right. You were a medic, weren’t you?”
I try to ignore the burst of pleasure that comes with her remembering. “I was. And I’m acting medic for my team now, as well. So I’ve kept up with my training. I’m no doctor, but I can manage basic triage, first aid, stuff like that.”
Bea gives me an appraising look. Then she nods. “Okay.” As I take another step towards her, she adds, “But I have questions. And I need you to promise you’ll answer them honestly.”
There’s no hesitation. “I will. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
She watches me as I approach the bed. Her gaze is solemn. Watchful. Hesitant.
Once I’m beside her, I take her wrist in my hand and rest my fingers over her pulse. She waits for me to finish counting before she asks, “Am I really the primary suspect? In… Jenna’s death?”
With a nod, I reply, “Unfortunately, yes.”
Tears well up in her eyes. “How? It doesn’t make sense. I remember seeing her on the floor, all bloody—” Her voice cracks.
“There’s evidence.”
“What evidence? Do you know?”
I busy myself checking her reflexes so I don’t have to see her anguished expression. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.” It’s firm. Scared, but certain.
So I tell her, hating every second of it. I tell her about the fingerprints on the knife. The blood on her shoes and clothes. When I mention the defensive wounds on her arms, Bea gasps and looks at her bare arms in horror. Long scratch marks drag down her forearms, scabbed over, but fresh.
“But…” Bea’s voice wobbles. “How?”
That damn fist punches into my chest again.
I drag my gaze to hers. “Whoever hurt you could have done it post—” My mouth snaps shut.
She flinches. Then quietly, she says, “Post Mortem. Right?” When I nod, she adds, “Don’t hide anything from me. You promised to tell me the truth.”
“Yes. Post Mortem. I talked to my team about it, and that’s what we think happened. Same with the fingerprints. And the blood.”
“But I was unconscious.”
“I know.” Perching on the edge of the bed, I lift the bandage carefully away from her forehead to check beneath it. The cut is held closed by two small butterfly bandages, but it’ll likely leave a small scar behind. Which, for some reason, feels abhorrent to me.
Before I can add anything, Bea says, “So… the man who attacked me—”
“The man?” I sit up straight. “Are you sure it was a man?”
“Yes. He talked to me. He said—” Her forehead squinches up, and she winces in pain. “He said…”
“We can talk about it later.” I’d rather not make her talk about it at all, but unfortunately, that’s not possible.
In order to investigate effectively, we need to question Bea.
Not just about Jenna, but about Bea’s background, too.
Because one scenario we discussed on the plane was that Bea was actually the target, and Jenna was just an unrelated victim who got dragged into it.
But I’m not asking Bea about that now. No way. Not when she’s fighting back tears and looks like she’s on the verge of passing out.
“Is this too much?” I ask. Smoothing the bandage back in place, I let my fingers linger on her skin for an extra second.
And shit, her skin is so damn soft.
For just a moment, or possibly less than that, Bea leans into my hand. Her eyes close. Then she reopens them and swallows hard. “I need to know.”
She’s so strong.
Even stronger than I realized.
So I fight back the instinctive urge to shield her from the painful truth and keep talking.
I outline everything we discovered last night and this morning, about the apparent cause of death—multiple stab wounds resulting in massive blood loss—and how Bea was discovered unconscious only feet away from Jenna, the bloody knife clutched in her hand.
I tell Bea about what the police think happened; that as she was hurrying to leave the scene, she slipped in blood and hit her head on the locker, knocking her out until nearly eleven-thirty last night.
“He grabbed my head,” Bea insists. “I was trying to get to my phone, and this man… he slammed my head into the locker. I didn’t slip. I was careful not to touch the blood at all. I touched Jenna’s wrist to see if she was… she was…”
More tears spring free.
“Hey. It’s okay.” Without thinking, I brush the fresh tears from her cheeks. “You don’t have to talk about it now. We can wait.”
“Until when? Until the police come get me? Until—”
“They won’t.” My tone brooks no argument. “The police won’t find you here. There’s no way.”
Bea sniffs back her tears. “How do you know?”
“Because there’s no reason for them to look here. We got in and out of the hospital without being noticed. And we were wearing disguises, so even if we did get caught on surveillance, which we didn’t, we couldn’t be identified.”
Hope sparks in her eyes, but it’s quickly extinguished. “But…”
“You’re safe here,” I continue. “Like I mentioned before, I brought you to our headquarters. It’s extremely secure.
No one can get inside without our permission.
And this”—I make a sweeping gesture around the bedroom—“is our client apartment right on site. We keep it for, well, clients, obviously. Or if friends or family come to visit. So no one can get to you here.”
“Your headquarters?” She gnaws on her lip again. “Headquarters for what?”
“Blade and Arrow Security. There are three branches, one in New York, another in Texas, and we’re the newest of them. We provide private security and investigative services to clients all over the country.”
“And you work here?”
A rare bloom of pride warms my chest. “I do. I know you wouldn’t have thought it, seeing me two years ago. But… I got my shit together. And even though I’m missing a hand—”
“Indy.” In a blink, Bea’s voice loses its wobble. She gives me that look, the one I remember so well from our sessions, when she’d insist I could achieve whatever I wanted. “I never doubted you. Not for a second.”
Emotion slams into me with the force of a tank.
Gruffly, I reply, “I did. But I’m here now. And my company, we’re good. We can keep you safe here, like I said. We have contacts, avenues the police don’t have access to. We can investigate this. Find out the truth. And then—”
“But they probably think I ran away.” Bea’s face pales. She clutches my arm. “They’re going to really think I’m guilty now.”
“They won’t.”
“How?”
“We’ll stage it to look like the actual killer kidnapped you. You’ll have to go along with the story, of course, but—”
An unwelcome thought creeps in. But I can’t ignore it.
“If you want to go back now, Bea, we can arrange it. I know I didn’t give you a choice before.
And maybe that was wrong of me. But you have a choice now.
We can bring you back. Arrange it to look like a hospital mix-up.
Or that you were taken by some freak who read the article online and wanted to take matters into his own hands.
We’ll figure something out, Bea. If you want us to. ”
If she says yes, she wants to go back, I’ll make it happen. Even if it’s the last thing I want to do.
But I desperately want her to stay.
To let me make things right.
“No,” Bea finally says. “It would be too risky. And if what you say about your company is true…”
“It is.” I slide my phone from my pocket and set it on the mattress beside her. “You can look it up. My branch isn’t listed, but the others are.”
“Why not yours?”
“We’re called the Shadow Team. So we take care of more… undercover cases. We take referrals, but we don’t advertise our services like the other branches do.”
Bea glances at the phone. Her fingers creep towards it. “What about my parents? They must know by now. And if I’m missing, they must be so worried.”
Shit. Her parents. Of course she’d want to talk to them. But it’s a risk…
“You can’t talk to them yet.” As she opens her mouth to argue, I hurry to add, “We’ll make it happen. I promise. Tyler, he’s the computer expert on the team, I’ll talk to him about it. We can have someone local—they’re still in Pittsburgh, right?”
Bea nods.
“Okay. So we have contacts all over the country. We’ll have someone get in touch with your parents. Let them know you’re okay, but that they can’t tell anyone. And we’ll get them a secure phone so you can call them. It might take a day or two, but we’ll get it done.”
When she doesn’t immediately respond, I ask, “Can you wait? If not, I’ll try to figure something else out.”
Her hand moves back to her lap. “Indy.”
There’s something in her eyes that makes my heart jolt. “What?”
“Why did you do this? Go all the way to DC. Smuggle me out of the hospital so I won’t go to jail. Risk getting in trouble yourself.”
“Do you think I had an ulterior motive?”
“No.” Her expression is unreadable. “Maybe I don’t know everything about you. But I know enough.”
“What do you know?”
“That you have honor. That you dedicated your life to protecting people. That you’re a good person.”
Oh.
Eden’s told me things like that before. But hearing it from Bea…
“I’ll never hurt you. I swear.”
“But why?” Bea touches my arm. Her hand looks so fragile. So small. And for some reason, I ache to take it in mine. “Why did you do all that? When you haven’t seen me in years?”
At first, I’m not sure how to answer.
How to voice all the thoughts spinning in my head.
How to express feelings I don’t even want to admit to myself.
“I knew you didn’t do it.” It’s part of the truth, at least. “As soon as I heard, I knew it wasn’t possible. And I had to do something.”
“Oh.” She pulls her hand back, leaving a cold spot behind. “Okay.”
Then she leans back against the pillows again. Exhaustion washes across her face. “I’m tired. Would you mind…”
“Oh, yes.” I slide off the bed. “Of course. But I’m going to leave the door open this time, just so I can check to make sure you’re okay.”
Bea stares at me for a second. “Or.” She blinks slowly. Heavily. “Could you maybe stay in here? Just for a little while?”
Oh.
“Yes.” I hurry to the corner of the room, where an armchair is tucked into it. Then I carry it over to the bed, set it down, and sink into it. “Of course I will, Bea. I’ll stay as long as you want.”