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An hour later, with Hailey tucked into a hospital bed in a private room with an IV in her arm, Joe pulled up a chair and laced his fingers through hers.
“Feeling better?”
She croaked in her new raspy voice, “I’m fine. What about you? Has anyone checked you out yet?”
Lifting up his shirt, he twisted around to show off the bandage on his back. “That’s the worst of it. Some sharp branch speared me. Why didn’t your father’s gardeners plant some ice plant in that area?”
“Let’s be thankful there weren’t more rosebushes in there.”
“There were enough.” Joe held out his arm where a hodgepodge of gauze patches created a pattern on his skin.
She kissed her fingertips and pressed them against the biggest gauze square. “Did the police talk to you yet?”
“They did, and Agent Porter is on his way.” He scooted his chair closer to the bed. “Turns out Ayala must’ve gotten a C in bomb-making class.”
“I don’t know.” Hailey folded over the edge of the sheet and creased it with her fingers. “That sounded like an A-plus effort to me.”
“She didn’t use enough chemicals to take down the house, but we definitely would’ve been severely injured if we’d stepped across that threshold.”
“My purse set it off, didn’t it?”
“I saw the wire inside the house at about the same time you moved forward and swung your purse in the doorway.”
“You saved us again. If you hadn’t seen the wire, hadn’t suspected Ayala of setting us up, the EMTs would’ve been picking up our body parts from that front garden.” She covered her eyes with one hand. “It felt like...felt like...”
“What you experienced at the refugee camp.” Joe smoothed his hand over her leg beneath the sheet.
“Only that was much worse. There was shrapnel with that one, horrible, horrible injuries. How could a nurse perpetuate that kind of violence?”
“Something else is more important to her now. If a few children have to die for the greater good, she’s down with that.”
“Exactly.” Agent Porter tapped on the open door. “We’re looking into Ayala Khan’s brother and her boyfriend.”
“Agent Porter, this is Joe McVie.”
Porter stepped into the room, his large frame making it appear even smaller, and extended his hand to Joe. “I know all about Captain McVie, Delta Force. You’ve been busy on your leave, Captain.”
“Call me Joe. I feel like we’re old friends.”
Porter drew up a chair on the other side of Hailey’s bed. “Are you okay, Hailey? You’ve been through the wringer since...Joe showed up, haven’t you?”
“You think I’m a target because of Joe?” She struggled to sit up, punching a pillow behind her. “If you’re going to blame anyone, outside of the real culprits, blame Marten de Becker...and help him. He’s still alive.”
“So is Andrew Reese.”
“Thank God. Is he talking?”
“I got nothing from the CIA except Reese took a beating and refused to finger his assailants.”
“Unlike me.”
Crossing his arms, Joe extended his legs beneath Hailey’s bed. “What are you doing about Ayala Khan?”
“We have her on the terrorist watch list, the no-fly, and we’ve contacted Interpol. Everything we can do.”
“Is the CIA ready to admit Major Denver didn’t have anything to do with the bomb in Syria?”
“Hold on.” Porter held out a hand. “All we know is some group is targeting the relief workers who were kidnapped. We don’t know why. Maybe they think they can ID their captors.”
Joe snorted. “I don’t think some random terrorists in Syria would be too worried about that. The connection is the ID of Major Denver and the fact that Marten de Becker, who had positively identified Denver as one of the kidnappers, decided to change his mind.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions, McVie.”
“Are you forgetting what my Delta Force teammates discovered? The original emails implicating Denver were fake, and the claim that Denver shot an Army Ranger when he went AWOL was force-fed to Asher Knight through mind control.” Joe bunched his hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets.
