Page 27 of Long Past Deadly

Quaid turned to Mackey, but he subtly made a down-low sign of ‘I’m out.’

Quaid kept an arm around his aunt and walked her to the door. “I have to call her and Hunt. It needs to be me.”

“I would think so. Are you hurt?”

In the hallway, he turned Elizabeth towards her office at the end of the hall. He and Mackey both had public offices across from Operations, but Elizabeth had the corner office. She was their financial guru and brain trust.

“No, Harry’s asleep on my sofa.” She turned the knob on his office door, stepped through, and flicked on the lights.

Quaid missed a step, but recovered quickly. “Harry has an office with a sofa.”

“With all the noise of the Operations Center attached. The man’s been here since the assassination attempt. What is going on?”

“As near as we can tell, the man’s after Alanna. We don’t know why yet. She needed rest before she could share the whole story. Drucker has her. Bets took care of her at the ER. There’s nothing for Cait to do, yet.”

“She won’t see it that way.”

Quaid frowned, agreeing. “I spent too long trying to protect everyone around me when I thought it was some mess from my past. Now the parameters are different.”

“We need to help her with whatever it is.”

“We will.”

“You don’t like her.”

Leave it to Elizabeth to be blunt. “We worked through a bit of that. I admit I don’t know her, and she’s defensive and private.” He went to the conversation area and collapsed on his nubby, gray sofa. Elizabeth followed him, choosing the chair across from him.

“We don’t leave our friends to fend for themselves.” That Elizabeth felt she had to spell it out pricked at his conscience.

“We don’t. And we won’t. She had my back the entire time. I’ll have hers, too.”

Niles interrupted a tick before rapping on the door. “Sir, I have the gear.”

“Bring it in here. We’ll separate out what I borrowed from Hunt and get organized.” The man disappeared as quietly as he arrived. God, how did he think he was better off without his family around him? That had been a stupid move. He couldn’t afford to make any more. For Alanna’s sake.

Elizabeth rose. “We have one guest room open on the fifth floor. You could sleep there.”

“Give the space to Alanna.”

“She has a crew quarters assignment already to mitigate the drive to LA FBI headquarters.”

“Yeah, with the bare minimum. Let’s put her in a more comfortable setting until she’s back to full strength.”

“She might not want to.”

“I’ll talk to her. In fact, make the suite her standing room assignment as long as she’s here.”

Elizabeth tipped her head and gave him “the look.” It always loosened his tongue.

“She has no family, Liz. None.”

“Better quarters will take care of that?”

“No, it won’t. But it will tell her we respect her and will take care of her. I may have screwed up with my attitude about her from the beginning, but I’m fixing that.”

Elizabeth raised her hands in surrender. “Whatever you say, but you get to tell her.”

“No problem.” His internal self was rolling on the floor laughing, but he coached himself to ignore. “Tell Donner to make the arrangements. I’ll take care of the rest.”