Page 28 of Tied Over

“Excellent,” Dr. Nkosi said, giving me a smile that was lovely as opposed to Ian’s shit-eating one. I already liked her better. “You will be ready to leave the hospital tomorrow morning, and as we already have you off all the good drugs, which was at your request, I can tell you’re done with being here.”

“You would be correct,” I agreed.

“Well, three and a half days is more than enough.”

I groaned like I was actually dying.

“I will be back,” she told me, and with that, she and her team left.

Alone in the room now with Bodhi, who was standing beside my bed with crossed arms, and Ian, who was at the foot of my bed, smirking at me, I wanted to scream.

“Why not send just me to Custodial WITSEC?” I asked Ian. “Bodhi shouldn’t be punished because I got shot.”

“What are you talking about?” Ian asked, squinting at me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You got your witnesses out, and you got Petrov.”

I was quiet, waiting.

“Do I wish you’d called Wes before you breached? Sure. Do I wish Crouse was more concerned for your life than getting Petrov? Absolutely. Will his office ever run anything with ours without my oversight and personal attendance? Fuck no,” he growled. “I get it because I was a cowboy once upon a time too, but never did I gamble with anyone’s life but my own.”

“Wait now, he—”

“No, Jed,” Ian snapped at me. “You were hurt, bleeding, he had no idea of the extent of your injuries, and he thought—and this is in the official report—that you had a finite number of minutes left on this earth before bleeding out.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No,” Ian said again, his voice going low and dark. “Petrov could not have gotten out of that building. It was surrounded by CPD, a SOG team was coming up the elevators, and there were more officers on every floor of that building. What you guys didn’t want to be a big deal ended up huge. It’s eating up newspaper headlines and airtime on every news channel in the city and beyond. Eli has been center stage, talking to the press for the last three days, speaking not only for us, but the CPD and FBI as well.”

“I never meant to embarrass the marshals service or—”

“You didn’t. Again, your partner secured the witnesses, and you helped bring down Petrov. We came out of this clusterfuck looking very shiny.”

But he didn’t look or sound happy.

“Crouse is on administrative leave pending a formal investigation.”

“That’s not—”

“If you so choose,” he said, scowling, “you can speak at his hearing in a month. Mabe and Salazar are going to as well.”

Nice of Ian to throw that in. He wasn’t thrilled with Crouse at the moment, but he didn’t want him run out of the FBI.

“I don’t think you should. Crouse is always looking for credit. He wants the glory. He’s a waste of space and should be demoted or just be out.”

Or I was wrong and Ian thought Crouse was a fuckup.

“You go with your gut on that.”

“Thanks.”

“When you get back, you’re going to Custodial with your partner and—”

“When I get back? Where am I going?”

“Since we all know you need a keeper, you’re going with Bodhi on vacation starting tomorrow, Friday, and we won’t see you back here, reporting to Miro, until July sixth, next Thursday.”

“What?” I suspected I still had the good drugs in my system.

“You’ll leave here in the morning, and your doctor has cleared you to fly to Seattle with your partner.”