Page 102 of Shallow Remains

“Yes, we’re warming you up, but you look a lot better already. Can you tell me what happened to your left wrist?”

“Eve kicked it.”

The woman nodded. “I’m going to take you back for some x-rays, okay? We’re short-staffed, so I’m going to do them myself.”

“Where’s Lachlan?” She tried to push up on her right elbow, looking around. “Is he okay?”

“They’re treating him right now, but he’s in good hands, I promise.”

“Is he okay?” she repeated.

“I think he’s going to be.” Naya wheeled her out of the room, down a brightly lit hallway and into a dimmer room. Maddy’s wrist hurt so bad, and positioning it for the series of radiographs made it worse.

Dr. Patel studied the images, wrote her report, and came back to her. “You’ve got a combined distal radius and scaphoid fracture. It’s a high-energy injury, fairly rare, and complex. You’re going to need surgery to stabilize the fracture sites. I’m going to call ortho, see what they can do. Hang tight.” She gave Maddy a smile and squeezed her shoulder on the way out.

Alone in the room, Maddy’s eyes flooded with frustrated tears. When the doors opened again and Blaine came in, the tears spilled over. “I need s-surgery.” On top of everything else she’d just gone through, that’s what set her off.

He came straight to her and took her good hand in a firm grip. “I’ll be here. Don’t worry.”

“I w-want to s-see Lachlan.” Her voice wobbled.

Blaine pulled up a chair and sat down next to her bed. “He’s going to be okay, Mads, but he’s got a collapsed lung and a concussion. They put a chest tube in to reinflate the lung, and they had to drain some blood from his chest cavity.”

That sounded really serious. “I want to see him,” she insisted. “I need to see him. He needs me too.”

Blaine squeezed her hand. “I know. Can you tell me what happened first? I want to make sure I get on top of this and tie up any loose ends before they get away from us.”

The person in Turkey, he meant. And anyone else involved with this plot.

She told him everything, keeping it short because she was tired and scared and couldn’t concentrate for shit right now. “The account number,” she suddenly recalled. “I memorized it.”

“You did?” He whipped out his phone, typed it in as she recited it. “Mads, this is incredible. We’ll be able to mop up the rest of it with this.”

“She left the laptop behind. It’s still at the cabin, intact. And she had her phone on her when she…” Between those three things, hopefully the powers that be could unravel everything else.

“I’ll let Rafe know. But the FBI is gonna take charge of this real fast, and the CIA will be involved too. Also, we saw something from the air on our way to you that you need to see.” He found something on his phone, turned it around to show her.

The overhead shot showed Lachlan’s boat still a fair distance away from the one she and Eve had been on.

“Look left.” He zoomed in.

She gasped when she saw something moving under the water. Close enough to the surface that there was no guessing what it was. “That’s a mini sub.”

“It absolutely is. The timing of it being in that location is suspicious as hell. I’m not sure if Eve had lined it up as a getaway plan, but even if not, it’s definitely the kind of thing someone could use to slip between the islands without being seen.”

“Smuggling drugs.”

“Yep. Which would explain the money on those guys Rafe arrested, and what happened to Onyx.” He tucked his phone away. “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

He left the room and returned several minutes later with an orderly. “Mission’s green lit. Let’s do this.”

The orderly wheeled her out of the x-ray room and down the hall back to emergency. Maddy’s heart started pounding as she looked around. She spotted Grey standing at the end of a hospital bed. Looked past him through the gap in the curtains.

“Special delivery for Lachlan McCaffrey,” the orderly said.

Grey smiled at her and drew the curtain aside. Maddy sucked in a watery breath when she saw Lachlan propped up in the hospital bed with leads attached to his chest and a bandage covering his side.

His face was pale and covered in bruises. But his tired, weak smile was full of warmth when he spotted her. “Maddy.”