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CHAPTER 9
Evan
I awoke or,more like, came to with the brain-scrambling disorientation that comes from unnatural sleep. I blinked to clear my vision. Red stood over me, peering down at my face. I jerked into an upright position and surveyed the room. It could have been a windowless hospital, from the bed to the machines to the IV hooked into my arm, but I knew better.
“You’re at HEAT HQ, you’ve been out just over three hours, but you shouldn’t feel any lasting effects from the sedative,” Red said. She wore a white medical coat over her dark blue pants and light blue sweater and spoke to me in her calming, bedside voice. Suddenly, she wasn’t Red anymore. She was Dr. Bond.
“A tranquilizer dart?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and my throat was raw. “And people say I’m an asshole.”
She handed me a glass of water. I stared down into it, then glanced up at her, suspicious as hell.
“Evan, I wouldn’t drug you, I swear.”
I arched an eyebrow so high, it probably reached my hairline.
“I can understand why you’d be concerned,” she conceded, “but that decision was made by my team. I did not condone it.”
“You mean it was made by TJ.” I shifted to hang my legs over the side of the bed. “And I know how chain of command works. He obviously doesn’t trust me. Keeping me drugged would eliminate any imagined threat I might pose.”
“He does not want to keep you drugged,” she said. “Here, let me unhook your IV, which just contains fluids to keep you hydrated.”
She smoothly and painlessly removed the needle. Or maybe I didn’t notice whether it hurt because she had to touch me to do it. I liked her touching me. I missed it, now that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t ever be able to pull her into my arms again.
I hated that I had put her on the defensive. I hated it more that I wasn’t sure I could trust her. Last night had been unbelievable. So good, and not just the sex. I didn’t doubt what she’d told me or the connection we’d made. My last thought before I’d lost consciousness was that I hoped I would see her again after I woke up, despite our no-strings-attached, never-see-each-other-again agreement. I’d been so sure that her presence would make everything all right. It had given me peace.
A jarring thought occurred to me. “That tranquilizer was a sedative, right? Anything else?”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded. “Also an anti-anxiety medication, the kind given to patients before surgery to keep them calm.”
At least she didn’t attempt to lie about it, but I didn’t want the least from her. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, preferably with the woman I’d been with for the past day-and-a-half. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure she still existed. And besides, that hadn’t been our deal.
“When can I leave?” I asked.
“Soon, but not today. Your boss knows you’re with us.”
“I also need to check in with my sister,” I said. “I texted her last night to tell her I’d be out of town for a day or so, and she made me promise I’d call her this morning before her hospital shift.”
“Oh.”
I immediately understood. I shook my head. “They took my phone? What’s next? Are they going to lock me in a cage?”
She flinched. “No, that’s not going to happen.”
Her placating tone didn’t reassure me, not like it had yesterday when she’d bandaged my arm while I drove at 70 miles per hour. We had been a team, and a damn good one. And despite her injury, she’d been lively and exciting. Forward, flirtatious, bossy. But now that we were with her real team, everything was different. She was different. Reserved. Closed off. Maybe even a little nervous. I wondered which Samantha Bond was the real one. I desperately wanted it to be my Red, but I was fast losing faith.
“How about you explain exactly what is going to happen,” I said.
She sat down on the bed, leaving a foot of space between us. “They’re going to keep researching you and Bennet and your whole team. Their next step will be to pull your military records and your Philly PD files.”
“They can do that?”
She nodded. “So, if there’s anything in your file that’s problematic, anything you need to explain, TJ needs to hear it and now is the time to share it.”
I tensed. I’d kept her safe after her team had dropped the ball. Now they were returning the favor by digging into my personal and professional lives. And they suspected something. Of course they did, because there was something they wouldn’t find in my files. The very absence of data would set off alarms.
I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “You know, 36 hours ago, my biggest problem was figuring out how to tell another perfectly nice friend of my sister’s that I didn’t want to see her again at the end of our date.”
She smiled. “Are you asking me to believe you lived a boring life?”
