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CHAPTER 19
Samantha
I rodewith Kessler in the medivac helicopter and Evan rode with Bennet in an ambulance. The rest of Alpha Team decamped to HQ, where the twenty-two people who had participated in the operation would debrief. The Alpha Team-only debrief would be later, after Kessler was stable.
Thus far, all I knew about what had happened outside that small storeroom was that nine suspected Carbonados operatives, or at least their guns for hire, were now in custody and being interviewed by an interrogation team handpicked by X. I held my tongue when Penn shared that detail, not mentioning that she’d been the one who’d inflicted Sloane on us. Then again, he was the one HEAT employee who hadn’t reported to her, so maybe in a few days or weeks or years, I would stop blaming her for Kessler’s way-too-close brush with death.
I waited alone in the family waiting room while one of the best vascular surgeons in the country led her surgery team. Our comms were turned off, the team was occupied with sorting out the aftermath of the day, and I was alone. Evan stayed with Bennet in the ER, keeping me informed of our second patient’s examination, MRI, and sedation so he could rest while they kept him overnight for observation.
A few hours after arriving at the hospital, Bennet was finally resting peacefully. Kerri was on duty and promised to keep Evan informed if anything changed, but I knew, as I’m sure she did, that Bennet would be fine. I hoped we could soon say the same about Kessler. With his best friend in good hands, Evan joined me in the waiting room.
I threw myself into his embrace. “God, it was getting lonely here.”
He wrapped his arms around me. “I’ve got you, Red. Rest here for a minute.”
And I did. I was calm, at peace, settled by his presence. Maybe it was crazy, maybe we were crazy, like Evan’s parents had been. Maybe it was too soon to tell where this thing was going. But standing in the quiet waiting room, safe in his embrace, I knew I wouldn’t be adding Evan to my roster.
Before I could tell him, an OR nurse came to tell us the surgery was going well. Evan and I hugged again, but I’d lost my courage to broach the subject he’d opened earlier, six feet underground in an eighteen-inch-diameter tunnel.
For the next hour, we sat beside each other on a small loveseat, holding hands and drinking surprisingly good coffee from the hospital café.
“Things have changed since I last worked at a hospital during my residency,” I said.
Evan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Things always change, Red. You have to grab onto life’s few constants when you find them.”
I didn’t take the opportunity he was affording me, and he didn’t press the issue. To change the topic, I asked him a question I knew was probably too personal, but if I was going to screw my courage to the sticking place in the foreseeable future and go all in with him, I needed to know he wasn’t holding anything back.
I squeezed his fingers. “Would you tell me the rest of the story?”
He smiled. “Which one? The Prescott-Bennet friendship story, the Jack and Gwynneth love story, or the sexy Green Beret story?”
“The one about Kerri’s ex, when you pulled a gun on him at that bar.”
A cloud passed over his face. I could see his desire to shut down.
I pressed my hand to his cheek. “Do you have any idea what you did for me today?”
He kissed my cheek. “Stayed in my lane, played to my strengths so you could play to yours.”
I nodded. “And you helped me save my friend’s life, identify Sloane as a traitor, and survive that fucking tunnel. An experience I hope never to repeat, by the way. If you think there’s anything you can say that will scare me away now, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“I thought I might have found something that did, back in that tunnel.”
“I’m still here, and you’re changing the subject.”
He kissed the nearly invisible bruise on my temple. He set down both our coffee cups on a nearby table, then held both my hands. He took a deep breath and started speaking quickly, as though he was worried that if he stopped to breathe, he wouldn’t finish. “When Kerri’s ex, Steve, was on his knees in that bar, hands in the air, obviously not carrying a weapon, everyone had backed away. It was just the two of us for a minute. I thought about doing the right thing, waiting for the cops to get there to take him away. And then I remembered the last time I’d seen Kerri before they left Philadelphia.” He dropped his eyes and shook his head.
I wanted to touch his face, whisper words of encouragement, but I didn’t know what to say that would help. I could only do for him what he did for me: offer solace and, I hoped, eventually peace. I waited while he steadied himself.
“It was summertime, and I’d stopped by in the morning of the day they were leaving,” he finally continued. “It was hot and she’d been running around the house, packing. She was wearing a short tee shirt, and while we were talking, she bent down to pick up something off a low shelf and her shirt rode up in the back. That’s when I saw the bruises just above the waistband of her jeans.”
Bruises on her lower back. I thought about all the damage that could inflict to kidneys, vertebrae, sacral nerves. She could have been disabled, paralyzed, or even worse from that kind of beating. And I knew from my ER rotation years ago that those kinds of bruises were rarely from fists. They were usually from kicks sustained while the victim was lying on the ground.
“She’d told me about the awful arguments, his threats, the way he’d grabbed her, not let her walk away when he was angry,” Evan said. “I knew Steve was a piece of shit, but I hadn’t wanted to use the word ‘abuse’ to describe what he was doing to her, what I’d allowed to happen to her. I didn’t want to think of my sister like the DV vics I’d seen in my first years on the job. But when I saw those bruises, everything I’d been denying clicked into place.
“I did my damnedest to talk her into not getting on the plane, staying in Philly, but she refused to listen. I realized later she was terrified he’d do worse to her if she didn’t do what he wanted. So she left, and I followed them as soon as I could.”
While Evan took deep breaths, I squeezed his hands, silently supporting him.
