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He nodded. “Got it.”
She raised her hand to make another loop.
He groaned.
“Hah! You see? That time, I did not even touch you. I have infant patients who handle stitches better than you, Mr. Lattimore.”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “It’s been tense around here. Just trying to lighten the mood, no matter how brief that period might be.”
She glanced down at him, her eyes like deep brown gemstones. “Do you always cause trouble for women? Because I have not forgotten that there is a ring on your finger.”
“I guess you could say that my, for lack of a better word,playfulnessis a coping mechanism,” he explained.
“I don’t know your face. You are new?”
“Yeah. You’ve worked with this team before?”
She closed another loop. “Yes. Several times. I have done this for them several times as well.”
“Am I your worst patient?”
“Yes.”
He scrunched his face in faux disappointment and watched her work as she closed the last stitch. Then she patched him up with a clean roll of gauze and sent him a few more glances, her dark eyes daring him to make a sound.
Once done, she straightened, cradling the rest of the roll in her right hand. “You didn’t answer my question from before. Do you always cause trouble for women? I am sure, despite your wife waiting for you, you still get them to do what you want because you have a nice smile and eyes like a galaxy.”
“No, no trouble,” he said.
“So, you are faithful?”
“Very.”
“Well then, I hope your wife knows how lucky she is that you are faithful.”
With that, she walked off.
He watched her leave as he rose to his feet. She was an attractive woman, and had he been a single man, he was pretty certain he could have gotten her naked and sweaty underneath him on top of the cot’s paper-thin mattress. Then, later, she would tell him he was no longer good enough for her, if he’d ever been, and leave their relationship when he was thousands of miles on the other side of the globe.
Gage called for them to meet him upstairs.
He shrugged on his shirt, left the tent, and climbed the precarious stairs to the second floor, where he found everyone, including John, in what was once a one-bedroom apartment. Dez sat on the kitchen counter chewing on an apple while the rest of the team spread out around the living room.
“The little girl you had,” John began. “The one who clutched you. What did she say to you?”
Joel leaned against a wall and folded his arms. “She said, ‘You came back. Thank you.’”
“When I took her, she kept asking me to return to you,” John added. “She said you took her away from the ‘bad man’ and kept her safe.”
“Tell him what she said the bad man looked like,” Gage prodded.
John held his arms out at his sides as if adding another several inches to his lean frame. “Puffy. And she said he spoke with an accent and smoked cigarettes. A white man.”
The room momentarily fell silent.
“Then it was surveillance, like I suspected,” Mike said. “The person Lattimore saw wasn’t there for the kids. They were there for us. I don’t know who’s stupid enough to fuck with us, but they better hope those cigarettes kill them before we show up.”
Even though most of them were quiet, they all turned in Julien’s direction, and it was odd to see him without a laptop, tablet, or some other electronic device in his hands.
