Jessica rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, single-mindedly focused on one thing: not freaking out. Actually, she was more concentrated on not showing any outward signs that she was on the verge of breaking down. Daniel’s concerned glances and sympathetic smiles indicated she wasn’t doing a good job. Or maybe she was. She had no idea. All she knew for sure was that she would see her mother in a few minutes, and the thought terrified her.
It shouldn’t. If anything, this moment should be one of those cathartic, transcendent kind of moments that alter the course of your life, but she wasn’t interpreting her body’s response that way. She knew exactly what it felt like to have a nervous breakdown. She’d spent the better part of a year downing Xanax like Tic Tacs to little avail in Serbia. And another year after that convinced that the new life she was building with Daniel would come crashing down at a moment’s notice.
“Fuck. This shouldn’t be so hard,” she murmured, barely aware that she had spoken out loud.
Yeah. She wasn’t doing a good job at concealing this at all.
“Sorry,” she said.
“About what?”
“This.”
“You’ve endured worse,” said Daniel. “Way worse. Don’t lose sight of that.”
His words didn’t make a dent in the field of nervous energy that radiated from her chest. She was nearly shaking from it, like an adrenaline boost, except this neurochemical reaction wasn’t helping her in any way she could interpret. It was drawing her inward, where she could least afford to be. For all practical purposes, they were in enemy territory, and she was dead weight. No. She was worse than dead weight. More like a zombie.
When the elevator door opened, Daniel stepped into the lobby and glanced around, nodding for her to exit when he saw it was safe. A backlit sign on the wall pointed them in the direction of the room block used for hospice care. Rooms 440–459. Elevator C would have delivered them closest to the rooms, but Daniel insisted they use a different elevator as long as the areas connected. She would have taken the shortest route. The most obvious route.
She hesitated for a moment, desperately wanting to return to the lobby. Daniel placed his hand against the inner door, making sure it didn’t shut. He kept his eyes in the hallway, waiting for her to move or stay put. It didn’t matter to him one way or the other. Right now, he served as her bodyguard and not much more than that. He wasn’t her husband, lover, or best friend. Daniel was her only protection from a potential attack or trap.
Jessica stepped out of the elevator and immediately felt dizzy. She didn’t stumble, but it must have been clear from her face, because Daniel looked worried.
“I’m good,” she said, starting to walk.
A firm grip on her shoulder stopped Jessica in place.
“Wrong way,” he said, giving her a funny look.
“What?”
“You need to get this out of your system,” he said.
It was an odd thing for him to say, especially after successfully tiptoeing around her for nearly two days.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. What?”
“You need to find the nearest bathroom and reboot your system,” he said.
That was right! Danny remembered. As a deep cover CIA operative in Serbia, she occasionally induced vomiting before a nerve-racking mission or field operation, particularly if she felt like she was losing the battle with anxiety. Initially admitting that to her handler had put her under close scrutiny.
Excessive anxiety was viewed as a liability. The CIA’s behavioral health division maintained that a certain degree of anxiety was beneficial to the job. It tended to keep operatives on their toes — and alive — but they didn’t like the kind that led to mistakes, which ultimately led back to the agency. A few months after confiding in her handler, she was ordered out of the field. An order she refused, because she’d reunited with Daniel, and they’d hatched a plan to walk away from it all. Together. With a lot of money. They were on the cusp of escaping again. This time for good. The thought made her smile, and she felt oddly better.
“I can hold your hair for you,” said Daniel.
“I’m wearing a wig,” she reminded him.
“I didn’t say I would go into the bathroom with you,” he said. “I can hold your hair in the hallway.”
“Such a gentleman,” she said, seeing an illuminated bathroom placard down the hallway.
He gripped both of her shoulders and stared into her eyes with determined love and seemingly infinite compassion.
“You’re going to be fine. I know that’s the last thing you want to hear, but—”
“No. I need to hear that,” she said. “We’re going to be fine, as soon as I get to that bathroom.”
Chapter 20
Daniel situated his far more lucid-looking wife on a deep, brown leather couch in the hospice lobby and made his way to the caregiver station. A tall intense-looking man with glasses looked up from his computer monitor as he neared, the screen reflecting in his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Can I help you find someone?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said Daniel. “My wife is here to see her mother, Vesna Erak.”
The man started typing on his keyboard. “Just a second. Ms. Erak hasn’t received any visitors since arriving in hospice. I need to see if — no, she hasn’t placed any restrictions on visitation. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. We’re pretty well appointed here, as you can probably tell. Family members can order from the hospital’s twenty-four-hour menu. Anything you need, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m here until eight in the morning. My name is Dave. Your wife’s mother is in room 451. Would you like me to show you the way?”
“Thank you, Dave. That’s all right,” said Daniel, glancing over his left shoulder in what he assumed was the direction of the hospice rooms.
It was the only hallway open to the generously furnished and empty lobby. The hospital had gone out of its way to make the hospice area as soothing and comfortable as possible for grieving families. The walls were painted a warm color and the lighting was softened compared to the patient hallways they’d travelled to get here from the distant elevator. The institutional feel had been erased, a far cry from the room his mother had died in. Not that he ever saw her alive in that room. She’d been delivered to the funeral home by the time he managed to get back from Japan. Car crashes didn’t wait for your ship to pull back into port.
“All of the rooms are down this hallway, right?”
“Correct. 451 is on the left side, about halfway down,” said the attendant.
“May I ask you an odd question?”
Dave slid his chair to the left of the monitor and looked at Daniel over his glasses. “Yes?”
“My wife hasn’t been back to this area in a long time,” said Daniel. “A lot of that has to do with an ill-tempered ex-fiancé connected to some unsavory Serbian gentlemen. Organized crime, she thinks, though he’s never been formally linked. Anyway, this guy has gone out of his way to harass my wife in a number of different states. We live in Baja, Mexico, now, if that gives you any indication of the degree of hassle he’s given her. This won’t be a long visit for that very reason.”
Dave looked absolutely enthralled by his tale, barely blinking.
“There’s obviously a sizable Serbian community in the surrounding towns, so it wouldn’t be unusual for Serbian Americans to visit the floor, but have you seen any men in their mid-thirties that might fit the bill? Perhaps someone visited her mother and left quickly or hung around here waiting? Someone asking questions?”