“We’ll ride with you,” Knox said as he and Waller entered the elevator. The doors snapped closed and the car lifted.
“As best I can tell, he only took one bullet,” Taylor said. “It passed clean through and didn’t strike any vital organs. There’ll be no limitation of function. Biggest risk is infection, and we’ve dosed him with antibiotics.”
“But all that blood, and he was out cold,” Waller said.
“We’ve looked for a second bullet, but I don’t see another entry wound, and the skull X-rays were negative. I’m having him brought downstairs for a CT.”
“Then where’d all the blood come from?” Knox asked.
“This is just a guess, but the force from the gunshot could’ve knocked him backward. If he tripped or fell and struck his head on the curb, it would explain the five-centimeter gash on his scalp and all the blood you saw. The scalp bleeds profusely and always looks like a wound much worse than it actually is.”
A bell rang as the elevator neared their floor.
“So that’s it, then. Just a clean bullet wound and a cut on his head?”
Taylor held up a hand. “I didn’t say that. If he hit his head like I think he might have, he could have a subdural hematoma. If it was more of a glancing blow and merely a laceration, he’ll be fine. The CT will tell us all we need to know.”
The elevator stopped abruptly and the doors slid apart. “In English,” Knox said.
“The blow to the head might have caused some internal bleeding around his brain. If that’s the case, we have to relieve the pressure immediately or we could lose him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to radiology.”
Taylor stepped out of the elevator, leaving Waller and Knox standing there, staring at the closing stainless steel doors. Then, Knox turned to Waller, his face contorted into a hideous Halloween mask of anger. “How the hell could you have let this happen?”
64
Nick Bradley walked into the bar near his motel and ordered a Scotch, straight up. He buried his head in the crook of his elbow and exhaled deeply while the bartender prepared his drink.
When the man placed the glass on the counter in front of him, Bradley lifted his head and then peeled a couple of bills off his money clip. His eye caught an image on the news playing out on the television mounted above the far end of the bar.
“Hey, can you turn that up?” Bradley asked the barkeep.
The man reached below the counter and pointed a remote at the TV. As the volume rose, Bradley could hear the news reporter setting the scene.
“…and it appears as if the government’s case against Anthony Scarponi could be in significant jeopardy, unless their key witness, former FBI agent Harper Payne, makes what would appear to be a miraculous recovery…”
Bradley’s gaze remained locked on the TV as images of the street in Fredericksburg flashed across the screen. An officer-involved shooting team was examining and documenting the scene behind the reporter as she babbled on about the Scarponi case.
“We have Ray Jamison standing by at Colonial General Hospital, where Agent Payne was brought a little over an hour ago.”
Bradley threw another mouthful of Scotch down his throat, the burn bringing his mind back into focus. His placed the glass back on the bar and grabbed for his cell phone, which was now ringing. He answered it with his eyes still fixed on the TV.
His back straightened. “I’ve been trying to reach you, where the hell have you been?” He paused, waiting for the answer. He shook his head, then slid down off his stool. “Did you see the news? This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He listened for a second, then broke in. “No. Absolutely not.” He turned and glanced around, realizing his voice had been a little too loud. “We need to meet,” he said as he pushed through the bar’s front door. “Right now.”
65
The birthing room was decorated with primary colors, children’s hands of all shapes and sizes splashed across the walls. It was a comfortable environment, with a couch, chairs, and plenty of room to stretch out and relax with your newborn.
Presley Jane Archer, a seven-pound-five-ounce, pink bundle of delight had just been brought back into the room to see her mother after being examined, scored, and foot printed.
Hector DeSantos stood in the doorway as the baby was reunited with Trish, whose attention was so focused on the newborn that she did not even see him standing there. The nurse smiled at him on the way out, then closed the door behind her.
After Archer had gone down in the streets of Fredericksburg, DeSantos went on a hunt, sniffing out his prey in every way he knew how. But he had come up empty. Anthony Scarponi had gotten away. But DeSantos knew that sooner or later — preferably sooner — he would bring justice to the grave of Brian Archer. Zebra 59, his partner’s dying words, meant that DeSantos’s sole focus would be to track down and settle the score with Archer’s killer.
DeSantos had walked through the hospital corridors, fresh with the knowledge that Trish had given birth to a healthy girl, trying to wipe the anger, the depression, the terror, off his face. He had stopped at a restroom and stood in front of the mirror, attempting to smile, attempting to hide what was in his heart. As he had done so many times in the past in so many dire undercover situations when he needed to, he was actor first, commando second.
Now, as he stood in the doorway, his heart pounded fiercely against his chest, not out of fear, but out of sadness because of what he was about to do. He had to take a mother’s most blissful moment and turn it into a nightmare. But there was no other way. He knew that as the hours passed and Trish did not hear from her husband, she would begin to worry, and then ask questions. And the person she would call would be him.
And that’s the way it should be; that’s the way he and Brian had always wanted it.
He forced a smile across his face and held out the modest bouquet of flowers he had picked up in the hospital gift shop on the way up. Pink and yellow roses with a smatter of baby’s breath. How appropriate. Trish looked over and smiled.
Her face was haggard and her complexion pale. It had no doubt been a difficult labor. But then again, in his limited experience with pregnant women, he had never heard of an easy labor. Only ones less difficult than others.
“Where’s Brian?” Trish asked.
“We were called away and were in the middle of a mission when the page came through,” DeSantos said, maintaining the phony smile. “He wanted so much to be here, you know that.”
Trish smiled. “Of course, he wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
DeSantos felt his stomach seize up on him but he forced himself to hold it in, to choke off the emotions. “So, this is Presley?”
Trish turned the baby around to face DeSantos.
“Say hi to Uncle Hector,” Trish sang.
DeSantos touched the newborn’s soft facial skin with the back of his forefinger and felt a surge of emotion well up in his throat. He fought back tears and summoned the strength to say, “She’s beautiful.”
“I see Brian in her eyes, don’t you?”
DeSantos smiled. “Yup. And her mother’s beautiful face.”
Trish planted a kiss on the baby’s cheek, then said, without looking up, “So when’s Brian coming?”
DeSantos knew the question was going to come; it was just a matter of when. He was going to tell her what he had prepared himself to say in the car, that he was sorry, that Brian had died in the line of duty, that his last thoughts were of mother and daughter, that he, Hector, was to look after them. And that he was going to get the son of a bitch who had killed her husband.
But he knew that as soon as he started to speak, Trish would know. It would click in her mind and that would be it. Brian was dead. That would be all that mattered to her. But to DeSantos… what mattered to him was making sure Anthony Scarponi paid for what he had done.