24: Deadline (24 Series) (38 page)

Kim nodded, and winced as bruising and blood-caked wounds were revealed beneath. Her hand went to her mouth. “Dad … Good grief, what happened to you?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You’re the worst liar.” Kim forced aside her worries and set to work helping him redress his injuries with fresh bandages, finding clean clothes in Stephen’s work closet.

When he finally met her gaze, there was so much sorrow in it, Kim’s breath caught in her throat. The last time she had seen that look in her father’s eyes, it had been on the day he had come to tell her that her mother was dead.
What have they taken from you this time?

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“For what?”

“I’m not going to be able to keep the promise I made.”

*   *   *

“Is Grandpa going to stay with us?”

Stephen couldn’t keep a frown from his face as he took his daughter out to the waiting area beyond the doctors’ offices. “I don’t know, pumpkin. That’s up to him. He’s got a very important job.”

Teri nodded with the kind of seriousness that only a child of her age could muster. “I remember. You said he has some work to do.” She studied the face of her toy bear, as if it would provide some input as well.

“That’s right.” He glanced up and his eyes fell on a television screen mounted on the wall. The sound was muted on the feed from CNB, still showing the same endless round of footage of ambulances racing down New York streets from the day before, mixed in with shots of police helicopters hovering in the gaps between skyscrapers and news anchors with grave expressions.

Stephen sighed. Kim had never spoken in great detail about her father’s job, but he knew enough to guess at the shape of it. He knew that Jack Bauer had been a high-level federal agent and part of the Counter Terrorist Unit, and from his wife’s reticence on certain things, he was certain that the man had been involved in working against threats to the USA for several years. Kim’s pain at the loss of her mother, the woman they had named their daughter after, was all caught up in that, but Stephen had never pressured Kim to tell him more than she wanted to. He loved her dearly, but he had learned there were things in the Bauer family history that they wanted to stay buried … and that was fine. When the day came that Kim wanted to tell him, he would be there, and it wouldn’t change a thing about how he felt about his family.

“Dr. Wesley?” He turned as a nurse he didn’t recognize came toward him. She had blond hair tied back in a tight, severe bun, accenting an attractive if austere face. “Pardon me. I know you’re on break…”

“Is there a problem?” He noticed that she wasn’t wearing an ID tag.

The nurse held up a medical chart. “Dr. Lund has an issue that requires a second opinion … It will just be a minute.”

He took the chart and scanned it. “All right…” Stephen beckoned Sue over. “Hey. Can you watch Teri for me? I’ve got to deal with something.” He bent down and kissed his daughter on the top of the head. “Be right back.”

“Okay.” Teri didn’t look up, still engrossed in her staring contest with the stuffed toy.

Sue smiled. “Sure, Doctor.” Her smile faded as she glanced at the nurse. “I’m sorry, you are…?”

“I’m new here,” came the reply. “Nice to meet you.”

The nurse walked on toward the elevator and Stephen fell in behind her, still poring over the chart. The patient was one of Lund’s problem cases, but Stephen was sure that he’d heard the other doctor saying the person in question was showing improvement. As he read on, he could find nothing that would require the insight of another oncologist.

He looked up as the elevator doors shut. “You’re sure this is the right chart?”

The nurse ignored him and punched a button. Instead of descending to the floor below where Lund did his rounds, it began to rise to the upper wards.

“Hey,” he began, reaching out to tap her on the shoulder.

She moved like a striking cobra. The woman spun in place, grabbing his outstretched arm and twisting it hard enough to force him down toward the deck of the elevator car. Her other hand pulled a serrated push-dagger from a lanyard hidden in the collar of her scrubs and pressed the tip into his throat. “Do not call for help. Do not speak.” The nurse’s accent had abruptly shifted to a Middle-European inflection that he didn’t recognize. “Do not try to escape. Nod if you understand.”

He did so, slowly and careful to avoid the tip of the dagger pressing into his flesh.

The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened to reveal two men in nondescript clothes. One of them, a large man with a tanned complexion, gestured for him to get back up on his feet. The nurse—although he doubted now that was what she was—drew back and allowed it to happen, pushing him out into the corridor.

This floor of Cedars-Sinai was empty at the moment, cleared for refurbishment work that was due to start in a day or so. Stephen looked around, and realized he was very alone. “What do you want?”

The big man smiled without warmth. “You are an intelligent man, Dr. Wesley. Why not take a guess?”

*   *   *

Kim blinked back tears, but she didn’t look away from him. “Dad. No, please, don’t do this.” She shook her head.

With each word, it felt like Jack’s heart was being torn out of him. “I came here because I had to see you, Kim. I owed you that. I couldn’t just drop off the face of the world and let you go on wondering, never knowing…” He remembered the aftermath of the thwarted reactor meltdown attacks a few years earlier and the circumstances that had forced him to stage his own demise. That act still haunted him for how much it had hurt his daughter. “I hated myself for doing that once before. I never want to put you through that again.”

“But you have. You will!” She shied away from him as he reached for her, anger in her eyes. “I lost Mom. I lost Chase. I lost you, but I got you back…”

Jack frowned. Part of him wanted to tell Kim the truth about Chase Edmunds, that he hadn’t died in the Valencia bombing, and of the bravery and loyalty he had shown right up to the end … But the other man’s death was still raw, and Jack could see no reason to heap more pain and anguish on his daughter.

He opted for the one truth that he knew was certain. “Your mother loved you. Chase cared about you. And I will always love you too, Kim. That’s why I have to do this.”

She sat quietly and absorbed his terse recounting of the incident in New York, only breaking her silence with a muffled sob as Jack told her of Renee Walker’s death. Kim guessed how much Renee meant to her father, and the fact that she shared his pain in that moment cut him like knives. He told her of the men and women hunting him, and his headlong race across the country. And now it was coming to an end, now that he had reached her, he couldn’t find the words to express how he felt. Everything he said was a pale shadow, a ghost of his real sentiments.

He took a breath. “As long as I am here, you are in the crosshairs. And not just you. Stephen and Teri too. There are people out there who will use you to get to me, ruthless people. You were part of CTU once, you know what kind of world that is. There’s so much darkness, and I don’t want it to touch your life anymore.” He came close and took her hand, and this time Kim let him. Jack gave a shaky smile. “Your mother would be so proud of you, to see the woman you have become. And I know one thing for sure, Kim.
You are the very best thing I ever did
. You’re the one bright light at the center of my life, and for all the bleak places I’ve ever been to, all the things I’ve had to suffer … You make that worth it.”

Without words, she drew him into a hug, and he felt his daughter’s warm tears on his chest.

“You’re all I have left,” he told her, emotion choking his voice, “and I can’t put that in harm’s way. Even if it means I have to leave you behind. I will not let anyone hurt my family. You deserve a good life. I want you to live it.”

“That’s not fair!” Kim blurted out the words. “Damn it, Dad … You don’t have to be alone anymore. You don’t have to shoulder this by yourself. We can find a way … We could…” She trailed off as she finally came to the same understanding that he had. “It’s not fair,” she repeated.

“This is how it has to be,” Jack told her. “It’s the only road that’s open.”

They held each other in silence for long moments. Finally, Kim found her voice once more. “Where will you go?”

“Someplace off the clock,” he said. “I’ll go dark, I’ll slip away … and you’ll be safe.”

*   *   *

Lenkov pushed the American into an empty chair and took up a position too close to the other man, towering over him with obvious menace. Bazin leaned indolently against the wall across the room from the young doctor, his eyes flicking to Ziminova. He didn’t need to order her to keep watch. She just nodded and waited by the door, scanning the corridor.

Bazin didn’t expect to be interrupted, though. He gauged the man in the chair and guessed that this wouldn’t take long. “Well?” he prompted. “Tell me why I am here, Dr. Wesley.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“We have a file,” Bazin explained, making an airy gesture. “Information is so freely available in this country, honestly…” He chuckled. “It’s embarrassing. It’s not even difficult to find.” He told the man about how he had used a common Internet search engine to not only track down details of the doctor’s position at the hospital, but also of how he had been able to find social networking sites in short order that had pictures of charity baseball games and picnics, where Wesley’s wife and daughter were caught on camera. “A sweet child,” he concluded. “I have two myself.”

The doctor licked his lips. “This is about Kim’s father.”

“Where is he?” The doctor didn’t speak, but Bazin saw the answer in his eyes. He nodded to himself. “A few hours ago, I repeatedly brought a man to the point of drowning in the waters of a river. Over and over again, until he stopped hiding the truth from me. This I did in order to find Jack Bauer. And I am capable of far worse.”

The young man glanced up at Lenkov, who remained stone-faced. “I … I can’t help you.”

Bazin continued as if he had never spoken. “It is not a simple thing to betray someone. It goes against the grain. You are a good man, Dr. Wesley. I saw that about you, so I understand your reluctance to commit an act of disloyalty. You wonder how you would live with yourself afterward? I can tell you this: It is easier than you think.”

“Bauer is here,” Lenkov spoke for the first time.

Caught by surprise, the doctor flinched, and Bazin knew that Lenkov’s guess was correct. Ekel was already performing a sweep of the hospital in case Bauer had slipped into the building, but this was the first confirmation of it.

“I am going to make it easy for you, Doctor.” Bazin pushed off the wall and came closer. Wesley fought down his fear, admirably so for a man in his position, still clinging to a shred of defiance. Bazin cocked his head. “You have made life-or-death choices many times in your work, yes? This is no different. And there is no need to blame yourself. This is not your fault, my friend. I am giving you no choice.”

“I … I don’t—”

Bazin silenced him with a look. “Do you really want to consider what will be done if you refuse?” The words came to him effortlessly, with all the rote smoothness of a polished performance. “Unless you do exactly as I tell you, or if you try to disobey me, I will have your wife and your daughter killed.”

Color drained from the doctor’s face. “Please,” he managed. “No.”

“It will only take one word from me,” Bazin explained. “And I can assure you, it will be quite horrific.”

That defiance returned for one final flash of anger. “You son of a bitch!”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded, accepting the insult like a gift. “The lives of your family mean nothing to me. But Jack Bauer’s life does hold value. And so that is the trade we will make, Dr. Wesley. You will give up your father-in-law, and in return you, Kim and little Teri will go on living.”

“You’ll kill us all!” he blurted. “I know how this goes … I’ve seen your faces…”

Lenkov gave a rough chuckle. “You watch too many movies.”

“Let me explain it to you,” Bazin went on. “I have no interest in you, the woman, the child. I only care who you are in this moment because you have a connection to Jack Bauer. When that goes away, you will be beneath my notice. That is why we are making this arrangement.” He talked about the odious deal as if Wesley had already agreed to it, because on some level the man already had. “You will never speak to anyone of this conversation or of who you met, because that would mean your wife would learn about what you did. You don’t want that. You want Bauer to simply go away and for your very pleasant life to carry on as before.”

When the doctor hung his head, Bazin knew he had him. “What do I have to do?” he whispered, beaten down by his circumstances.

Bazin nodded to himself. He felt no pity for the man, no guilt for what he had just done. It was a transaction, nothing more. “A simple thing. I want you to help him,” he explained.

*   *   *

Jack trailed Kim out into the corridor and watched her bend down to sweep his granddaughter up into an embrace. She nodded a grateful smile to one of the nurses and turned back to him.

“Hey, Grandpa,” said the girl. “Do you have to go to work now?”

“I do,” he told her, forcing a smile. He took the paw of the plush toy she was holding. “Listen, sweetheart. Your friend Bear here is going to look after you while I’m not around, okay? You keep him close, and you make sure you listen to your mom and dad.”

“Okay,” Teri replied. “
Be safe
. That’s what Mommy always tells Daddy when he goes to work in the morning.”

“I will.” Jack turned to see Kim’s husband walking quickly toward him from the elevators. The man looked pale and sweaty, and Jack knew instinctively that something was awry.

Time to go, Jack,
said a silky voice in the depths of his thoughts.

Kim saw it too. “Stephen, what’s wrong?”

He took a breath, meeting his wife’s look before he tore himself away to glance at Jack. “Someone is, uh, here. I just talked to one of the security guys and they told me they removed a man with a Russian accent who was loitering down by the reception. Said he looked like a soldier.”