Girl Takes The Oath (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 5) (15 page)

“Let’s get a move on,” Emily said. “The hothead may not have much time… or you, for that matter,” she added when she saw Braswell’s shirt in the headlights of one of the sedans.

The sound of her friend’s voice, growling a command and cutting through the static in her mind, offered CJ a much needed reassurance, as the horrors of the scene she’d just witnessed began to take hold. There would be plenty of time to replay the worst moments for herself in the days to come. But just now, the moment when Emily first handed her the gun and a mission brought her considerable satisfaction. She’d held her ground, just when her friend needed her to. This isn’t what she’d come to the Academy for, and maybe she’d dreaded the prospect of battle more than she realized. Yet here she was, standing next to Emily on the bridge, and she’d come through the ordeal in one piece.

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Chapter Thirteen

Tending
the Wounded

“I feel for him,” Braswell muttered. The institutional light in the room made him want to rip the IV out of his arm, scour the drawers for his street clothes, or anything to wear besides the hospital gown that barely reached his knees… and he didn’t even want to think about what might become visible behind him were he to act on this impulse. Having his daughters there brought some relief, as well as a touch of modesty, even as it reminded him how comfortable the couch in his den was compared to this hospital bed. “I mean, he’s got no one. Don’t they say it helps to hear familiar voices… or is that just on TV?”

“Yeah, right, Dad. So you mean we can’t just send Kiki down there?”

“Shut up, Haru,” her little sister said.

“
You
shut up.”

Braswell rubbed his forehead and smiled at them. A tantalizing mixture of irritation and affection, he knew nothing they could do would take anything away from his love, a father’s love. It had its share of pain, too. What love didn’t? He couldn’t help wondering if something similar had shaped his attitude toward Miss Tenno. Padgett kept saying she had him wrapped around her little finger, that she was untrustworthy. He felt it, too, and he also saw what Padgett wouldn’t, or couldn’t, namely all the ways in which she didn’t fit the profile of a mole. Not exactly a mole, in any event… that wasn’t quite right, since who could she be working for? Certainly not the Chinese. And yet, one didn’t seem to know exactly what she was loyal to, or where she hid her heart. As he looked at his girls, musing on what they might become, the thought persisted:
Maybe Padgett was right
.

“Enough, Haru. Go see what’s keeping your mom.” His oldest stomped her feet out the door, grumbling. “Kiki-chan, come here, sit… and hand me the remote.”

She was an older woman, stout and strong, with back and forearm muscles developed from years of wrangling patients in and out of bed. The nurse breezed in with a professionally cheerful mien, and said, “I think we can take that needle out of your arm today, Mr. B.”

“Does this mean I’m a free man?”

“If you can make it to the elevator under your own steam, then yes, you are.”

“I’ve been working out, you know. I may surprise you.”

“Well, just wait until you eat something before you make a break for it, okay?” She wheeled the IV stand out and left it standing in the hall just outside the door. “I’ve got you down for the swiss steak,” she said from the end of the bed. “Is that still what you want?”

Kiki flicked through the channels on the hospital cable service, and pushed the volume up when she found a cartoon, until her dad got her attention with a disapproving shake of his head.

“Bring me a double order, okay?”

“With extra rolls for the gravy,” she said with a chuckle. “Does your wife let you carbo-load like that at home?”

“I’m not trying to break out of there.”

A half hour later, Tomoko slid in behind the meal cart, carrying sandwiches for her girls. “Miharu, I left the sodas at the nurses’ station. Go get them, please.”

As much as an adolescent girl might like to resist, or at least grumble, the voice of maternal authority was unanswerable. Haru left quietly and returned a moment later, and her father knew his commands never carried that much force, at least judging from the resistance they met.

“I’m so glad you’re all here, Tomy,” he said.

“He’s not alone, Dad,” Haru said.

“What?”

“There’s someone sitting with him,” Tomoko said. “A girl. She was there when I went for the sandwiches. She’s probably been there over an hour.”

“I think she was reading to him,” Haru said. “At least, the first time I went by she was. Now it looks like she’s fallen asleep in the chair. Her eyes were closed.”

“Get this off of me,” he said, pushing the dinner tray away, wincing as he leaned forward. “I need to get down there.”

“Ed, stop,” Tomoko said. “Eat first, then go see who it is.” She pushed the tray back over the bed, kissed his cheek and turned to her daughter. “Miharu, go ask her to wait.”

She returned a few minutes later, a look of self-satisfaction plastered across her face, almost begging for a question.

“Well…” her father said.

“She’s waiting for you, Dad. Don’t worry.”

“That’s it… she didn’t say anything else?”

“Haru’s hiding something, Dad.”

“Shut up, Kiki,” Haru said. When she looked up, her mother’s disapproving glare diminished the pleasure in snarling at her sister. “She’s totally cool, Mom. I think she’s
hapa
, like me. But her hair is really dark, like yours.”

“Did you get her name?” her father asked, as he tried to choke down the last bit of his dinner.

“Michiko, but she said I could call her Em.”

“Help me up, girls. I’ve got to get down there.”

Groaning and cursing, limping his way down the hall—he turned once to tell his wife to wait in the room with the kids—wishing he still had the IV cart to lean on, Braswell brushed the nurse aside. “I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”
Should he ask her to call security, or would he regret over-reacting later?
With one hand clutching the doorframe, a glance back to make sure his family hadn’t followed, he ventured to look inside Padgett’s room.

“C’mon, hothead,” he heard Emily coo into his partner’s ear. “You don’t want to give up this easily.”

The monitors beeped and flashed quietly, and something dripped into an IV, and Padgett’s chest rose and fell, but nothing else seemed to have changed. A dog-eared copy of Milton’s
Paradise Lost
lay on the blanket at the foot of the bed. Other than the monitors, his room was empty—no flowers, no pictures of loved ones, nothing personal.

“The nurses say he should come out of it,” Braswell said. “They just don’t know when.”

“Doesn’t he have anyone?”

“He’s a bachelor, and his parents live in a retirement home in Florida. I don’t think they’re strong enough to make the trip up here. And how’d you get in here anyway?”

“Apparently the nurses think I’m his fiancée.”

She leaned over Padgett, one hand on his cheek and whispered something in his ear, then kissed his forehead. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it back here until today.”

“Don’t sweat it, sister,” he said, trying to sound gruff. “We’re not your responsibility… but it is sweet of you,” he admitted after a moment.

And before he could prevent it, the girls skidded up to the doorway, Kiki peeking around his bathrobe, Haru standing boldly just inside the room, hands on hips and exceedingly pleased with herself. “Dad, this is my friend, Michiko.”

Tomoko stepped through a second later, and stood staring at an apparition—tall, strong, pretty in an exotic sort of way, with short black hair framing a face not quite fully Japanese in cast and shape, and not quite not;
is this how her daughters would turn out?
—until it occurred to her to ask the girl’s name: “
Hajimemashite. O-namae wa nan desu ka
?”

“
Watashi wa Tenno Michiko to moshimasu
,” Emily said with a little bow.

“It is very good to meet you, Tenno-san,” she replied in English, returning the courtesy. “My daughters do not speak Japanese, I am sorry to say. What an interesting name you have.”

“I told you she’s way cool,” Haru whispered.

“C’mon everybody,” Ed growled, and tried to usher them out, without letting go of the doorframe. “I need a moment alone with Miss Tenno.” Once Tomoko had managed to direct the girls down the hall, he took an uncertain step into the room. “Help me get into the chair.”

“You look weaker than I expected, Ed,” she said, with one arm around his waist

“It’s just the stitches. I’ll be fine in a day or two. But never mind about that. I wanted to tell you… remember that extradition order?” Emily nodded. “You don’t have to admit anything, but there’s no way it’s not you they’re after, not after this last episode.”

She didn’t say anything, not that anything she said would make a difference.

“It’s just that I’ve been thinking about this past month, and it doesn’t make sense.”

“My life has never made much sense,” she said, “at least, not to me.”

“That’s harsh, but it’s not what I’m thinking. I mean, the Chinese are clearly interested in you, but… you know, first they’re trying to extradite you, then they chase you through town, but no weapons. Next, it’s a gang of thugs who attack you with clubs and knives, and then this, a full-on assault team. Either they can’t make up their minds what they want from you…”

“Or it’s different groups.”

“At least two,” Braswell said. “I think you know what at least one of them wants, don’t you?” He couldn’t help but see the wheels turning behind her eyes. And yet, the strange thing was that she didn’t seem shaken by the reflection going on in her heart. Her eyes grew hard and dark—could they get any darker than they already were? Too dark for a co-conspirator, much darker than that. “And a coordinated attack, that can’t have been by chance. You know what that means.”

“They had inside information.”

“Someone at the Japanese embassy would be my guess.”

“Or at DSS. Did you call in our location?”

Before Braswell could follow her line of thought any further, a tap at the door behind him got his attention: two NCIS investigators flipping open badges, which they hardly needed, since he recognized them from a meeting in the Commandant’s office at the Academy a few weeks earlier, and she must have, too—agents Horton and Everett.

“Captain Crichton said you’d be here,” Everett said. “We have a few questions. If you’ll excuse us, Agent Braswell, we’ll step out into the hall.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emily said. “Just let me make a stop at the Nurses’ station. He’s gonna need a ride back to his room, I think.”

“You read my statement on the incident?” Braswell asked. “Because neither of us would be alive if it weren’t for her. You realize that, right?”

“It’s okay, Agent Braswell,” Emily said, in a more formal tone than he was used to hearing from her. “I don’t need protecting,” she added in a low voice.

“We are aware of your statement,” Everett said. “It doesn’t concern our present inquiry.”

Horton and Everett waited impatiently as Emily arranged for a wheelchair and helped settle him into it. Since she had committed no crime on that bridge, Braswell figured the only interest NCIS could have in her was some sort of loyalty check. Even if she wasn’t a mole, the US Navy wasn’t in the habit of putting an officer on the path to running one of their warships without knowing exactly who she was loyal to. And there was no denying that Michiko Tenno’s recent history contained enough of the unexpected to set off any number of alarms.

“We gather that while you were in DC you visited the Japanese Embassy,” Horton said.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, loudly enough for Braswell to hear from his perch in a wheelchair at the nurses’ station. He could pretend to wait for a nurse to roll him back to his room for a moment or two.

“What was your business there?”

“Personal business, sir,” she said. “A family matter.”

“An officer in the US Navy doesn’t have personal business in a foreign embassy, Miss Tenno. Who did you see there?”

Braswell waited to hear what she would say. The other day in the car, in a carefully orchestrated conversation, she managed to make a preposterous story seem oddly plausible. But here, without the benefit of a sympathetic audience, how would she respond? In the event, she said nothing, merely reaching into her pocket to produce the same ornate card she’d showed him and Padgett.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Everett asked. “We can’t read it.”

“It’s an invitation, ma’am, from the Crown Princess.”

“From the who?” Everett said.

“What would the Crown Princess want to see you about, Miss Tenno?” Horton asked.

“Like I said, sir, it was a family matter.”

“Are you trying to tell us you’re a member of the Imperial Family?”

“Here it comes,” Braswell thought.

“The Princess likes to think of me as a distant cousin, sir.”

“And are you?” Everett asked.

“No, ma’am, not that I know of.”

A little chuckle escaped his mouth, not perhaps loud enough for the NCIS agents to hear, but almost impossible to suppress completely, since it was hard not to admire the artfulness of her responses. She’d gotten them to elicit the information she wanted them to have, without committing herself to the truth of any of it. And the bind she’d put them in was delicious. Obviously, they wanted to force some sort of admission from her, but no longer knew how hard they could press someone with the connections to wangle a private audience with a distinguished personage. In the end, they had to let her go about her business.

“Where will you be for the holidays?” Horton asked.

“I report to Quantico tomorrow for two weeks of Professional Training, sir, and then Charlottesville to visit my family.”