Secrets and Lies (18 page)

“Well, I should get going. I’m due in surgery tomorrow morning and I still need to go home and get some sleep. It was nice meeting you Miss Davis.”  He did the once over look again.

She returned a polite smile and a friendly goodbye. “Mon Dieu, what a pompous jerk,” she muttered under her breath.

“Yeah, that’s close to what I thought the first time I met him too,” Thomas confirmed.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Davis. Your release papers are signed and you can go.”

“Thanks,” she smiled.

“Don’t forget to fill the prescriptions. Take the painkillers as needed, and finish off the antibiotics. Don’t stop until they’re gone.”

She nodded. She had no intentions of filling the painkiller prescription, but she would get the antibiotics. “Home?” She looked up at Thomas. She was still as barefoot as she was when they wheeled her in.

He lifted her into his arms. “My home,” he admitted.

“But I need my clothes, and my work, and my—”

“This is not negotiable, Thena.”

“What about clothes?”

“You can wear one of my shirts tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll take you by your place so you can pick up something to wear.”

There really was no point in arguing with him. Thomas had made up his mind that she would be safer at his place, and to his place she would go—for tonight anyway. She wasn’t going to let whoever this maniac was scare her out of her home. She knew she should have moved sooner. She should have sold the house and moved closer to the city. It would save on the cost of gas at least, but this was her home. She had designed this house and built it with her dad. She couldn’t bring herself to walk away from it. She loved the house, loved the memories that were made there, and she wouldn’t let anybody drive her from it.

What she didn’t understand was why somebody felt hell-bent on killing her. Had she made somebody angry with a home design or something? As far as she knew she didn’t have any enemies. She didn’t get out much, work and home was about all she saw now days. The guys who worked for her liked her enough; some of them loved her like a daughter because they had been young men working for her father when she was growing up. The only thing different in her life now was finding her mother’s body. But recent events couldn’t be linked to that; could they? She didn’t know anything about the case. The cops weren’t telling her anything. In fact, the cops had lost the body and didn’t seem in a hurry to find it. No; somebody trying to kill her now because of a crime that happened nearly twenty years ago just didn’t make sense. But then if it wasn’t about that, what was it about? Nothing made sense to her. She gathered with her mind in a fog from the medication they had given her at the hospital that nothing would make sense until morning. She mentally reminded herself to call Kyle and postpone tomorrow night. She would have to make sure to call him in the morning.

She felt Thomas place her down on something soft. Her eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?”

“My place,” he gently brushed her hair back from her face. “Go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleep,” she yawned.

“Sure you were,” he whispered near her ear before placing a soft kiss on her forehead.

She hadn’t felt like she was sleeping, but maybe she was. She didn’t remember much other than when he put her inside the car he had called for. That’s right; he had ridden in the ambulance with her so he would have had to have a car come pick them up from the hospital. She didn’t want to think about the logistics now. She started to roll over on her side, but he stopped her. “Your arm,” he cautioned her.

“Oh,” she whispered before turning onto the other side instead. She was halfway to slumber land, but she was still awake enough to know when Thomas’ weight shifted off the bed and he left the room. He must have put her in the guest room. She wished he had stayed with her for the night. She wanted him to hold her. She wanted him to tell her everything was going to be all right, even if it really wasn’t. Just for one night she needed to believe she could beat this maniac at his own game.

Chapter Eleven

“W
hat would you like for me to do about it, Captain?” Phoebe paced the floor as if pacing was going to solve all her problems. She had handled Thomas McGregor, or at least she had tried. He left the precinct. He stopped asking questions…or so she thought. How was she supposed to know the man wouldn’t back down?

“This gets out and we all lose, and I mean we lose everything; do you understand that? We lose everything. You stop him. You stop her. You fix this. Or you kiss your career and your freedom goodbye.”

Phoebe heard the click in the line. He hung up on her again. Why did everything come down to her? Why was she the one to fix their screw up? Why; because she had entered into this game lock, stock and barrel she took on the past twenty years of their sins the moment she took the money.

Chapter Twelve

“D
rake, I need a favor.” Thomas paced the kitchen. He didn’t have an issue getting information on anybody, but when it came to D.C., the best person to ask was Drake Daniels. He was still in and out of D.C. With his security clearance he had greater access to needed information than Thomas had as a civilian.

“I can be on the first plane out,” Drake offered.

Thomas laughed. “Not that kind of favor, my friend.” He shook his head. He had the best friends a guy could ask for, even if they were all action junkies. “I need information that, right now, I just can’t get without drawing attention to my case. I need to know more about Doctor Harold Evans. I know what I’ve found so far, and it looks a little too press release to be truth.”

“Congressman Elias Evans son?”

“The one and only.”

Drake laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure what you found on him was the PR version. What I have heard of the doctor and his father would paint an entirely different picture.”

“That’s what I thought,” Thomas mumbled. “I need to know what he was doing twenty years ago, if there was anything possibly illegal, possibly related to a theft of hospital drugs and supplies, anything like that.”

“What’s going on, Thomas?”

If Thomas thought he could get out of telling Drake more, then he was seriously mistaken. Drake didn’t do limited information. When he asked questions he expected to get answers—preferably true answers. “I’m working a case, and she…she’s in danger, Drake. I don’t know how everything fits together yet, but I’m sure that doctor was involved with her mother’s disappearance. He might be involved with the attempts on her life too. The more information I have about what went on here, the better I can be at protecting her.”

“I see,” Drake mumbled. “Will she be attending future family events?”

Thomas exhaled slowly. “I’m not getting married, Drake. All of you know I won’t take on that responsibility until I have Sabian where he belongs.” Be that in a grave or in prison, he planned to see his mission through without complications. Marriage, no matter how much he wanted it, would be a complication that he couldn’t afford right now.

“Any progress on Sabian?”

“None. I had a lead, but it didn’t pan out—again.” He bit his tongue to keep from cursing. “I’m really getting tired of how easily he seems to vanish. But I have to get this guy, Drake. I owe my unit that much. Those were good men and they left behind good families. He can’t get away with what he did.”

“And he won’t, Thomas. I know it’s not easy waiting, but don’t let impatience be to your detriment. Sabian will hide anywhere and everywhere for a long time, but he’s going to screw up one of these days, and when he does we’ll get him.”

He knew that eventually Sabian would make a mistake, he just didn’t know when. The longer this case took, the longer it would be before he could have the family he wanted, before he could truly have Thena. She wouldn’t wait that long. Why would she? Why should she? She deserved better. She deserved more.

“How’s Geneva?”

“She’s fine. She’s in New York recording her album. She’s almost finished. Once she’s done I think we’re both going to spend some time in the Keys.”

“Still splitting your time, huh?”

“For now. I’ll pull out once we wrap up this Sabian issue. Once I’m done with that Geneva and I will probably settle in South Carolina. She likes being near her father. We can vacation in the Keys. You know me. I’m not attached to any one place. So long as I’m with her it doesn’t matter where it is.”

Thomas did know the truth in those words. Drake had been around the world on missions, never really fully calling a place home for more than a few months out of the year. “Tell her I said hello when you speak with her.”

“Will do.”

“How’s Mike and Zenya doing?”

“They’re great. Patience is almost one. I can’t believe how fast time flies. It feels as if it was just yesterday when Zenya was pregnant.”

Thomas laughed. “Yeah, time goes quickly sometimes. I need to get out there and see my goddaughter again. Last time I saw her she was three months and gorgeous.”

“She’s still gorgeous,” Drake said. “She’s going to be a heartbreaker when she gets older. She looks a lot like Zenya already.”

He was right. Patience had Zenya’s coloring and small button nose, but she had Mike’s blue eyes.

“Once we settle things, and Geneva gets her album done, we want to concentrate on having a few of our own.”

Thomas shook his head. It seemed like everybody was making babies. Sully and Alaina were expecting their little girl any week now. According to calculations, Alaina was approximately eight months pregnant. From what Sully had told him the last time he spoke with him, the doctors were anticipating she would deliver on time. Out of their group, Drake and Gavin were the only two married without children. And from what he figured out the last time he spoke with his brother, London and Gavin were planning to start a family of their own—soon. Now Drake was talking babies...Thomas knew his day would come—he just didn’t know when. He couldn’t start a family, not like this, not when his life’s mission was to find Sabian and get justice.

He needed to change the topic—quickly. “Call me when you know something,” Thomas shifted the conversation back to business in an effort not to think about the life he was putting on hold, the life he wanted to have now, but couldn’t commit to until his mission was over.

“Actually, I’m going to be up in New York to see Geneva over the weekend. I’ll come through Boston before heading back to D.C.”

“It’s not necessary, Drake. I don’t want to keep you from whatever you’re working on.”

“I’m working on finding Sabian. Other than that, and the busy work the higher ups seem to keep giving me, there’s not much else demanding my time.”

“Thanks,” Thomas felt the need to utter that one word. Drake had been more help to him than he could ever know. They all had been there for him, for his family.

“See you soon,” he disconnected the call.

Thomas leaned against the kitchen counter, thinking about Thena, her case, his case, and the future they might not have because he couldn’t marry her. He couldn’t promise her forever, not until he found closure for what happened in Afghanistan. Until that happened, he wasn’t much use to any relationship. He had told himself to stay away from women who wanted more than he was able to give, but Thena had been different. Thena had come into his office and he knew he was in trouble. She was the woman he could see himself taking beyond the bedroom. He wanted more than that with her. The first moment that thought entered into his mind he knew he needed to distance himself, and he had tried, but he had failed. The harder he tried to walk away from his emotions, from the connection he had felt bonding him to her, the more he wanted it. He wanted it then and he wanted it now. He just didn’t think it was possible. She wouldn’t wait, and he couldn’t abandon years of work to be the husband he would need to be, the husband she deserved.

The thought of her with somebody else made him physically sick. He didn’t want her to love anybody else, to be with anybody else. He wanted her to love him, and only him. He was jealous of a guy who didn’t even exist in her life yet. There was Kyle, her friend, and ex-boyfriend, but Thomas wasn’t worried about him. It was becoming clear to him that Kyle really was just a friend to Thena. She had no intentions of rekindling their previous romance. At least she didn’t at this time. A lot could change over the years. A woman that smart, that beautiful, that good at heart, wouldn’t stay unspoken for forever.