TEN
Schaeffer slammed down the newspaper and stabbed at the nurse’s call button. “Peggy!”
She didn’t answer. The bitch was ignoring him on purpose. He was her only goddamned patient. She was probably flirting with one of those pompous Secret Service agents again.
He held the button down. He had no idea if that made it buzz any longer out at the nurses’ station or wherever the hell the nurses got the signal, but he hoped it did. When he released it, he yelled, “Peggy, get in here and deal with this damned beeping, for God’s sake.”
The door opened and the crotchety bitch swept in. “How difficult is it to keep your arm straight, Senator?”
“How difficult is it to shut your mouth and do your job, nurse?” He shook the paper out and glanced through the door where one of the agents stood. “Where the hell is Colonel Young?”
“No sign of him yet, sir.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Gil scanned the columns for the article he’d been reading when that damned IV pump had started beeping for the millionth time that morning. He was so ready to get out of this godforsaken place, and if shit like this article kept popping up, he’d never be able to leave.
Peggy snapped the door to the IV pump closed and rounded the bottom of the bed.
“What?” Gil said, still half waiting for the don’t bend your arm mantra. “No warning from the warden?”
With her hand on the doorknob, she faced him. He didn’t take his gaze off the paper. “I’m done wasting my breath on you. I’m saving it for patients who actually care about their treatment.”
“Hallelujah.”
“And you are not a prisoner, Senator. Please, use this door at your earliest convenience. It’s big enough for even you to get through.”
The fat dig burned. Gil flashed a glance her way with a threat on his tongue, but she slammed the door so hard the blinds over the glass rattled. Gil winced at the noise and muttered, “Fucking bitch.”
He started reading where he’d lost his place, but the door opened again. He didn’t bother to look up. “I’m not going to choke down any more of this hospital crap you call food. If you can’t get the kitchen to provide something decent to eat, then get your ass out to Bistro Bis and pick up two orders of eggs Benedict.”
“Thanks for thinking of me, but I’ve already eaten.”
The deep male voice, filled with too much confidence and attitude to be one of the Secret Service agents’, filled the room. Gil looked up just before the door closed again. He took in the sight of Owen Young in uniform, his chest weighted down by medals, and snapped the paper before returning his gaze to it, even though he wasn’t reading anymore.
“Don’t you fall face-first into your food with all that weight on your chest, Young?”
“You should be nicer to the people here, Senator,” he said, approaching the bedside. “They hold your life in their hands.”
“They do a job, same as you, nothing more. And they do a shitty job of it too. You all have a lot in common.” Gil slapped a backhand against the article and glared at Young. “This has become a problem, Owen. You need to handle it, and you need to handle it better than you’re handling Foster and those menaces he calls a team.”
Young’s sharp green eyes darted to the paper, scanned the headline, Syria’s Chemical Weapons Linked to American Chemical Mogul, and returned to Gil’s face. “It’ll blow over.”
“No, it won’t.” He snapped the paper again—he just loved the sound—and folded it. “The FBI has been trying to contact me for a week.”
Young’s lids lowered and his jaw clenched. “And you’re just telling me about it now. We had a discussion about communication, Senator. The last time you delayed informing me, you lost Quaid Legend.”
“I’ve been a little under the weather—”
“You’ve been hiding out. The doctors said you could have left the hospital last week if it weren’t for the new ailments you come up with daily. Now I know why, especially given your dislike of the staff and—God forbid—the food.”
“You know what you need, Owen?” Gil narrowed his eyes. “You need to get yourself some pussy. Why don’t you go on over to the Alibi Club tonight? I’ll call and let them know you’re there as my guest.”
“What I need, Senator, is information and in a timely manner.”
“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” Gil demanded.
Owen angled his head, the move calculated and menacing. “Have you?”
He held Gil’s gaze too steadily and with too much authority. Gil was sweating beneath his pajama top, one the Secret Service had brought him from home. The sweat would start pouring off him any moment, and Owen would mistake that for weakness.
“No, Owen. I’m talking to the man who should have found and captured Legend, O’Shay, and the lousy team of firefighters who broke them out of a top-security federal—”
“Prison?” Owen interrupted.
“Lab,” Gil countered. “What progress have you made since you came in yesterday?”
“I’ve discovered that you failed to mention you involved Abernathy in this train wreck of a scheme, Senator. And I’ve discovered Abernathy is running the wrecked car down a hill at three hundred miles per hour to inevitable catastrophe.”
Anger surged. “Abernathy’s balls had better be in Pakistan.”
“If they are, he’s not attached to them. He’s here, Senator. He confronted Halina Beloi and Mitch Foster outside Beloi’s home in Washington State last night. And it might have helped me find them earlier, before Abernathy, had I known her real name.”
“That wicked bitch,” Gil muttered, heat and pressure swelling inside his body. Sweat trickled from his forehead and into his eyes. Gil grabbed a washcloth and wiped his face. “I didn’t think she’d ever have the balls to use her real name again.”
“You’re missing the point—”
“No, I’m not. The point now is that Abernathy’s trying to get her research and take over while he thinks I’m incapacitated.”
Gil tossed the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The momentum sat him halfway up, but without the strength to pull his body forward, Gil fell back, struggling to retain some dignity with the use of the bed’s handrails. By the time he’d righted himself, Gil was struggling to breathe and every damn machine made some kind of outrageous noise.
Gil sat with his back to Owen, but he could sense the other man’s smirk. He shot a glare over his shoulder, but didn’t catch Owen grinning to himself. The man was still frowning.
“Why didn’t you tell me Abernathy was in this up to his balls?” Owen paced slowly toward the windows, his hands clasped and fisted behind his back.
“Because he’s not supposed to be,” Schaeffer bit out. His face had to be glowing candy-apple red by now. His eyes had to be bulging out of his head. The damn heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen monitors were dinging and beeping as if warning of an imminent nuclear explosion. “Like I said, he’s supposed to be in Pakistan, handling the acquisition of smart weapons. You have to stop him. You have to find Beloi before Abernathy does.
“He doesn’t give a fuck about anything but that project. And he’s got strong connections in Indonesia. That’s where he wanted us to grow this in the first place. He won’t take the time or go to the trouble to kill the whole damn team like he should. They don’t pose any significant threat to him. He’ll just grab Beloi and drag her under. Which will turn Foster and the others into a pack of rabid hyenas against me.”