Unlocking the door, he was greeted only by silence when he pushed into the room. “Katie?” No answer.
Looking around, his eyes moved to the bed. Her luggage was sitting on the bedspread, her clothes spilling out of it. Just then she emerged from the bathroom and, seeing him, stopped dead in her tracks. The look on her face said it all.
It’s your fault, Ryan, a little voice inside told him. You’ve been ignoring her for weeks. You should have expected this.
Still, he had to ask it. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”
There was a long silence as she summoned up her resolve. When she did, her words hit him like a slap in the face: “I’m leaving, Ryan.
I’m going back to Maine.”
He had seen it coming, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear. “Why?” She didn’t answer, instead moving forward to cram the rest of her clothes in the bag. “Katie, please, just . . . Will you stop for a second?”
Her movements slowed until she stopped completely and looked up at him. Even from across the room, he could see that she was trying hard not to cry.
“Why are you leaving?”
“ ‘Why?’ ” She was incredulous, staring at him with a strange combination of anger, disappointment, and hurt on her face. “Are you seriously asking me that? Ryan, I’ve hardly seen you in the past few days, and all I can think about is what you’re doing and whether you’re okay or not. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Do you even remember why I came down here in the first place?”
“Yes, I do know. I told you—”
“You’re such a liar,” she interrupted bitterly. The look in her eyes reflected the pain she was feeling. “You don’t understand at all. If you did, even a little bit, you wouldn’t be putting me through this.
You would know how much it hurts.”
He was beginning to realize how serious this actually was. “Katie, I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I swear . . .”
She was still staring at him. The disappointment had given way to a gaze of distrust, which was somehow far worse. “I love you, Ryan,”
she finally said. “I do. But I can’t be here while this is going on, I just can’t. Being here, so close but not knowing what’s happening, wondering if someone’s going to knock on the door in the middle of the night and tell me that you—” She broke off abruptly, unable or unwilling to verbalize the thought. “It’s just too much for me.”
A horn sounded outside. Katie swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and picked up her bag. “That’s for me,” she whispered. “I called a taxi. My ticket is waiting at the airport.”
Ryan didn’t know what to do. For all the anguish he was feeling, the worst part was seeing her in pain. He thought about reaching out for her, trying to hold her back, but sensed that that would only make things worse. He was fighting for words. How often does everything come down to a few sentences? What could he offer that might limit the distance between them? Say something.
“Katie?” She turned at the door but refused to lift her gaze. “I hope you understand that what I said before, about needing you . . .
I meant that, you know? I can’t think of anything else, or say anything else that would be more true.”
She let go of what might have been a choked sob, but she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Don’t call me, Ryan.”
“What?” The panic started to rise inside. He took a step toward her. “Katie, listen—”
“No!” She held up a wavering hand to stop him. “Just . . . don’t, okay? Not for a while. I need some time.”
“Katie!” She was gone, the door closing softly behind her.
He stared after her in disbelief, wanting to follow but unable to move, trying desperately to figure out what the hell had just happened. Looking around, he was vaguely aware of sterile prints and stock furniture. This would be life without her, he knew. Flat surroundings and still air.
He couldn’t go back to that, not after what she had given him. He needed time, time to think about it, time to figure out how to get her back, but something was piercing his thoughts. He looked around, dazed, still trying to get his mind around the disaster that had just transpired. His cell phone was sitting on the dresser where he had tossed it earlier. After staring at it for a good twenty seconds, he finally realized that it was ringing.
Ryan was running back out to the car less than thirty seconds later. The tires on his BMW left a 6-foot strip of rubber behind as he peeled out into the night, back toward the city lights, back toward Washington. He had taken his jacket and his phone. For the moment, decisions about Katie would just have to wait.
Chapter 27
WASHINGTON, D.C.
When Naomi woke, her return to the world was a gradual process. First she had a sense of shadows spread across the ceiling, separated only by fine threads of yellow light. As she gained a sense of her surroundings— a hospital? —the light seemed to bleed into the dark patches, so that she soon became aware of the faces staring down at her. She read them carefully as her vision cleared.
When she saw concern and not dread in their eyes, she felt relief wash through her body.
Ryan took her hand as Harper went to look for a nurse. “Naomi, can you hear me?”
She tried to speak, but her throat was dry and she wasn’t altogether there yet. “Mmmm.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he assured her. “You took two rounds, but the vest caught both of them. I wouldn’t move around for a little while, though. It’s going to hurt.”
Sure enough, she felt a crushing pain in her chest when she tried to sit up. Ryan eased her head back onto the pillow and smoothed her hair. “Jesus, I just told you not to move,” he said in quiet exasperation. “I don’t believe you sometimes. If I told you not to run into traffic, you’d probably do it just to spite me.”
She smiled weakly. “How long have I been out?”
“About three hours. How do you feel?”
She tested her limbs and winced. “Sore. Can I have some water?”
As Ryan went to fill a cup from the sink, she said, “When can I go home?”
“We’re waiting to see,” he replied gently. He handed her the cup.
“Try to get some rest.” He squeezed her hand as she drank. Harper reentered the room, followed soon thereafter by a harried-looking nurse. The young woman proceeded to check Naomi’s vital signs as Ryan pulled the deputy director toward the door.
Once they were in the hall, he leveled Harper with angry eyes.
“What the fuck was she doing on that raid, John?”
“She’s a grown woman,” Harper responded quietly. “She wanted the chance and I gave it to her. Besides, you’re in no position to question me, Ryan, not after the shit you pulled with Elgin.”
The younger man looked away and tried to calm himself. Anger wouldn’t help him here, and he knew it. “What was in the apartment?” he finally asked.
“Not much, but it’s early yet. We’re still trying to ID the occupants.
The landlord had names, of course, but they were meaningless. It would have been nice to take one of them alive. The Bureau found a cell phone, still intact but cloned. We probably won’t get anything useful out of that. The outgoing calls were deleted. There was a laptop, too, but someone put a half dozen rounds into it when the shooting began.” Harper leaned back against the wall and rubbed his eyes. “It wasn’t a good trade, Ryan. HRT lost four operators with another one on the way out. The SAC got clipped as well. We didn’t get shit in return. The Bureau’s in an uproar; that’s two of their top guys on the East Coast dead inside of a month. The only positive thing is that we’ve been able to throw the press off track. They’re carrying it as a high-risk arrest warrant that went bad.”