In A Fix - Mary Calmes Page 0,93
the glint in her eye then, just that little glimpse letting me know how truly pleased she was.
“Special Agent Montez?”
“Just Reina is good.”
“Oh,” I said quickly, touched that she would make the offer. “Thank you.”
She nodded, and I realized she looked younger, suddenly, and sad too. “I want you to think better of Agent Lund, but I don’t know why.”
“I’m sure you were just as close to him as Dallas was, and it’s sad to lose friends, no matter the reason.”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
Digby and Ryder were both transported to the hospital under heavy guard, and a new fiberglass front door was being hung, because for some insane reason, Dallas had a spare in his garage. We were going to have to have a long talk about why that was.
“Listen to me.”
Turning my attention from Ella and Dallas, standing together looking like they should be modelling on billboards, I found Montez squinting at me.
“Bauer is an excellent agent. He goes a bit too cowboy on me occasionally, but I always trust his instincts, so you should too.”
“Is there any particular reason you’re telling me this?”
“No. I just thought you should know.”
Dallas had to go to the hospital to talk to Ryder, I had to go to get checked out by a doctor and get a tetanus shot, and Ella insisted on coming with me. What was nice was that we talked more. She brought me up to date on her family and confessed she was horrified over the fact that she had thought about sleeping with Ryder, but had decided against it only because she was tipsy.
“He is handsome,” I offered helpfully. “And he didn’t want to kill Dallas. That’s something.”
“Oh, but killing the love of Dallas’s life is okay?”
“Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” I chided her.
“Am I?”
“Yes, you—don’t…you don’t know how he—what?”
She snorted out a laugh.
I made the cutting motion across my neck with my hand.
There was more snickering after that.
After the adrenaline crash, my headache came roaring back with a vengeance, so one of the nurses brought me some painkillers that wiped it right out and left my head feeling almost cool.
“I’ll come back and visit when it’s not stupid cold here,” Ella said out of the blue.
“Well, when you come to Chicago, you get about a three-, maybe four-month window when it’s what I define as warm, so plan—”
“Chicago, Croy?” She grimaced. “Come on. Who’re you kidding?”
“I don’t—”
“That sweet little house with the never-ending supply of front doors—”
“Oh good, I was worried I was the only one who thought that was strange.”
“No. That was odd,” she assured me, shooting me a look of concern. “You definitely need to get the story there, but his house and his ugly car—”
“Wait,” I warned her. “That car is a classic and—”
“You’re fooling yourself if you think you’re going back. Why would you leave that man for a job?”
“Because people don’t move in together after one day, two days. That only happens in romantic comedies and—”
“I think if you’re lucky enough to get struck by lightning, that you shouldn’t second-guess it, or risk losing it on the hope that it’ll come again. That seems—” She stopped, thinking. “What was that stupid word you used to—oh!” she gasped, pleased with herself. “Obtuse. That seems obtuse.”
At one time I had been very fond of that word.
Because ER time exists in a vacuum, I was ready to go home about the same time that Dallas came to let me know he had to go to the office to record his statements while everything was still fresh in his mind. Montez had taken mine while I was waiting for the doctor to see me, and I felt bad that Dallas still had a long day ahead of him before he’d be allowed to go home. Higa was going back to DC with Murray. He needed all the reports uploaded that evening so he could present it all when they began debriefing Murray the following day.
“I’m so sorry,” Dallas said, helping me dress, straightening the cardigan I was starting to think of as mine. “I’m gonna be stuck at work all day, maybe all night.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him, smiling, lifting my hand to his cheek and then thinking better of it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, stepping in close to me, between my parted knees as I sat on the hospital bed.
“Nothing, I just—there’s a lot of your colleagues here right now and—”
“Yeah, everybody knows I’m bi,” he said, putting his hands