“Oh, all right. If you insist, Sherlock.” I smiled down at her. She was a small woman with a head of thick, curly red hair, confined this morning at the back of her neck with a gold clip. She had the whitest skin and the prettiest smile that was warm and sweet unless she was pissed, when she could chew metal if it came right down to it. We’d come into the Bureau at the same time, all of two years ago now.
She managed a surprising amount of my weight, walking lock-step, veering sideways so she could push me down onto a hospital chair. Once I was seated I grinned up at her, remembering the two of us going up the ropes in our final physical exam at the Academy. I hadn’t known if she’d be able to do it or not, and I hadn’t been about to leave her. I’d hung beside her, encouraging her, calling her names, insulting her at a fine clip until she finally made it all the way up the rope with those skinny arms of hers. Sherlock didn’t have a lot of upper-body strength, but she had something a whole lot better-guts and heart. She was more fond of me than I probably deserved.
“You’re going to talk to me. The doctors are shaking their heads. They’ve already called your boss and I’ll betcha they’ll be here ready to roll you into the floor if you take so much as one step toward that door. Here’s reinforcements. Dillon, come here and help me figure out what’s eating Mac. Look, he’s even got his pants on.”
Dillon Savich raised a dark brow at that, his expression saying quite clearly to me, The shit better have his pants on.
I settled back in the chair. What difference did five minutes make? I’d still be out of here soon enough. Besides, it was best that some of my friends knew what was going on.
“Look, guys, I’ve got to go home and pack. I’ve got to fly out to Oregon. My sister was in an accident last night. She’s in a coma. I can’t stay here.”
Sherlock knelt beside the chair and took one of my big hands between hers. “Jilly? She’s in a coma? What happened?”
I closed my eyes against immediate memories of that demented dream, or whatever it had been. “I called Oregon early this morning,” I said. “Her husband Paul told me.”
Sherlock cocked her head to one side and studied me for a moment. Then she asked, “Why’d you call her?”
Sherlock not only had heart and guts, she had this brain that could accelerate electrons.
Savich was still standing by the open doorway, looking fit and big and tough. His eyes were on his wife, Sherlock, who was just looking up at me, waiting for me to strip open my guts for her, which I was about to do. No contest.
“Just sit back and close your eyes, Mac, that’s right. I won’t let anyone bother you. I wish I had some of Dillon’s private reserve whiskey from Kentucky. It would mellow you out quicker than Scan can get Dillon up with his best yell.”
“That didn’t make a whole lot of sense, Sherlock, but let me tell you that Midge brought me a beer last night,” I said. “I didn’t puke. It tasted really good.” An understatement. I couldn’t imagine sex being better than that one Bud Light.
“I’m so happy for you,” Sherlock said, and patted my cheek. And waited. I watched her look over at her husband, standing there just inside the hospital room, all calm and relaxed, his arms crossed over his chest. It was a pity that there weren’t more like him at the Bureau, instead of the clone bureaucrats who were too afraid to do anything that hadn’t been sanctioned for at least a decade. I hated it when I saw it, prayed I wouldn’t turn out to be like that in the years to come. Maybe I had a chance not to be, in the Counter-Terrorism section. The bureaucrats did their thing in Washington, but in the field the rules fell away. You were on your own, or at least you were if you were on the ground with a terrorist group in Tunisia.