Everything hurt. Even her eyelashes hurt when she opened her eyes.
Ouch. She squinted a bit from the light overhead. Too bright. They were like phosphorous flares going off in her face. She closed her eyes again and then opened them slowly.
Still painful, but bearable.
A face appeared directly over her.
She smiled. Casper. Ken Casper. His battle-toughened face was deeply grooved with worry lines, deeper even than she remembered. He fumbled for her hand, wrapping a big, sandpapery hand around hers.
“Hey, ghost of mine,” she whispered.
“You’re in the hospital, sweetie. They’re going to have to operate soon, but the doc says you’re going to be fine.”
“Where’s Ryan?” The faintness of her voice scared her, sounding as if it came from somewhere outside of her.
“He’s on his way. I came in the ambulance with you and sent him in a car with some of my staff.”
She tried frowning and wasn’t sure it worked. “I thought you were a romantic, Casper. Don’t you know that you’re supposed to let the handsome hunk ride with the beautiful woman. The old guy takes the cab?”
He laughed. “I’ll remember that for next time, sweetheart.”
“The vice president?”
“He’s fine. Not a scratch on him.” He stroked the back of her hand. “He’s going to get some mileage out of this politically.”
“Still the same old cynical Casper,” she rasped, her throat dry and scratchy. “McCaffrey?”
A cloud shadowed Casper’s face. “He gave us the slip in the panic that ensued. But we’re pretty sure he was the one who got off the shots. He dropped the gun beside you, so we’ll run the ballistics and make sure. We’ll catch up to him at some point.”
“What about Flynn?”
“He’s in custody and singing like a bird, telling us all about the center and the Patriot’s Foundation of Family Values. We’ll be rounding up that crazy bunch for the next six months. But for now, the immediate threat is over.”
Tess nodded, and a great sense of peace settled over her. They’d won.
“We wouldn’t have figured it out without you, Tess.”
Casper rubbed her hand, and then leaned down to smooth her hair back off her forehead. His touch was warm, but Tess couldn’t help but wish the hand enclosing hers was Ryan’s. She desperately needed to feel the heat of his skin and the sound of his voice.
She started to drift, and she tightened her hold on Casper’s hand. Oh, God, she needed to hang on. She needed to be awake when Ryan arrived.
“It’s okay, Tess. He’ll be here soon,” Casper said, reading her mind.
She pulled on his hand, coaxing him closer. “Tell Ryan-” She sucked in another breath. “Tell him when he gets here that I need him.”
It didn’t matter anymore if he couldn’t say it back to her. Even if he was still stuck on the whole concept of her being his patient and he couldn’t love her the way she wanted. Nothing mattered to Tess except that she tell Ryan how much she needed him.
“You can tell him yourself. Just hang on, sweetie.”
But Tess couldn’t hang on. She fell over the edge and dropped into nothingness, spinning around and embracing the darkness. And as she slipped away, her hand falling from Casper’s, she thought,
THEY TOOK OFF the handcuffs and pushed Ryan into a room on the second floor of the hospital. He didn’t know the name of the hospital but he knew it was only a short ride from the hotel. Apparently the head agent had made arrangements for his arrival, because when the car pulled up front, two other agents met them at the door and escorted him upstairs.
Ryan surveyed the room. Small with no windows. The furniture had a definite institutional flavor. He paced, unable to settle. The agent with him took a seat by the door, his attention on a magazine. He pointedly ignored Ryan’s questions.
By the time the door opened, Ryan was sure he’d worn a hole in the carpet. The senior agent walked in and nodded his head at the other agent, dismissing him.
He turned to Ryan. “I’m Supervising Special Agent Ken Casper of the United States Secret Service.”
Ryan ignored the introduction. “Where’s Tess? I demand to see her
“You’re not in a position to demand anything, Doctor.” But then the man’s face softened. “Besides, she’s in surgery and no one can see her until she’s out.”
Ryan’s heart slammed against his chest. He’d figured the wound was serious, but he couldn’t deny he had hoped it was superficial. “How bad is it?”
“They couldn’t tell me anything. But her surgeon will notify us when he’s done.” Casper motioned to the couch. “Sit down. I know you have a lot of questions, and I’ll answer as many of them as I can.”
Still on guard, Ryan stayed on his feet. “How do you know Tess?”
Casper sank down onto the edge of one of the chairs, stretching his long legs out in front of him with a deep grunt.
“I’ve known Tess since she was a toddler. I was good friends with her dad.” The sadness Ryan had noted in the man’s face when he leaned over Tess flickered across the agent’s face again. “I was assigned to her father during his years as U.S. senator.”
Realization hit Ryan. “Casper! You’re the ghost that watches over her, aren’t you.”
He nodded. “When she was little, she called me Casper the Friendly Ghost.” He shifted in the chair, trying to get more comfortable. “I got close with the family. When her dad died in the crash years later, I tried to help, but times changed and her mom needed to get on with her life. We kind of drifted apart. The last time I saw her was at her mother’s funeral. That is, until-”
His voice drifted off and for a long moment the man stared into space, his gaze turned haunted, as if he was seeing their last meeting play out in front of his eyes and what he saw shot him through with terrible guilt.
“Until what?” Ryan prompted.
Casper’s eyes flickered back into the present and he hunched over, his elbows coming to rest on his thighs. “Until she came to me a little over eight months ago to tell me that she thought her stepfather was up to his eyeballs in some kind of plot to hurt the vice president.”
“Which it turns out he was,” Ryan said dryly. “So, you decided to use her to learn more.”
“She insisted. And as much as I didn’t want to, we knew that she was the only one who could get close. She wasn’t supposed to go deep. We just wanted as much superficial information as she could gather-preliminary stuff that my own agents could use to infiltrate the foundation. We have a file yea thick-” he spread his hands a foot apart “-on that damn organization. But no one could get a handle on them. Mainly because infiltrating it was next to impossible.”
“But not for Tess?”
“No, unfortunately not for Tess.” He had rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt and, for a minute, he fiddled with a button on the cuff. He lifted his head. “I think her stepfather took a certain delight in using her. In subjecting her to his brainwashing techniques. It would have been his ultimate revenge against her father. Flynn despised Senator Ross, saw him as the epitome of everything he hated. Blamed him for the weakening of the American military.”
“Why would he take a chance using Tess?” Ryan asked.
“A maniac’s ego perhaps. Who knows?” Casper shrugged. “Flynn knew how close Tess was to the vice president. He knew that of all the people he had to choose from, Tess was the one person who would never be questioned. Never be denied access to him. She was above reproach.”
“So why put her life at such risk?”
Casper sighed. “Because we never thought he’d go this far. Tess had explicit instructions to stay on the periphery of the organization. To just get a feel for things and then report back to us. We never thought he was
