crawling all over me at six in the morning, licking my face off.”
As a matter of fact, Callie could picture it too, and that was a surprise. What wasn’t a surprise was that she could also see herself, lying next to Ben Raven, laughing, waiting for Luciano to leap over on her. Why did feelings and attachments have to sprout like weeds at a time like this?
Ben shot her a look, but didn’t say a word. When they got to Margaret’s house, he walked Callie to the front door. The lights were all off except for the porch light.
“Looks like your mom’s friends have gone for the evening.” He waited until she’d unlocked the door and stepped inside.
“Callie, about this natural thing.”
“Yes?”
“Ah, forget it. Never mind. I’ll call you when I find out anything about Giffey.” She was bundled up in her black wool coat, a bright red scarf wrapped around her neck, but he could clearly picture that sexy little black dress beneath. No, it wasn’t the time, dammit. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned to leave when she grabbed his arm and yanked him back. Then she looked up at him and said, “Don’t go. Oh dear, am I an idiot or what? I forgot that my mom told me she wanted me to move back to my own place this evening. She said she was fine now, that she needed to be by herself for a while. I told her I would, that I’d see her for dinner tomorrow night. I forgot. I wonder what I should do.”
“Check on her, make sure she’s okay, then I’ll take you to your apartment.”
She nodded. “Okay. What will we be doing tomorrow?”
“I have a meeting with Captain Halloway and Police Commissioner Holt at the Daly Building at eight-thirty, but I’ll call, let you know when I’ll be coming by to get you. Savich will have something for us to do, count on it.”
“Come in with me. I’ll check on Mom, then we can have some of her fancy French roast coffee. Anything I’d have at home would be stale, probably growing mold. And Mom always keeps some croissants in the freezer. What do you think?”
Ben wasn’t tired either. He was hyped. He could take on the world. The fact was he wanted to take her to bed, and that made everything even more intense. “Okay, a croissant sounds good. You got real butter?”
“Maybe Mom does. You’ll have to take your chances.”
She took him to the ultra-modern stainless-steel kitchen, gave him a bag of gourmet coffee, and pointed him to the coffee machine, a European thing that looked like you’d need a degree in French engineering to figure it out.
Callie said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “Let me go upstairs and check on Mom. Thing is, I’m still worried about her. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Yeah, go on up, make sure she’s really asleep. If she wakes up, hears us moving around down here, it might scare her since she’s expecting to be alone.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’m right here,” Margaret said, smiling at both of them as she walked into the kitchen. She looked pretty good, Ben thought, as he nodded to her.
“You having any problems with the coffeemaker, Ben?”
“He’s a guy, Mom. It’s in his genes.”
Margaret laughed. “Stewart never had that particular gene.” Her voice dropped off, but she didn’t start crying. She walked to the cabinet and reached for coffee mugs.
Ben’s cell phone rang. “Raven here.”
Both women watched him as he listened for several moments. When he punched off, he said, “I’m sorry, but something’s come up. Mrs. Califano, Callie, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And he was gone.
Callie started to go after him, then stopped. “I wonder what’s going on?”
“He’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but in the meantime I’ll miss all the fun.”
Margaret said, “I think I’d rather have tea. Will you join me?”
CHAPTER
36
BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL
SURGICAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT
THE LARGE ROOM was filled with shadows except for the semicircular workstation where six nurses and three clerks manned computers and monitoring equipment, filed reports, and wrote notes in the patients’ charts in the muted light of their individual desk lamps. Conversation within the group was low but frequent, just above the hum and repetitive beeping of the monitoring equipment.
Only the curtain to cubicle twelve was pulled back slightly.
At eleven-thirty, an X-ray technician slid her I.D. badge through the slot reader in the SICU door and maneuvered in, pushing the portable X-ray unit in front of her. She was wearing rubber-soled shoes and made no sound when she walked over to the dry erase board to find the cubicle of her patient. She nodded to one of the nurses, who looked at her from behind the console, nodded toward cubicle twelve, and looked back down at the chart she was checking. The X-ray tech located the patient, and disappeared inside uncurtained cubicle number five. There was a soft murmur of voices, the sound of a machine being positioned, then silence.
The X-ray tech emerged from the cubicle five minutes later, gave a small wave to the staff behind the large workstation, and wheeled out her equipment. Minutes later, another I.D. badge slid through the door slot. A tall older man walked in silently, wearing a white lab coat over green scrubs, carrying a plastic tray with blood-drawing paraphernalia. He was whistling under his breath. The nurse gave only an infinitesimal start, then shook her head at the obvious black dye job on his hair and mustache. Her fingers moved away from a small button at her side.
The lab tech smiled at her, and then, like the x-ray tech, checked the dry erase board for his patient. “You’d think,” he said, “that docs would try to schedule these nonemergent blood draws when the patient has a chance of being awake.”
“Nah,” one of the nurses said, “better to catch them half asleep, they don’t worry as much.”
The lab tech carried his tray to cubicle number four and quietly pushed the door open, disappeared inside.
After the lab tech left, it was silent again in the large room, and in fact hardly anything seemed to happen in the SICU for the next two hours. The monitors continued their repetitive low-hum vigil, and the patients’ heart rates and blood pressures read out as curiously stable for an intensive care unit. None of the nurses left the central workstation.
At a quarter to one in the morning, the door to cubicle twelve opened. Agents Savich and Sherlock came out stretching.
Savich said, “It’s time for a shift change. Are all the new patients ready?”
“I got a buzz from Agent Brady. He says all’s clear, and they should be arriving as a group just about now.”
In the next moment, the door to the SICU swung open and three men and two women dressed in hospital nightgowns came walking in, behind them a score of new nurses, clerks, and techs.
“Hurry,” said one of the patients. “Brady said they just spotted a guy coming this way from the pathology lab.”
A patient with a huge bandage wrapped turban-style around his head waved an IV line toward his assigned nurse, who rolled her eyes at him.
Within two minutes, new patients were lying in beds in five of the cubicles. The nurses and staff were settled in behind the workstation, and the machines and monitors resumed their low buzz, the sign all was normal once again.
Savich paused a moment in the doorway to check over the SICU once more. “Let’s go home, Sherlock.”
