body, “. let. ”
Henderson leaned close, with Tony Almeida beside him.
Chappelle shuddered. “. Bauer. ” he gasped. “Don’t. Bauer.”
He passed out.
“Crashing again!” the medic yelled. He snatched up the defibrillator paddles again and shouted, “Clear!” He barely waited for the others to step back before shocking Chappelle’s heart again. Chappelle’s body convulsed, and his heart beat faintly in the portable monitor. “Okay, go!” the medic ordered.
“Do we go with him?” Tony asked.
Henderson nodded. “I’ll follow.”
“What was he saying, about Bauer?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does he think we’re going to let Jack do while he’s in jail? Don’t let him what?”
“Delirium, probably,” Henderson guessed.
Tony paused. “You know, no one’s been talking lately about Jack.”
Henderson watched the medics wheel Ryan Chappelle out the front door. “This may not be the time, Tony.”
“Yeah, but now’s when it’s come up. There’s no one here that thinks Jack Bauer really killed an innocent man in cold blood. Is there?”
Henderson turned back toward Tony. They were opposites in appearance — Tony had a soft face with sad eyes, a sharp contrast to Henderson’s steel blue gaze. But underneath, both men were made of the same hard, dark material.
“You’re asking if I believe it,” Henderson said. He paused for a moment.
“You have to think about it,” Tony said disdainfully. “You and Jack, you’ve been on bad terms since Internal Affairs started looking into that missing money.”
“That’s nothing,” Henderson said dismissively. “It’ll go nowhere. No, I’m wondering what I’ve done to make you think I’m that much of an ass. I brought Jack Bauer in here. I’ve stuck my neck out for him before. No, I don’t think he’s guilty of murder. But that guy getting rolled out on the stretcher did, and I have a feeling that a jury is going to see it that way, too.”
The guards returned to the library, conveniently, when the fighting was done. One of them, a squishy-faced guard with an oversized lower lip, was the same guard who had disappeared just before the Salvatruchas appeared, but he was accompanied by a platoon of officers headed by an older black officer with the blase look of a man who’d seen everything one could see inside a prison. His name tag said “Lafayette” on it.
“Get the four-pieces,” Officer Lafayette said with a slow Louisiana drawl. “Hook these boys up and get ’em into isolation.”
The platoon produced four-piece steel wrist and ankle cuffs, connected by chains, and began to fetter the four gang-bangers. Oscar was still doubled over and could barely walk from the pain in his groin. Jack was sure he’d ruptured something and wished the Salvatrucha a slow and unsuccessful recovery.
“You gonna get fucked, blondie,” Oscar said as he was led away.
“Well, you’re not gonna be doing it,” Jack said. The guards tugged Oscar out the door.
Lafayette turned to Jack. His low-slung posture and heavy sigh told Jack he didn’t expect to get much information. “You gonna tell me what happened?”
Jack believed the guard hoped to hear a no. “Your guy, the one with the swollen lip, took a coffee break right about the time these four showed up. They tried to kill us, but we took them down first.”
Lafayette leaned to the side, looking past Jack at Ramirez, who was still slumped against the table. The guard looked back at Jack and chewed the inside of his mouth. “We, huh?”
Jack decided he needed to get some help. “Look, I don’t know why these guys have come after me twice, but I’ve had enough of it. I need to speak with Officer Cox right away.”
Lafayette shook his head. “That ain’t possible.”
Jack insisted. “If you talk to him, he’ll explain everything, even if you have to call him back in to the office. I promise you, he’ll want to know.”
“You ain’t gettin’ me, son, it ain’t possible. Cox took a shiv under the ribs not half an hour ago. He didn’t make it.”
Jack felt a firm, cold pressure start in the bottom of his chest, a sense of some danger long present but only now discovered. “Then the warden. He’ll want to talk to me if you tell him my name.”
“Can’t do that, either. Warden took sick this afternoon. He’s in the hospital.”
The pressure built up into Jack’s lungs, tightening them, though he showed no emotion whatsoever. “Then call him there. Trust me, he’ll want to know this—”
“He ain’t takin’ calls. What I heard, he’s had a heart attack or something.”
The pressure reached Jack’s heart, nearly freezing it. He looked around him, and for the first time in three weeks, he felt as if he were in jail.
3. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Peter Jiminez knocked on the door. The woman who opened it was lean, with short-cropped hair. She was pretty in a homey sort of way, but dark circles hung heavily below her eyes.
“Mrs. Bauer? Peter Jiminez, I worked with your husband. Sorry for the late hour. We’ve actually met twice, once right after I came on and a couple of weeks ago when—”
“Yes, I remember, um, Peter. How are you?”
Peter shifted a little uncomfortably. “Well, ma’am, I just, I wanted to stop by and talk to you. I just can’t get my head around Jack being in jail.”
Teri bit her lip and looked past Peter, as though expecting to see someone else there. “Come in, Peter.”
Teri stepped back and let him enter, feeling as she did as if she was allowing the CTU agent to cross some sort of boundary. Her relationship to Jack’s work was, by nature, distant and difficult. At the moment it was also tragic.
Peter looked as uncomfortable as she felt. He had a boyish look for a CTU agent, with a plump face and a ruler-straight part in his thick black hair. He wore a blue suit and dress shirt, but no tie. This Peter Jiminez might have been a young movie executive or a banker, but Teri knew from experience that he would have a gun slung under his arm, and probably another hidden somewhere.
“Can I get you something?” she offered, motioning him to sit on the living room couch. She took a seat in a chair across from the table.
“No, ma’am, thank you,” he replied. “I don’t want to trouble you. Truth is, I’m not even sure why I’m here. Do you mind if I just jump right in? Here’s the thing: when my chance came to join CTU, I jumped at it, because I wanted to work with your husband.”
“Did you know him?”
“Not him personally, but his reputation. CTU guys don’t talk much about their work, that’s true of a lot of agencies, of course. But word gets around. I was in Diplomatic Security Services when they started the CTU program. We did protective services — bodyguard stuff, but we don’t like using the word
“I’m sure it did,” Teri said wryly.
Peter laughed. “Well, there was some colorful language attached to his name sometimes. But he also had a reputation for getting the job done. So I jumped into CTU the first chance I got. Two months on the job, and now this happens.”
