The Homecoming (26 page)

“Sometimes the best journeys aren’t planned down to the nth degree.”

She’d heard that. But had never been able to embrace the concept. She was a neurosurgeon. Being a perfectionistic, detail-oriented individual went with the territory.

“I’m not very good at going with the flow.”

“No problem. I am. So I’ll teach you.”

She lifted her chin. “I’ve always been an independent woman.”

He laughed at that. A huge, rumbling laugh that burst forth from deep in his chest. She could actually feel it against her breasts. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?” he suggested.

Then, still holding her hand, he ran his free one down her hair, which, she feared, must look an absolute fright. But from the way he was looking at her, either he didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Can we talk about this later?” he asked. “Because after all that time in the hospital yesterday, I’d really like a shower.” The broad hand that had stroked her hair moved down to smooth over her shoulder, his fingertips brushing against the crests of her breasts. “And I don’t want to take it alone.”

To Faith’s shock, the suggestion made her blush like a love-struck teenager. She could feel the heat rising in her face, so bright it would have been impossible for him to miss.

The last time she’d gone with the flow was when she’d let Ben pick her up that night they’d first met, when she’d attended a riverfront festival in Portland with friends. And, Faith reminded herself, look how well that had turned out.

They’d just gotten beneath the steaming- hot water when her BlackBerry rang from where she’d left it on the suite’s table.

Years of medicine left her unable to ignore it. Especially when she had a postsurgery patient in the hospital.

“I’m sorry.” She went up on her toes, gave John a quick, hard kiss, grabbed a towel from the rack on the wall, wrapped it around herself, and ran back into living room, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

The call was, as she’d feared, from the hospital. She kept the conversation brief, aware of John now standing in the doorway, a towel draped low on his hips.

“What’s wrong with Danny?” he asked.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said in her most reassuring physician’s tone.

“Faith.” He crossed the room and took hold of her shoulders. “You don’t need to treat me with kid gloves. I’m a cop. I’ve also spent hours in hospitals with Glory. So just give it to me straight; then we can deal with it.”

“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “But first you need to understand that medical terms don’t necessarily mean a prognosis, and—”

“Faith,” he repeated, cutting her off. Although his voice was strong, his face had gone ashen. “Just say it.”

This was not the first time she’d ever said the words to a patient’s family member. But never had they been so personal.

“I’m so sorry, John.” She placed a comforting hand on his arm. “Daniel’s in a coma.”

Trey hadn’t wanted to like Sax Douchett. First of all, he was a SEAL. And his dad had always said that SEALs were the hotshot cowboys of the military. When he’d been a little kid, he’d thought that being a cowboy would be a cool thing. Until his dad explained that it meant they lacked discipline.

Which Marines, his dad always said, had in spades.

Wanting to grow up to be a Marine, just like his dad—one of the few, the brave, the proud—Trey had worked really, really hard on his own discipline.

Sometimes he messed up, like when he left his bike in the driveway and his grandmother almost ran over it when she came home from the hospital late one night, but all his teachers, here and in California, were always telling him that he was the best kid in his class.

So when he saw his mom smiling up at that cowboy SEAL, he’d gotten mad. That was the special look she’d sometimes given his dad. She wasn’t supposed to look at other guys like that.

But then the SEAL had invited him to ride in the parade. And better yet, had let him play fetch with Velcro. Even if the dog didn’t always bring the stick back, it was fun to toss it.

The lumberyard had been neat, too. Especially when Sax had bought him his own toolbox filled with stuff so he could help fix up Bon Temps. He even showed him how to hold the hammer. Not at the head, which was the way he’d been doing. But at the very end of the wooden handle.

“Let the tool do the work,” he’d said. And although in the beginning he bent as many nails as he got straight, he’d just begun to get the hang of it when Sax had said they should go get lunch.

And
that
was when things turned from cool to awesome.

The inside of the VFW hall was the most
guy
place Trey had ever been. The walls were paneled with boards that had big knots in them, the top of the bar was carved with initials and symbols of different units, and the most awesome of all was the stuffed animals. Not stuffed toy ones like the whale he’d won at Sax’s welcome- home party.

But
real
ones.

The kind that used to be alive.

And were now dead.

Though a lot of them looked as if they could come to life again at any second.

“Is that a grizzly bear?” he asked, staring up at the huge, snarling animal standing next to the jukebox.

“Sure enough is,” the bartender, who’d told him to call him Pete, said. “Bagged him myself in Alaska, on some R and R after a mission in Panama.”

“On Operation Just Cause?” Trey asked.

“Got it in one.” Pete glanced over at Sax, who was seated on the stool beside Trey. “Kid knows his military history.”

“My dad was a Marine,” Trey announced.

“Yeah, I got that from your shirt,” the bartender said.

“Jared Conway was a hero,” Sax said.

“That Conway’s kid?” a voice called out from the pool tables.

A man ambled over, a mug of beer in his hand. His hair was the color of a carrot, tied back in a ponytail with a leather string, which Trey figured his dad would consider a lack of discipline, but if the guy was in this place, then he must have been a veteran, so Trey straightened his back in the respect he’d been taught.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Jared Conway was my dad.”

“Hell of a thing happened to him,” the man said. “Name’s O’Riley. Tim. Served in the sandbox about the same time as your dad. I was Airborne, so our paths never crossed over there. But he was a couple years ahead of me in school, and I remember him being a straight-up guy. And a real ROTC star.”

“I’m going into ROTC. When I’m old enough.” Trey decided not to mention that that was another one of those things his mom said they’d talk about when the time came. Which wasn’t encouraging. But he’d already made up his mind.

It was Tim O’Riley’s turn to shoot a look at Sax. “Apple didn’t fall far from the tree with this one,” he observed.

“Seems not,” Sax agreed.

Trey liked talking about his dad, which he couldn’t do much with his mom because he was afraid he’d make her cry. And whenever his dad’s name came up in front of his grandmother, she’d get a sort of pinched look to her face that gave him the idea that his father hadn’t been her favorite person.

As if they knew just how he was feeling, other veterans got up from tables and came over to the bar and began telling stories about his dad. Stories neither of his parents had ever talked about. Like how he’d been an Eagle Scout, and the time he’d rescued a little kid, younger than Trey, who’d gotten caught in a riptide on the coast, and his dad had gotten a medal from the fire department for bravery.

“Your dad was a bona fide all-American hero,” one guy wearing a black leather vest with all sorts of patches on it said. His gray hair was pulled back in another one of those ponytails. “Semper Fi, kid.”

“Semper Fi,” Trey repeated along with the other Marines in the room.

And he suddenly realized, as he looked over at the snarling grizzly bear, and the mountain-lion head glaring down from the wall, and the rattlesnake coiled on the shelf holding the bottles behind the bar, that right now, here, in this very special place of warriors, he wasn’t afraid of those dangerous-looking animals.

Or of volcanoes, or typhoons, or tsunamis, or any other of the disasters that could kill innocent people that he’d seen on TV.

Because every man in the room seemed to agree with Tim O’Riley and Sax: that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

Proudly lifting his glass of root beer, Trey Conway joined in the toast to his all-American hero father.

Since Cait McKade had, like Kara, been a cop, what had started out as a planned girls’ lunch turned into the two of them sharing former cases.

It was only when a diner at a nearby table gasped in shock as Cait shared the story of the Flamemaster, a serial arsonist who’d terrorized the Lowcountry city of Sommersett, South Carolina, a few years ago, that they realized the entire restaurant had gone unnaturally quiet as everyone avidly eavesdropped.

They’d laughed afterward out on the sidewalk, so hard that Cait had sworn she was in danger of wetting her pants. After stopping back at the sheriff’s office so she could take care of that problem, Kara had driven out to the small airfield with her, and been impressed by the gleaming white jet waiting on the tarmac.

“The guy who created Phoenix Team has deep pockets,” Cait divulged. “And doesn’t mind spending it. Although I’ve met him only once, I’ve got to admit that if I weren’t madly in love with my husband, I might’ve been tempted to try to get past his shields.”

“He’s former military?” Kara wondered how anyone in the service could acquire such wealth.

“I’m not sure. He’s a mystery man who doesn’t give anything personal away. I don’t think even my old partner, who runs the day-to-day operation, knows that much about him. He is one magnificent hottie, though. Dark, silent, and brooding, like an Irish Heathcliff.”

“Dark, silent, and brooding guys tend to be high-maintenance.” Kara had watched military wives who’d married the type and usually learned to regret it.

“Probably are. But you can’t deny they have a certain appeal.”

Kara was still thinking about that after Cait had taken off, headed back east with the box of bones, bullet fragments, and the casing from the shell that had killed her father. She’d sensed that Sax hadn’t survived his years at war totally unscathed, yet although he’d played at being the rebel back in high school, deep down he’d been a warm and caring person. And always, with her and now with Trey, unrelentingly good-natured.

It also occurred to Kara as she hit the clicker to open the house’s three-car garage that, were she to get to know him, Kara’s mother might realize how much Sax had in common with her father.

Her mother’s car wasn’t in its slot. Which was odd. When Kara hadn’t heard any further updates on Danny’s condition, she had assumed all would be well. Which meant that her mother and John should have been home by now.

She entered the kitchen door, pulled out her phone, and had just dialed her mother’s number when she was tackled from behind and thrown facedown onto the hardwood floor.

As strong hands began to pound her from above, causing a feeling of déjà vu to flood over her, Kara began to fight.

For her life.

“Okay,” Faith told John as they drove the rental car the short distance to the hospital, “the first thing you have to understand is that a coma is not an automatic synonym for a persistent vegetative state.”

“No offense, Faith,” he said through clenched teeth, “but I wish you wouldn’t even use those words in regard to Danny.”

“I strongly doubt we’ll have to. As I said, he came through the surgery with flying colors. He’s a young, healthy male in peak condition. Although I hate to make a prognosis without examining him, since you and I are closer than the usual doctor-patient family relationship—”

“Now, there’s an understatement,” he muttered. But she thought she detected just a hint of his usual humor in the tone.

“—I suspect we’re merely dealing with brain swelling from the trauma of first the gunshot wound, followed by the surgery.”

“
Merely
? That sounds damn serious to me.”

“It’s not that uncommon. And I’ll get to it in a minute. But first, the word
coma
itself simply means a loss of consciousness. Medically, it’s a sleeplike state from which people can’t be aroused, even if stimulated.”

“I know you’re trying to be encouraging, sweetheart. But that’s not exactly helping.”

“I’m sorry. But you wanted me to be straight with you, and that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s not uncommon, in the case of brain trauma, for a person to drift in and out of consciousness for minutes, hours, or even days.”

“Well, now I’m really relieved.”

She shot him a look. “Do you want the prettied-up version? Or the facts?”

He winced a little at her sharp tone. “Just the facts, ma’am,” he said. “And I just realized something.”

“What?”

“I think we’re having our first fight.”

She couldn’t help herself: Despite the seriousness of their situation, a laugh escaped. That was something else she and John had in common, Faith realized: Cops and doctors both shared a dark sense of humor. Sometimes it was the only way to get past the tough things they witnessed.

“Getting back on point,” she said, dodging any discussion of their personal relationship, which she needed time to sort out, “I sincerely doubt that we’re looking at days, because the duration usually relates to the severity of the injury to the brain. And Daniel’s injury was, as I told you, remarkably light, given the circumstances.

“Some doctors set the time at six hours. Loss of consciousness for less than that is limited to a concussion. The long-term outcome for those patients is excellent. Longer than six hours, there’s a broad spectrum of consciousness.”