Morgan: Robinson Destruction – Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Page 16
There would be no fingerprints to trace—she had none. No DNA to try and gather, Tru was always careful of that. And thanks to the man working the computers in the building, on loan too from the government, no one would ever have a picture of her in the ER or the recovery room.
Making her way down the hall, she saw a familiar face. Lowering her head so as not to be recognized, the pain in her belly nearly took her to the floor. The man that shot her was gone by the time she was able to turn around.
Looking down at her hand, she could see that she was bleeding badly from a wound in her belly. It was a gunshot wound that wouldn’t be fixed with duct tape, like she usually used until she could get someplace to get herself fixed up. Staggering to the nurses’ station, she pulled out her cell phone before it was too late for her.
“Number one seven four eight. Down. Last location.” She closed her eyes, wondering where the answering beep was. Just when she was ready to admit that she wasn’t going to get it, the answering beeps made her weep a little. “Agent down. Repeat, agent down.”
Nurses were moving much too fast for her dizziness, so she closed her eyes. Opening the phone, she took out the battery and the sim card and busted the phone. Christ, she needed to stay aware for just a few more minutes. She was also worried about her Charlie now, and if he would have someone take care of him if she was hurt.
The phone ringing at the nurses’ desk had her hanging on for just a few moments longer. More time than she thought that she had.
“Are you…? Let me get this right. Are you one seven four eight?” Tru nodded. “I’m to call Dr. Robinson to operate on you. I’m to ask you if you need anything.”
“No.” A very large man was coming down the hall. Staggering a little more, she felt herself being lifted up into his arms. “Robinson?”
“Yes.” She was laid down and they started to work on her—putting in an IV, taking her temp, asking her questions that she couldn’t answer—or rather wouldn’t. “I’m to tell you that zero zero three two is on her way.”
She couldn’t let the drugs take her under until she met with the other agent. Robinson seemed to know this, and had all activity stop regarding putting her under for the surgery to remove the bullet. Tru knew that she was in deep shit here because of two things. She was bleeding badly, and Tru had been shot by another agent.
“Agent, can you hear me?” Prying her eyes open, she looked at the legendary Rogen Hall. Tru had only seen pictures of her. They didn’t do the woman justice. “Agent?”
“Have kit.” The things she had on her were handed over to Rogen. She asked her if she knew who had shot her. “Yes. Agent twelve fifty-three. Assignment is complete.”
Tru could no longer keep her eyes open. If she were to die right now, which she thought was a very good possibility, her family would never know what she was doing here. Her death would be written off as a car accident, just the way she’d planned for it to look. No one would acknowledge her, her job, or what she had been doing here. Tru was nothing more than a fart in the wind as far as most of the world would know.
~*~
Rogen didn’t leave the hospital as she should have done. Nor did she take care that the phone calls were made that were needed so that the woman in the operating room would know that she’d not only completed her job, but that she’d not given any information to anyone about it. The kit in her hand, the one that the woman had given her, not only carried a used syringe, but also enough aconite to kill several large men in a matter of seconds.
That didn’t bother her. What did bother her, and the reason that Rogen hadn’t called it in, was that she’d been shot by one of her kind. Another agent had tried to kill her. May have, according to Thatcher.
Sitting in his office, waiting for Thatcher to tell her if the woman lived, Rogen looked out the window and tried to think. In this hospital someone was dead. A person that the young woman would have killed to have completed her assignment. Instead of calling anyone that might well have the answers to the million and one questions going around in her head, she called Patrick.
Rogen knew that he was on vacation. It was actually his honeymoon, but no one but her and Thatcher knew that. Winnie James, one of her best friends and colleagues, had married him the day before yesterday. As soon as Patrick answered, she knew that someone had contacted him about what was going on in their little town.
“Are you on a secure line?” She told him that she was forever when talking to him. “Good. You have in your hospital a woman by the name of Trudy Justice. She’s named after her mother, I guess. Anyway, Tru—she goes by that, believe it or not…Tru. I take it that someone contacted you about her. Are you to kill her? If you were told that, don’t. She’s about as valuable as you are, Rogen.”
Rogen told him what she knew. He asked her if anyone else know that she’d been shot by another agent. Now Rogen was beginning to worry.
“No. That’s why I called you. Nothing about this is making me all warm and fuzzy. You know me well enough to know that very little makes me feel that way, but there is something very hinky about this.” Patrick told her she was a smart cookie. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to go where you are and beat it out of you?”
“She’s an agent, as you’re aware, that goes in and cleans up messes that might occur. The target that she had this morning was a man by the name of Allan DeLong. He was working doubles with another country for a little while now. His body was recovered—”
“On our land this morning.” Patrick said that was right. “Thatcher worked on him. It’ll really piss him off when he finds out that he’s dead. I have to at least give him something for this. It really does bother him to lose one.”
“You know that we trust him as much as we do you. Just between you two, however, it’s going to look like he suffered a heart attack. Unless someone is looking for aconite, they’re not going to find it. So he’ll be in the clear.” Rogen thanked him. “Justice was sent in to finish up the job that another agent, dead as well, was to have taken care of yesterday. We only found out about this, I guess, when his body turned up in Thatcher’s operating room.”
“What do you want me to do about Justice? You know as well as I do that we can make her death very public so that they think they got their man.” Patrick said it was already taken care of. The people in the operating room with Thatcher were going to help him. “Where do I take her after this? And those helping him—who hired them? You or the other agent’s guy?”
It was barely a second before he started cursing. Rogen stood up just as Patrick stopped cursing and told her what she needed to do.
“Check on Thatcher. Mother fuck, I never thought of that. Also, she has a dog. A monster of a thing. You’ll have to go and get it for her.”
She was leaving Thatcher’s office when she thought of something else. Telling Patrick, he told her that if things went south for Thatcher, he’d call in a clean-up crew.
“I have to go. I’m standing right outside the operating room right now. Just send the crew, Patrick. I don’t want this to linger around too much if there is need for the crew.” He said to consider them there. “I owe you.”
When she put her phone in her pocket, she realized that she was going to have to find the one that Justice had. Just as she was thinking of the trash cans between here and recovery, one of the nurses pulled out a handgun with a silencer on it. She never got to pull the trigger.
Chapter 13
Thatcher was trying his best not to freak out. All he could think about was that someone had planned to kill him. It hadn’t had a thing to do with him being married to Rogen, either. Only that he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There had been three people, two nurses and an anesthesiologist, with him in the operating room. One of the nurses was dead, the other was in Rogen’s custody. The anesthesiologist had committed suicide by
arsenic just before Rogen was able to arrest him.
Thatcher’s hands were still shaking when Rogen asked him if he was all right. “No, I’m not fucking all right.” She kissed him on the mouth. “That helps, but it doesn’t negate the fact that someone was willing to put a bullet in my head because I was called in to help a patient that needed me.”
“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t called Patrick to talk to him, it would have been too late.” Thatcher told her that she wasn’t helping at all. “I’m sorry, honey. I truly am. But you’ll be happy to know that we know who the killer was. Who killed Mr. DeLong, as well. Agent Justice is going to be hanging out at our house until we can make sure that she’s safe.”
“I signed her death certificate.” Rogen kissed him again. “Rogen, I’m sure that you’re aware of this, but you need to explain more and try to distract me less. All right? Someone just tried to kill me.”
“Okay.” Rogen took him to his office and closed and locked the door. When she sat on the corner of his desk closest to him, Thatcher leaned into her so that he’d hear whatever she had to say to him. “Tru Justice, that’s her name, is the woman that you saved. She’s like, really important to the government. She has an eidetic memory. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, but that isn’t a real thing.” She only nodded at him. “Are you telling me that she remembers every sound, word, and language she hears? That’s not possible—you know that, right?”
“It is for her. Case in point, she read books on what a doctor does in his everyday work. Then she looked up each of those procedures to see exactly how to do them. Then, Patrick told me, she read up on more things, emergency things to do, so that she’d blend into coming here for this job. Justice also speaks every language that can be used, even a couple of dead ones. She did a stint as a race car driver. Can fly a plane as well as a helicopter.” Thatcher was impressed. If any of that was true. “Thatcher, she worked in your emergency room for over three hours waiting for you to get out of surgery for DeLong. And she did it flawlessly.”
“Okay, she’s good. But why did someone shoot her?” Rogen said that they were working on that. “As in you know and need more information, or you don’t know and are starting from scratch?”
“Both. We know who shot her, but we can’t do shit about it because—well, he’s dead. I didn’t do it, but whoever sent him here to take care of her.” Thatcher asked if that was the unknown. “That, and it’s someone that works with Patrick and me.”
Now that scared him more. To have someone right in the government working to kill off an agent…well, that was something that would keep him up at nights. Thatcher asked her what she needed from him.
“Two things. First of all, you are going to quit your job sooner rather than later. I can’t watch over you here when I can’t be in the operating room with you. The second thing is, and this wasn’t my call, the agencies are paying to have yours and Dawson’s building finished by the end of the week. They’re going to use you both, if you agree, as their emergency room for agents and the like that can get to you faster than back to home. They want that up and running as soon as possible. You can turn them down, but I’d not. They’ll be able to have a staff on board with you that will keep you both safer than I can, not to mention all your patients. In additional, they’ll pay all the insurance for both you and Dawson.”
“Christ, they certainly make it hard to turn down, don’t they?” She told him that she loved him. “Are you telling me that because there is more?”
“I do love you, dumbass, but there is more.” He asked her if it could wait until he processed what he already had heard. “I suppose, but it’s nothing bad.”
“All right, tell me. I can handle one more thing, I guess.” Instead of answering him as he thought that she would, Rogen took his hand into hers and put it on her belly. He felt the movement almost as soon as he touched her. “That’s our baby.”
“Yes.” She was grinning like he was sure that he was. “I felt it earlier when I was talking to Patrick the second time, but I didn’t know what it was. It just occurred to me that it’s our baby moving, and I couldn’t wait to share with you.”
Thatcher leaned down and put his head on their child. He could feel the fluttering that was there, feeling it like the baby was telling him that it was there to distract him even more. Pulling up her shirt, he kissed the mound and looked up at Rogen.
“I love you so very much.” She kissed him again, this time longer and with more heat. “I can’t wait to hold it. Jimmy will love having a sibling, don’t you think?”
“I do. And I wasn’t distracting you so much as I was bubbling over with the need to tell you, and I thought that this would be a great way to make you realize that things could be a lot worse.” He nodded, still holding her belly in his larger hands. “Thatcher, I’m so happy you pissed me off enough to fall in love with you.”
“Forever the romantic.” She laughed and told him that she had to get back to work. There were things still going on. “I’ll have to talk to Dawson about the other thing.”
“I hope he says yes. They started on the building about an hour ago.” She skipped away and Thatcher had to laugh. His wife was going to drive him insane, but he loved her anyway.
Dawson was in his office in the ER. He knew that he’d been stressing out about this place, but he had a feeling that today was about all he could handle. The new administrators had sent down another memo, a memo that was about four pages long, on things that were going to be changing soon. Most of it having to do with nurses and how they were going to be treated from now on.
“Did you read this shit?” Thatcher told him that he’d only seen the topic. “Yes, well, let me read you a few lines of this bullshit. You’d think, oh good. Nurses are going to be treated better. Get a raise. Or, I don’t know, they’re going to have more help. No. It’s nothing like that at all. They want them to wear their own clothing in here to save costs and make them more friendly looking to the patients. Can you fucking imagine the germs that we’ll be dealing with because of that? Everyday clothing my ass. Next they’ll tell us that they should wear open toe shoes so that they’ll get whatever is all over the floor too. Fuckers.”
“When is your notice up?” Dawson eyed him. “What if I told you that the building that we’re working on will be finished up by the end of the week? That we will have partners that will not only pay our medical insurance, but also help us out with staffing?”
“Who?” He told him what Rogen had told him. “When can we start? I have to tell you, Thatcher, I’m an inch away from just walking. And in answer to your question, my notice was up yesterday. I’m helping out because ‘they’re still looking for the perfect fit,’ they told me.”
“I’ll help you pack up.” In an hour, not only did they have Dawson packed up, but his office was emptied as well. Thatcher had packed his stuff up a couple of days ago, but hadn’t had the time to take it out. The two of them walked out together as his notice, like his brother’s, had been over yesterday.
Driving toward the offices, he told him everything that he could concerning what was going on around them. Thatcher didn’t mention the murder attempt on him. Nor did he say anything about their guests in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Charlie hadn’t put up a bit of fuss once they got him into the car. It was like he didn’t care at all that a cat was taking him to his master.
Pulling into the parking lot that was going to serve as their new offices, both of them just sat there and stared at the work already finished in the place.
“Did you know that we were going to paint it blue?” Thatcher said that it wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he did like it. “Me too. Sort of cozy looking, I guess. There’s a lot of equipment going in the back, did you see that?”
He hadn’t, so they made their way back there. Thatcher didn’t notice that they’d had loading docks before, but apparently they had t
hem now. The buildings, one on either side of them, were being renovated too. While he didn’t know they were for sale before, he supposed they could always find something to use them for.
“Are you by chance the Doctors Robinson?” Both he and Dawson nodded. “I’m the agent in charge of the work being done. Your wife said that she sent you a picture of me so that you could talk to me. I’m only here to talk about the buildings.”
Thatcher pulled out his phone and saw the note attached to it. If this wasn’t the man, she said for him to kill him. He had no idea how he was going to pull that off, but he was glad that it was who was in the picture. His name was Cody Wayne.
Dawson was talking to Cody about the other two buildings and why they were being fixed up too. Thatcher caught up with the two of them as they entered the building on the right of their offices.
“These will be for you to use for regular patients that will need an overnight stay. Everything in these rooms, eighteen in all, will have all the state of the art equipment that the hospital should have.” Dawson said they thought that the hospital was far behind in that. “They are. In addition to that, there will be two cameras in each of the rooms that will be monitored at all times. Just to make sure that the people you have in here are actually who you think they are.”
Dawson looked a little confused, but Thatcher could help him later with that. Both of them were very impressed at how far they’d come in getting things ready, as well as the way they had it laid out. Cody told them that they’d had a lot of practice in setting these sorts of things up.
When he took them to the other building, Thatcher noticed that not only wasn’t there any sort of identification on the building, but you had to have a swipe card and a code to get into the place.
“I’ll set that up for you as soon as we have a look around. It’s my understanding that you’re aware of the agent already here.” Thatcher said that he was, and that he’d explain that to his brother later. “Good. No one but agents will ever use this building. You aren’t to use it for anyone else than that, or they’ll be shot. I’m not joking here. We cannot have anyone knowing who these people are, ever.”