Jasper, page 7
“That’s fine. You’re doing just fine,” Evan reassured her. “So, you saw the blood appear, and Mason slowly collapsed. Is that correct?”
She nodded. “He slowly sank to the ground, and then he just dropped. Before I got there, I think the pilot and a couple other people had already been all over him. Masters was there too.” She thought back to the scene and shuddered.
“Right, and do you know if Masters was on that flight, or do you know if he had any purpose for being close by?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I presumed he was already at the hangar or something.”
“Right.” Evan considered that.
“That is possible, right?”
“Of course it is. That’s quite possible. I’ll talk to him about it.”
“You should also probably talk to my cousin.”
“Jasper, yes. He’s already making waves,” he shared, with a twitch of his lips.
“He’s good at that,” she noted, with a smirk. “He’s been to hell and back, but I know he would go the distance all over again for Mason.”
“Any particular reason?”
She hesitated and then shrugged. “At one point in time Jasper was pretty down and upset over a case early on in his career, where he ended up arresting a very good friend,” she shared. “Mason was the one who helped him step out of that guilt to see that it wasn’t his fault. His friend was at fault for making the choices he had. Plus Jasper still had a sworn duty to do right by the job, and that sometimes doing right by the job felt like doing wrong by the people you cared about.”
“So, Mason and Jasper were good?”
“More than that. I know that back then Jasper struggled, and again in a more recent investigation, but, after talking to Mason each time, Jasper seemed to find a certain amount of peace with it; and they’ve been very close ever since. Jasper’s my cousin and has been in my life a very long time, and we’ve been close. So having Mason be a part of that was an easy transition for all of us,” she murmured.
“Of course. It’s a good thing Mason trusts Jasper because we’re all in the position of having to trust him now.”
She looked up at him, nodded, and very carefully added, “If you have any other ideas, please don’t. You can trust Jasper. I can’t emphasize enough how important he has been to multiple other cases, cases that he was given because he would do the right thing, regardless of the outcome, yet cases that hurt him badly,” she explained, with a nod. “That’s one of the reasons why he delayed starting here. He just needed time to …” She broke up as she thought about it, then tilted her head. “I guess the easiest answer is he needed time to heal. His spirit was hurting.”
Evan sat back and nodded. “I think, in many ways, we’ve all been there.”
“Exactly, and Mason was damn glad to have him out here with us, so we can spend time together and could do things with him. Jasper’s a good guy.”
“Is he single?” Evan asked curiously.
She winced. “He was engaged to somebody in the military back East, but, as it turned out, … that was one of the people he ended up recently having to arrest.”
Evan sucked back his breath. “Shit.”
“Yes, a betrayal at all levels,” she noted, “particularly since one of the reasons the relationship even started was apparently for her to keep him at a distance and, therefore, prevent him from finding out the truth.”
“Which makes it even harder, of course. … I get that. You never want to be duped into a relationship, but to be intentionally duped into a relationship as part of a larger plan to prevent you from discovering a crime, that’s a whole different level of betrayal.”
“Exactly,” she agreed, with a smile. “Jasper is a good guy. Don’t forget that.”
*
Mason shifted in whatever cotton-batting world he was in. He kept turning, twisting, and looking for the danger that was ever present, that the voice at the back of his head kept warning him about. Move, move, move, now, and yet nothing moved.
The more he tried to shift, the more he tried to get away from whatever danger was oncoming, the more he realized that absolutely nothing was moving. He couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t move his legs, and somehow he was a prisoner or subdued in some way. He couldn’t figure it out, and the harder he tried, the more exhausted he became, and, just as he fought off one wave of panic, another wave would come in.
He felt the pinch of something into his arm, and, for the first time, it occurred to him that maybe he was being drugged. With that thought alone, he slipped back under again. Along with the drugs went the will to fight, as he slid back into the unconscious state he’d found himself in earlier.
All the fight went out of him, and he crashed back under.
Chapter 6
‡
Amber got off for lunch at noon, hoping to run some errands, but first she headed up to check on Tesla. When she got there, Tesla was on the phone but appeared to be doing fine. So, checking to ensure that everything was well with Mason, Amber stepped back out into the hallway and headed down to her car. She was tired, hadn’t had a great night’s sleep, envisioning men in her ER room who didn’t belong there, intent on causing all kinds of chaos. Of course she’d seen way too much in life not to realize just what chaos they could cause, and that was the last thing that she needed in her world right now.
As she got to her car, distracted and still thinking about Mason and everything that had gone on, she pulled out her keys to buzz the vehicle open. Just as she went to do that, another vehicle raced up beside her. She heard the roar of the engine, and she turned and belatedly jumped out of the way. Still, the car slammed into her hip and sent her tumbling.
Several people nearby shouted and raced toward Amber; then, she was checked over quickly. She struggled to her feet, surprised that she had full mobility, even more surprised that she hadn’t blacked out. She was pretty sure she wasn’t badly injured, but she was hurt and knew that she would be stiff and sore at best. Now that the shock was wearing off, she was beyond angry.
She didn’t understand whether she had just been the victim of an accident, with some fool going too fast, or there was something much more ominous about it. One of the doctors she knew well eyed her critically.
“Come on. We need you back inside,” Dr. Charles said, wrapping his arm around her. “Let’s get that checked out.”
She took several tentative steps, leaning on him, and shook her head. “I’m fine. You know it as well as I do,” she muttered, “but I’ll be damn sore.”
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he agreed, “but I would still feel better if we got you checked out.”
She frowned, but the doctor wouldn’t take no for an answer. Realizing her reluctance was probably because she didn’t want a fuss made over her, intellectually she still knew that this wasn’t the time to argue. She went back into the ER, wincing with pain at every step. Her team raced over to ask what had happened, and Dr. Charles gave them the rundown.
“This guy just came out of nowhere and slammed into her and kept right on going,” he shared, urgently raising a hand to keep them all from hovering over her. “We need to run some X-rays and confirm nothing worse is going on in there.”
It took another two hours for everybody to decide that, other than the horrific swelling, bruising, and the fact that it would take days to recuperate from this, she needed bed rest. Maybe even an overnight stay. She had nothing broken, so, for the most part, it would all be soft tissue damage.
She managed to convince everybody to let her go home on the promise that she would check in with them later.
And, with that agreed to, she and a few of the medical team went back outside, walking with her to her vehicle. When she tried to get into the driver’s seat, she found the pain was bad enough that she had to bite it back, just so they didn’t stop her from leaving.
Then her door swung open wide, and Jasper barked, “Don’t even get in on the driver’s side. Let’s put you on the other side or in the back seat, and I’ll drive you home.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he just glared at her. She snorted. “So, who died and made you boss?”
“The good thing is, you didn’t die,” he declared, “but we’ll have a talk about that.”
Her mouth snapped shut, and she stared at him mutely for a moment. Then, with his help, she managed to get around to the far side of her vehicle and sat down in the passenger seat, wincing at the pain still radiating through her body.
He nodded his thanks to her coworkers and got in the driver’s seat. “Not to worry. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
There were a few grins, but a couple people seemed worried.
As soon as he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, she looked over at him. “Are you saying this is connected?”
He looked over at her. “Did anybody see you take that video?”
She frowned but knew he was right to ask that question. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, but you don’t know for sure, do you?”
“No,” she admitted, her voice dropping, as she realized that was a possibility. “I made it look like I wasn’t.”
“And trying,” he noted, with a raised brow, “probably made it look like you were. Every time we hide something, it’s amazing how much it ends up bringing attention instead.”
“Crap,” she muttered softly.
“Now, tell me exactly what happened today.”
Marshaling her thoughts, she went quiet for a moment and then gave him a brief version of what had happened. “Honestly it happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance to see anything.”
“Which might be a good thing in a way,” he replied, with a nod. “You did fall, right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Do you think the driver would have seen that?”
“If he looked in his rearview mirror, he would have had to,” she said, thinking about it. “Why do you seem happy about that?”
“We want him to think that you’re hurt. If he was intent on killing you, we want him to think he succeeded.”
“Crap,” she muttered, staring at him in shock. “Why would you even put that out there?”
“What do you want me to do? Not tell you?” Twisting in his seat, he faced her. “You took videos of two guys who were suspicious to you in the ER. I presume you had no chance to see who was driving the car that hit you.”
She shook her head. “No, … it was totally unexpected. It happened too damn fast.”
“Exactly, so we have you taking videos of suspicious guys in the ER, and now you’re the victim of a hit-and-run in the parking lot. Were you here on your day off?” he asked, frowning at her. “Your shift’s not over now, is it?”
“No, I planned to run some errands on my lunch break,” she shared. “I came out to my vehicle, still debating as to whether I would have enough time. As I hit the button to unlock the door, the next thing I know, all hell breaks loose. I jumped out of the way but still got hit and ended up on the ground.”
“Right, so how would somebody know about your schedule?”
She shook her head. “Only somebody who works there.”
“Or somebody who can get online, I presume?”
“Sure,” she said cautiously, “but that’s not exactly information that anybody can just grab.”
“And yet it probably wouldn’t be very hard to get,” he stated, with a note of humor in his tone.
She winced. “Yeah, that would be the case for people like you.”
“But think about where you live and where you work,” he declared, raising one eyebrow. “On this base, all kinds of people know how to do all kinds of things. In many cases that’s what we’re trained for.”
She sank against her seat, shaking inside. Not how she expected her day to go. She had never dreamed that something like this could happen, and the thought that it could have been deliberate was enough to make her vomit. Almost immediately she yelled out, “Pull over.” He pulled to the shoulder, as she opened the passenger door and heaved.
She stumbled out, and he came around to help her. When she was done, she looked up at him. “God, I don’t even want to think about that.”
He nodded grimly. “You might not,” he noted, with a firm tone of voice, “but I have to think about it. So, if this is connected, you now need to be under guard. If there’s a connection between you and what happened to Mason, I need to know what that is.”
“Only the fact that I took that video,” she murmured.
“Have you been seen going into Mason’s room?”
She frowned. “I don’t … I mean … Anybody could have seen me, I guess,” she replied. “I’m just walking into a hospital room. It’s my job.”
“Exactly. So somebody sees you taking videos. Somebody sees you going in and out of the hospital room where Mason is being treated for an attempted assassination,” he shared, looking at her calmly. “That is not a far-fetched theory to say the least. So, now we’ve got to consider just what is the purpose of taking you out.”
“I don’t know, but they didn’t succeed.”
He nodded, helping her to get back in the vehicle again. “Which brings me to the next point. If he didn’t succeed, will he try again?”
Her head dropped back against the headrest. She whispered, “Damn, I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, “but we can’t let this slide. That was a deliberate rundown, I imagine.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so, and, if it wasn’t deliberate, you would think they would have stopped to see if you were okay. I presume you hit the car with a pretty good thunk?”
She winced. “I certainly felt a thunk but it doesn’t mean they heard one.”
He laughed. “They would have heard it, and they would have been mentally measuring it, seeing just how much of an impact they’d made.”
“He wasn’t going all that fast,” she noted cautiously. “I just thought it was an accident. It could have just been an accident,” she repeated lamely.
“Yeah, maybe an accident,” he mumbled, “and, then again, I’m not big on accidents.” She glared at him, and he smiled. “The good news is that you’re alive, that you’re okay, and that we’re now in a position to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
“What are you envisioning that to look like?” she asked, her words sliding out, as she stared at him in shock. “Because no way I can have a guard on me. I’ve got to go to work,” she replied, now panicking. “That’s just not how this stuff works. I’m nothing to them.”
“You were nothing until you took that video,” he stated.
She frowned at him. “Oh, so now I’m to blame?”
“No,” he countered. “I am.”
*
Jasper noted how Amber hadn’t said a word since he’d made that statement about him being to blame, but he could see that starting to build in her head, and she would want more of an explanation. Moments later he pulled up outside her apartment.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but don’t start hollering about how I knew where you live. When you told me that you had taken this video, I did some due diligence to gather some facts in terms of where you live and whatnot,” he explained.
She just shook her head, not believing him.
He smiled, looking at her intently. “Now let’s get you up to your apartment.” He came around to her side and slowly helped her straighten out. He could see the beads of sweat on her forehead. “Did they give you a pain shot?”
“They gave me a muscle relaxant and a bit of a painkiller,” she admitted, “but, because I was driving, I couldn’t take very much.”
He didn’t say anything, knowing that any painkillers could affect her after something like this, but the emotional trauma was also something she would struggle with. With him at her side, he slowly got her up to her second-floor apartment. As they walked in, she looked around and noted, “Everything here appears to be normal.”
“Good, and I’m sorry you even had to consider that.”
She stared at him. “I don’t want to consider it. I don’t want anything to do with any of this.”
“And yet …”
“Right, and yet I brought it on myself,” she muttered. “Crap, what the hell was I thinking?”
“You weren’t, and that’s why it’s my fault.” He got her into the living room, where he eased her into a chair. He quickly brought over a footstool too. “Let me know if it’s better with or without this.” She tried it with her injured leg elevated, then paled, and he removed it to ease back the pressure. “That’s not better.”
“No, it isn’t.” She grimaced. “I don’t know where you get off thinking this is your fault,” she muttered, “but it isn’t.”
“I told you to keep an eye out for suspicious characters,” he noted. “If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have thought to take that video.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “I never even considered that, but it’s hardly your fault. They looked suspicious. regardless of what happened to Mason,” she shared.
He laughed. “You can be as mad as hell at me because I am.”
“It doesn’t help to be mad,” she murmured. “All I want right now is to have this all go away.”
“You and me both,” he agreed, “but it looks as if we’re in for a whole lot more than we thought.”
“Great,” she muttered.
He came back with a glass of water and stated, “I’ll put on the teakettle. Better take some of your pain meds.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and sighed. “No, I don’t think I can just yet. I will when this painkiller runs out.”
He nodded. “I’m okay to do whatever it is you say you need,” he shared. “You’re the one who knows what you’ve taken, but don’t forget that you threw up shortly afterward. Now, do you want tea?”
She smiled, then nodded. “A cup of tea would be lovely. Now you’re reminding me that’s what I kept giving Tesla. Although I’m starting to crash now, just as the adrenaline’s wearing off.”
