She kissed his forehead. “I have to call my supervisor anyway. I’ll be right back. Don’t let him get agitated.”
She tried to walk by Evan, but he drew her into his arms and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
Then he handed her over to Micah, and he did the same. “We owe you one, Agent Callahan.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away. She looked over at Rome who was watching them with a frown.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She slipped out of the room, relieved to be out of there. Rome had been giving her such a strange look. Almost angry. Like it had been her fault. Leaning against the wall, she shut her eyes and tried to keep from allowing the fear that had swamped her the night before to take over. She would not let it win.
“Agent Callahan?”
She opened her eyes and found the agent she’d talked to the night before. “Agent Brewer.”
The man smiled at her as if her remembering his name was a gift. “If you have a chance, I’d like to talk to you. Agent Smith is on his way here.”
Her eyes widened at the news. “He is?”
“Yes. He has been calling every thirty minutes to check on you.”
She smiled. “He’s a family friend.”
“This family friend wants to know just what the hell you were thinking.”
She looked down the hall at her supervisor. He looked tired. She had always thought of him as an honorary uncle. He and her father had started at the Academy together, came up in the ranks together, and it was Smith who had been beside the bed with her when her father died. Everything she had been holding back came bubbling to the surface. The fear for Rome, for herself, the stress she’d been working under the last two weeks…
She let the tears fall as she walked down the hall to him. When she reached him, he opened his arms, and she allowed him to pull her close. And then she wept.
· · · · ·
“You fainted,” Evan said, chuckling. “Wuss.”
“I didn’t faint.”
“Maria said you did,” Micah said as he settled in the chair beside the bed. The one Maria had been sitting in. All night, he had known she was there. He had been drugged to the gills, but he had felt her presence, and it was the only thing that would have kept him in that hospital room.
“She’s wrong.”
“I have a feeling she’s hardly ever wrong,” Micah remarked. There was a hint of humor in his friend’s voice, but Rome ignored it.
“She thinks she knows what she’s doing. Damned if she just thinks she can do what she wants.”
Evan and Micah shared a look.
“And another thing, how does she get off acting like she saved me? I’m the one who got her out of the situation.”
“Jack was your partner,” Micah said quietly.
The guilt crashed down on him. “Yeah, I know. It’s something I should have seen.”
“Shit, son, no one could have seen it. He hid it well. His name isn’t even Jack Daniels.”
That caught his attention.
“What do you know?”
“Just what that Agent Brewer told us. They started looking into his background. Jack Daniels died twenty-two years ago. He stole the kid’s identity, built a life for himself. I have a feeling the FBI will be uncovering information about the bastard for years.”
“Maria blames herself, Rome,” Micah said.
“He was my partner. I should have known he was killing women. Hell, I didn’t even make the connection with all his trips back to the mainland.”
“From what I heard, they’re going to have a special commission, and your girlfriend is going to be under the microscope,” Evan said.
“What the hell are you talking about? They’re blaming her for their idiocy? Feels like she’s going to be the scapegoat. They couldn’t find the man, and she has to come up with some kind of asinine idea of using herself as bait, and this is the way they treat her?”
“Yeah, well, she’s a trained FBI agent.” Micah’s tone was oddly neutral.
“So.” It sounded very immature, but he didn’t care. The fear he’d had when he knew that Jack had her, what he could have done to her, came rushing back. “If she thinks that she’s going to be doing shit like that after we get married, she has another think coming.”
“You’re getting married? You proposed?” Evan asked.
“No, but we will.”
“You will?” Micah asked. “Is she coming to live here?”
Rome hadn’t gotten that far. Hell, he’d just come up with the idea. He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t watch her leave. It would tear him apart. He loved her, loved her like crazy, and there was just no way he could let her go.