Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (24 page)

Chapter 49

Tuesday Night

Monica, Heidi and I followed
Alex's ambulance to the hospital. Caleb and another agent followed along as
well, as did Frank. We all sat in the waiting room, which, given the late hour,
was otherwise vacant. Caleb took Monica's statement about being kidnapped and
held. He took my statement about
assisting
the FBI
in her rescue. He asked about each person we had disabled or killed
during the rescue operation. When he had what he needed, he asked us to sign
our statements and thanked me for my assistance. Then it was Frank's turn. He
had brought Detective Branch along. She took detailed notes during Caleb’s
interview and asked Monica and me to sign a statement for the LAPD as well. She
said she’d fill in the details later. That way, we wouldn't need to go downtown
to sign the document. I knew she’d get it right and appreciated her
thoughtfulness.

The doctor came out and told
us that Alex was okay. As I had suspected, the slug had gone clear through and
had done no serious damage. He’d given Alex something to help him sleep. We
should go home, he told us, and come back tomorrow. Given what Monica had been
through, I agreed.

We took Heidi home. I thanked
her for helping. She thanked me for letting her help. She hugged Monica and
told her she was glad she was all right.

Once Heidi was safely behind
her door, I asked Monica if she wanted to go home. She said, “No. Right now I
just want to be with you. You can take me back to my place tomorrow.”

It had been just after four
a.m. when we drifted off to sleep. We had both been wired and not at all
sleepy. We’d snacked on what I had in the cupboards and talked about innocuous
stuff, enjoying being with each other again. We showered together and made love
and had then, finally, fallen asleep. It was ten a.m. when we awoke. We made
love again and then showered and got ready to go see Alex. We stopped at an
IHOP for breakfast, again talking about anything but what had happened. We
weren't ready to talk about it yet. It was too big a subject and we both knew
what had to be said. We'd get to it. But we needed a little more time.

It was a little after noon
when we walked into Alex’s room. Heidi was there, sitting in a chair next to
his bed, holding his hand. Alex's sister, Susan, was on the other side of his
bed.

Alex smiled. “Doctor says I
can go home this afternoon,” he said. “Have to go easy on my leg for a couple
of days. But other than that, I'm good.”

“I've got some vacation time
coming,” Heidi said. “I'm going to take a week off and take care of him.”

Susan was smiling, but she
seemed a little concerned. She didn't know Heidi, and I suspect she was alarmed
at how fast things were moving between her brother and this new woman in his
life.

Alex was smiling, but I could
see that he was worried about the whole thing. Heidi may have been moving a
little too quickly for him as well. But it wasn’t up to any of us to raise the
issue. That’d be up to Alex.

“I'll worry about you less,”
Monica said, “knowing you're in such capable hands.”

“You need any help getting
home?” I asked Alex.

“I think between Heidi and
Susan we've got everything covered.”

Heidi smiled and nodded.

We visited a while longer and
I told him Monica and I would take his car that was still at my office back to
his office. He gave me the keys and thanked me.

After we left the hospital,
Monica wanted to go for a run, so we went back to my apartment, changed, and
took Wilson with us to the park to run. It was the most relaxed run I’d had in
the past nine days. It felt good.

After four miles, we sat down
at a picnic table. There were no other people in the section of the park we
were in, so I let Wilson go exploring on his own.

In a moment, Monica said, “We're
avoiding talking about it.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Why?”

“I figured we'd get to it
when we were ready.”

“I wasn't afraid,” she said. “I
was angry.”

I nodded.

“I knew you were looking for
me.”

“I was.”

“What did you do?”

I explained how our first
assumption was that someone she had investigated and caught in a crime was
retaliating against her. I explained how we had gone through all her files
looking for possible suspects.

“
Who
did you suspect?” she asked.

I told her, explaining that
eventually we had expanded our search to include people she’d busted as an MP.
But even then, we’d come up empty.

“When did you figure it was
someone retaliating against you?”

I told her about the first
note and how we then started looking at all my past cases, first my PI cases,
then my cases as an agent.

“Were there more notes?” she
asked.

I explained about the
additional notes, and I explained about the CIA missions in Afghanistan.

“When did you figure out it
was
Bahara
?”

I told her about the last
note being hand delivered and the image on my security system.

“One of the sisters,” she
said pensively. Then, after a brief moment, “I'm sorry you had to endure that.”

“I'm sorry for what you had
to endure being taken.”

“Yeah, but I think you got
the worst of it.”

“How do you figure?  You
were the one kidnapped and held against your will.”

“Yeah, but I was okay. I was
just angry and waiting. You were worried. You had no idea who took me or why or
where. You were all over the place trying to find me. You had nothing or very
little to work with. If the situation had been reversed, I don't know if I
could have held it together.”

I took her hand in mine. “You
could have, and you would have.”

She smiled at me. “I love you,
Jake Badger.”

“I love you, too.”

We stared into each other's
eyes for a moment.

I said, “Given the kind of
work we do, people wanting to get even with us is part of the job. Part of the
life.”

“I know,” Monica said.

“If you weren't with me,” I
said, “you'd have a lot less to worry about.”

“If I weren't with you,” she
said, “nothing would be worth worrying about.”

It was getting difficult for
me to control my emotions.

“It would be the same for
you,” she said, “if you weren't with me, you'd have less to worry about.”

Tears filled my eyes. “Not
being with you is not an option. I love you and I don't care about anything but
having you in my life.”

Tears filled her eyes as well.

“Well, then,” she said. “I
guess we're stuck with each other.”

“I guess we are.”

Just then, Wilson bounded up onto
the picnic table.

“Hear that, Wilson?” I asked.
“Monica and I are stuck with each other.”

He responded with a gentle
woof and gave each of us kisses to acknowledge his approval.

THE
END

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