It wasn't quite as simple as that. Her reason for returning was more complex, but she was at a loss to explain her multilayered motivation to Doc when even to her it was unclear. Why wasn't she out there doing a live remote, taking advantage of the extraordinary insight she had on this story? W
hy wasn't she recording a voice track to couple with the dramatic images Kip was getting on video?
"What were you doing out here?"
Doc's question roused her from her musings. "In Rojo Flats?" She laughed. "I was on vacation." She explained how she was en route to New Mexico when she heard of the so-called kidnaping on her car radio. "I called Gully, who assigned me to interview Cole Davison. On my way to
Hera I got lost. I stopped here to use the rest room and call Gully for directions."
"That's who you were talking to when I came in?"
Tiel's gaze sharpened on him, her expression inquisitive.
He raised his shoulder in a slight shrug. "I noticed you back there on the pay phone."
"You did? Oh." Their eyes connected and held, and it was an effort for her to break that stare. "Anyway, I concluded my call and was buying snacks for the road when… who should walk in but Ronnie and Sabra."
"That's a story in itself."
"I couldn't believe my good fortune." She smiled wryly.
"Be careful what you wish for."
"I am." After a beat of five, he added quietly, "Now."
This time it was she who waited him out, giving him the opportunity either to expound on his thought or to let the subject drop. He must have felt the same implied pressure from her silence that she had felt from him earlier, because he rolled his shoulders as though his burdensome reflections were resting on them.
"After I found out about Shari's affair, I wanted her to…" He faltered, began again. "I was so pissed, I wanted her to…"
"Suffer."
"Yeah."
The long sigh he released around the word evinced his relief over finally getting the confession off his chest. Confidences wouldn't come easily to a man like him who had dealt in life-and-death situations on a daily basis. To have the courage and tenacity to battle such a seemingly omnipotent enemy as cancer, there was surely a generous degree of the god complex in Bradley Stanwick's makeup.
Vulnerability, any sign of weakness, was incompatible with that personality trait. No, beyond incompatible. Intolerable.
Tiel was flattered that he had confessed a weakness, had revealed to her even a glimpse of this all-too-human aspect of himself. She supposed traumatic situations were good for that, too. Like a deathbed confession, he might be thinking this was the last chance he would have to unburden himself of the guilt he had carried over his wife's terminal illness.
"Her cancer wasn't punishment for her adultery," she argued gently. "It certainly wasn't your revenge."
"I know. Rationally and reasonably I know that. But when she was going through the worst of it-and, believe me, it was sheer hell-that's what I thought about. That I had subconsciously wished it on her."
"So now you're punishing yourself with this self-imposed banishment from your profession."
He fired back, "And you're not?"
"What?"
"Punishing yourself because your husband got killed.
You're doing the work of two people to make up for the industry loss created when he died."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Is it?"
"Yes. I work hard because I love it."