“That’s life. Bad guys thrive. Good ones die.”
She wondered if he was referring to war buddies. “Who, specifically?”
“Let’s hope not Brady White.”
Heeding Jake’s advice, he wasn’t wearing his jacket, but he patted down one of the pockets and took out his cell phone. He asked Siri for a number and had her call it for him. Brynn listened in.
“Howardville Community Hospital. How may I direct your call?”
“I’m a friend of Brady White’s. I heard he’d taken a downturn. Can you give me an update on his condition, please?”
“I’ll connect you to the OR. You can speak to the charge nurse.”
“He’s in surgery?”
“If…if you’ll hold, sir, I’ll check to see what his status is. Please stay on the line.”
Rye disconnected and said to Brynn, “This morning the lady in the ER wouldn’t tell me anything. This one tried to keep me on the line. Which means they’re tracing the calls.”
“At least we know Brady is still alive.”
“That’s something. That’s huge. But we still have the problem of getting you to Violet.”
“I’m open to ideas.”
“First, we acquire new phones.” With sleight of hand, he silenced the phone he’d just used and dropped it into a nearby trash can. “Sooner or later that number will be attributed to me by the Howardville SO. Which means it will be fed to Wilson and Rawlins, and they’ll share it with the Atlanta PD. If they track it, they’ll be looking for me here, while I’m somewhere else. If I can get this frigging line moving.”
He looked toward the front of it, as though calculating how long it would be until their turn. He was still wearing the ball cap, which kept anyone except Brynn from seeing how his eyes were constantly sweeping the crowded area, looking for a sign that they’d been spotted by someone in uniform.
“What are you thinking of doing?” she asked. “Returning to the hotel?”
He shared his concerns about security cameras getting the license plate number of the Uber car they’d taken from the garage to the hotel. “But I don’t have a choice except to go back. I left my flight bag behind.”
He gauged the length of the line again. “We’re sitting ducks here. What we really need to do is scare up some wheels. We got lucky with Jake, but guardian angels don’t come around that often, and using taxis and hiring cars is risky.
“Do you know anyone who would lend you a car on short notice, late on Thanksgiving night, without asking too many questions? Someone you trust? Fellow doctor? A girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
She shifted her gaze away from him.
“Welllll,” he said. “That was like a puff of cold air on an aching tooth. There’s a man in your life?”
“Past tense.”
She tried to avoid looking at him directly, but he followed the evasive motions of her eyes. “Husband?”
“We weren’t married.”
“But a serious relationship.”
“We lived together for a while.”
“Huh.” His eyes were shadowed by the cap’s bill, but she could sense their intensity on her face. “Your recent kissing ban. Is it because of him?”
With heat behind it, she asked, “If he can help us, does it matter?”
He turned aside and muttered something she thought it was probably just as well she didn’t catch, then came back to her with an indifferent shrug. “When you have a dead stick, you look for somewhere to land, and anyplace will do.”
10:47 p.m.