Page 14 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)

“For the record, I think this is a bad idea.” Reuben held the door open as Pete, Conner, Micah, and Romeo walked through the double doors into the Thunder Bay Regional Hospital. The soaring three-story glass entrance let in the blue-skied sparkle of midafternoon.

“We can’t just go back to Deep Haven without checking on her, knowing if she’s going to make it,” Conner said.

“And,” Seth said, “can I mention that Conner and Micah need to change their shirts before they get arrested? Or admitted.” He had reluctantly agreed to check on Blue instead of turning them all in.

In fact, for now it seemed like Seth believed them, especially after Conner resigned himself to telling the entire story.

The death of his brother some seven years ago, Justin’s missing “partner,” Liza’s group text, and the advent of Blue’s phone call.

A search of the deceased in the truck confirmed what a few eyewitnesses had remembered—a man in a gray shirt fleeing from the grounds, followed by crazy Conner and his gun.

“Besides, without the jump drive, and until I can get Danny Boy’s phone unlocked, I can only guess at what happened,” Conner said.

“If she’s awake enough to talk, maybe she can help fill in the blanks.

” He walked up to the desk and addressed the nurse there.

“This isn’t my blood,” he said without preamble.

“It belongs to someone named Harmony Blue. My buddy and I were there when she got shot. She was brought into the ER about two hours ago. We just want to check on her.”

Nurse Elliot, according to the badge around her neck, considered him a moment. “What did you say her name is?”

“Harmony Blue,” Micah said, leaning on the desk.

He had washed his hands, but Harmony’s blood still stained his shirt sleeves and chest. He always had an I’m-in-charge aura about him that made people take him seriously.

Now, Nurse Elliot, middle aged with cropped blonde-gold hair, responded in kind, returning her gaze to her screen.

“I can tell you that she’s here and out of surgery, in recovery. ”

“We’d like to see her.”

“I’ll have to call up, get permission.” Elliot picked up her phone. Asked about Blue. “She’s being transferred to Critical Care. Family only, I’m afraid.”

Conner hadn’t a moment’s hiccup. “She’s family. She’s...my sister-in-law.”

Elliot raised an eyebrow. “That’s not immediate—”

“My brother’s dead. She’s all I have.” And that, he reckoned, was true.

Still, to his surprise, he got a pass. “I’ll be right back,” he said, but glanced at the double doors down the hall.

He headed to the elevator, while Micah and the rest wandered toward the coffee shop.

Ten minutes later, Conner came down the back stairs, over to the double doors, and let them in. “Yeah, you really do need to change your shirt, Micah,” he said as they headed back upstairs, toward Critical Care.

In fact, probably they needed an entire costume change. “See what you can find in the way of new threads,” he said to Seth, whose eyebrows went up.

“I’m not breaking the law for you.”

“I’ll do it,” Romeo said. Frankly, Conner had sort of forgotten he was along. He suddenly realized that Romeo, quiet and absorbing everything, had received more of a field trip than he’d bargained for.

“Don’t get—”

“Caught,” Romeo said. “I know. I’ll catch up.” Then he took off down an adjacent hallway.

Cocky is what he’d meant to say. As in, keep your head down, don’t draw attention to yourself. But perhaps Romeo already knew that. He wandered down the hall, hands in his pockets, looking like the grown son of one of the patients.

“Who is that kid?” Micah asked as they strode down the hall.

“John Christiansen’s nephew,” Seth answered. “He lived with them a couple years ago. John has a soft spot for the kid.”

“He’s a fast thinker,” Micah added. “And doesn’t freak out.”

“If he ever wants to stop chopping firewood and start fighting fires, he might be a good asset to the Jude County Hotshots,” Reuben said.

“Oh, he’d still chop firewood,” Pete said. “But we’d add digging ditches to the fun.”

Conner grinned. Yeah, sometimes that felt like all he did.

A life, probably, he could let go of, if it weren’t for the camaraderie.

I don’t think I can go back to Montana...

He hadn’t thought much about Liza’s words last night. But now they tunneled inside, latched on.

Maybe she wasn’t talking about just this summer...

“Check in at the desk,” Micah said, his voice low. “We’ll hang back.” He gestured with his head toward the Gatekeeper of the Critical Care Ward, a thin brunette wearing a knitted sweater over her pastel scrubs.

Conner approached. “I’m here to see my sister—Harmony Blue?” A little editing for the moment didn’t feel wrong.

The woman glanced at her computer. “Room 212, but be aware that she’s still a little groggy.”

He flashed Micah the room number, then headed down the hallway.

The antiseptic smells, the ethereal quiet of the carpeted hallways, save for the occasional code, or name, or even conversation emanating from the patient rooms, raised the thin hairs on the back of his neck as he ducked his head down.

He couldn’t help it. People came to the hospital to die.

Not this time, please, Lord.

Conner couldn’t set foot inside a hospital without remembering his all-out sprint through Kalispell Regional the night Liza had fought for her life. He’d been dodging feds, too, which made visitation iffy, but he’d made it to her room without being arrested.

Then.

He found the open critical care area and pushed his way inside.

Blue lay in the farthest bed from the door, her curtain pulled back. Tubing extended from her chest, a heart monitor pumped out rhythm, and an oxygen mask cupped her nose. She looked impossibly frail, nothing of the rebel in her demeanor.

He couldn’t stop himself from taking her hand. Rubbing his thumb over her pale, nearly translucent flesh. “I’m so sorry, Blue. Please don’t die.”

Her hand squeezed in his, and he looked up to see her eyes, pale blue-green, opening, latching onto him. She reached over and pulled the mask away.

“You—what are you doing here?” Her voice emerged more of a rasp than words.

Not the greeting he’d expected, but— “I couldn’t leave without...I had to make sure you were okay.”

She relaxed then, a soft smile finding her lips. “You’re so much like him, you know.”

He stilled.

“Justin,” she added.

“I knew who...but I didn’t know that we—”

“Your smile—it’s his. And he was always making sure I didn’t get left behind. And...when he held my hand, he rubbed it in just the same way.”

Conner looked down at their clasped hands, then let hers go and set it gently on the bed. “I didn’t get the thumb drive.”

She blew out a breath. “That’s not good. It’s all the evidence we had.”

“You didn’t back it up anywhere?”

“Sure, my computer. Which blew up two days ago.”

Right. “Any guesses on what it had on it?”

Behind him, he heard a shuffle of noise, and he looked up to see Jim Micah close in on them.

“Hey,” he said quietly and touched her foot. “You’re alive.”

She grinned then, warmth in her eyes. “Thanks for not leaving me.” She looked at Conner. “But please tell me you got him.”

He made a face. “Actually, he’s...he’s dead.”

Her eyes widened.

Conner held up his hand. “I didn’t kill him.” Directly. “We were chasing him and shot out his tires. His truck flipped, and he went through the windshield.”

Her gaze flickered to Micah, as if confirming Conner’s words. He nodded.

“Shoot. I would have liked to know who he was.”

“How did he find you—us?” Conner asked. “Did you call anyone?”

“Besides you? No. And after we talked, I turned the phone off. So there couldn’t be a GPS signal.”

Actually... “You didn’t throw it away?”

She sighed. “It’s the last piece I have of Justin. Silly, I know, but I still have his voicemail on it. The one he left the day he sent me away. I sometimes turned it on just to listen to it.”

“You...you still have a voicemail?”

“The phone is in my stuff, wherever that is.”

Micah was already rummaging through a clear plastic bag hanging on the end of her bed. He unearthed the flip phone. “It’s off.”

“It’s an old phone,” she said. “But turn it on—it might still have juice.”

He pressed the power button.

“Tell me about the day you left,” Conner said as the phone powered up. “Did he say anything about who might want to hurt him?”

She tried to adjust herself, moving up in the bed, but winced. “Can you move my pillow?”

Conner moved to adjust it, and that’s when she leaned close. “Your friend—is he FBI?”

He met her eyes, shook his head.

She glanced at Micah and nodded. “Okay. So...Justin was, you know, working undercover. I think his job was to alert the FBI or NSA or whoever he worked for, to possible terror attacks. One of them was a pipeline attack in Alaska. The FBI stopped that one. But then he alerted them to a bomb in Times Square, near a recruiting center. They did nothing—and the bomb went off. Thankfully, no one was injured, but Justin was furious. It wasn’t the first bombing that didn’t get stopped either—apparently both the British and Mexican consulates were bombed in the early days of Justin’s joining the Sons of Freedom.

He started to suspect that maybe the SOF might be working for, instead of against, the government. ”

“A black ops arm—domestically?” Micah said, his voice low. “To what—drive political power?”

“Or gain financially,” Blue said. “Justin thought that maybe whoever was behind it benefited by the aftermath—the increase in weapons, perhaps?”

“An arms contractor?” Conner said.