Page 78 of Unbearable
Fox held up his fingers like he was locking his mouth, then he crossed his heart. Holding up a finger, he snatched up the whiteboard. Quickly, he wrote a message while Ethan watched.
Slowly, he opened the room door. The officer quickly turned to see what was happening. Fox held up the whiteboard so he could read it.
“I can have some sent up to you from the café,” the man said. Fox scribbled another line on the board and turned it around. “No, you’re not leaving this room, even for the café, without authorization from Detective Addams. She’d have my head.”
Fox wrote one more time on the board. Turning it back around, the officer read it with a smile. “Call me what you want, but that’s the best I can do.” Fox nodded. The officer motioned for a nurse and asked that some cheese pizza sent up.
Fox closed the door. He wouldn’t be eating any of the pizza. His throat still hurt too much to swallow anything but soft food. At least he could smell it while Ethan ate.
He was so ready to leave the hospital, he could scream. Not that he would ever return to his apartment again. Knox was making arrangements to pack everything up and move it to storage. He would deal with that when they returned.
The future was such a crapshoot now anyway. Dover had mentioned him moving in with her, but he would much rather relocate farther north. He didn’t know if Bailey would even want him around after all of this. Somehow, he had managed to get her sister killed and her pulled out of her home and into hiding.
The pizza arrived, so Ethan sat on the bed eating it on the rolling table. Fox searched the room for something to do. He had no idea what had happened to his phone, and the television was set to cartoons. They had agreed the last thing Ethan needed was news coverage of his mother’s death. Fox had watched more cartoons in the last two days than in all his life prior.
“Hey,” Knox said, pushing the room door open. “Pizza? How did you get pizza?” Ethan giggled. “Man, someone’s getting spoiled.” Ethan giggled again. “You about ready?” he asked Fox. Fox nodded, so Knox gathered up Ethan and his pizza. “Bailey is waiting with Dover in the lobby. The bags are already in the car. We’re getting an escort.”
“What’s that?” Ethan asked.
“The police are going to take us to the airport. Isn’t that exciting?!”
“Yay!”
They rode the elevator with two police officers to the ground floor. In the lobby, they not only met Dover and Bailey, but Memphis stood next to them. A pretty woman and a little girl completed the group.
“Hey, you look a tad better than last time I saw you,” Memphis said. “I mean, as much as your ugly face can.” He pulled Fox into a bear hug. Turning him lose, he turned to the woman. “I’m staying in Boston to help with the hunt. This is my wife, Thayer. She thought Ethan might enjoy someone to play with for a little while.” He squatted to his knees. “Ethan, this is Blue. She wanted to meet you. Is that okay?”
Blue waved, and Ethan smiled. “I like dinosaurs,” he announced.
“Me too,” she answered. “Daddy said were cousins.”
“Okay,” he agreed.
“Thayer will show you around and make sure you’re settled,” Memphis said, pushing back up to his feet. “If you needanything, you just have to ask. Or in your case,” he added, turning to Fox, “grunt.”
“We need to get you out of here,” Dover said. She pulled Fox in for a hug. “Take care of yourself.” She handed him a phone. “It’s encrypted so you can get a hold of me whenever.”
“Let’s go.” Knox took the hands of both kids and herded them through the door. There was a large SUV waiting just outside with what looked like undercover agents standing at the ready.
“Be careful,” Memphis said when Fox shook his hand.
He nodded before joining Knox next to the car. He slid into one of the seats next to Bailey. Her hand found his. A police car pulled away from the hospital with their car following. He turned to look out the back to find a second police cruiser following.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked quietly. He nodded and moved his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him the entire way to the airport. He decided that moving north of the city might not be such a stretch anymore.
When they got settled wherever they were going, he did need to email his boss though. Hopefully, he would still have a job when all of this was over.
The kids chatted in the back seat, both bent over some game Blue had brought. Knox sat next to them dozing with his head against the window. Thayer sat on the other side of Bailey. He hoped she would be the comfort Bailey needed to mourn her sister if he wasn’t enough.
They pulled through a private gate onto the tarmac of a private airport. The SUV stopped next to a private jet.
“Exactly who did you make arrangements with?” Bailey asked.
“It belongs to Thayer’s father. I used to work for him. He does me a favor from time to time,” Knox answered.
“Some favor.” They opened the doors and climbed out. Blue ran up the steps into the airplane as if she did it every day. Ethan waited at the bottom until Bailey nodded at him to follow. By the time Fox managed to climb aboard, they were sitting in the back with a box of colored pencils between them on a table.
Fox dropped into a seat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. It had been impossible to sleep in the hospital with the staff coming into his room every few hours. Fatigue was finally catching up to him.