Nightingale Way: An Eternity Springs Novel (11 page)

Cat’s spirits lifted immediately. The
Eternity Times
might not be the
Washington Post
, but it was still an ink-on-newsprint publication. She’d been missing that in her life. “Thank you. What’s my first assignment?”

“We have a town meeting tonight I’d love to take a pass on. The guy I’ve been dating moved away last month and he’s here for a visit.”

“Tell me when and where.”

“The school auditorium at seven o’clock. I’ve been told there’s to be a special presentation.”

“Seven at the school. I’ll be there.”

Cat was so happy that she decided to stop by the Trading Post grocery store to buy a brand-new notebook. After that, she figured she might as well indulge in something sweet from Sarah Reese’s bakery, Fresh. While choosing between a strawberry pinwheel cookie and an oatmeal apple raisin cookie, she overheard a discussion about some new handmade items being offered
for sale in the quilt shop on Spruce Street, and she decided to take a look. There she fell in love with a double wedding ring quilt made of satin and silk—not the usual quilting fabrics. A discussion with the shop owner, LaNelle Harrison, led to an invitation to attend the next quilting bee. Walking back to Angel’s Rest, Cat came across Sage and her little dog, Snowdrop. They talked dogs for a few minutes, then Sage invited Cat to come out to her house on Hummingbird Lake to see paintings Sage had done of the little white bichon frisé that had been a gift from her husband, Colt, when they were dating.

Cat rode one of the bicycles available to Angel’s Rest guests out to the lake. She thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and returned to town more relaxed and lighthearted than she’d been in weeks. That feeling ended when she braked at a stop sign and saw a scowling Gabe Callahan circle his car to help someone out of the passenger seat in front of the Eternity Springs Medical Clinic. Cat did a double-take. A woman in a white physician’s coat hurried out the clinic door pushing a wheelchair as Gabe escorted the bloodied and battered figure of a man.

“Jack!”

“Dammit, Callahan!” Jack snapped, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of Colt Rafferty’s motorcycle as it pulled up behind Gabe’s car. “I can walk by myself.”

“Sure you can,” Gabe fired back, ignoring Jack’s protest and putting the injured man’s arm over his shoulder to help support his weight. “After all, you are Mr. Invincible, aren’t you?”

“What happened?” Colt’s sister-in-law and the clinic’s physician, Rose Anderson, locked the wheels of the wheelchair and motioned for Gabe to help Jack sit.

“I don’t need a wheelchair.”

Colt ignored his protest. “He called this morning wanting company on a motorcycle ride on the Alpine Trail. We’ve done that ride before, but this time, the idiot rode like a drunken grizzly. Flat-out reckless. He went too fast and took a turn too wide. I thought he was going off the side of the mountain, but he managed to put the bike down instead. He kept himself on the road. His bike is at the bottom of a hundred-foot drop.”

“I’m okay,” Jack said. “Just scraped up a bit.”

“He’s banged up his knee,” Gabe told Rose. “Can’t put weight on it.”

“Yes, I can.” It was his arm that he suspected might be fractured.

“We’ll X-ray it just to be sure,” Rose said, her voice crisp and professional.

Jack’s day grew even more splendiferous after they’d entered the clinic and he heard a door open behind them and his ex-wife exclaim, “What happened to Jack? Is he okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Colt did his best to make a liar of Jack by explaining, once again, his version of what had happened, complete with his drunken grizzly nonsense. Rose asked Colt to help Jack up onto an exam table just as Jack’s cousin strode into the clinic and demanded, “So what’s this I hear about putting down your bike to keep from flying off a mountain when you weren’t wearing a helmet? You dumb-ass.”

“Wait a minute.” Cat whirled on Cam. “Are you saying that he rode a motorcycle, he
wrecked
a motorcycle, and the reckless, moronic, demented dunderhead wasn’t wearing a helmet?”

“Dunderhead?” A slow smile spread across Cam’s face as Rose rolled her eyes. “Well, now, my brilliant
powers of deduction tell me you must be the ex-missus. I’m the black sheep cousin. Welcome to the family.”

Cam took Cat’s hand and leaned down to kiss her cheek. Cat’s shocked expression faded, and Jack figured she must have concluded that his injuries weren’t too serious or else Cam wouldn’t be hitting on her.

She addressed Cam. “You’re Sarah’s fiancé. She told me you’re a charmer. Her engagement ring is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Jack scowled. What about that honking hen’s egg of a diamond he’d given her? “Excuse me, but I am in pain, here. Could you all take your dog-and-pony show somewhere else so that I can get medical treatment?” Glancing at Rose, he added, “Isn’t having all these people hanging around against the HIPAA law or something?”

The doctor snapped her fingers and spoke in a droll tone as she pulled supplies from a drawer. “Oh, darn. I knew I was forgetting about something.”

“Quit whining, Davenport,” Gabe said. “I’m the one who needs a shot. You’re being a pain in my ass. What’s up with you today? This sort of behavior is completely out of character for you.”

Jack’s gaze met Cat’s and he silently requested that she keep his confidence before saying, “Rose? Can we clear the room, please?”

Dr. Anderson sighed. “My dumb-as-dirt patient has made a request. Let’s allow him his privacy while I see to his injuries, shall we?”

Colt snorted derisively. “I’m happy to go, but Rose, I don’t know how much luck you’re going to have. As the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid.”

Expressing agreement with Colt’s observation, Jack’s friends left the clinic. Cat hung behind until Rose said, “Ma’am?”

“Do you need some help? I don’t see a nurse or anyone else.”

When the doctor smiled, Cat noted her resemblance to Sage Rafferty. “We’re shorthanded today, I’m afraid. I think we’ll be okay unless …” She glanced at Jack. “Do you want her to stay?”

Yes
. “No. I’m okay.”

“And I’m leaving,” Cat fired back. “You’ll want to use the big needles, Doctor. His hide is awfully hard.”

She breezed out of the clinic, closing the door behind her with such gentleness that it felt like a slam. Alone now with Rose, Jack attempted to relax. He’d never been inside this clinic before—despite the fact that he’d donated half the money to open it—and he liked it. The place had butter-yellow walls and white curtains and a clean scent that wasn’t antiseptic-smelling.

The doctor was pretty easy on the eyes, too. Even scowling at him like she was right now. “I admit I don’t know you very well, Jack, but I did believe you had more sense than this. Let’s take a look at you. Do you need help getting undressed?”

“Wouldn’t hurt, I guess. I think my knee is screwed up. Something is stuck between my ribs, too.”

Rose shook her head then turned her head and went to work. An hour and twenty-two stitches later, his road burn cleaned and dressed, his strained (but unbroken) knee wrapped in a tension bandage, and a two-inch-long shard of metal removed from his side, Jack realized he had a problem. The orderly had cut his clothes off.

Just when he’d asked Rose if she had an extra pair of scrubs lying around, his cousin returned carrying a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt with ES Auto & Sports Center tags still attached. “You owe me twelve dollars and sixty-seven cents.”

“Thanks, cuz.” Jack gave a mellow smile, a product of the painkillers that saved the day because putting on his clothes proved downright painful.

Refusing the wheelchair, he walked out on crutches
and wrestled his way into Cam’s truck. Cam turned on the ignition and asked, “Where to? Eagle’s Way?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure you’ll be able to get around by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine. I have a lot of work to do to get ready to go. I can only do it from my office.”

Cam gave him a sidelong glance. “Go? Go where? You can’t put weight on your leg and you think you’re gonna put your James Bond suit on? Where are they sending you this time?”

It must have been the combination of pain and painkillers and the fact that Cam was family that loosened his tongue, because for the second time in two days, Jack opened up about his job. He not only opened up, he began to blab. “They’re not sending me anywhere. I’ve had it with the suits. Damned politicians and political hacks and bureaucratasses.”

“Bureaucratasses?” Cam repeated.

“I’m going off the reservation, going rogue.”

Cam braked a little too hard as they approached a stop sign. “Want to explain that, cousin?”

“I have the money to do whatever I want. This time, it’ll be my agenda, my rules of engagement. I’ll play just as mean and dirty as th-th-they do.”

“You sound drunk. Just how many of those pills did Rose give you? Did you eat anything this morning?”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, rubbing his aching head. “I’m alive, aren’t I? Tony isn’t.”

And Jack told him about Tony Martinez, spilling gritty details he’d never shared with anyone—not even during his other blabfest with Cat last night. Speaking the facts and his thoughts aloud served to dissolve his drug-induced mellow, but even as his mood blackened, his resolve strengthened. “I’m going after their asses. For Tony. For all the other lives they’re ruining. If the suits won’t do it, I will.”

Cam waited until he’d negotiated one of the hairpin turns on the road between Eternity Springs and Eagle’s Way to ask, “You’re gonna run an operation off the books? You hiring mercs for this?”

“I’m gonna hire a whole damned army. What’s the sense in having more money than the Queen of England if I don’t put it to good use? Why shouldn’t I do this? How many times have I’ve risked my life to rescue politicians and their wives and their mistresses and other Very Important Pricks? This time I’m gonna do it for a friend. For my partner. Why not rescue Tony’s memory?”

“He took his own life, Jack. That’s not on you.”

Jack ignored him. “I’m gonna hire an army and we’re gonna infiltrate that godforsaken land and its depraved cartels and take ’em out one by one. Hell, maybe I’ll get myself a uniform to wear. Get some shoulder epaulets. Every banana republic leader needs some of those. Wonder if Armani could whip me up a set.”

“I think Rose must have made a mistake with her drug dosages. You’re talking crazy.”

“Why is it crazy? Answer me that? I’ve spent my entire adult life fighting these sons o’ bitches. I came to the job thinking it was good and noble work. You know what? It was. Back then, it was. I’m proud of the work we did, the things we accomplished, the people I helped. It was an important job that needed to be done. But it cost me. It cost me my family. Cost me Cat. And now the politicians have gotten in the way. Somehow the good guys have become the bad guys and vice versa. Where’s the justice in that, Cam?” Jack dropped his head back against the headrest, closed his eyes, and repeated, “Where’s the justice?”

Cam didn’t respond, and Jack let the movement of the car and the effects of the painkillers lull him into sleep. When he awoke, he realized the car had stopped. Cam
was no longer behind the wheel. Assuming they’d arrived at Eagle’s Way, he opened the car door and reached around to the backseat for his crutches … and stopped. This wasn’t Eagle’s Way. “What the hell?”

Cam’s truck was parked in the main lot at Angel’s Rest. What had he missed?

Jack took stock of his situation. He ached all over and his mind was still fuzzy from the drugs, but he could get around by himself. He hauled himself out of the truck and started toward Cavanaugh House, the main building on the Angel’s Rest property. He’d made it halfway there when Cam descended the front steps with a spring in his step. Upon seeing Jack, he grinned crookedly. “Hey. Feel better since your nap?”

“What are we doing back in town?”

“I’m saving my marriage.”

Jack frowned. “You’re not married yet.”

“I’m glad you remember that. After all, you’re my best man.”

Oh. Yeah
. The wedding had slipped his mind. “I thought Devin was your best man?”

“Y’all are co–best men. Now, about this foreign invasion you’re planning. I hope you’re not thinking of bugging out on me before the wedding, are you?” When Jack hesitated, Cam shook his head. “Forget it, Davenport. You made me a promise, and I’m going to hold you to it. You can go fight your war after you stand up with me at the altar if that’s what you want, but you are not leaving Eternity Springs until I head off on my honeymoon the third weekend in August.”

Jack gave the statement some thought. It could take him a month or longer to hire men and procure supplies. He could do that from here as well as from anywhere. Mexico wasn’t going anywhere and neither were the cartels—until he arrived, that is.

If deep inside himself, Jack recognized his idea to be idiotic, he refused to let it surface. Emotion—and painkillers—continued to ride his blood. Sincerely, he replied, “I want to be at your wedding, Cam. I’m honored to be your co–best man.”

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled.”

“So what marriage-saving task caused you to turn around?”

“Well, you’re probably not going to like this, but that’s really just too bad. We think that under the circumstances, it’s better for you not to be alone at Eagle’s Way. That house is full of stairs, and stairs and crutches and pain meds don’t mix. All we need is for you to take a tumble and crack open your head or break both your legs. When Sarah heard about your accident, after she knew that you were okay, the first words out of her mouth were could you still put on a tux and stand at the altar.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. I’m telling you, this wedding stuff is serious business. One thing I’m learning real quick is that you don’t mess with a bride’s idea of the perfect wedding photographs.” Cam folded his arms and declared, “That’s why I’ve arranged for you to stay here at Angel’s Rest at least until you are off your crutches.”

Jack eyed his cousin’s belligerent stance. Nobody was making him do anything, but Jack wasn’t stupid. Cam had a point about stairs, true, but he could navigate his house without climbing stairs. He’d just do all his living on the main floor. Even as he opened his mouth to say so, Cam made a statement that changed everything.