In Graywolf's Hands

“What floor?” she demanded as the doors began to close.

Lukas pretended to cock his head as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”

Irritated, she raised her voice. “What floor are you taking him to?”

The doors closed before he gave her an answer. Not that he looked as if he was going to, she thought angrily. What was his problem? Did he have an affinity for men who tried to blow up young girls and cut down young boys for sport because of some half-baked ideas about supremacy?

Her temper on the verge of a major explosion, Lydia hurried back to the emergency room admissions desk and cornered the clerk before he could get away.

“That tall, dark-haired doctor who was just here, the one who was working on my prisoner—”

“You mean Dr. Graywolf?” the older man asked.

Well, ain’t that a kick in the head? Conroy and his people had blown up the exhibit because of contempt for the people it honored and here he was, his life in the hands of one of the very people to whom he felt superior.

Graywolf. She rolled the name over in her mind. It sounded as if it suited him, she thought. He looked like a wolf, a cunning animal that could never quite be tamed. But even a cunning animal met its match.

Lydia nodded. “That’s the one. He just took my prisoner upstairs to be operated on—where was he going with him?”

“Fifth floor,” the man told her. “Dr. Graywolf’s a heart surgeon.”

A heart surgeon. Before this is over, Dr. Graywolf might need one himself if he doesn’t learn to get out of my way, Lydia vowed silently as she hurried back to the bank of elevators.

Chapter 2

Lydia looked around the long corridor. After more than three hours, she could probably draw it from memory, as she could the waiting room she had long since vacated.

Blowing out an impatient breath, she dragged her hand through her long, straight hair. It was at times like this that she wished she smoked. Or practiced some kind of transcendental exercises that could somehow help her find a soothing, inner calm. Pacing and drinking cold coffee to which the most charitable adjective that could be applied was godawful, didn’t begin to do the trick.

She knew what was at the root of her restlessness. She was worried that somehow John Conroy would manage to get away, that his condition wasn’t nearly as grave as that tall, surly doctor had made it out to be. And when no one was looking, he’d escape, the way Lockwood had. Jonas Lockwood had been the very first prisoner she’d been put in charge of. His escape had almost cost her her career before it had begun.

She and Elliot had managed to recapture the fugitive within eighteen hours, but not before Lockwood had seriously wounded another special agent. It was a lesson in laxness she never forgot. It had made her extra cautious.

Something, she had been told time and again by her mother, that her beloved father hadn’t been. Had Bryan Wakefield been more cautious with his own life, he might not have lost it in the line of duty. The ensuing funeral, with full honors, had done little to fill the huge gap her father’s death had left in both her life and her mother’s.

Lydia crumpled the empty, soggy coffee container in her hand and tossed it into the wastebasket.

The corridor was almost silent, and memories tiptoed in, sneaking up on her. Pushing their way into her mind.

She could still remember the look on her mother’s face when she’d told her that she wasn’t going to become a lawyer because her heart just wasn’t in it.

Lydia smiled without realizing it. Her heart had been bent on following three generations of Wakefields into law enforcement. Her great-grandfather and grandfather had both patrolled the streets of Los Angeles and her father had risen to the rank of detective on the same force, doing his father proud.

Her mother had argued that she could become part of the D.A.’s office. That way, she would still be in law enforcement, only in the safer end of it. But Lydia had remained firm. Sitting behind a desk with dusty books or standing up in court in front of a judge whose bout of indigestion or argument with a spouse might color the rulings of the day was not for her.

With tears in her eyes, her mother had called her her father’s daughter and reluctantly given her blessing while praying to every saint who would listen to keep her daughter safe. Lydia had no doubt that her mother bombarded heaven on a daily basis.

Mercifully, Louise Wakefield remarried six months after Lydia had successfully completed her courses at Quantico. Her stepfather, Arthur Evans, was a kind, genteel man who ran a quaint antique shop. Her mother made him lunch every day and always knew where to find him and what time he’d be home. It was a good marriage. For the first time in nearly thirty years, Lydia knew her mother was at peace.

Lydia looked at the wall clock as she passed it. She sincerely wished she could lay claim to some of that peace herself right now. Glancing at the clock again, she frowned. It announced a time that was five minutes ahead of her own watch. Not that it mattered in the larger scheme of things. It just meant that her prisoner had now been in surgery for three hours and forty minutes, give or take five.

She rotated her neck and felt a hot twinge in her shoulder. It had been bothering her the entire time she’d been here. She couldn’t wait for this night to be over. All she wanted to do was to go and soak in a hot tub.

It was her bullet they were digging out of Conroy. If he hadn’t moved the way he had, it would have been lodged in his shoulder, not his chest. Though she was filled with loathing for what he’d done, she’d only meant to disarm him. Cornered, the man had trained his weapon on Elliot. There’d been no time to debate a course of action. It was either shoot or see Elliot go down.

Lydia felt no remorse for what had happened. This kind of thing went with the territory and she had long ago hardened her heart to it. If there was pity to be felt, it went to the parents of the boy whose life had been lost and to the people who, simply going about their business, had been injured in the blast.

Lydia sighed. The world seemed to be making less sense every day.

She found herself in front of the coffee machine again. If she had another cup, she seriously ran the danger of sloshing as she moved. But what else was there to do? There was no reading material around and even if there had been, she wouldn’t be able to keep her mind on it. She was too agitated to concentrate.

Digging into her pocket, she winced. Damn the shoulder anyway. It felt as if it was on fire. Probably a hell of a bruise there. When she’d shot him, Conroy’s weapon had discharged as he’d fallen to the ground. She’d immediately ducked to keep from getting struck by the stray bullet. As near as she could figure, she must have injured her shoulder when she hit the floor.

Lydia glanced down at herself. The jacket and pants she had on were both discolored with the prisoner’s blood. Shot, he’d still tried to put up a fight. It had taken Elliot and her to subdue him. For a relatively small man, Conroy was amazingly strong. She supposed hate did that to you.

She looked accusingly at the operating room doors. Damn it, what was taking so long? Were they rebuilding Conroy from the ground up?

Lydia stifled a curse. She knew she could have someone from the Bureau stationed here in her place, but she didn’t want to leave until she had a status report on the bomber’s condition. She wanted to know exactly what she was up against. There was no way she was going to lose this one, even for a blink of an eye.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that not even she could live on coffee alone. She tried to recall when her last meal had been. The day had taken on an endless quality.

Lydia jerked her head around as she heard the operating room doors being pushed open. The sound of her heels echoed down the corridor as she quickly returned to her point of origin.

The physician who had given her such a hard time emerged, untying his mask. He looked tired. That made two of them.

“Well?” she demanded with no preamble.

It didn’t surprise Lukas to find the blonde standing here like some kind of sentry. Gorgeous, the woman still bore a strong resemblance to a bull terrier, at least in her attitude. Their earlier exchange had convinced him that she wasn’t someone who would let go easily. Or probably at all, for that matter.

Lukas took his time in answering her, walking over to the row of seats in the waiting area and sinking down onto the closest one. The woman, he noted, remained standing.

“Well, is he alive?” she pressed.

Lukas pulled off his surgical cap and looked at her. “Yes. He’s lucky. The bullet was very close to his heart. Less than a sixteenth of an inch closer and he’d be on a slab in the morgue.”

Her mouth twisted. Whether the word lucky was appropriate or not was a matter of opinion. “Too bad the boy his bomb blew up wasn’t as lucky.”

Lukas didn’t feel like being drawn into a debate. Weary, he rose to tower over the woman. It gave him an advantage. He found he preferred it that way. “Look, I don’t want to know what he did. My job is to patch him up as best I can.”

Her eyes grew into small points of green fire. “How can you not care?” she asked heatedly. “How can you just divorce yourself from the fact that the man you just saved killed a teenage boy? That he might have killed more people had his timing been a little more fine-tuned.”

The woman was a firebrand. The kind his uncle always gravitated toward. Too bad Uncle Henry wasn’t here to appreciate this, Lukas thought.

“Because I’m a doctor, not a judge and jury.” The look in his eyes challenged her. He knew all about hasty judgments. “Are you sure you have the right man?”

She laughed shortly. The tip they had gotten had specifically named John Conroy as the mastermind of the new supremacy group whose goal was to “purify” the country. The explosives they’d found in his house erased any doubts that might have existed. What they hadn’t found, until it was too late, was the man himself.

“Oh, I’m sure.”

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “That was your bullet I took out.”

“Yes.” And he was going to condemn her for it, she thought. She could see it coming. There was a time for compassion and a time for justice. This was the latter. Lydia raised her chin. “We chased him down into the rear loading dock behind the mall. I shot him because he was about to shoot my partner.”

The hour was late and he should be on his way. But something kept Lukas where he was a moment longer. “I didn’t ask you why you shot him. Figured that was part of your job.”

She didn’t like the way he said that. “You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a life to get back to. Or at least a bed.”

Finished, he brushed past her and accidentally came into contact with her shoulder. The woman bit back a moan, but he heard it. Lukas stopped and took a closer look at the bloodied area around her shoulder. When she’d first come in, he’d assumed that the blood belonged to the prisoner. Now he had his doubts.

“Take your jacket off.”

Startled by the blunt order, she stared at him. “What?”

“I thought that was pretty clear.” There was a no-nonsense tone to his voice. “Take your jacket off,” he repeated.

Even as a child, she had never liked being ordered to do anything. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Why?”

The last thing he wanted right now was to go head-to-head with a stubborn woman. “Because I think that’s your blood, not his.”

Lydia turned her head toward her shoulder. Very gingerly, she felt the area around the stain. Flickers of fire raced up and down her arm. Now that he said it, she had a sinking feeling he was right.

Dropping her hand, she gave a dismissive shrug with her uninjured shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. I can take care of it.”

Lukas glanced over her head. The operating room was free now. The orderly had wheeled his patient into the recovery room. Administration had sent in a security guard to watch him. That should please Ms. Law and Order, he thought.

“So can I. Come with me.” It wasn’t a suggestion. He caught her hand and dragged her behind him.

She had no choice but to accompany him. “You have a real attitude problem, you know that?”

Lukas spared her a glance. “I was going to say the same thing about you.” He released her hand and gestured toward a gurney. “Sit there.”

Lydia looked around the empty room, panic materializing. “Where’s the prisoner?”

Opening a drawer in a side cabinet, he took out what he needed. “They took him to recovery.”

Lydia turned on her heel, about to leave by the rear door, the way she assumed Conroy had. “Then I have to—”

He caught her hand again. This woman took work, he thought.

“Stay right here and let me have a look at that shoulder before it becomes infected,” he instructed. “Relax, your prisoner’s not about to regain consciousness for at least an hour.”

She frowned, torn. Her shoulder was beginning to feel a great deal worse now than it had earlier. “You know that for a fact?”

The surgical pack in place, Lukas slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “Pretty much.”

Maybe she was overreacting, at that. “Is he still handcuffed to the railing?”

In reply, Lukas nodded toward the metal bracelets lying on the countertop. “They’re right there.” He saw her look and watched her face cloud over. Like a storm capturing the prairie. “I figured you might be needing these for someone else.”

She bit back a curse. Unconscious or not, she would have felt a great deal better if Conroy were still tethered to the railing on his bed. “This isn’t a game.”

“No one said it was.” He nodded at her apparel. “Now take your jacket off. I’m not going to tell you again.”

Tell, not ask. The man had a hell of a nerve. Setting her jaw, Lydia began to shrug out of the jacket, then abruptly stopped. The pain that flared through her left shoulder prevented any smooth motion. Acutely aware that the physician was watching her every move, she pulled her right arm out first, then slid the sleeve off the other arm. She tossed the jacket aside, then looked at her blouse. It was beyond saving.

She sighed. The Wedgwood blue blouse had been her favorite. “What a mess.”

“Bullets will do that.” Very carefully, he swabbed the area and then began to probe it. He saw her eyes water, but heard no sound. The woman was a great deal tougher than he’d assumed. He knew more than a couple who would have caused a greater fuss over a hangnail. “How is it you didn’t realize you were shot?”

She measured out every word, afraid she was going to scream. “The excitement of the moment,” she guessed. “I hit the floor when he fired. I just thought I banged my shoulder.” Lydia sucked in a breath, telling herself it would be over soon. “It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“And not the first time you were shot, either,” he noted as he began to clean off the area. There was a scar just below her wound that looked to be about a year or so old.

Lydia pressed her lips together as she watched him prepare a needle. “No, not the first. What’s that for?”

“That’s to numb the area. I have to stitch you up.” He injected the serum. “How many times have you been shot?”

She hated needles. It was a childhood aversion she’d never managed to get over. Lydia counted to ten before answering, afraid her voice would quiver if she said something immediately.

“Not enough to make me resign, if that’s what you mean.”

He couldn’t decide if she was doing a Clint Eastwood impression or a John Wayne. Tossing out the syringe, Lukas reached for a needle. “You have family?”

Watching him sew made her stomach lurch. She concentrated on his cheekbones instead. They gave him a regal appearance, she grudgingly conceded. “There’s my mother and a stepfather.” She paused to take a breath. “And my grandfather.”

That made her an only child, he thought, making another stitch. “What do they have to say about people playing target practice with your body?”

Did he think she was a pin cushion? Just how many stitches was this going to take? “My mother doesn’t know.” She’d never told her mother about the times she’d gotten shot. “She thinks I live a charmed life. My father was killed in the line of duty. I don’t see any reason to make her worry any more than she already does.”

Lukas glanced at her. She looked a little pale. Maybe she was human, after all. “What about your grandfather?”

“He worries about me.” Lydia kept her eyes forward, wishing him done with it. “But he’s also proud. He walked a beat for thirty years.”

“So that makes you what, third generation cop?”

“Fourth,” she corrected. “My great-grandfather walked the same beat before him.” Lydia looked at him sharply. He was asking an awful lot of questions. “Why? Does this have to go on some form, or are you just being curious?”

Lukas took another stitch before answering. “Just trying to distract you while I work on your shoulder, that’s all.”

She didn’t want any pity from him. “You don’t have to bother. It doesn’t hurt.”

He raised his eyes to her face. “I thought FBI agents weren’t supposed to lie.”

His eyes held hers for a minute. She relented. “It doesn’t hurt much,” she amended.

He knew it had to hurt a lot, but he allowed her the lie without contradiction. “That’s because the wound was clean.” He paused to dab on a little more antiseptic. It went deep. “The bullet cut a groove in your shoulder but didn’t go into it. That’s why you probably didn’t realize it. That and, as you said, the excitement of what was happening. They say that when Reagan was shot, he didn’t know it until someone told him.”

It felt as if he was turning her arm into a quilting project. Just how long was this supposed to take? The last time she’d been stitched up, the doctor had hardly paused to knot the thread. “Maybe I should run for president then.”

The crack made him smile. “Maybe. You’d probably get the under-twenty-five vote. They don’t examine things too closely.”

Another slam. Did he get his kicks that way? Or was it because she didn’t crumble in front of his authority? “Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?”

He found that her feistiness amused him despite the fact that he was bone-weary. “Most of my patients are unconscious when I work on them.” He cut the thread. “There, done.”

Gingerly, she tested her shoulder, moving it slowly in a concentric circle. She felt the pain shoot up to her ear. “It feels worse.”

“It will for a couple of days.” Rising, he set the remaining sutures aside, then preceded her to the door. He held it open for her. “If you ride down to the first floor with me, I’ll write you a prescription.”

She paused long enough to pick up her now ruined jacket before following him to the door. “I told you, I don’t need anything for the pain.”

He began to lead the way to the elevators, only to find that she wasn’t behind him. “But you might need something to fight an infection.”

She looked down at her shoulder, then at him accusingly. “It’s infected?”

“The medicine is to keep that from happening,” he told her, coming dangerously close to using up his supply of patience.

“I have to go guard the prisoner.” And to do that, she needed to know where the recovery room was located. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to volunteer the information.

She was right. “There’s a security guard posted outside the recovery room. You need to get home and get some rest.”

The security guards she’d come across were usually little more than doormen. They didn’t get paid enough to risk their lives. Conroy was part of a militant group, not some misguided man who had accidentally blown up a chem lab. “You ever watch ‘Star Trek’?”

The question had come out of the blue. “Once or twice, why?”

“Security guards are always the first to die.”

“Your point being?”

“Someone professional needs to be posted outside his room,” she told him impatiently.

That was easily solved. “So call somebody professional.” He saw her open her mouth. “As long as it’s not you.” The issue was non-negotiable. “Doctor’s orders.”

Certainly took a lot for granted, didn’t he? “So now you’re my doctor?”

Taking her good arm, he physically led her over to the elevator bank.

“I patched you up, that makes me your doctor for the time being. And I’m telling you that you need some rest.” He jabbed the down button, still holding on to her. “You can bend steel in your bare hands tomorrow after you get a good night’s sleep.”

She pulled her arm out of his grasp, then took a step to the side in case he had any ideas of taking hold of her again. “Look, thanks for the needlepoint, but that doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”

“Yeah, it does.” The elevator bell rang a moment before the doors opened. He stepped inside, looking at her expectantly. She entered a beat later, though grudgingly, judging by the look on her face. “Your mother has gray hair, doesn’t she?”

“Does yours?”

He inclined his head. “As a matter of fact, it’s still midnight-black.” After writing out a prescription for both an antibiotic and a painkiller, he tore the sheet off the pad.

“Then you must have left home early.” She folded the prescription slip he had handed her. “I’ll fill this in the morning.”

“The pharmacy here stays open all night. I’ll ride down with you if you like.”

He certainly was going out of his way. But then, she knew what it was like to be dedicated to getting your job done. She couldn’t fault him for that. “I thought you had a bed you wanted to get to.”

“Like your prisoner, it’s not going anywhere.” He pressed the letter B on the elevator keypad. “A few more minutes won’t matter.”

Lydia had always been one to pick her battles, and she decided that maybe it would be easier just to go along with this dictator-in-a-lab coat than to argue with him.

With a sigh, she nodded her head in agreement as the elevator took them down to the basement.

Chapter 3

The scent of vanilla slowly enveloped her, began to soothe her.

Ever so slowly, Lydia eased herself into the suds-filled water. Leaning back, she frowned at her left shoulder. The cellophane crinkled, straining at the tape she’d used to keep the wrap in place.

Graywolf had warned her about getting her stitches wet just before she left him and, though she’d pretended to dismiss his words, she wasn’t about to do anything that might impede her immediate and complete recovery. There was no question in her mind that she’d go stir crazy inside of a week if the Bureau forced her to go on some sort of disability leave. She had no actual hobbies to fill up her time, no books piling up on her desk, waiting to be read, just a few articles on state-of-the-art surveillance. Nothing she couldn’t get through in a few hours.

Her work was her life and it took up all of her time. Yes, there was the occasional program she watched on television outside of the news and, once in a while, she took in a movie, usually with her mother or grandfather. There was even the theater every year or so. But for the most part, she ate and slept her job and she truly liked it that way. Liked the challenge of fitting the pieces of a puzzle together to create a whole, no matter how long it took.

It hadn’t taken all that long this time, she thought, watching bubbles already begin to dissipate. The tip they’d gotten from Elliot’s source had been right on the money.

Looking back, she thought, things seemed to have happened in lightning succession. An informer in the New World supremacy group they had been keeping tabs on had tipped off the Bureau that a bombing at a populated area was in the works. Initially, that had been it: a populated area. No specifics. That could have meant a museum, an amusement park, anyplace. For a week, with the clock ticking, they’d all sweated it out, having nothing to go on.