Chapter 10

 

On Monday, around noon, Max sat at his desk reading the latest email from Cal Adams. The FBI had taken the information Max and his team had uncovered and run with it, alerting the Social Security sites that might be targeted for a bombing and questioning Lucy Alcott. As a courtesy, they notified threat assessment where they were headed, but for now, at least, he and other Secret Service members involved were finished.

He stared blankly at the screen, thinking about the weekend. Connor had stayed in Maryland with Nick, so Max and Whitney spent Saturday and Sunday alone. Their physical contact had been the same as that morning only more frequent. They laughed that they felt like teens pretending their actions were not sex. But intercourse seemed inappropriate now to her, and he understood that.

They didn’t discuss what was between them, but he noticed some things about her that might bode well: she didn’t drink any alcohol at Nick’s nor at home but told Max to go ahead and indulge. When she took a nap, her hand cradled her stomach. And once, she referred to the fetus as a child. Maybe this was wishful thinking. They hadn’t discussed anything more. And she had a lot of time yet to decide.

Please don’t let it take her too long, Max thought. The anxiety was just about killing him.

To get away from his fretting, he picked up the phone and called his father. “Hey, Dad,” he said when John Blackwell answered.

“Hey, son. I was thinking about you. Wondering how things were going.” He’d told his father that Whitney had given him a second chance, but that’s all. No sense getting him excited about a baby they might not have.

“How about lunch today? Are you free?”

“Other than my date with Tom Clancy, I am.” His dad was a voracious reader. Since he’d retired, teaching only one course as an adjunct, he’d been catching up on all the thrillers that he’d missed over the years when he’d been bound to the classics and other reading his students had been assigned. “Where and when?”

When he gave his dad the information, John asked, “Is Whitney coming?”

“No, actually. She took the day off from work.”

Which had surprised Max. She wasn’t sick except at Nick’s that one time. The rest of the weekend had been uneventful. Maybe she was more tired than he realized. She was in bed when he left for work, half-awake. They’d shared a luscious kiss before he took off.

“Then it’ll be us two.”

“See you in half an hour, Dad.”

“You sound better.”

“I am. I’ll tell you everything when I see you.”

When he disconnected, he headed out to see Drew Michener. Jim Manning, the FBI director, was leaving Drew’s office. Max greeted him, then gave a courtesy knock on the ajar door. “Got a minute?” he asked.

“Yeah, more than. Director Manning just left. Looks like we’re done with our part of the case.”

“I came over to make sure, at least for today. If we are, I’m going to meet my dad for lunch.”

“Can you talk for a few minutes?”

“Of course.” He sat down in front of the large oak desk.

Michener was about his age, though his full head of hair was completely gray. “Max, I’m concerned about Whitney. She’s off today, and I can’t remember more than a handful of days over the last five years when she took sick time.”

“Yeah,” he said, his tone noncommittal. “She’s not feeling like herself. I’m glad she stayed home. She did tell me that if you needed her, she’d come in.”

“I don’t need her. Maybe you should take the rest of the day off, too.”

“Maybe.”

A frown married his brow. “Does she still want to switch partners? Or transfer to New York?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her that.”

“I didn’t realize she was unhappy here.”

“That’s not the whole story. She likes having you as a boss. She loves the team here.”

“Then it’s you she’s leaving over?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Okay, this is Drew asking, not Special Agent Michener. I’ve always thought you two were soul mates, so if you want to talk, I’m here. As a friend.”

Max sighed. “I would if this was only about me, but it isn’t. I can’t betray a confidence.”

“Fine. I wanted you to know that.”

He stood. “Thanks for caring, Drew. I mean it.”

He thought about his boss all the way to the little French bistro near his dad’s house. Drew was married and divorced, a common occurrence for agents, but Drew seemed to have a good relationship with his children. Max envied him. Shit. It always kept coming back to kids.

He was the first to arrive and was seated when his father walked through the door. And like always, Max felt a little bit better.

o0o

“Hello, Ms. Dwyer. I’m Eve Evans. Nice to meet you.”

Her heart beating at a clip, Whitney stared at the woman she’d moved heaven and earth to get an appointment with. “Thanks for seeing me so quickly.”

“Mary Thomas rarely asks for favors. I’m glad to do it.”

Over the weekend, Whitney decided she did want to talk to someone about her issues again, only this time, a specialist. So after research on the net this morning, she called the top psychologist at the FBI behavioral unit, whom she’d worked with in the past, respected and liked.

Dr. Evans continued, “And I must say, in my field, I don’t get many women.”

“I imagine.”

The therapist was attractive, with shrewd brown eyes. “You’re not a combat veteran, are you?”

“No, I’m a Secret Service agent.”

“Ah. A vastly undertreated population. Jumping in front of bullets and the responsibility of protecting important people has to cause a lot of PTSD in agents.”

“Yes, but if this is what I have, it isn’t job related.”

“Then how were you led to me?”

“I went on the Internet and did a general search for my symptoms, and the condition came up.”

“Which ones?”

“Nightmares, cold sweats, flashbacks, inability to invest in relationships and extreme anxiety.”

“How long have you suffered from those symptoms?”

“Since I was five.”

Psychologists were trained not to show surprise, disapproval or even joy. But the woman’s eyebrows shot up. “Five years old?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you live with someone who had the syndrome? Children of sufferers often take on their symptoms.”

“No. That’s not what caused this.” She hesitated, knowing she was going to have to voice what happened with her parents, willing herself to do so. “It’s a very sad story.”

“Then I’m glad we booked a double session. Shall we begin?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Then Whitney Ann Dwyer took a giant leap of faith. “I was in a plane crash…”

o0o

Later that afternoon, as Max and his father left the restaurant, the January wind blew through both of them, though they wore outer clothing and heavy pants, and despite the fact that it was only 2:00 p.m. His dad walked ahead of him and slipped on the step. Max caught him. “You okay?”

“I lost my balance.”

Glancing down, he saw there was no moisture on the ground. When they reached the sidewalk, he linked his arm with his dad’s. For the first time, his father felt fragile. “Let me drive you home.”

“You have to get back to work. I can take the metro.”

Something niggled at Max. “No, I’ve got the afternoon off.”

“Then I accept the ride. I’m feeling a bit flushed.”

More marked niggling. “Want to wait inside while I get the car?”

“No, the walk will do me—”

His dad grabbed his chest.

He let out a long, low moan.

“Dad!”

His father fell forward, right into Nick’s arms.

In fifteen minutes, Max arrived at Doctors Hospital. He’d followed the ambulance here, and since it was one of the private hospitals that had sprung up in cities, he parked easily in the emergency lot and raced inside. The gurney carrying his father was almost to the double doors of the treatment area.

The reception area was small, with only a few people waiting.

“Sir, are you with the man brought in minutes ago?” a woman behind the desk asked.

“What?” His pulse thrummed in his head. He knew his father had had a heart attack.

The receptionist got up and came around the counter. “Come with me. We check in at one of these private cubicles. There’s a chair for you.”

Like a child, he followed her.

After he sat, she asked, “Can I get you something?”

“No, I—I…” Words wouldn’t come.

She took the chair opposite him at a small desk and picked up a clipboard. “Right now, we only need his name, age, and closest relative.”

“John Blackwell, Sr. He’s seventy. I’m his son, John, Jr.” No one had called him that in forever. Even as a child, he’d wanted to be called Max because the nickname sounded tough.

“Do you know if he has any identification on him?”

“Yes. We went out to lunch. He insisted on paying. I was taking him to my car to drive him home.”

“Do you have ID?”

He showed it.

“Sit here until I check to see if you can go into his treatment room.”

When she left, he put his face in his hands. Dear God in heaven, his dad might die?

o0o

“Breathe deeply, Whitney. Sip the water if you can.”

She tried to take in air, tried to recover from the physical sensations that always assaulted her when she retold the story of the plane crash. The taste of blood in her mouth, the heavy weight of her parents, who had thrown themselves over her trying to protect her, the smells of fire and human waste, making her gag then and choke now.

Finally, she could breathe and sipped the water.

Eve leaned forward. “That’s a traumatic story, Whitney, and the scars it left on you must be very deep.”

“I’m thirty years older.” She shivered. “I don’t want these scars, these roadblocks to my life anymore.”

“That’s a good sign.” Eve’s empathetic tone helped. “And that’s why you’re here. Can you talk more now?”

She nodded, but her hands were trembling.

“Tell me about going to live with the Marinos.”

A smile crept to her mouth. “They were wonderful. My mother was a twin, and Aunt Deidre had always been a second mother to me. She even smelled like my mom. Those first nights after the crash, she let me sleep in her bed and never let go of me once.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“Connor’s my age and we’d already become best friends from family trips together and from staying over at each other’s houses, though we lived in different cities. We’re still close today. He’s a doctor and spent time in Syria with Doctors without Borders. The other guys treated me like spun glass. Declan, the third oldest is an ER doc and an army medic who goes out on special assignments. Nick and Gabe went to college, then joined the Secret Service.”

“A whole family of heroes.”

“We don’t see ourselves that way.”

“You must have gotten a lot of love, living with them.”

“Almost too much. For a while, I was overwhelmed after being an only child.”

“Were you ever able to enjoy your childhood?”

“You know, I was.” She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I had bad dreams at night the first year after I got there. They subsided. After that, they only came when something bad happened. Connor got hurt in a bike accident. Nick and Gabe getting shot, more than once. Aunt Deidre had a mild stroke. The nausea over these kinds of events started when I got older.”

“That’s not as uncommon as you might think.”

“Basically, though, I’ve had a nice life. I did great in school, had a lot of choices, but I wanted to serve my country.”

“Why did you choose the agency instead of the military?”

“I wanted downtime, my own life, as well as a career. And I’m good at the job. I’ve climbed the ladder there fast.”

“But still, the nightmares. Has the nausea gotten worse lately?”

She laughed. “I’d say so. It’s been a roller coaster week. The guy I was sleeping with dumped me on New Year’s Eve, then wouldn’t leave me alone. I was tossing my cookies until he finally came to his senses and groveled his way back into my life five days later.”

“A strong woman like you let him come back?”

“Sort of.” She shrugged. “I found out I was pregnant.”

“Wow.”

“I know. Crazy, right?” She swallowed hard. “This is a huge issue, because all my life, I refused to consider having a child. Conceiving was a total accident. And one of the reasons Max and I were so perfect together was that we were in the same place about family.”

“I’m confused.”

“Of course you are. The reason he dumped me was that he changed his mind. He wanted a wife and kid. I told him I might be able to give him the former but not the latter. He…found someone else who would.”

“So he came back when you discovered you were pregnant?”

“No. God, this sounds like a soap opera. He came back before that. Said he was willing to give up whatever he had to in order to keep me in his life. Then, I found out about the pregnancy.”

“This is an unusual story.”

“You can use the word crazy.”

Eve chuckled. “Did you come here to decide whether or not to have the child?”

“I’m not exactly sure. I only knew I needed more help with what plagues me.” She shook her head. “I know this is selfish, Eve, but I’m petrified at the idea of bringing a child into the world who might experience a loss like I did. I survived what happened to me because of the Marino family, but this child wouldn’t have that.”

“Maybe the child would. Do your siblings have any children?”

“Two on the way. Others who are ten to seventeen.”

“So?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She went to the edge of her seat. “In any case, I need to manage this fear—I know that PTSD never goes away and sufferers have to learn to live with it.”

“That’s a healthy attitude.”

“Yeah, but I’ve had a ton of counseling and nothing’s changed.”

“Which was why you want to try a PTSD counselor.”

“Yes.” Again her heartbeat sped up. “Do you think you can help me, Eve?”

“I do. Let’s get started.”

o0o

Sitting at a table in the ER waiting area, Max stared blindly at his cell. Where was Whitney? They never turned off their phones. And he needed her now. Something must be wrong. A horrible thought invaded his head. Did she make a decision about the baby and not tell him? Was she at a clinic right now, and that’s why she couldn’t answer the phone?

“Agent Blackwell?”

The doctor he’d been waiting a half hour to see stood before him. Max rose, too. “That’s me.”

“I’m Dr. Flagg. I’m the cardiologist in ER on the late shift.” He was younger than Max, with an air of confidence.

“How’s my dad? When can I see him?”

He gestured to the chairs. “Let’s sit.” When they did, the man’s gaze was direct. “Your father is resting now. It appears he had a heart attack. You described his episode as chest pain, shortness of breath and discomfort in his arm.”

“Yes, I phoned 911, but we were out on the street and I didn’t have aspirin. I did chest compression until the ambulance arrived. They got there quickly, maybe six, seven minutes.”

“We won’t know how bad this is until we take blood tests to confirm the myocardial infarction and other tests to determine if there’s blockage.”

“If there was, will you do an angioplasty or open heart surgery?” He’d already checked the Internet on his phone as he waited.

“Those are two options. But we won’t know until we do the tests if it indeed was an infarction.”

He swallowed hard. This was serious. Critical. Life-threatening. “Will you do the tests tonight?”

“All of them. We’ve already drawn the blood for the first step.”

“Can I see him?”

“Yes, this is a private hospital, so we allow relatives to wait in the room with the patient. He’s in the cardiac wing, which is carefully monitored. You can stay there when he goes for the rest of the tests.” He looked around. “Would you like to call someone? Brothers or sisters. Wife, mother.”

“I’m an only child. My mother died when I was young. It’s just me and Dad.”

“A friend, perhaps.”

“In case he dies.”

“He’s stable now. But that’s why we’re acting right away. We don’t want him to have subsequent attacks.”

“I’ve phoned someone. She’ll be here soon.” He hoped. He had no idea where Whitney was or what she was doing. But he couldn’t think about her now.

o0o

The cold air slapped Whitney in the face as she walked out of the doctor’s office on DuPont Circle. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. She trudged through the dark afternoon—God, she hated winter—and made it to her car. Once inside, she started the engine and turned up the heat, but instead of driving away, she laid her head against the headrest.

Wow. She didn’t know she had it in her to subject herself to counseling again. All that unprocessed thought tumbled out of her, leaving her drained. At least this time hadn’t been like the other sessions. It had been harder, but maybe that was because she’d isolated the root of the problem. She had PTSD. Which didn’t exactly cheer her up. Millions of people suffered from the malady, there was no cure and she could only learn to manage the symptoms. Who knew how long that would take? Her hand drifted to her stomach. And she didn’t have forever. She had a little less than six weeks.

Her eyes closed, she thought about what had made her consider the therapy. First, Max had asked her to when he found out she was pregnant, and she knew she owed him that. But what had pushed her over the brink was Isabelle, Nick’s wife. Whitney had gone to lie down in the spare room at their home. Max and Nick and Connor had taken a walk. Nick had told her he felt bad about punching Max and wanted to soothe the waters. So she’d taken a nap. When she awoke, Isabelle had opened the bedroom door…

“I’ve checked in a couple of times. You were asleep.”

“I’m awake. Come inside.” She patted the mattress. “Sit.”

Isabelle sidled onto the bed and Whitney’s face was even with her stomach. Whitney inched herself up.

“You sure you’re okay?” Isabelle was kind and generous anyway, but there was extra concern in her voice.

“Um-hmm.”

“I don’t have any sisters.”

A non sequitur. “Me, either. But we’re sisters of a sort.”

Isabelle smiled and put her hand on her belly.

“Are you excited?” Whitney really wanted to know.

“Of course. But it’s more than that.”

“It is?”

“Hmm. Giving birth is a miracle, so humbling, yet you feel like you’ve been chosen for the greatest of gifts.”

Whitney’s heart turned over in her chest. “That’s nice.”

Isabelle took a bead on her. “I actually came in to tell you all that.”

Whitney stiffened.

“No, don’t get upset, honey. I’m not asking for an admission. I know your background, your attitude toward motherhood. But I think you’re pregnant.”

“Because I have all the signs?”

“Partly.” She swept her fingers over Whitney’s face. “But also because you’ve got these spots of red on your cheekbones that haven’t gone away since you got here last night.”

“I don’t understand.”

She touched her own face. “I had them the first three months, too. Both times. If you need a female to talk to, I’m here.” She smiled. “Sister-to-sister. And I promise to keep all this to myself…”

Whitney had sighed when Isabelle left.

But one word had stuck with her. She’d been so worried about inflicting pain on a child that she hadn’t let herself think about motherhood. What would it be like to carry a child to term, give birth and raise maybe a little boy like Max? Could she get over her fear of doing that…?

A loud ringing brought her out of the rumination. She grabbed her phone. “Dwyer.”

“Whitney, where have you been? I’ve called several times.”

“Oh, I left my phone in the car.”

He went silent.

“Max, what’s wrong?”

“My father had a heart attack. We’re at Doctors Hospital. They’re running tests right now. It’s…it’s serious.”

“Oh, dear God in heaven.” She put the car in reverse. “I’ll be right there.”

“You sure? Do you feel okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So you went out?”

“I had an appointment, so I’m close to where you are.”

Again the silence.

Ah, she got it. “Max, I would never make a decision about the pregnancy and follow through without telling you.”

“Okay.”

“Hang on. I’ll be right there.” And she would. Physically and mentally. She wouldn’t let her issues keep her from helping Max.