Arriving back in Baltimore, Sage handed over the hot coffee before returning Thorne’s car fob. He took a long, satisfied drink, his free hand absently stroking the bear head on his Berserker t-shirt. Smacking his lips, he wiggled his eyebrows at her.

Seeing what looked like dancing red caterpillars on his forehead, Sage laughed.

“Now,” he rumbled past his smile. “About getting you to slip on a pair of heels for me.”

She patted his chest. When it came to flirting, Thorne was about as dangerous as a teddy bear. She knew for a fact he showered the same attentions on the octogenarian two doors down, even took the woman flowers once.

The man had zero intentions of getting serious until he settled down in a medical practice somewhere far away from Baltimore.

“I have a two year old to calm down,” she told him.

Sage’s own emotions had made it hard enough to drive. Calling from the car during rush hour would have been even more dangerous, maybe even deadly if anyone on the other side of the call was freaking out.

“Little Leah?” Thorne stroked his beard. The man was an absolute sucker for kids. It was one of the many things she liked about him. “Anything more I can do to help?”

Sage looked over the fresh pair of scrubs he had put on in anticipation of his next shift. “Got a pair of those hanging around—you know, my size?”

The thick but nimble fingers stopped stroking his beard and began to comb through it. “Not here, but I can think of a certain nurse I can talk out of a pair sometime around midnight.”

The man did like his women on the voluptuous side. That had always been a plus even though she didn’t take his flirting seriously.

“Not on my account, Romeo,” Sage laughed. “If it comes down to it, I’ll figure that part out on my own.”

With a goodbye wave, she sprinted back to her apartment. Once inside, she took a quick pee and pulled her messy hair into a ponytail. Grabbing a juice, she sat down at the counter and opened up Skype, pinging Lindy’s computer with a video chat request.

Less than a minute later, Lindy appeared onscreen. Stress deepened the lines in her face. Her eyes looked hollowed out. Seeing the smile the woman had to force, Sage felt bad for calling, even though she had good news.

“You still haven’t heard anything?” Sage asked.

The smile flattened to a shaky line. Lindy shook her head.

“Just that crazy call yesterday,” she said. “I’m sorry Leah bothered you.”

“She’s never a bother,” Sage said. “I wish I had been able to do more for her on the call.”

Lindy wiped at her eyes. The surrounding skin was dry, but swollen and much pinker than the rest of her face.

“I understand,” she said. “I’ve been driving everyone crazy since then. You could say I was nagging the extra mile to make sure they were taken care of—except for Emerson. I’ve called him half a dozen times to see if he could find out anything.”

Sage nodded. Lindy had drawn a reasonably logical line from the FBI to the Army. The Army had its Intelligence and Security Command. It and the FBI were part of the U.S. Intelligence Community. But Emerson would have to hopscotch through a number of personal connections to drill down to the one person in the Army or greater Department of Defense who could—and would—provide the information.

“It’s complicated,” Sage explained. “The mission was classified.”

“Probably,” Lindy agreed.

“Definitely,” Sage persisted. “Sutton is alive—”

A harsh sob broke from Lindy. Over the woman’s crying, Sage heard Adler’s voice in the distance, then Leah calling and running. Both came into view, looking first to Lindy then to Sage onscreen when Lindy refused to lower her hands from her face.

Gaze bouncing between the three of them, Sage settled on Leah’s worried face. “Honey Bee, I was able to talk to someone today that knows Sutton is coming back. It’s a secret, but he is supposed to be at a hospital close to where I live tomorrow morning.”

Adler’s brows knitted together. “This is real?”

Sage nodded. “I was told he can’t call or have any visitors until after he’s been debriefed, and they can’t debrief him yet because of the amount of painkillers he is being given. Beyond that, I don’t know anything.”

Lindy had switched from covering her eyes to one trembling hand pressed against her mouth.

“I’m still trying to find out more,” she assured them. “I only know about Sutton, not anyone else on his team.”

Adler swiped at his jaw, his head subtly shaking back and forth like he was puzzling something other than his brother’s situation. He swiped again then looked straight in the camera.

“Thank you, Sage.”

“Of course,” she replied as Leah looked at each of the adults in turn.

Lindy didn’t look any better for hearing the good news. The gaze remained hollow. Adler rolled his lips then folded one of his mother’s hands in his.

“You need sleep, Mama. Maybe now you can get some.”

She nodded with as much understanding as a zombie in some late night horror flick.

“I need to get her to bed,” he said with a glance at Sage. “Tell your aunt goodbye, Leah.”

“Love you,” Leah said, blowing a kiss, the strains of fear not gone from her sweet little face but greatly reduced.

“I love you, too,” Sage answered as Adler leaned in and terminated the video chat, his head and shoulders obscuring the toddler.

Sage took her juice, computer, and phone over to the couch and sank into its pillowy depths. Feeling like she had just run a marathon from start to finish, she closed her eyes and fell asleep, her laptop propped on her stomach and the bottle of juice slipping from her hand.

*

Opening her eyes to the glow of twilight around her windows and a persistent knocking, Sage’s body groused that she had slept on the folded up couch the entire night. Her mind rejected the idea.

“Just a minute,” she called out with a cheerfulness she didn’t feel. The knocking ceased immediately.

Picking the computer up from the floor, she woke the device as she placed it on the coffee table. The time in the top right corner read six in the morning. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had visited her that early. Clients didn’t have a drop-off address for her, just a post office box. Thorne had proven to be completely self-contained. Beyond him, she had no one in the complex she would call an acquaintance.

Someone experiencing an emergency would have kept banging away. They would have said something, too. For now, there was only silence.

Cautiously, Sage approached the door. She put her eye up to the peephole. A perfectly styled red bun filled the view. The shade was different than Thorne’s and he didn’t have the length for a man bun.

Gloria Perkins, it seemed, had decided to pay a visit to Sage’s home.

Insinuating she knew Perkins was getting busy with Steve probably wasn’t Sage’s best idea of the year.

Slowly, she slid the chain off the door then turned the deadbolt. Pushing a foot forward and leaning her knee and shoulder in, she braced the door against any sudden entry.

“This better be about Sutton,” she warned as Perkins turned from staring disdainfully at the surrounding street.

Gaze slitted, the secretary offered a curt nod. Handing over a small piece of paper, she offered a razor-thin smile. Her hand instantly retreated the moment Sage pinched one edge of the note and opened it.

Sage scanned the tidy blocks of print. Someone had written down a building designation and room number for Walter Reed.

“Security is rather abysmal,” Perkins noted. “As is house cleaning, so don’t plan on sneaking in with a smock and a mop bucket unless you want hauled off to a federal prison.”

“Right,” Sage agreed. Scrubs were almost as bad an idea. Some hospitals required a certain uniformity among their staff, a single solid color. If she picked the wrong colored scrub, she would definitely be scooped up by security for questioning.

“If you’re caught—”

Sage preempted the warning with a wave of her hand. She wanted to poke at the woman, tell Perkins that she would flip in a heartbeat, spilling every detail as to how Steve had provided the information. That wasn’t true, but the woman made Sage’s skin crawl.

“One last thing,” Perkins said, turning back. “No additional assistance will be forthcoming.”

“On this matter?”

Perkins shrugged. “I didn’t seek clarification.”

Sage returned the shrug and swung the door shut. She couldn’t imagine another situation where she would have to resort to her father for help. The man didn’t have many springs to pull and what he did have were badly frayed.

Nor was there any law against Sage calling his office again.

Struck with an idea on how to get in the hospital, Sage yanked the door open. Perkins stood at the edge of the sidewalk waiting for the traffic to clear just enough for her to cross over to her black Audi parked on the other side of the street.

Gaze zooming in on little details, Sage made a note of what was basically a Congressional secretary’s uniform. Three-inch heels, the color matching that of the suit skirt. Today, the skirt and jacket were a deep brickish red, but the blouse remained white. The bun was pulled tight and worn high, no stray hairs. In addition to the piece of paper she had handed Sage, Perkins also carried a leather portfolio that zipped around its three edges. Still waiting on the traffic to clear, she held the portfolio like the hilt of a great sword.

Sage imagined other times in which the woman might hold the accessory against her chest like a shield.

Smiling, Sage shut the door before Perkins could notice her watching. She didn’t need scrubs, she had just the outfit to let her walk freely through the hospital.

As an added bonus, there was no way Thorne would balk at her borrowing his car a second day in a row if she wore heels when she asked.

*

Two hours later, Sage walked down an air-conditioned hall at Walter Reed, her spine stiff with purpose. Anyone who looked at her was met with a glare suggesting she knew everything about them and they would soon be receiving a visit from the Secret Service or worse.

Coming at last to Room 315, she opened the door and stepped quickly through.

The room was private and empty but for the patient. Sutton was on his back, eyes closed, hands folded peacefully across his stomach. From the waist up, he looked no different than he had the few times she’d seen him talking to his mother or niece on Skype.

Below the waist was the issue. One leg was raised by a pulley, a plaster cast covering his entire foot and extending up to the middle of his thigh.

Heart trying to pummel its way through her chest, she rounded the bed and finally released a sigh of relief. Covered by a thin white blanket, the outline of his left leg appeared completely normal.

“I hope you look as good as you smell,” the familiar voice drawled, his speech slightly slurred. “Problem is, my eyes don’t want to open.”

Sage snorted, her head tilted as she stared at his face. The eyelids fluttered a few times and then she was staring into green eyes that matched his mother’s.

“Hey, I know you, yeah?” He reached and patted at her arm, missing on the first attempt. The lips pulled up into a dopey grin.

“Leah’s aunt,” Sage answered. She put the leather portfolio on the side table, unzipped it and pulled out a small tablet. “I can see they’re keeping you high on painkillers.”

“Boy howdy they are,” he laughed.

Placing a finger against her lips, she cautioned a little more silence before navigating to the tablet’s Skype app and sending Lindy a video chat request.

“I was told you weren’t debriefed, so you aren’t allowed visitors.”

He winked his response.

“Right, then let’s get through this before anyone finds me in here.”

With the chat request unanswered, she shot a text to Lindy’s cell phone. She hadn’t mentioned that she was attempting the visit to anyone. The last thing she wanted to do was get their hopes up and then fail.

Inside the portfolio were two slim smartphones. One was hers, the other she had picked up at a pre-paid store on her rush over to the hospital. She pulled the pre-paid and placed it in Sutton’s hand.

With the seriousness of her visit nibbling away at the drugs’ effects, he made an attempt to sit up. Pain blossomed across the strong cheeks and he fell back.

“Forgot there’s a remote for that,” he half smiled.

“Take it easy, Cowboy. No one wants you straining yourself just so they can see you sitting up.”

With the message to Lindy showing unread, she pulled up the contact number for Adler that she still hadn’t deleted from her phone and pressed the call button.

He picked up on the second ring. “Sage, what’s wrong?”

The sound of panic in his voice shocked her. Of course, he had to think she was calling because of Sutton—and she was.

“Are you okay?” he demanded when she didn’t answer.

“Y-yes. I’m in Sutton’s hospital room and I can’t get caught, so grab your mom and Leah and get them on Skype.”

“One second,” he said and put Sage on hold. When he switched back a few seconds later, he was talking to Leah.

“Come on, Honey Bee, we need to see Sage on Skype.”

Waiting for the incoming video chat, Sage filled a small paper cup with water and handed it to Sutton. He sipped gratefully, his dark-lashed gaze looking up at her.

“Still have his number,” he murmured. “That’s promising.”

Before she could ask what he meant, the request alert sounded. Sage jabbed at the icon and turned the camera to face Sutton, but not before she saw Leah sitting on Adler’s lap in front of the camera.

“Sutton! You came back.”

Sage had turned the volume to low before starting the app in case anyone passing by in the hall could hear the voices. She turned the sound up a little, her face darting into view.

“We’re playing a whisper game, Honey Bee.”

The little head bobbed. “I play, too.”

“Hey, munchkin,” Sutton said. “You keeping Gam-Gam busy?”

Leah shook her finger at the camera. “You keeping Gam-Gam busy.”

Sutton laughed, then winced as the reaction bounced his leg.

Something offscreen caught the toddler’s attention. Sage guessed it was a person by the way Leah waved her hand to draw the distraction closer. Adler got up at the same time, his arms still wrapped around the little girl.

“Sutton come back,” she said, switching from waving to repeatedly pointing at the screen.

Lindy sat down in the chair. Leah climbed out of her uncle’s arms and onto her grandmother’s lap.

“Sage found Sutton,” Leah announced. “Sutton come back.”

Face overwhelmed with emotion, Lindy rocked her granddaughter back and forth.

“Yes, love, he came back. That’s why we always say our prayers.”

It took a few more seconds of rocking and staring at the screen before Lindy could speak again.

“How bad is it?”

Sutton shrugged. “Enough for a medical discharge. More breaks from my right femur down to my toes than I have fingers. Pins get placed tomorrow.”

A sharp cry from Lindy had Leah gently placing her finger against her grandmother’s mouth.

“Whisper game, Gam-Gam.”

“Yeah,” Sutton agreed with a glance at the wall clock. “I’m not allowed visitors. I have to sign-off or else Miss Ballard will be here when the nurse comes in a few minutes with my next dose of painkillers. No one wants to wear orange for one day, let alone ten years.”

“When can we talk to you again?” Lindy asked.

Wearing the dopey grin once more, he held up the smartphone Sage had brought him. “Provided I can keep it hidden from the staff, I can message you again about half an hour from now. After that, I’ll probably be out like a light for a couple more hours.”

Lindy kissed the toddler’s hand then extended it toward the camera. “We love you, son. Message us when you can.”

“I love you, too,” he said then closed the app.

Sage took the tablet away and shoved it in the portfolio without turning it off. With three quick snaps of her wrist, she closed the zipper and gripped it to her side just as she had seen Gloria Perkins do.

“I put a hundred on the phone’s calling plan. I’ll message Lindy with the account details so she can monitor and refresh.”

“Thank you—for everything.”

She pulled away from the side of the bed, but not before Sutton snagged her wrist and drew her in.

“I know my brother, he was as happy to see you as he was to see me, and I’m the one who almost died.”

She glanced at the clock. There wasn’t enough time in an entire day to discuss her feelings about Adler. The next few minutes before a nurse discovered her presence wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “There’s a little more time than I let on. Not much, though. I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again, so I wanted a minute with just the two of us to thank you for the visit. You did more good for me than all the chemicals they’re pushing into my body.”

“I’m happy I could help.”

He squeezed her hand, his touch warm and firm. “Family is the best medicine, Miss Ballard.”

She nodded, uncertain how much the medicine in his system influenced what he was saying.

“It’s a big family,” he pressed before releasing her hand. “There’s always room for more.”

She rolled her lips. Whatever Adler had told Sutton, or whatever Sutton thought he saw, the soldier was missing the part where Adler had pulled away—pulled first and pulled hard. Through Leah and Jake, Sage would remain on the perimeter of the Turk family. She would help the Turk family as if they were her own brothers and cousins. But that was it. That was all there could be and talking like it might be otherwise was pointless—and incredibly painful.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, stepping toward the door. “But I really have to go.”