Flowerbed of State (24 page)

“Wait.” Turner caught my arm. “You’re needed here.”

“But I—”

“Hernandez and Cooper are already on their way. They’ll want you to show them what happened. I’d like to hear what happened, too.”

Staying behind while the ambulance rushed Lorenzo to the hospital didn’t seem right. I now understood why Gordon had acted so upset the other day. I was on the verge of turning into a leaky watering pot.

I needed to let Gordon know what was going on. I found my phone on the ground where I’d dropped it. I dialed Gordon’s number and gently explained the situation.

Gordon already knew. Ambrose had told him. How Ambrose knew, I had no clue. But Gordon assured me he was already heading over to the hospital to personally make sure Lorenzo received the best possible care.

After hanging up, I dialed the number for Rosebrook, the antebellum Charleston home where my two aunts and grandmother lived. I wanted to assure them that I was safe . . . and to be honest, I wanted to hear their voices.

Before I could type in the last number, Turner put his hand on my phone and snapped it closed.

“You can make your phone calls later,” he said. “You need to tell me exactly what you did this morning, everyone you talked to, everyone who saw you. Even if it seems harmless, apparently you did something today to get this guy worked up enough to come after you.”

“I resent that. I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Turner huffed and then grabbed his ribs. “Dammit, that hurt.” Breathing short shallow breaths, he continued more calmly. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“How did you get on the scene so quickly?” I demanded. “How did you know Lorenzo and I were in danger?”

“The facility’s security system automatically sends an alert to the U.S. Park Police when there’s a disruption to the power. It’s a red flag that there’s a problem. Whenever something like that happens, they send an officer out to check on things.”

“But that doesn’t explain why
you’re
here.”

“I already told you CAT would be keeping an eye on you.” His gaze hardened. “I wasn’t kidding.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You could thank me.”

“I’m not sure I’m happy to know that my every move is being watched.”

“You don’t like being watched by the Secret Service, but you’re okay with being stalked by a killer?”

I shrugged.

“You could at least apologize for bruising my ribs.”

“I am sorry for that and for dropping that board on your foot.”

The second EMT returned. “Jack, those injuries need to be looked at. You need to go to the hospital.” He seemed to know Turner. I wondered how. “Your ribs need to be x-rayed. And your foot is probably sprained. It might even be broken.”

“No. I’m not leaving.”

“Be reasonable. There’s enough police here to protect her and then some.” The EMT gestured toward the parking lot filled with cop cars. “They don’t need you.”

“I’m not leaving.”

The EMT sighed and thrust a clipboard at Turner. “Then sign this form.”

Turner quickly scribbled his name at the bottom of the sheet and handed it back.

“Is he a friend of yours?” I asked after the EMT stormed off.

“No. He’s my younger brother.”

“Really? You have a brother?”

“What? You think I was hatched out of a pod?”

I laughed. “Yeah, I think so. You know, I am sorry for hitting you and dropping that board on your foot. Are you sure you don’t want to go with them? I could go, too.” I still wanted to hear Lorenzo’s version of what had happened.

“This is nothing compared to the pepper spray.”

“Oh.” Embarrassment scorched my cheeks. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have acted—”

“However wrongly, you thought you were protecting yourself,” Turner said rather tersely. He limped over to a bench in the shade and, wincing, started to sit.

“Dammit, Jack, what the hell happened to you this time?” The silver-haired Special Agent in Charge Mike Thatch grumbled as he hurried toward us. I could tell by the fire in his eyes that there was going to be hell to pay.

If Turner got his way, I was sure I’d be the one making those payments.

L
IKE a good soldier, Turner shot up from the bench to stand straight and tall in front of his boss. He slowly lowered his hand from his ribs.

“Nothing happened to me, sir,” I was surprised to hear him say. I’d expected him to present a blistering report of how I’d attacked him again.

Thatch turned toward me and raised his brows. “What happened?”

I shrugged.

Sure, I could’ve spilled my guts about what I’d done. But doing so would only make me look rather stupid and make Turner more upset with me than he needed to be. If he wanted to keep quiet about what happened, who was I to question him?

Thatch continued to press his deceptively innocent silvery gaze on me. I think he’d missed his calling. He would have made an excellent interrogator. Even though I’d turned my attention to an overgrown concord grape vine growing up one side of the greenhouse doorframe, my skin felt itchy. I wanted to say something. I
needed
to say something.

“There may have been”—I started to say when I couldn’t stand Thatch’s wide-eyed scrutiny a moment longer—“a landscaping timber—”

“I’m fine,” Turner insisted. And as if to prove his health, he paced. Even though his foot had to be hurting, he managed to bear weight on it without limping. But it wasn’t without a cost. With each step, his jaw muscles grew tauter and tauter. His fingers curled into fists he held so tight that, as my Aunt Willow would say, he scared all the color out of his knuckles.

“Sit the hell down, Jack, and get off that foot.” Thatch turned to me again. “I passed an ambulance on the way out. Did my agent at least let them take a look at him?”

“He did,” I said, which earned me a glare from Turner that, I swear, had enough heat to incinerate the hair right off the top my head. Thatch hadn’t missed the look, either.

“I think I don’t really want to hear the rest.”

“Probably not,” I agreed and returned my attention to the grape vine. It was in dire need of pruning.

“From the looks of it, our killer targeted Ms. Calhoun. He cut the power and phone lines to the facility,” Turner said, still on his feet. But at least he’d stopped that idiotic pacing. He shifted his weight off his injured foot.

“Apparently, you’ve not been doing a very good job of keeping our witness out of trouble, Turner. Do I need to assign someone else to handle her?”

“Excuse me? You assigned him to
handle
me?”

“I meant no offense, Ms. Calhoun,” Thatch said smoothly. He smiled like a snake. I’d met less than a handful of people who’d rubbed me the wrong way. Today, I added one more name to that short list. But he was Turner’s superior and had the power to make his life and
my
life at the White House miserable. So I pressed my lips together and swallowed the hundred or more choice words begging to be said. He thought I needed a minder? Ohhhh . . .

“As I was saying, Jack, do I need to assign someone else to take care of this”—he glanced at me—“
delicate
task?”

Turner’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed deeply. The muscles in his jaw tightened again. “No, sir. Of course not, sir.”

Thatch’s silver brows rose again. The older man tilted his head slightly toward me. “See that I don’t.”

 

TURNER STUCK BY MY SIDE AS SPECIAL AGENT
Cooper and Detective Hernandez questioned me at length. Not wanting to get Lorenzo into trouble—he had returned with the van after all—I remained vague about why Lorenzo had left.

“And as soon as Mr. Parisi had gone on his errand, the electricity was cut off?” Cooper asked as he ran through the details for the third time.

“It all happened in less than a minute.” The sun, deep red and large, sat low on the horizon.

Richard had said he’d pick me up from my apartment at eight. I needed at least an hour to shower and put on some makeup, not to mention pick out an outfit to wear. It was stressful enough going out on a date after a long, dry spell. Add to it that I was dating a man who had a long-standing habit of dating gorgeous supermodels and actresses who draped themselves in the most expensive designer clothes. Knowing that didn’t help my self-confidence.

“I need to clean up for the night. Would it bother you if I worked and answered your questions at the same time?”

“This won’t take much longer,” Cooper assured. “But go ahead and do what you need to do.”

The three men followed me into the greenhouse, where I found the pots and plants exactly as Lorenzo and I had left them earlier. I stacked empty planters while the two detectives fired questions at me.

Turner, I was glad to see, had found a chair and was able to get his weight off his injured foot.

By the time I’d finished straightening up, Cooper and Hernandez seemed satisfied that I’d answered all of their questions. Naturally they reminded me that they might call for follow-up questions as the investigation proceeded.

Hernandez rubbed his grizzled, salt-and-pepper mustache and shifted uneasily. He put a fatherly hand on my shoulder.

“Be careful, Casey. This guy has you in his sights and you don’t even know what he looks like. He could walk right up to you, and you wouldn’t know your life was in danger.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, and that worried me.

I’d have to take extra care in the future. Not just for my own protection, but for the safety of those around me. Lorenzo could have been killed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then,” I told Turner, who limped silently behind me as I headed back to the van. “I’m beginning to look forward to our meetings at the White House gate.” I reached for the van’s door handle.

Turner put his hand on mine. “One of the Secret Service agents will return the van to the White House. I’m driving you home.”

He tightened his grip as if bracing for an argument.

“I’d appreciate that,” I said, which must have shocked him.

When he didn’t let go of my hand, I gave his shoulder a nudge. “If you don’t mind, I’m sort of in a hurry.”

 

ABOUT HALF AN HOUR LATER TURNER LEANED
back in a kitchen chair and took a sip of the herbal tea I’d brewed for him. He looked at home in my kitchen.

“You sure have a lot of plants.”

“Occupational hazard,” I said while I rooted around in the pantry. Next to a half-empty bag of potting soil and below a stack of two-gallon pots, I found the first-aid kit Aunt Alba had given me the day before I’d left for D.C. She believed all Northern cities were festering pits of depravity. So she’d bought me the deluxe first-aid kit from Charleston’s last corner five-and-dime store.

When I emerged from the pantry with the kit in hand, I’d noticed Turner’s expression had soured. He wrinkled his nose. “They look so harmless on the shelf up there.”

“What does?” I followed his line of sight. “Oh, the peppers?” I’d built the glass plant shelves myself. They ran the length of the south-facing window above the sink. On the top shelf were my habaneras. They were a little bit leggy from having to reach for the winter sun, but they were producing a nice crop of spicy fruit.

“They’re not even red.”

“Not yet. Those aren’t ripe.” A few had turned light orange, but I liked to pick them when they took on a bright reddish-orange hue and the surface of the skin had wrinkled just a bit. That’s when this variety of pepper, in my opinion, was at its peak of potency.

“And what do you have growing on the shelf beneath them, deadly nightshade?”

“Close. Tomato seedlings.”

I placed the first-aid kit on the kitchen table and dug around in its contents, searching for something that would help ease the soreness in Turner’s ribs and foot.

He’d already turned down pain relievers.

“Do we wrap the ribs?” I asked when I found an Ace bandage.

“No. I’ll just ice it down when I get home.” He started to get up. All the color in his face drained away. He groaned and landed back in the chair with a thump.

I groaned in sympathy. “Your muscles must have tightened up. Let me help you.” I found an ice pack in the back of the freezer. “If you drove home now, you’d probably end up getting in an accident.”

He nodded and gritted his teeth.

Since the temperature in the house was warm, he’d shed his flak jacket as soon as he’d checked the apartment for signs of intruders. Underneath, he was wearing a black T-shirt that hugged his impressive muscles. Now I could have handed him the ice pack and let him place it where he thought it would do the most work. But the devil led me to mischief.

I was being helpful—right,
helpful
—when I said, “I think we need to get your T-shirt off so I can inspect your injury.” As if I’d know what a broken rib would look like.