He grinned. “I’m pretty sure they had to cut some of it,” he said. “I didn’t think it was all that bad when I first looked, but honestly, it was caked with blood, so I couldn’t see it that well. You probably got some stitches.”
“Maybe so.” She nodded slowly. “It is sure pounding.” She reached up with both hands, immediately wishing she hadn’t. “The pain is excruciating.”
“I’m sorry. Head injuries are like that. Trust me. I know.”
“Not your fault,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “I just need to lie here dead quiet for a couple days.”
“Can you even do that?”
“Well, maybe, if I don’t talk to anybody,” she said. “Dang it, I almost started shaking my head. It’s instinctive.”
“You’re about due for more painkillers. The nurse told me that I only had a few minutes to talk to you before she’d be back with your meds.”
“Great,” she said, “so I get to spend the next forty-eight hours drugged up.”
“It’s either drugged up or in terrible pain.”
“I don’t like the drugs,” she said abruptly.
“I don’t either,” he said, and enough sympathy was in his voice that she believed him. Then he added, “But I prefer it over being incapacitated by pain.”
She had to agree. “You’ve got a point there,” she murmured. “How are you guys doing on the investigation?”
“Not sure we’ll be investigating,” he said.
Her eyes flew open, and she stared at him. “I hope you do,” she said, “because it had something to do with that coworker.”
“Well, it might have,” he said gently, “but it might not have either.”
“I told you that the shooter I saw was tall, lean, and a very different body type.”
“And I hear you, but, according to what we’ve heard so far, there’s no sign of him.”
She frowned. “So no one’ll believe me. Is that it?” She hated to hear that note of bitterness in her tone. But it was always a case of being that one female up against a dozen men. She was either imagining things or overreacting. “He was there,” she said forcefully.
Axel picked up her hand and asked, “Are you certain?”
She stared at him. “Yes. He also had a faint limp.”
“Which side?”
She shut her eyes for a moment, recalling the memory. “Favoring his right,” she said. “I don’t know if it was from an injury that occurred on the sub,” she said, “or something else.”
“Weapons?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “He had a small snub-nosed-looking handgun. I hadn’t really seen anything like it before.”
“But you’re licensed for weapons?”
“I’ve done basic training,” she said, “but I don’t carry. I’m a navigation IT specialist,” she said. “I was looking for bugs in the actual coding.”
“So you don’t have much action experience.”
“None.”
“You can’t say that anymore,” he said grimly. “You’ve got experience now.”
“Not the kind of experience I want,” she said.
“None of us do.” He patted her hand and said, “Think back now. Can you tell me anything else about him? Did you hear his voice?”
She closed her eyes again and thought about it. “It was such a panic of multiple people screaming. And so much noise,” she said slowly. “Such a freaky experience, turning around, and he’s firing at people. It’s chaos. Somebody yelled out, ‘What are you doing? Who are you?’” With that, she stopped. “He said something.” She frowned, focused.
He patted her hand again, just waiting.
She said, “It’s like that line out of a B movie. He said something like, ‘I’m your worst nightmare.’”
“Interesting,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because, for most of us, our worst nightmare is betrayal. Somebody we trust turning on us.”
“Well, if he wasn’t one of the men on the crew,” she said, “how does betrayal fit in with this?”
“We’re wondering if Hostettler was working with him.”
Her gaze widened; she hadn’t thought about that. “I didn’t like him. But that doesn’t mean he’s a part of this.”
“No, but he’s the only one who we figure committed suicide.”
She stared up at him. “It was pretty ugly down there, once we realized we couldn’t get the sub back up. We didn’t know what the hell was going on, and we were wondering how long before a rescue could be done. How much air we had was a big concern. Then it got really crazy when the shooting started. So who knows what Hostettler thought. Everybody would soon be dead with us short on air. Then the shooting came, with everybody lying there, shot up and in pain. Maybe his suicide was the easy answer for Hostettler.”
“Maybe,” he said with a nod. “It means though that we’ll be looking into his background pretty carefully.”
She winced. “I imagine you’ll be doing that for all of us,” she murmured.
“But it’s not an issue, unless you’re trying to hide something,” he murmured. A moment of awkward silence passed. When it went on, he squeezed her fingers. “Is there?”
Her eyes flew open, and she stared at him. “Me personally? No more than anybody else,” she said. “It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything. I just don’t want some things aired.”
“Okay, so why don’t you just air them to me right now,” he said. “Maybe I can head off some of it. We don’t want to waste our time and resources on stuff that isn’t relevant anyway.”
“It’s probably already too late,” she murmured. “Four years ago, my ex posted a bunch of photos on the internet. Nude photos of me. He was trying to get revenge for the breakup.”
“Asshole,” he said in an irritated tone.
“Exactly,” she said. “I went to the cops, but they never would do anything with it.”
“No. Once a photo’s up on the net,” he said, “it’s out there.”
“And it’s not that the photos were pornographic or anything,” she said, “just more along the line of sexy. Maybe that made them more appealing.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was pretty bad. They’re out there. I was just hoping this wouldn’t inspire a new round of interest in them. That’s really not who I am.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I’ll just tell the guys up-front and take the news out of it.”
“That just means they’ll all instantly look for them,” she said bitterly.
“So how did you handle it at the time?”
“I posted a dozen photos of myself, like in a bikini and in a thong. I figured if more pictures were out there of my own choosing, maybe they’d stop looking for the others.”
“An interesting point of attack,” he said in surprise.