“Angel?”
“The one who held your femoral artery together until I could get in there and repair it.”
“Oh, that one. Will do.” Marco didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He began to feel sleepy and noticed, late, the nurse had added something else to his drip.
“I’m going to get prepared, and I’ll meet you downstairs. Wave to all your fans along the way. It will take your mind off the procedure.”
Marco was getting confused. Rhea looked like she had two heads, and then his eyes got very sleepy. A warm feeling overcame his body as the pain in his leg and knee drifted off into space. Just as he was told, as they wheeled him through the doorway and down the hall to the elevator, he waved to all the imaginary fans in the wings.
“You got this, Boss. We’ll all be here when you come back!” Rhea’s voice got smaller and smaller until he couldn’t hear anything but the squeaking of the wheels on the gurney.
The two male orderlies working the head and foot of the gurney were whispering.
“You got plans for lunch?” one asked the other.
“The burger basket was all I planned. You can come,” the other one answered.
Marco barked, “That is so unfair,” just before he fell asleep.
Marco’s first sensation that he was still alive was that he heard laughing. Of course, they’d be laughing. He only hired people with a good sense of humor, and the boss was always the brunt of all the jokes. He tried to count the laughs, since there were no words being spoken, and people were trying desperately not to laugh.
He must have rolled his eyes because someone shushed everyone to silence. He expected them to say something like, “Let the king speak,” but of course that was ridiculous.
At last, the mystery was killing him, so he opened his and let the smiles in the room come fall all around him. God it was great to be alive, he thought. That was something to smile for.
Just as promised, Khalil and Absalom were right there, without their normal silk pajama attire. No jewelry either. Each of them wore a pair of Hawaiian print golfing shorts in solid blue and green and a bright matching Aloha shirt with pineapples, flamingos and old 1950’s vintage convertible cars with surfboards coming out of the back seat. They looked like they were having a good time. Each sported a big grin.
“Boss!” said Khalil, who reached over and grabbed Marco’s hand in a grip, not a shake. Absalom was a bit shyer to adopt the custom, but his warm, eager expression told Marco everything.
“Father sends his respects for a smooth and easy recovery, Marco. He wishes that you reschedule his boot camp,” Absalom stated in a formal clipped Indian dialect.
Marco was beginning to feel some hot pain coming from his upper leg and twisted a bit to try to elevate his knee, but his entire leg had been immobilized. He closed his eyes. “Just a minute, I’m having a hard time getting the right position.”
Dr. Patel introduced himself and the two boys dialogued with him in Hindi. Then he gave his attention to Marco. “It’s normal to start to feel pain right now. I’ve ordered you something for it, which should be here soon.”
“I forgot that part, doc,” Marco whispered.
“Maybe I have something better for the pain,” Patel said softly.
Shannon appeared at his bedside. Her pink cheeks and soft red lips looked so fresh and inviting, her timid smile made even his toes, which hadn’t recovered from the anesthetic yet, tingle.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” he said, with his eyes filling up with water. “God, I owe you a lifetime of apologies. I misjudged everything. I almost lost you.”
“But you didn’t. I’m here, and I have much to apologize for as well. But I like the lifetime of saying whatever it is you want to say to me. I promise I’ll listen. I’ll hang on every word, as long as you get back to your perfect, ornery self and start chasing me around with your cane.”
“A cane is it, doctor? You didn’t tell me about that,” he said as Shannon bent down and kissed him gently on the lips. “Ah, paradise. I’ve been to paradise.”
Shannon blushed and waited for the doctor’s response.
“We’ll see. I wouldn’t bet against you, Marco. But let’s be patient. Your body has been through a lot of stress. No ordinary person would be expected to get up and start dancing. But somehow for you, it will be different. I’m sure you’ll be breaking records, my man.”
He held Shannon’s hand while Rhea and Dax greeted him next. Then Forest and Kevin, with Art right behind.
“I understand you guys found this little worm in a storm drain?”
“Not quite, Marco. She was hiding in a cave underneath it. Very smart little lady,” said Art.
Shannon squeezed his hand. “Lucky for me it happened in Florida, where the ground is warm, even in the rain. It kept me toasty until morning. I fell asleep. Of course,” she showed him the several dozen bites on her forearms and neck, “I think I slept with some other creatures too who extracted their bounty on me.”
“So, who was this guy? Rhea told me he was a cameraman at TMBC?”
Art nodded. “I have a former profiler friend who now does something safer, and she told me it sounded like a fan gone crazy. That didn’t make sense, because at the time we were thinking Rebecca, and she wasn’t a fan.”
“That’s for sure,” Kevin mumbled.
“A fan of who, me or Shannon?” Marco wanted to know.
“A fan of Shannon’s. And it turns out my friend was right, although it didn’t help us solve the case. We got him from the surveillance tapes at the hotel, and, well, let’s just say he chose a wrong place to show up. Gulf Boulevard has more security cameras than New York,” he said.
“Yup, and we were able to track him all the way North until he came to the entrance to Honeymoon Island State Park. Parts of it are rural. The Park was closed, but he must have known the terrain because we think he was headed to an abandoned Ranger Station there. It’s dotted with little trails and picnic pavilions all over the place, amongst the virgin slash pine stands, which is what got her all cut up. If she’d have kept running, she’d have made it to the beach,” added Kevin.
“We owe the Coast Guard a thank you for finding his pickup, or it would have taken us a day or two to comb through the area on foot,” Art continued. “We thought we’d find her or him with the night vision the chopper has, but no luck with that. She was safe and sound in that cave.”
“So, what was his story?”
“He’s from California and did work in Santa Rosa. Fancied himself as a director of sorts, but his specialty was gory car wrecks. Worked for the newspaper up there, mostly freelance work. When Emily’s accident occurred, he covered the funeral, everything. He hounded the drunk driver for years, even getting arrested for confronting him after he got out. The driver only served about five years.”
Marco squeezed Shannon’s hand. She was looking down at the bed.
Art continued, “And we think he became obsessed with Shannon. Like he thought he was her protector. He followed her to Florida, knew about her modeling and acting career and even tried to get hired on as an extra. He’d been planning this for a long, long time, Marco. He was one mixed up dude.”