“Yes. Unless something could be done to prove her innocence and to expose that conspiracy against her,” Dave said, giving Bullard an encouraging look.
“I don’t think she’s up for the fight,” Bullard said. “She hasn’t got the heart for it.”
“No. Sometimes life is like that,” Dave said. “But maybe we should pick up her fight?”
“I would love to, but I don’t want to alienate her either, getting her involved regardless, and you know she would have to be a party to the legal fight.”
“We’ve seen injustice all over the world.”
“Yeah, we sure have.” Bullard looked around and said, “Please tell me the rest of the team is okay. How bad has it been?”
“No deaths,” Dave said, “though we’ve had close calls and some serious injuries. Everybody is recovering, some slowly, but we’re still on the hunt. If you’ve got a couple hours, I can bring you up to date on what’s gone on.”
“I’ve got nothing but time,” he said. “Did you arrange for us to get out of here?”
“Yeah. I have a boat and a helicopter on standby,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what I was up against coming here.”
“I’m not sure either,” Bullard said. “We’ve also had some strangers lurking around the island. More than usual apparently,” he said. “People have been hiding in the bushes watching, and you know how I feel about that.”
“You also have a beautiful woman here,” Dave said. “I’m sure she’s attracted plenty of looks.”
“Maybe, but it feels like it’s more than that.”
“Good enough,” Dave said. “I’ll still trust your instincts. Injured or not, you’ve always had an uncanny ability in that department.”
“Dave, do we know who blew up the plane?”
“Well, we know one layer,” he said. Then they sat down together and, for several hours, went through everything Dave knew, as methodically as he could. By the time he gratefully accepted the fresh juice from Leia who’d come to join them, his voice was raspy and dry.
She stared at him in shock, after hearing only part of it, but understood how immense the trials against Bullard’s team had been. “It’s a miracle any of the team is alive,” she murmured.
“It’s a miracle he’s alive,” Dave said, pointing to Bullard, “and believe me. We’re all very grateful for what you’ve done.”
She just shrugged and walked away to give them some room, still within hearing distance but not close enough to intrude.
“So we’re still looking for the very top man. Is that it?” Bullard asked.
“Yes,” Dave said. “We’ve finally got it down to that, after going through layers and layers of crap to get here.”
“I can’t believe Deedee is dead.”
“I know,” Dave said, “and to think Kano and Catherine are together because of it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say they’re together because of it. They were together before, and Deedee essentially broke them up,” Bullard said. “She was one hell of a bitch.” But there was almost a note of respect and admiration in his voice as he said it.
“We were worried for a while there that you had something going with her,” Dave said.
“No,” he said, shaking his head and looking at Leia, who was close enough to hear. “There were just some things you couldn’t do with her. Lines not to be crossed. She was a black widow if there ever was one.”
“Apparently she did kill a couple husbands. Michael has survived and is still holding the reins of Kingdom Securities, though several of their men went rogue and have gone off the reservation. But the thing about this deal is, at every step of the way, every low-level bad guy has been taken out by the upper-level bad guys. Total clean-up from within. So we still don’t know who’s at the top, but we’re finally at the last level. Although everyone said it’s someone close enough to all of us that we’d stay with him in your absence.”
“There aren’t too many who could be at the top,” Bullard said. “And since it isn’t Deedee, and it’s not Michael, I’m not sure who else among my competitors it could be,” he admitted.
“That’s the thing,” Dave said. “We’ve all been wondering who this unnamed person could be.”
Bullard nodded. “Have you called the rest of the team?”
“Absolutely. Several are on their way because they don’t believe it, so you can expect more company,” he said.
“Well, they need to bring supplies,” he said. “We don’t have a ton here, definitely not as much as those guys eat.”
Dave nodded and pulled out his phone. “I’ll give them word on that,” he said. “Izzie really wants to see you as well.”
“Ah, Izzie. We have some time to make up for. Nothing like sitting here and thinking about the things that you could have done differently,” he said. “I didn’t do well by her.”
At that, Leia smiled and joined them.
“Dave found out some of your history. Sounds like you were made a scapegoat. What would you have done differently?” Bullard asked her pointedly.
“I’m not sure I could have done anything differently,” she said. “When somebody is out to set you up, how do you get away from it?”
He nodded. “So, I presume you didn’t kill the patient?”
“No, I didn’t kill him,” she said. “It wasn’t my knife close to an artery, but Leo had his right there.”
“And you think he did it?”
“He looked right at me before he sliced it,” she said, “and it wasn’t a random slice, like an accidental nick. It was a long gash in a major artery. We couldn’t save him at that point.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “And you, being the young upstart, were reviled and blamed, right?”
“Particularly when Leo said I had done it, and he’d watched me do it. Nobody would listen to me over him,” she said. “It was all his word against mine, and, although I was a respected surgeon there and thought I had a strong support system, when push came to shove, nobody was there for me. I could have moved somewhere else or done something else, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to just walk away and not get involved in anything where my hand could be blamed for killing someone again.”
“Do you have any tiny shred of doubt that you were involved at all?”
“Meaning, did I wonder if somehow I had sliced his artery? No, I have no doubt about how things went down, and I was not involved,” she said. “I protested until I was blue in the face, but nobody believed me. When they started talking murder charges, I was asked to leave, and I left. They said they would do their best to mitigate any malpractice suits against me, as long as I disappeared. So I did. I up and left, then came here, and here is where I’ve been ever since.”
“You were one of the best and the brightest surgeons of your time, according to the media,” Dave said.
“Yes,” she said, “back then maybe I was, but things change, and I’m out of practice now.”