Fallon nodded slowly. “That’s good to hear.”
Neither had to say any more because Bullard knew; they all did. But it was suddenly a different world out there, and he didn’t want to go forward without Leia at his side. Though there had been many events in his life where he’d been forced to deal with circumstances he didn’t want anything to do with. But no way he would let her be hurt.
Just then Dave came running down the boardwalk. He’d been on the phone. “So,” he said, “I’ve just heard from a source that somebody was interested when the news came out that you were alive. There was also interest in who might have rescued you, and the information included something about a New York doctor who’d been in hiding for five years.”
“She hasn’t been in hiding,” he said, “not in the sense of hiding away from law enforcement or anything. She’s been hiding from life.”
“Well, apparently somebody put a price on her head.”
At that, Bullard stopped and stared, fury building in his chest. “That’ll be that damn doctor,” he said instantly.
“That’s my take on it,” Dave said. “We’re getting as much information as we can right now.” He hopped onto the boat, and the two of them took seats at the back. Fallon stepped up to stand beside Dave while Ryland took the wheel, and in no time they were underway.
As they sped across the water, Bullard completely ignored the beautiful blue sky in this tropical paradise. He’d been living here for months now, and it’s not like he ever wanted to be complacent about it, but it was really hard to see anything but the evil patterns weaving around them. “So this guy was keeping an eye out for her, and, now that she’s surfaced, he wants, what? To talk to her? If the goal was just to kill her, they could have taken care of that on the island.”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Fallon said. “Unless he thinks she’s told somebody or she has some proof or something.”
“I don’t know,” Bullard said. “We never really talked about it.”
“Is she the kind who might do something like that?”
He tilted his head to the side, thinking about her. “She’s definitely a survivor, so, in that case, the answer would be yes,” he said. “So we’ll need to ask her about that when we find her. But a few other questions are on the top of my list.”
“Like what?” Fallon asked.
“Like why the hell she didn’t expose that bastard at the time,” he snapped. “She said that he’s killed before. On the operating table for sure, but I wonder if there was more even than that.”
“Of course he had a certain amount of—I don’t know—leeway, since so many patients in a practice of that nature were probably likely to die anyway,” Fallon said.
“Potentially, but that would be pretty harsh to just assume that a percentage of the patients would die on the table.”
Then Dave spoke up. “Remember? A lot of doctors won’t take on cases with poor potential for good outcomes. Too many deaths hurt their survival statistics, which impacts the cost of their malpractice coverage.”
“If that asshole is putting her through this over something that stupid, I may just kill him myself,” Bullard said immediately. “What a horrid world we have become.”
“We already knew that,” Fallon said, “but now it’s a matter of trying to minimize the damage.” Bullard nodded, as Fallon went on. “I still think we need more information about the whole scenario with this doctor.”
“Ice is working on that,” Bullard said. “Her father had some contacts that he would get a hold of, although he is probably in surgery for 90 percent of the day, and we can’t wait for that intel to come through.”
“I think we can,” Dave said. “We’ll be at least an hour getting up the coast.”
“Well, we better shave off at least ten minutes,” he snapped because he couldn’t bear the thought of showing up only to find he was ten minutes too late. He sat here, trying desperately to stay focused on what was happening, though his mind was spinning about the doctor. Was this really about Bullard, or was it about Leia? Surely it couldn’t be about both of them.
Or could it?
Yet, at the same time, he had suffered, and so had she. He felt terrible in a way since he’d actually taken her out of hiding and brought her back into the real world. He had no idea enemies lay in wait for her, any more than she had for him. Her protectiveness had been as much about her own peace and sanity as his. How awful that they had both ended up as targets. His shoulders were broad, and he’d been a target many times, but it was much harder on her. He just had to find a way to get them both out of here safely.
“Just got a text from Levi,” Dave said, holding up his phone. “Ice’s father is having a meeting right now with the hospital board members he knows.”
“Good,” Bullard said in surprise. “Christ, he got on that fast.”
“Well, everybody knows we don’t have any time to spare right now,” Dave said. “Whether the target’s you or her, it doesn’t matter. You’re both in danger, and we won’t get to the bottom of this until we actually get whoever it is who’s hunting you.”
“I was really hoping we would have some answers by now,” Bullard said.
“We all did,” Fallon said, “but we’ve checked every person we know of on this earth who would have a grudge against you, yet still somebody has hired these men to take you out.”
“So maybe it’s somebody that we don’t know,” Bullard said.
“That would make sense in one way, but there has to be a connection,” Fallon said.
“We’ve deposed a lot of tyrants,” Bullard said, “and it doesn’t take a big connection to see that some of those guys would be after me.”
“But they have to really care about it,” Fallon said. “It can’t be just about your security company because seriously, if you died, it won’t do anything for them.”
“It would make them smile, at least,” he growled.
“That’s true,” Dave said, as he stared off in the distance.
“And what if it’s somebody that we do know,” Fallon said, “but not somebody we would expect?”
“Like an enemy presuming to be a friend?” Dave asked.
“Something like that, yeah,” Fallon said, with a nod.
“At this point we have no choice but to look at options like that,” Dave said. “Do you have anybody in mind?”
“Not really,” Fallon said, “because we’re surrounded by a lot of people, but we vet all of them. To think that anybody we vetted is involved would mean our system sucks.”
“It doesn’t suck,” Dave said. “We have one of the best in the world. The problem is, we don’t always know what’s going on in somebody’s mind.”
“So we take another look,” Bullard said. “As soon as you mentioned Deedee, I was thinking that maybe she would have had something to do with it, or even Michael. But—”
“Not Michael or Deedee, but definitely some employees and ex-employees of theirs went off on their own. But, in the midst of all that, we found out they’d been hired on by this guy, like all the others.”