Killer Countdown. Amelia Autin

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed completely oblivious. Two were watching the in-flight movie, and the third was dozing with his head propped against the window.

      “No one knows any more than you,” he reassured Mike. “And I didn’t tell any of you because I didn’t want to put you in the position of lying to the press should any questions arise.”

      “Cancer?”

      Shane shook his head. “Worse. At least...in the perception of the general public.”

      “What could be worse than cancer?”

      He considered what if anything he should tell Mike and quickly reached the conclusion he’d been fooling himself thinking he could keep the diagnosis secret. He made a mental note to contact Carly regarding the promised exclusive—she’d kept her word, hadn’t mentioned his illness when she’d reported on the assassination attempt, so he needed to keep his word, too. Then he said, “Epilepsy. And it’s not curable.”

      “Epilepsy?” Mike looked blown away. “But you don’t... I mean...you haven’t...”

      “Yeah, my symptoms aren’t what most people think of when they think of it.”

      “Jeez.” After a moment the younger man said, “What symptoms? You never said.”

      Shane quickly recounted what he’d told Carly. “I’ve been having these episodes for about six months now. The first physician I consulted had no idea what was causing them. He thought maybe I was depressed and wanted to prescribe an antidepressant.” He snorted. “I knew I wasn’t depressed, so I insisted on seeing a specialist. A whole slew of specialists, in fact, an endocrinologist and a neurologist among them. Nobody could put a name to what was wrong with me. I was complaining to a doctor friend from my Marine Corps days that even with all the medical advances, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and he suggested the Mayo Clinic.”

      “And that’s the diagnosis they came up with? Epilepsy?” Mike shook his head. “Maybe you should get a second opinion.”

      Shane laughed, but the humor was lacking. “Don’t need one. And you wouldn’t suggest it if you read the literature they provided me with. What I have isn’t all that common, but it is a specialized form of epilepsy—the symptoms are unmistakable. And even if they weren’t, the tests they performed—”

      “You mean all those electrodes?”

      “Yeah. Those electrodes were for EEG tests. They were actually able to trigger two episodes with their stress tests. The nurses observed the goose bumps on my arms and legs—that’s the reason they wanted me to wear running shorts and a short-sleeved shirt in bed, by the way, so they could observe the physical manifestations—and they talked to me during each episode and recorded my responses. Just as I’d told them, each incident lasted about a half a minute then went away, and I never lost consciousness. But the EEG recorded what was happening in my brain each time. Sure enough, I was having tiny seizures.”

      Mike didn’t respond for several minutes as he digested this. “And it’s not—you said it’s not curable? What are you going to do?”

      “It’s controllable but not curable.” Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out a little pill bottle, the prescription he’d had filled before he left the hospital. “Twice a day, and it’s supposed to control the seizures.”

      “And that’s what you want me to include in your statement to the press?”

      Shane shook his head. “Not exactly. As I told you, first let’s just say I’ve been asked not to talk about the attack. I promised Carly Edwards—”

      Mike pointed to his laptop screen. “Tiger Shark? Her?”

      “Yeah.” He envisioned her in his hospital room...then in his fantasies. “I promised her an exclusive if and when I went public with this information. And I always keep my promises.”

      * * *

      Carly settled into her first-class airplane seat on the red-eye flight to DC with a tiny sigh of satisfaction. She declined the offer of an alcoholic beverage and instead requested a bottle of water, which was quickly forthcoming. She sipped at it, then closed her eyes. As the plane took off, she let her mind replay everything that had happened over the past two days. High on the list was the scoop she’d managed, even though the police had seized her smartphone and the video she’d taken as evidence in the assassination attempt on the senator.

      But even higher on the list was Senator Jones himself. Shane Jones. She could still see him confronting her this afternoon, a seething, very-pissed-off male. She was on the tall side for a woman, but he towered over her. And she would have bet her next exclusive there was not an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. A body that had sprawled protectively atop hers when the bullet had whizzed over them. At the time, she hadn’t focused on anything except her fortunate escape, but now she realized how good it had felt to be held in his strong arms. Safe. Secure. And unbelievably, that embrace had reminded her she was a woman and he was a man. An incredibly sexy man.

      Stop thinking about his physical attributes, she told herself, frowning a little. But then she remembered those chocolate-brown eyes, and the way they and his mobile mouth could express a wide range of emotions, as they had in his hospital room. He’d been angry with her this afternoon—and all marine—but yesterday...yesterday he’d seemed human. Approachable. A wounded warrior trying to come to terms with a diagnosis that made a mockery of his seeming invulnerability.

      She ran through the facts she knew about him—the ones she’d known for a while and the ones she’d researched yesterday after she’d cut the interview short—and tried to assemble them into a picture of the man.

      Knowing he was a widower whose wife and unborn child had died at the hands of terrorists, explained that incredibly protective streak in him. Not just this afternoon, but five years ago, when he’d used his body to shield a pregnant woman from harm in a domestic terrorism incident outside a bookstore. He’d escaped injury this afternoon, but not back then. That’s when he’d sustained the TBI that most likely was the trigger for the seizures he was experiencing now.

      Carly had still been in college when Shane’s pregnant wife had been kidnapped and murdered, but it had made the news at the time. She remembered it vividly, but she hadn’t known it was him. She hadn’t made the connection until she’d researched everything she could about the senator.

      Wendy Jones, wife of a marine lieutenant stationed at the NATO headquarters in Belgium, had been abducted in broad daylight by a terrorist organization in retaliation for the arrest and conviction of three of its members, including its founder. And then executed in cold blood.

      Carly had read with keen interest the interview he’d given his hometown newspaper shortly after the US Marine Corps had retired him due to the injuries he’d sustained that day five years ago. He’d made the Corps his home for so long it almost seemed a sacrilege to even think of “hanging up his spurs,” retired Lieutenant Colonel Shane Jones had explained to the reporter. “Twenty and out” had never been in his mind. He was a lifer. “Once a Marine, Always a Marine” wasn’t just a slogan used by former members of the US Marine Corps to distinguish themselves from lesser mortals, it had been his mantra.

      Shane had been reticent, but the reporter had skillfully elicited the information that Shane was one of those rarities, a marine who’d enlisted in the Corps as a buck private and then had rapidly risen through the ranks. Not just as a noncommissioned officer—a noncom—but as a commissioned officer. Tapped at СКАЧАТЬ