“Duh,” she answered.
“Short for Maverick,” Alex said.
Sierra screwed up her face. “What? Why would he call you that?”
“Maverick…from Top Gun,” Alex said.
Sierra frowned before she grabbed her phone and tapped on the display. “Oh, that ancient movie with Tom Cruise. Whatever.”
Alex shifted in his seat. “Yeah, ancient. Anyway, we’re big on nicknames. And Doc here tried to call me Ace, but that’s reserved for Ava only.”
“I can’t believe you call him Doc,” Sierra said with a shake of her head. “You should have picked something more like him. Like–”
“Don’t say crazy,” Kyle said, wagging his finger.
“Fine. Next…what exactly didDocdo to that was so wonderful?”
Kyle leapt from his seat. “I told you. I rescued Ava and whisked her away from that murder charge. I–”
“Stole the gun back…we all know that. We were all part of that, duh,” Sierra said. “What else?”
“I totally rescued Mav from a Board stronghold. Guns blazing.”
Alex recalled him firing two shots during the rescue, both misses. But it didn’t matter. He’d been there when they’d needed him. He was an important part of the team. A team that was about to be disbanded.
“He totally did. Shot at a guy, too. Doc did a great job. He was a big part of my rescue.”
Kyle grinned at him. “Thank you for confirming that for so-called family who thinks the only thing I do is screw up.”
“That’s not true,” Julia said with shake of her head.
“No,” Grant said. “When we were dealing with Lydia, Kyle was a big part of that. I knew it had it in you, son. Just like a Harrington.”
“Speaking of like a Harrington, did you ever sort out that issue with the blood type Sierra received?” Alex asked, desperate to get his mind off of Ava’s missing presence.
“No,” Grant said with a shake of his head.
“It must have been some sort of mistake with the paperwork,” Julia said with a shrug.
“No,” Kyle answered with a shake of his head. “Hospitals don’t make those mistakes, and if they do, the patient is usually dead.”
Alex’s features crinkled as he tried to make sense of it. “So, wait a minute…”
He leaned forward and grabbed his laptop.
“What are you doing?” Julia asked.
His fingers raced across the keyboard as he worked to access the hospital’s files on Sierra. “Checking the files. I want to see if the blood they gave her when she went there after the ball was the same as the type they gave her when she pulled her stitches.”
Kyle eased onto the cushion next to him as he bypassed the hospital’s security measures and found his way into the patient files. “That’s incredible, Mav.”
“Yeah, hospitals are easy. Give me something hard to try,” he murmured as he found Sierra’s file and opened it to read the chart.
“Looks like she had…AB negative after the ball. And…” He tapped around to find the next entry. “AB negative when she popped a stitch, is that right?”
Grant’s features pinched. “Well…no. It’s not. If that’s right…”
“You’d be her father,” Kyle said before he shrugged. “Well, assuming Lydia didn’t have an affair with another man who inexplicably had the same rare blood type or Lydia had that blood type.”
