Hannah made a face. “In the flesh.”
Thewoundedflesh,Sam thought, fighting back the urge to peel off her dress and check her knife wound. But she said she was fine. And he had to take her word for it since they currently had bigger fish to fry.
“But…but,” Vick sputtered, “Yang said youescapedthe FBI. Why are you here working with them to…” Vick’s eyes grew round as he glanced back at Sam and then over at Fisher. “You’re not feds, are you? Who are you? Where are you taking me?”
When he started to struggle, Sam pressed a hand in the center of his chest. “Don’t move, man. You’ll open that wound again, and this time you’ll probably bleed out.”
“Where are you taking me?” Vick repeated. If his voice had been windy sounding before, now it was absolutelywheezy.
“We’re taking you to the hospital,” Sam assured him. “I promise. Now…back to Hannah.”
Vick shook his head. “She wasn’tsupposedto bepart of this at all. Yang told me she stumbled across some exchanges between him and his U.S. contact. So Yang had me back hack her computer, destroy the report she sent to her superiors, and plant evidence against her. But just to shut her up and keep her quiet until we could finish.”
“And how do ya reckon Yang knew about Red Square and their plot to hijack the Dominion Pipeline?” Fisher asked. “It never occurred to ya that Yang might be part ofthatscheme as well? That he might be trying to disrupt our country’s infrastructure on multiple fronts?”
Vick’s eyes tracked back and forth as he considered things. Eventually, he screwed tight his lids and pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Yang was so convincing. He said Bishop was—”
“Wait,” Sam interrupted, the hairs on the back of his neck lifting. “Did you sayBishop?”
But Vick chose that moment to pass the fuck out. His arm fell to the seat. His head lolled to the side. And his mouth fell open.
At least Samhopedthe bastard was only unconscious. He pressed two fingers to Vick’s carotid and heaved a sigh of relief when he felt an answeringthud.
“Did he sayBishop?” Hannah’s eyes seemed to take up her whole face. Disbelief colored her voice. “As in…theBishop? The former secretary to the director of the FBI? The guy we took down months ago?”
Sam was a little disbelieving himself. “No way that was coincidence, right?”
“We’re going to have to talk about that later,” Eliza jumped in. “We’re sixty seconds out from the hospital and I need to know what the plan is.”
“Plan?” Hannah frowned.
“If we go into a hospital with an unconscious man sporting a bullet wound, the feds will be called. Therealfeds. They’re going to want to know who we are,” Eliza explained.
“So we drop him off outside the emergency room and haul ass to the airport,” Fisher said. “We can be on the plane headed back to Chicago, and Mac and Delilah can switch out the plates on this bad boy”—he patted the top of the seat in front of him—“before anyone here thinks to start askin’ questions.”
“It could work.” Eliza nodded.
“Afterward,” Sam added, “we’ll call your pops, fill him in on what’s happened andwhywe had come down here and did what we did. He can pull all his strings to cover any tracks we left behind.”
Sam didn’t catch Eliza’s grimace. He was too busy watching Hannah’s eyebrows pull down over her nose as she glanced over at Eliza. “Who’s your pops?”
Fuck.He hadn’t meant to let that slip.
Hannah picked up on the silence that permeated the inside of the vehicle and her frown deepened. She looked from Eliza to Fisher to Sam. “Who’s her dad?”
“The chief of staff to the president of the United States,” Eliza admitted hoarsely.
Hannah’s mouth fell open. “Sothat’show you guys were able to get on a conference call with the FBI director when we were proving Grace…” She trailed off and shook her head. “I’d beenwonderinghow it was you made that happen. Guess it helps to have family in high places, huh?”
Before Eliza could answer, Hannah turned in her seat and pinned Sam with a look. Her mouth was flat, her eyes troubled when she asked, “Do I actually knowanythingabout you anymore?”
It was a rhetorical question. Which was why he didn’t bother answering it.
But if hehadanswered he would’ve told her…You know everything about me that matters, sweetheart. Except for maybe the part where I’ve gone and fallen in love with you.
28
Dell Seton Hospital
