Steven James - The Knight

“His record is squeaky clean,” she said.

“Too clean?”

“Maybe.”

“Listen, pull together whatever you have on him. I’ll call you when I get to my computer. Just wait for my call, OK?”

“All right.”

“Keep digging. See what you can find.”

“I will.”

Through the windows in the back of the ambulance I could see that we’d reached the hospital. Angela’s words troubled me. A man doesn’t usually disappear into the mountains and drop off the map unless he’s running from something.

The paramedic accepted his phone back and Cheyenne finished her call, then asked, “Pat, do you know if Kurt survived the explosion?”

“I think he had enough time to get into the tunnel before the shaft blew. But I’m not sure.”

“Are there any other ways out of that passageway?”

“I don’t think so. He chose that tunnel for one reason: there was no possible escape.” I wondered how long it would take a rescue team to dig him out. Maybe weeks. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother. That was a satisfying thought.

Cheyenne considered my words for a moment. “Thomas Bennett and his wife owned the mine. She should know if there are any other passages.”

“Good thought,” I said.

The ambulance stopped, and the paramedic opened the back doors as Cheyenne phoned headquarters for Marianne Bennett’s number.

Two EMTs rushed toward us from the hospital, and with the help of the man who’d been riding with me, they wheeled me out of the ambulance.

“I’ll see you inside,” I called to Cheyenne, and then the emergency room doors slid open and the three men pushed me into the building.

6 minutes later

My nurse set down the blood pressure cuff. “The doctor will be with you in a minute.”

“Thank you.”

I’d been so groggy in the ambulance that I hadn’t thought to ask Cheyenne how Calvin was doing. So, as soon as the nurse stepped out of the exam room, I stood to go find him.

I felt a little wobbly, but managed to make it two steps before the door opened again.

Cheyenne.

A small smile. “Going somewhere?”

I leaned a hand against the wall. “Just to see how Calvin is doing.”

“I was just with him. No change.” She looked at me with concern. “You shouldn’t be walking around.”

“I’m OK.”

I took my hand off the wall and showed her I could stand on my own, but she took my arm to support me. “Pat, since Friday you were nearly burned alive, bitten by a rattlesnake, sealed in a mine, blown up, and crushed by a boulder.”

“Imagine if it’d been an eventful couple days,” I said.

She offered me a half smile.

She’d left the door slightly ajar. Behind her I could see the front doors of the hospital.

“Thanks for getting me out of that mine,” I said. She was still holding my arm.

“I told you I’d come back for you.”

Her words brought to mind the comments I’d made as I was awakening in the ambulance. I’d been mumbling Lien-hua’s name, that I was glad she’d come back. That I needed her.

Gently, I removed Cheyenne hand from my arm. “Cheyenne, when I woke up in the ambulance, I thought that you were someone else.”

“Lien-hua.”

“Yes.”

“It’s all right. I know. You were groggy.”

I searched for the best way to balance honesty with sensitivity. Obviously, I liked both her and Lien-hua, but I felt like I needed to be straight with her. To tell her everything.

Cheyenne must have sensed that I was struggling with what to say. “Really, Pat. It’s all right. I understand. You don’t have to explain.”

Here’s where things got tricky. “Well… you see… maybe I do.”

Silence.

“Oh,” she said softly. Her tone mirrored the distance that was already stretching between us. “I see.”

“Listen, maybe I just need some time to sort out my feelings.”

“Right, sure, that makes sense.”

Her voice was breaking, a thin crack ran through every word.

She’s as lonely as you are, and you hurt her.

You hurt her.

I wanted to take her in my arms, to hold her, to tell her I was sorry, but I knew that if I did, it would be a way of making a promise that my heart wasn’t ready to keep.

“Cheyenne, this is really-”

“Can you tell me one thing, Pat. Please?”

“Of course.”

“Over the last year I’ve asked you out more than once and the timing was never right-and I understood all that, but…” She took a gentle breath. “Is there a chance it ever will be?”

Oh man.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. “Cheyenne, you’re an amazing woman and I… I mean, if I wasn’t-”

But she cut me off by holding up her hand. “No, that’s good. That’s enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please. Don’t be. The truth,” she said softly, “it suits you.”

In the moment that followed, our eyes said good-bye and I felt helpless, trapped by my feelings toward these two women who both seemed, in different ways, to be out of reach: Lien-hua, because of my past. Cheyenne, because of Lien-hua.

Then through the doorway, I saw Tessa and my mother entering the emergency room.

“Maybe we can talk more about this later,” I said.

Cheyenne turned to see who I was looking at. “That’s OK. I think we’ve talked about it enough.” Her voice carried no animosity, and for some reason that only made me feel worse.

Before I could respond, she stepped away and flagged down Tessa, then she disappeared around the corner and my mother and stepdaughter hurried to meet me in the exam room.

And I realized it was time to talk to Tessa about her father.

My head still ached, but other than that I felt passable, so after assuring my mother that I was all right, I asked her to wait in the lobby for a few moments to give me and Tessa a chance to talk.

She didn’t look convinced that I was OK. “They told us a boulder fell on your head.”

“A small boulder,” I said.

She smiled in a careful, concerned way. “All right, but we’re not leaving this hospital until a doctor looks you over.”

“Deal.”

That satisfied her and she left for the lobby as I guided Tessa toward a nurse’s station, where we found out that Calvin was in room

“Patrick,” Tessa said. “I’m really glad it wasn’t a bigger boulder.”

“Thank you. That’s kind of you to say.”

We headed down the hall and I was about to bring up the cy-bercrime email when she mentioned she’d seen Detective Warren leaving my room. “I recognized that look on her face.”

“What look?”

“Please.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “Tessa, I wanted to talk with you about-”

“So, pretty much: boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy loses girl. The end.”

I held back a small sigh. “Pretty much.”

“What kind of a story is that, anyway?”

The story of my life.

“I guess sometimes things don’t work out like you hope.” It was all I could think to say.

“Is Detective Warren what you were hoping for?”

Definitely time to change the subject. “So you’re looking for your father?”

She took a few steps before answering. “My last name should have been Lansing.”

“Did you read the email from the cybercrime division?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to meet him?”

“Yes, I do.”

A terrible whirlwind of emotions blew through me. Even though Tessa wasn’t my daughter, it felt like she was, and it stung to hear her words. But even though I had serious reservations about this man, I said, “OK.”

“OK?”

“If Paul Lansing is your father, your real father, you have every right to meet him.” How to put this. There really was no delicate way. “But…”