Page 48 of The Off Limits Captain
I look down at my hands. They are steady. I resent them for it.
“So do I.”
Peyton
The helicopter lands at a private airfield with one hangar, two trucks, and a windsock snapping itself half to death in the dark.
Ryan is out before the pilot finishes the shutdown. I follow with my bag over one shoulder, careful not to turn an emergency into a chase. A black SUV waits near the gate. The driver says, “Mr. McAllister,” like he has known Ryan since Ryan was tall enough to steal beer from a garage fridge.
Maybe everyone here has.
Ryan takes the front passenger seat. I slide into the back and watch his profile in the wash of passing headlights. His jaw is set. His phone stays in his hand. Every few minutes it lights up with a new message. He answers some. Ignores others. Once, his thumb hovers over a thread. I catch Dad before he locks the screen without typing.
The hospital appears ten minutes later, low and bright against the dark fields. Hill Country Regional has automatic doors, aflag out front, and the particular smell of antiseptic, old coffee, and vending-machine sugar that makes every waiting room in America feel related.
Ryan crosses the lobby in long strides.
I stop at the edge of the seating area.
He turns back.
“I’m not coming in unless someone asks me to,” I say before he can issue an order. “I’ll stay here.”
His eyes move over my face, searching for the trap.
There isn’t one.
That seems to throw him more than a trap would have.
“Fine,” he says.
Then he disappears through the double doors.
I sit in a vinyl chair near a plastic Ficus plant and put my bag at my feet. My phone has six texts from Gil, one from my father, and a news alert about the Stampede captain leaving practice for a family emergency.
Already.
I want to swear.
Instead, I text Gil.
At the hospital. Ryan’s mother in surgery. I am in the lobby. No quotes. No room.
His reply comes fast.
Good. Be human first. Reporter second. Still observe.
I stare at that last sentence.
Still observe.
The job and the danger, in three syllables.
A nurse walks by carrying a paper cup of ice chips. A man in work boots sleeps with his head tipped against the wall. At the vending machines, a teenager in a letterman jacket tries to smooth a dollar bill against his thigh while a woman who looks like his grandmother whispers instructions as if the machine might be offended by confidence.
I take out my notebook.
Across the lobby, one of the nurses comes out and sets a paper bag beside the sleeping man in work boots. She does not wake him. A minute later, an older woman in scrubs stops long enough to pull a blanket higher over his shoulder before moving on to the desk.
