The Escape (John Puller, #3)(115)

After getting the okay from the guards stationed outside her door, Puller opened the door a crack and peered in. Knox was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She still had a tube in her arm and she was still hooked up to a monitor. He read her vitals, and all looked good.

He walked over to her bed and sat down in the chair set next to it.

“Knox?” he said quietly.

She slowly opened her eyes. “Do I smell food, Puller?” she said.

“Wow, that’s good, Knox. Were you a bloodhound in an earlier life?”

“The food here—they call it food, any way—sucks.”

“It’s a hospital. If the food were good you’d want to stay, and that just wouldn’t work, would it?” He pulled out the burgers and fries and set everything up on the meal table that he rolled over to her. Finally he powered the bed so that Knox rose up to a seated position.

She looked at the burger and fries and then gave him a skeptical look.

He said a little guiltily, “I know it’s not your usual healthy stuff, nuts and twigs and nonfat cottage cheese. But I thought that—”

“I love you,” she interrupted.

“What?” he said, startled.

“Come over here so I can hug you.”

He did so, and she embraced him for a few seconds, pushing her face into his chest.

When they pulled apart she said, “When I rowed crew I ate stuff like this all the time. It’s only when I got older that I realized I couldn’t keep doing it unless I wanted to weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Nice of you to share that little secret.”

She took a huge bite of burger and a long gulp of the Coke and said, “You’re like a knight in shining armor come to save me from a tower filled with limp noodles and stuff here they call meat but tastes like aluminum foil spray-painted brown.”

“I’m not so sure how shiny my armor is.”

She took another mouthful of burger and then stuffed some fries in after it. She still managed to mumble, “God, so good.”

“You might have to run ten miles and do two Insanity routines to work this sucker off.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

She wiped her mouth with a napkin and watched him take a bite of his burger. “Did you just come to feed me or do you have something else?”

“I have a lot.”

He looked around the room.

She followed his gaze.

“Problem?”

“There might be more than four ears in here,” he murmured.

She sat back, ate another fry, then leaned over, opened the drawer of the nightstand, pulled out a pad of paper and a pen, and handed them to him.

“You can swallow it after you show it to me,” she said in a low voice.

He wrote it all down and handed it to her.

She read it all, her eyebrows hiking at several spots. She handed him the paper and he crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. “I’ll swallow it later, after I finish my meal. But until then—”

He pulled out his phone, dialed up his music library, and cued up a song. The music wafted through the room as Puller drew closer and looked at Knox. If they were being eavesdropped on, it would be very difficult to do so now.

“Damn, Puller,” she said. “Daughtrey. Poor guy. I never imagined.”

“Yeah. So we have the motive.”

“Like Niles Robinson. No winner, no matter what you did.”

“But not Reynolds.”

“No. She made her choice for reasons that all benefited her.”

“So they eliminated Daughtrey because he probably was no longer willing to do what they wanted. And he wanted out of the military They couldn’t allow that.”

“That’s the way I see it.”

She sat back against her pillow and looked anxious.

“What?” he asked.

“Promise you won’t get really mad at me?”

Puller looked taken aback by this question, and he was. But then his features softened. “You almost died in an explosion. How mad could I get?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Okay, I promise I won’t get mad.”

“I think I know why your brother was targeted. And the timing of it too.”

Now Puller looked dumbstruck.

She eyed him nervously. “Are you starting to rethink your promise about not getting mad?”

“Just tell me, Knox!”

“We received a warning about your brother.”

Puller gazed at her stonily. “You received a warning about my brother?”

“Yes.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“INSCOM.”

“And who was the warning from?”

“We don’t know. It was anonymous.”

Puller took a deep breath. He was clearly close to losing it. Knox seemed to realize this, because she sank back into her bed like she was trying to disappear.

“What exactly did the warning say?” Puller asked, his voice tense but under control.

“That Robert Puller had been framed, and that the DoD should take another long, hard look at it.”

“When exactly was this?”

“About four months ago. That’s what I meant about the timing.”