A Murder in Time(13)

Because there was nothing he could do to ease the desolation he’d glimpsed in Kendra’s dark eyes before she’d looked away, he simply said, “Get some rest, Agent Donovan.”

Kendra struggled against the humiliation and odd ache in her chest that had nothing to do with her injuries. When she finally lifted her gaze, she was surprised to see that she was once again alone in the room.

And she still didn’t know what had happened to Sir Jeremy Greene.



The next four days passed in a haze of tests and physical therapy. Kendra hated her weakness, hated how her limbs felt sluggish and ungainly. Unnatural. Every movement she forced herself to make was like pushing a giant boulder up a mountain, leaving her shaky and disoriented afterward, and in desperate need of a hospital bed.

Luckily, she had one available.

Leeds did not return, although she did hear that he checked on her regularly. As promised, Carson arrived to debrief her, solemnly informing her of the body count, which included Allan O’Brien in addition to Sheppard and Vale, and Danny Cortez from Team One. Two men from Vale’s SWAT team were also killed. Bill Noone had taken a bullet in the leg, but he was alive.

Terry Landon didn’t count.

Kendra thought of O’Brien, and his young wife who was now a widow, and wanted to weep. And to shoot Terry Landon all over again. Fucking bastard.

Carson left before she could ask him about Greene, and in truth, by the time their session was over, she was too drained to formulate any coherent questions anyway. She wondered if some of that lassitude was her mood, or if they’d added morphine to her IV bag after all.

Certainly time seemed to stretch out and then snap together, blurring and bleeding from one moment to the next, from evening to morning to afternoon. She never seemed to be alone. The nurses she’d heard talking—Annie (a motherly figure with sunny blond curls bouncing around a surprisingly youthful face) and Pamela (far less motherly, more angular with short salt-and-pepper hair)—now buzzed in and out of her hospital room like busy bees, checking her vitals, giving her little paper cups of pills, and accompanying her on her journey two floors below for tests, and then dropping another floor to the physical therapy department.

“For someone who was in a coma a couple of weeks ago, you’re doing amazingly well,” Dr. Campbell remarked as he came into the room one morning. He picked up her chart from the foot of the bed and gave it a brisk assessing glance before smiling at her. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“Oh?”

“Kendra.”

Her heart gave a lurch as her eyes swung to the door.

The man standing in the threshold was tall and thin, and so much older than she remembered. His once black hair was now streaked lightly at the temples with silver, and there were lines carved on his handsome face that she couldn’t seem to recall. It’s been more than a decade.

Yet as he stepped into the room, the expression on his face, in his thickly lashed, dark, dark brown eyes—her eyes, she realized with a weird sort of clutch of her heart—was sharply familiar, cool detachment laced with dissatisfaction.

Some things never change.

Seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents swirling in the room, Dr. Campbell continued to smile. “It’s good of you to visit Kendra, Dr. Donovan,” he said. If he thought it odd that the man hadn’t visited or called when his daughter’s life was hanging by a thread, he gave no sign. “I’ll give you some privacy.” He strode to the door, paused. “Kendra is doing remarkably well, but please don’t overtire her.”

“I understand. Thank you, Dr. Campbell.” Dr. Carl Donovan waited until the other man left the room, then said coolly, “So . . . this is why you gave up what could have been a brilliant future?”

Kendra didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Twelve years, and his first words to her were a criticism. Typical. “What’re you doing here?” She sounded a little breathless, but otherwise steady. “I’m the one with the head injury, but apparently you forgot that you disowned me.”

“Don’t be impertinent, Kendra.” Her father’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “I received a phone call from Associate Director Leeds, who suggested that if I wanted to keep doing my research, I should visit you.”

Kendra frowned. “I’m not following. What does your research have to do with me?”

“I’m working at the Fellowship Institute in Arizona—”

“On human genome research. I know.”

“Then you should know that the government is our largest donor.”

Kendra remembered the look of pity in the associate director’s eyes. “Ah. I see. Leeds blackmailed you. That’s why you’re here.” Not because her father wanted to see her. Heaven forbid that he actually cared. And odd how that hurt. She hadn’t seen her father in a dozen years, but he still had that power.

In a fastidious move, Carl lifted his pant leg to keep its pressed line before taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. He cocked a brow. “Are you going to tell me how you ended up here . . . like that?”

“Oh, you know. Just saving the world.”

“I could point out that there are easier and undoubtedly more productive ways to save the world. If you had continued—”

“How’s Barbara?” she interrupted. “The children?”