Mountain, page 4
“Are you sure?” she asked, struggling to hold open her eyes. “If these were such major questions that you needed to ask,” she argued, as her eyelids flickered shut again, “you should have done it before the painkillers took effect.” And, with that, she closed her eyes and let herself drift back under.
Mountain sat here, waiting for her to wake up again. He wrote down notes, reasserting everything he knew so far about the whole mess.
Teegan had come to the clinic, as soon as he realized Amelia was awake, but, of course, she was back under again now. He stepped up beside his brother. “I know I feel like shit,” he began, “but she looks like shit.”
Mountain snorted. “She’s still pretty feisty though.”
He grinned. “It’s what kept her going. You know that.” Teegan patted his older brother on the shoulder. “Don’t begrudge her the will to live, and even now … the will to keep herself safe.”
“I won’t,” Mountain replied. He checked out his brother, and, as if he’d registered something, his gaze hardened. “Why aren’t you in bed?” He glared at him.
“I’m healing and all that, and I’m doing a hell of a lot better. If I am not out as much as I can …” Mountain stared at him, warning Teegan with his gaze. Teegan shrugged. “Fine, fine. I was hoping to talk to Amelia and to at least thank her for saving my life,” he admitted.
“And you’ll get a chance, but not anytime soon. We can’t have anything bothering her, upsetting her, or in any way making her move and disturbing her stitches,” Mountain explained sternly. “She has to heal a little bit better first.”
Teegan nodded. “She kept me alive.” He stared down at Amelia, a smile on his face. “And it takes somebody special to make the decision that she did to take me on out there in the wilderness and to heal me and to follow through on it.” Teegan looked back at Mountain. “So she’ll get my respect every time.”
“She gets mine too,” Mountain agreed, “and don’t worry. I’m not begrudging her anything, but, if she knows something, no matter how small it is, we need that information.”
Teegan nodded. “Did she say anything?”
“Yeah, she told me, when she was shot the first time, that the shooter came up to check on her after he shot her, saying, Good riddance, and cut the dogs loose, thinking they would take off on their own, I presume. Then he left her to die.”
“Good God,” Teegan murmured, staring at him in shock. “She thinks it’s someone here? … It’s one of us?”
“She told me that he was dressed in the all-white winter camo, which we all use whenever outside, so she’s presuming it’s us. I’m afraid that she’s right too.”
“Any idea who might have a beef with her?”
“She knows nobody in this base, as far as we know, although she took her dogs to Joe. She shouldn’t have anybody who hates her here. I’ll have to ask her, but I’m not willing to rule that out just yet.”
“No, of course not,” Teegan noted, “but still it sucks. She’s done so much for me that it’s hard to believe anybody could really want to hurt her.”
“And yet somebody did want to hurt her,” Mountain declared, “and in a big way. I have yet to ask her about the second attack because she went back under, due to the painkillers.”
“So presumably, if that is all about the first attack, it’s possible that the initial shooter found out she was still alive and went after her again—probably worried she could identify him, if only by his voice maybe.”
“That’s one of the assumptions we have to consider,” Mountain said, with a nod. “But what happens now, when that person finds out she’s still alive, which is my main concern.”
Teegan looked at him intently. “Put me on the roster to guard her.”
“No,” Mountain declared, and he was not willing to give even one millimeter. “I’m not having you look after her, not when you’re barely capable of looking after yourself.”
“Hey, bro,” Teegan barked, feeling hurt. “I know that, in your mind, you don’t see me as being better or capable, but you’re wrong. Plus, in this instance, you need additional help to protect her. I would do anything I can to keep her safe, so don’t be foolish.”
Mountain snorted, and that revealed all about where his mind was on the thought of Teegan helping.
Teegan continued with his argument. “I can help, even if it’s sitting with her in the daytime, as backup for anyone, whatever,” he offered in a frustrated tone. “She saved my life, so don’t take away this opportunity for me to now help her.” And, with that, he stepped to the door. “Let me know if she wakes up again. I’ll go get some rest in the meantime.” And, with that, he slowly headed out the door.
Sydney walked over to Mountain. “You need to cut Teegan a little bit of slack.” He snorted, and she nodded at him sternly. “I understand. You’ve spent your lifetime looking after him, protecting him, being there for him, and, now that you’ve found Amelia, it’s brought up this whole Teegan went missing mess again. Nevertheless you need to ease up.”
“She knows something,” Mountain stated. “She knows a hell of a lot more than something, and, as soon as I mentioned Teegan, she deliberately floated back under again.”
“You blame her?” Sydney asked, with a knowing smile. “She doesn’t trust you, Mountain. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know anything about you. Yet here you are, demanding answers from her. Answers that she’s probably not sure she should even give you,” the doc suggested. “So cut her a bit of slack too.” And, with that, Sydney walked back to her desk, sat down, and continued writing her notes.
He had no idea what she was doing but wouldn’t argue with her. She was still the law when it came to the medical clinic, and this was her domain. As long as everybody here was functioning, doing well, and fit to do their duty on this base, he was prepared to leave the patients to her.
He looked down at Amelia and then back to Sydney. “Did you do a full body check on her?”
He had an odd tone to his voice, which Sydney picked up on immediately. “Yes, as did you.”
He nodded. “I did, but I meant under her clothing and all. Does she have any tattoos? Anything identifiable I couldn’t see? Does she have anything along that line?”
“No tattoos, at least nothing that came up on the initial check,” Sydney clarified. “I didn’t check her heels or soles. About her clothing”—she pointed off to the side—“you’ve already been through it once.”
He nodded. “I’ll go through it again.” He hopped up and went over every piece very slowly. Amelia dressed in extremely high-quality clothing. However, at the end of the day, it was still just clothing. At least they were in good shape. They weren’t brand-new by any means. Her boots were well broken in but had a good grip, good fit, and were rated for this type of cold. When he finally put down the last piece of her clothing, he sat once again and brooded.
Sydney walked over. “I know you want answers, but don’t you go making yourself sick, so I have another patient.” He looked over at her, struggling, and she nodded. “You can make yourself absolutely nuts over this,” she pointed out, with a grin. “So why don’t you give her some slack and let her recover a bit.”
“We need answers before somebody takes her out again.”
“I understand that. I get that, and we’ve got guards and all kinds of stuff happening,” she noted. “I’m just telling you that you need to go a little bit easier on yourself.” He glared at her, and she smiled. “Yeah, I also know that that glare is basically your go-to look when somebody says something you don’t want to listen to.”
“And you’ll ignore it, I presume,” he replied, with a note of humor.
“Absolutely.” She laughed. “I’ve got a glare of my own for people who don’t do what they’re told,” she declared, raising an eyebrow and glaring at him. “And, right now, you need to let Amelia rest a little bit longer. She’s giving you more information every time she wakes up.”
“She is,” he agreed, with a nod. “Just not enough of it.”
At that, she laughed. “Until you get to the bottom of all this, you won’t be happy. Still, don’t alienate everyone in the process.”
“You do realize that only a few people have been out during these latest training sessions,” he shared. “So I need to figure out who could possibly have shot her the second time.”
“And I presume you’ve got someone doing a list, running down who it could be.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, with an odd exasperation. “The list is damn narrow, and Chef is on it.” At that, she frowned and he nodded. “See? You don’t like that answer any more than I do.”
“No, I really don’t, but, if that’s where the answer is, then as long as you guys are certain …” She sent a look in his direction. “Then what am I supposed to do about it?”
“None of us can do anything about it, but, no, I’m not certain about Chef. Not yet anyway.”
“Then maybe go talk to him, explain that Amelia has come in. I’ll stay here with her anyway, so go do something useful for a change.” When he stiffened and glared, she laughed. “I’m not scared of you, and I won’t be intimidated by you.” She added in a challenging tone, “So go on, go find something useful to do.” And, with that, she pointed at the door.
He got up, with one last glance at the sleeping beauty on the bed. Then he faced Sydney. “You’ll let me know if she wakes up, right?”
“I will,” she stated. “So go, and, when you come back, maybe you’ll have more answers and better questions.”
And, with that, he turned and walked out.
Day 5 Morning
Amelia woke up, this time not feeling quite so rough, but her throat was sore, her eyelids heavy, and everything ached. As she shifted in bed, the doctor was immediately at her side. “Hey,” Amelia greeted Sydney. “Did you sleep here?”
“I sleep right next door, and Mountain’s been sleeping here every night to keep an eye on you,” she shared, as she quickly checked over Amelia. “How are you feeling?”
“My throat’s really sore,” she whispered. “I’m not feeling all that bad. The pain’s not terrible at the moment, but I’m not feeling good by any means.”
“The feeling good part? … That’ll take a while,” Sydney shared. “Let’s see if water helps with that throat.” She moved away to get a glass and fill it. “Some of these drugs can make your throat feel quite dry.”
Amelia had several large gulps and then nodded. “That feels a bit better.”
“Good.” Sydney eyed her closely. “You haven’t had any food for a while. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I would love some food.” She looked at the IV in her arm. “I guess that’s how you’ve been keeping me alive, huh?”
“It is,” Sydney confirmed, “but again our supplies are limited here. So the sooner I can get you off this, the better. Getting you onto food is a good step, only I don’t know how your stomach will handle it.”
Amelia closed her eyelids. “Something soft. Maybe soup would be good.”
“I’ll send Mountain to the kitchen, as soon as I tell him that you’re awake.”
“Do you have to tell him that I’m awake?” There was a hard note to her voice.
“I do, and it doesn’t matter, since he’ll be here in a heartbeat anyway because he has that inner instinct that tells him when you’re awake.”
“I don’t have all the answers he wants from me.” Amelia rolled her head to the side, careful not to move her body much.
“You give him what you can give him and nothing more,” Sydney stated. “If you don’t know who you can trust and if you don’t know anything about it, then you tell him that.”
“He won’t believe me,” she said.
“He’ll believe you because he won’t have a choice. He won’t like it, and it could definitely be something that you don’t know that’s helpful,” Sydney added, “but I think that’s really important for you to understand too. The fact that you already told him what you did helps a lot.”
Looking bewildered, she frowned. “How does it help anything? I don’t have a name. I don’t even have a face.”
“Did you see him?”
“Sure, but only with all his heavy gear on.”
“Right.” Sydney nodded, with a quick glance around. “And that’s not quite the same thing, is it?”
“No, it isn’t, since I couldn’t identify him.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she corrected. “What if you heard his voice again? Are you sure that’s not emblazoned into your mind?”
At that, she stared at Sydney, hearing the same snap of the voice. as it echoed in her mind. Good riddance. “Now that I might recognize,” she admitted slowly. “But you’ve got to realize that it was outside, in the cold, and I was in this pain-altered state.”
Sydney smiled. “Believe me, I do realize that, and so does Mountain. They’re not trying to push or to hurt you. It’s more a case of trying to get whatever information they can to keep you safe here. They’re trying to figure out why somebody would have shot you in the first place. That is hard evidence that we can see. The question is, why were you shot?”
Amelia didn’t know what to say to that, and then she remembered. “I might have seen something,” she whispered.
“Hang on a minute.” Sydney walked closer to her patient. “What do you mean, you might have seen something?”
“It was earlier that day,” she began. “It was hazy out, and I wasn’t even sure what I saw because of the white glare, but it’s the only thing that I can think of.”
“So, what did you see?”
“Several men were out that day, a long time ago, before I got shot the first time,” she began, “and I saw two men separate and have a big argument, but I was quite a long distance away. I couldn’t hear what the argument was. I couldn’t see anything really. A storm was blowing. But, when I saw them again, … there was only one man. I only saw one man come back.”
“You didn’t see what happened to the other man?”
“No,” she whispered. “I know I didn’t see him again.”
“When you say, you didn’t see him again, how long ago was this?”
“Weeks, weeks, and weeks,” she replied, with an expression of deep thought.
Then the clinic door opened, and Mountain walked in.
Sydney immediately called him over. “She’s wondering if all this is because of something she saw.”
Mountain’s eyebrows shot up, and his gaze turned to Amelia. He walked over and leaned close to her. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” she said, with half a smile, “but I do know that you weren’t the one I saw.”
“That’s good news,” he replied, with a light chuckle, hearing the loopy tone to Amelia’s voice, due to the pain meds and all. “So, maybe if you let me off the hook and trust me a little bit,” he told her, “we can get to the bottom of this. Now, tell me what you saw.”
She explained about the storm, seeing two men in a verbal fight. “I don’t even know that anything happened,” she clarified. “There was a blur to it, and that’s all I saw.”
“And, when you saw the one man return alone, can you tell me anything about him?”
She shrugged. “Not really, it was too far to have a good look. I could tell he was big but not huge.” She glanced at him. “Not your size.”
“Nobody here is my size anyway,” he replied, with a smirk and a half nod to the guy coming through the doorway. “Magnus is big, but he’s not that big.”
She nodded. “I don’t even think he was his size, but I could be wrong.” She frowned at the man who joined them. “Anyway, when I saw him again, it stuck out because I only saw one of them.”
“So, the real question is, did he see you? Would they have seen you in any way?” Mountain asked, looking at her. “When two were there or even after one returned, could you be seen? You need to think about this one carefully. You saw something, but did they see you?”
She shut her eyelids, as she thought back to that fateful day, a day that she had gone over many, many times, trying to figure out if that had anything to do with the situation she was in. “I don’t know,” she finally said, “but I was out there, so I guess it’s possible.”
“It’s also a very good reason behind all this,” Mountain stated, with a nod.
“If you say so,” she muttered. “Personally, in my world, … I don’t shoot people who might have seen me have an argument with somebody.”
“What if it’s an argument with somebody who didn’t come back?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“What if it’s an argument with somebody, and that somebody died or was killed because of this argument?”
She stared at him. “Meaning that he killed the guy he was having a fight with?”
“It’s possible, or maybe he left him out there to die,” Mountain suggested, “which, in these conditions, would be exactly the same thing.”
She stared at him and shook her head. “I don’t know. … Anything is possible. I just don’t know. I didn’t see the one again. I didn’t think much of it, but I did think about it from time to time.”
“What about the other one, the one still remaining?” Mountain asked, immediately picking up on her wording.
“I think I saw him another time, but I don’t know for sure. You’ve got to remember. I’m out there miles away. I don’t really have any way to ascertain one of you from another, not in your winter gear,” she noted in an exasperated tone. “Sometimes whole groups of you are out there. Sometimes you split up during your war games,” she pointed out, with a toss of her hand. “It’s hard for anybody to tell you apart. I don’t know,” she cried out in frustration.
Mountain immediately grasped her hand. “And that’s fine. You’re not allowed to get upset now. So just relax.”
She glared at him. “Gee, thanks for that,” she muttered. “You might be a little too late.”
