Chapter 2

Pearl walked back upstairs, looking for Gideon around every corner. When she didn't see him, she calmed down once again and headed over to the Physiotherapy Department and to her patients. She wished the hospital had better services for some of these people. What they needed was a specialized facility, and she'd seen and worked at a couple of them. Some were unbelievable at what they could offer a patient, but here? It was more a case of what worked for one was supposed to work for everybody. Thus the physiotherapist had to adapt what they had to work for everyone.

Similar to the way the public school system that worked to move a lot of people through the essential process, but, for those students who needed a little something extra, it wasn't the best system. She'd found that with rehab too. It worked very well for a lot of people, but for many who needed a little bit more, a little bit extra, it was not the ideal situation.

She'd certainly heard about other clinics and other facilities where more specialized services were available. She walked into her office to find her coworker John standing there, waiting for her. She gave him a quick frown. "What's the matter?"

"Hey." He gave her a shrug. "Just wondering what took you so long."

Her eyebrows shut up. "What's the matter?" she asked, with a harsh tone. "Are you checking up on me now?"

His gaze was a little more guarded as he replied, "Maybe. For all I know, you're hanging out in stairwells."

She frowned at him, not sure where that was coming from or why he would even attempt such a remark. "If you've got a problem, then say so."

"It's not that I've got a problem," he noted, "but other people might."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've never had an issue with anybody here," she exclaimed.

"I'm not saying you're having an issue now. It's just that,… while you were gone, some people talked."

She stared at him. "When you say some talked , what do you mean? What talk?"

He winced. "That one little bird has a tendency to talk about you."

Pearl flushed with anger because Betty, a woman who worked in the front offices, did seem to have it in for Pearl. She didn't know why or what she'd ever done to her, but, no doubt, if trouble was brewing, it was coming from her. "I see," Pearl said softly, "and of course you didn't back me up."

"Remember that it's a dog-eat-dog world up here," he told her, raising his hands in defense, "I don't back up anybody, and I don't expect anybody to back me up."

"Got it." She gave him a curt nod. "Thanks for the heads-up at least."

"Hey, I'm just telling you that rumors are flying around."

"Yet she has no business spreading rumors of any kind," Pearl declared stiffly.

Once in her office, she closed the door, not sure what she was even supposed to do about this. Betty took every opportunity to make snide remarks and innuendos when Pearl wasn't around. It wasn't exactly a good working environment, and she'd only been hanging on because she didn't know what else to do right now. She'd pretty much made the decision that it was time to just leave and see if she could start again somewhere else, but then she found Gideon in the stairway.

She sat here for a long moment to get her head wrapped around what she'd seen, when a knock came on her door and her boss walked in. Pearl waited.

Maria smiled at her. "I see you've already heard."

"John doesn't miss an opportunity," she shared lightly. "He won't back anybody up, but he's pretty quick to throw us to the wolves." Pearl shrugged away the unpleasantness.

"I will tell you that your person of interest was caught gossiping about you and that she has been reprimanded for it."

Surprised, Pearl frowned. "I just now walked in and heard she was talking about me."

"Ah, I should have figured that's what John was doing, as soon as you headed here." Maria turned around to glare out at the main offices through the glass door. "If he won't help the situation, spreading the gossip makes it worse."

"It absolutely does," Pearl agreed, "but you and I both know that he's a damn good therapist."

Maria nodded. "That's part of the problem. We tolerate a lot from everybody because we're short-staffed and because we need all the gifted people we can get. I just wish the gifted people didn't come with big issues."

"They don't all come with big issues," Pearl pointed out, with a laugh.

Maria added, "Yet you seem to have collected more than your fair share of them in your department."

"Sadly, I can only agree with that," Pearl muttered, with an eye roll.

"Anyway, just to let you know before you have to deal with it yourself, I dealt with it."

"How long before she quits?" she muttered.

"Not soon enough, unless we want to make a big issue out of it, but we can't do anything to speed that process along."

" Right ."

"Tolerate it the best you can, and hopefully, with this reprimand, Betty will be a little more circumspect in her blatant disregard for good manners."

"Not just good manners, it's basic professional etiquette to not pass around shit verbally that'll damage our relationship with our patients," she noted in frustration.

"I did tell her that. She just gave me that smirk, as if to say I didn't know what I was talking about."

"That always goes over well." Pearl had to laugh at that. "She's got that part down pat, doesn't she?"

"It's pretty damn irritating too," Maria muttered. "I've tried to get rid of her several times in the past, all with no luck. So, until she does something more egregious or bad enough that I can finally get other people onboard to remove her, just watch your P s and Q s."

"No need for me to watch my P s and Q s," Pearl quipped, "not with plenty of other people around here doing it for me. I don't like to gossip."

"Anyway, did you get that material downstairs?"

"And back again, yes, I did," she confirmed. She felt her face grow hot, as her mind flashed back to Gideon, clear as day.

"You look a little rattled."

"Yeah, I am in a way. I saw somebody in the stairwell that I hadn't seen in many years," she shared, "so that was a shock."

"Are you okay? Was it a good visit?"

"Sure." She waved her hand. "I'm fine. Besides, even if I wasn't and took the tiniest bit of time off, Miss Busybody would tell everyone it was an unexplained pregnancy from seventeen guys, all created in the last fortnight."

Her boss went off with a burst of laughter. "Oh my, hard to imagine how that would work, but you're right. Betty probably would."

"It just blows me away that somebody could be so mean and uncaring as to just make up all this shit," Pearl muttered. "Professionally speaking, it's absolutely stupefying that she has all this vitriol for me. What did I ever do to her?"

"She's not a physiotherapist, which I feel is the problem. She's not one of us. She's in an administrative role, and I think, in her mind, that's almost a diss. Maybe she feels inadequate for the job."

"With all her bullshit, she's made that her reality here, not about her job performance, and everybody already knows it," Pearl shared. "I get that you're keeping her because you don't want to rock the boat, but…"

Maria explained calmly, "I've submitted a request for termination several times, but my boss always overrules me."

At that, Pearl frowned and asked, "Is anything going on there that we should know about?"

Maria stared at Pearl and then chuckled. "I wish there were because that would be a good way to deal with it and to finally make it all go away."

"But would it though?" Pearl asked. "How do these problematic people always end up smelling like a rose, while the rest of us are in the shitter, digging out of the crap?"

Her boss left, still chuckling over that one.

Although it was funny, it wasn't funny at all when you had somebody so obviously hating on you and doing everything they could to give you a bad rep. It made for a most unprofessional and difficult environment to work in. It had gotten so bad that several people had quit. Other people just tuned out the gossip gal, rather than get involved in that ugliness. Still, a certain number of people always wanted to hear any bit of juicy gossip, even if it wasn't true. The fact that it wasn't true drove Pearl even crazier when she thought about it.

But she had other things to deal with right now, other things to keep in mind, and one of those was Gideon. She was still completely stunned to see that he was here in town. That didn't mean he would be staying in town, of course. Yet, for the moment, he was in the building somewhere, and it brought almost a giddy feeling to her soul.

So many things in her life she would quickly or cheerfully ignore—including Betty the biddy from out in the main office. However, if it meant that Pearl had a chance of reconciling with Gideon, she wouldn't let anybody here have the slightest indication of that. Surely Betty would no doubt throw a spanner in the works immediately, just to spite her.

If Gideon walked in Betty's line of sight, Pearl had no doubt he would be subjected to some of the most horrific lies this woman could dream up. The fact that Betty still worked here was inexcusable, yet somehow she was. Even Maria, Pearl's direct boss, didn't have a clue why or how, much less how long it would be before Betty turned in her own notice and walked.

*

Gideon parted ways with Jasper, who went to see Tesla and Mason. Gideon walked into Nicholas's hospital room and stopped when he realized the injured man was awake and talking with a woman. Both looked over at him.

The woman smiled, then jumped up to greet him. "Hi, my name is Elizabeth. Nicholas is my brother. While I'm so glad to see my brother is awake, he's not feeling all that great."

Gideon walked to the hospital bed with a smile, carefully shook the injured man's hand, and said, "So glad to see you, Nicholas. While you may not be fully awake and up walking around, we're damn glad to find you as well as you are."

"I'm pretty glad to be alive."

Gideon noted that Nicholas spoke somewhat slowly, yet clearly, without faltering. Still, he was holding back the pain, refusing to show it or trying not to. Gideon stood here for a long moment, studying the patient. Per his file, Nicholas was younger than he appeared, looking as if he'd been to hell and back. Captivity and torture would do that.

Then Nicholas spoke again. "I can't add much to the investigation of my own kidnapping and captivity. My captors never spoke in front of me. Never asked me any questions. But my gut tells me that I was taken as a just in case, a backup plan. Whatever their original plan was, it must have been blowing up, making them nervous. So they took me as added insurance."

"You want to explain that?" Jasper asked.

"My captors seemed to be middlemen, not part of the execution of the main plan, just hired to keep me hidden. Other than these impressions, I don't have a whole lot to tell you." Nicholas frowned, a confused and disoriented expression on his face. "If I knew more, I would give it to you, but I haven't had a whole lot of clarity in my world. I was kept drugged and isolated for a lot of my captivity. So the only thing I ever got to see was the one jailer who took way-too-much delight in pounding my face and body into the ground."

"That guy is dead," Elizabeth noted. She looked over at Gideon.

Gideon smiled at her. "I'm Gideon, and I'm here to help with the case."

She studied him for a long moment and then nodded. "Something about you guys is different." He cocked his head and waited. She shrugged. "It's hard to explain, but I get a sense of enhanced capability, indomitable spirit, that you won't allow this to beat you." She turned back to her brother and smiled. "Nicholas has that same look."

"I might have had it at one time," he clarified, "but things have changed in my world."

She whispered, "And you're not going back to work anytime soon."

His lips twitched. "They sure as hell better be paying me for all this," he muttered.

She snorted at that. "Considering that you were gone for months, I eventually had to go digging around for money to pay your house bills and whatnot. I'm sorry."

He rolled his eyes at that. "You found my stash, did you?" he asked in a teasing tone.

"I found your investment documents," she admitted, "so we had to wonder if that was part of the reason you were kidnapped."

Nicholas looked over at Gideon. "If I'd come across that amount of money, I would have been thinking along those lines too," he shared carefully. "However, as far as I know, it had nothing to do with it."

"How so?"

"Nobody but my financial advisor, my good friend, and I know about the money. Most of it came from financial investments, but the original seed money came from a good friend of mine I helped with a startup. When it went big, he bought up my shares, and I ended up with something like thirty-two million," he shared, with a smirk.

Gideon nodded. "That's a lot of money."

"Yeah, it is, and both he and I were surprised. For the two of us, it was something too good to be true, but he did so well with his business that it was truly mind-boggling. He made good on the promises he made to me, but he also wanted to own the business all himself, so I sold him back my shares, then just invested the rest." He shrugged. "It's not as if I needed it, and my sister didn't either. So I figured, if she ever did need help, it was there. Of course I hadn't told her about it, so finding it must have been a bit of a shock."

"It was one hell of a shock," she replied, "as was the USB key."

He stared at her blankly. "What key?"

At that, Gideon stepped forward. "That USB key appears to have some damaging information on a case involving a young man called Gary Trojan, who went to prison, then died in prison, wrongfully convicted, according to your notes."

Nicholas stared at him, then slowly nodded. "Yes, I vaguely remember that now." He shifted painfully in his bed and then winced. "God." He rubbed his forehead. "The docs tell me my memory will slowly come back in pieces and parts, but I want it all to come back now."

"Of course," Gideon agreed, with a smile. "That's pretty normal too, but, in the meantime, we need you to try not to push it. The information will come in its own time."

"Yeah. people keep telling me that." Nicholas growled, looked over at his sister, about to say something, when an odd look came over his face. "I don't feel so good." He collapsed against the pillow, and instantly the machine at his side went off, sending out alarms everywhere. Everybody jumped out of the way, as the crash team flew in. Then the visitors were sent out into the hallway. Gideon held Elizabeth, who was shaking as she tried to peer in through the window.

"My God, Nicholas," she cried out.

"It's all right," Gideon replied, comforting her. "Let the doctors work."

She turned teary eyes to him. "But he seemed so fine."

"He was fine, right up until he wasn't," Gideon explained, with a soothing tone, "and that's how recovery happens. It appears as if everything is okay. Then it needs a little bit longer before he can pull it together. Give him that chance."

She nodded, but the tears were rolling down her face as she stared in the window of the door to Nicholas's hospital room.

Feeling helpless and not at all sure what he could do, Gideon tried to pull her attention away from the room and asked, "Did he say anything about who held him and why?"

She looked up at him, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. "He only saw the one man and couldn't identify him. As he already told you, just one guy who seemed to delight in beating the crap out of him for some reason. Beating on people must have been that gang's thing because two hooded gunmen showed up unannounced at my place, holding me captive, and one hit me multiple times. Thankfully Masters turned up when he did. That man ended up dying in my house, shot by his own partner."

"Your house? That's on record?"

"I guess so, and, if you ask me, good riddance. He was a bastard who just beat up on people, particularly women," she shared, staring off for a moment. "Or maybe he just enjoyed that more." She wiped her tears, looked back through the window, and turned to face Gideon. "If you're here to help, I hope you can get to the bottom of this and fast. Nicholas has been through enough, and it's not fair that he has to go through another health event like this again."

"The doctors are doing everything they can," Gideon stated, trying to keep her attention away from what they were doing in Nicholas's room, but her gaze was locked on the window.

Finally she turned, her shoulders slumped, and whispered, "They got him back."

He smiled. "Good, now the question is, can you leave them to do their work?"

She glared at him. "I wasn't interfering," she snapped. "You were asking all of your questions."

"We were, and we still have to," Gideon shared, "so that we can get to the bottom of this."

She shook her head. "It's not fair that I got my brother back after all this time, but we still don't have any answers. I can't have anything happen that'll hurt him and set him back even more."

Gideon looked through the window of the door and noted the medical team still inside the room. He shook his head. "Your brother would want to help us as much as possible."

She sucked in her breath at that and nodded slowly. "Have you talked to Mason or Tesla?" she asked. "They were talking about bringing Mason out of the coma today."

"I hope they do, but I haven't heard anything yet."

She nodded. "It would be lovely to think that this could be over soon, both finding Mason's shooter and the people who took Nicholas," she murmured. "However, every time I turn around, something else is happening. Yet something is going on that's just plain ugly."

Gideon confirmed, "An awful lot of ugly is in this world, but we don't have to let it affect us."

She snorted at that. "Sounds great, but, at the moment, it seems like a bunch of malarkey," she muttered. "And, if you're anything like the investigators I had to work with before Masters showed up"—she shook her head in weariness—"we won't get along at all."

"We'll get along just fine," Gideon stated, with a smile, "because we are united in some important aspects."

She turned and said, "Enlighten me."

"We want to know what happened to your brother, and we don't want those assholes coming back for another round, with anyone."

Her eyes widened, as if she hadn't realized that could be a distinct possibility. She firmed up her lips and gave him a clipped nod. "That is very true. So I guess it's your job to go find these bastards," she muttered.

"Which is why I'm asking you if he told you anything helpful."

"No, but I wish he had. All he told me was that he was on his way home one day, and he was grabbed, beaten, and thrown into the back of a vehicle. I think then he was hit over the head or something." She frowned. "Afterward he was a captive and at their mercy during those four months. My God, who the hell keeps anybody for four months?"

"Only people who are either desperate or have a big potential payout," Gideon replied. "That's why we have to sort this out because we need to know about anybody who got those big bucks. We want to know what that payout is for and to ensure they never get it because, to do this once, just means they'll do it again and again. Anytime something works for someone, you can bet they'll quickly put it on repeat. Plus, it won't be long before the copycats start showing up."

She stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment, then noting how he considered this a real possibility. "That's disgusting."

"It's also human nature," he stated. "You and I both know that."

Jasper joined them now, and, by the looks of it, he already knew what had happened here. He came right to Elizabeth. Gideon gave Jasper a nod of acknowledgment, and Jasper smiled at him and then beamed at her.

"You trust him?" she demanded of Jasper, yet glancing at Gideon.

Jasper smiled and nodded. "Yes, I sure do." He eyed her carefully. "I've worked with Gideon many times. He's a good man."

She looked back over at him, but the distrust in her eyes never eased. "Maybe so, but I'll believe it when I get answers here."

"You got the best answer possible," Jasper noted, as he reached out and held her hand. "Remember when we first met, and your brother wasn't on anybody's radar but yours, and this guy," he said, as he pointed to Gideon, "was on a case somewhere out of the country."

She winced at that. "Thanks for the reminder," she muttered, "though I don't even want to go back to that part. My brother was worth absolutely everything, yet nobody, not even his own damn team, gave a shit."

"Which is something that we're looking into as well," Jasper declared.

She stopped and asked curiously. "You're investigating your own team?"

He gave her a flat stare, then turned to Gideon.

Gideon nodded. "If that's what occurred, then that's what we'll do. If nobody had Nicholas's back for all those months, you can damn well better believe I'll find out why," he stated, as Jasper nodded in agreement. "That'll never go down well for any of us."

She nodded. "Nicholas would never have thought such a thing could even happen. His whole career, he always firmly believed his people would have his back, but honestly, they've let him down in a big way, as far as I'm concerned," she said sadly. "It will be hard for him when he comes out of this and realizes just how badly they let him down and the price he paid for that."

"So, don't tell him right away," Gideon suggested. "He'll need to keep his spirits up on his long road to recovery. It won't be easy, and he will spend many months getting out of this, but he is clearly strong and capable. He survived some of the worst things that anybody could ever have survived. So let's give him the best chance on making a full recovery, while not pouring all this negativity back into his world."

She hesitated. "He'll ask."

"If he asks, then we'll tell him. We'll be honest," Jasper interjected. "We will say anything that needs to be said, without making it too difficult for him. Yet he doesn't need to know everything right now. Let's keep the man alive first, before we kill him with the additional news."

She winced at his phraseology and nodded. "To be honest, that's always worried me, thinking it would be one of the worst betrayals ever. So, find out why the hell all his supposed friends walked away from him," she murmured. "Maybe then he'll at least understand it."

"Will do," Gideon vowed, with half a smile. He smacked Jasper's arm, "Time to go."

Jasper nodded. "You're right." He gave her a smile. "We'll be back."

"You won't wait around and see if he'll be okay?"

Gideon smiled. "I already know he'll be okay. You just stay here and be there for him when he wakes up again." And, with that, Gideon turned to walk out, knowing that Jasper would follow.

Down the hallway, as they headed for the stairs, Jasper asked, "How do you know that he'll be okay?"

"Because he's a fighter, and I watched them as they brought him back. It didn't take a whole lot. For whatever reason, his blood pressure was all over the place. It's probably coming from his gut, some internal bleeding they didn't quite fix or something." Gideon shook his head. The human body could be such a fragile thing, and that amazed him the most. "But they will fix it, they'll get on it, and he will be fine. I refuse to tolerate anything less."

Jasper burst into laughter and grinned at him. "Sometimes we just need a hard-ass attitude,… even when directed at our own health."

"Yeah, and sometimes that hard-ass attitude doesn't do a damn bit of good."

"Maybe, but then you have to wonder if it isn't all about attitude, making sure that yours is the one that works in this world," Jasper offered. "You can think all kinds of things, but, at the end of the day, most of what happens in your life is what you believe, and that is something we can control."

"So, we do our best with whatever we are given, huh ?"

"Exactly."