Chapter 10

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Jasper left soon afterward, first making certain that Amber understood how the security system worked and that she wouldn't go outside because he had the house locked down. If she wanted to go out, he would take her as soon as he got back. In the meantime, she should do as much resting and healing as she could. He understood that could be hard work, given the fact that she was wide awake and not wanting to sleep anymore. However, she had the TV and her laptop, and she could phone various friends, although nobody could come over without Jasper disarming the alarm system, and she had agreed that was probably best not to do that for the moment.

As he went to his vehicle, he contacted Tesla and let her know what he was doing. "Are you sure you should?" she asked nervously. "That poor woman needs to be with someone."

"She's fine, and she's safe in the house, as you well know. Not to mention that it's hard for anybody to get in or out."

"I know," Tesla conceded, "but still, she must be nervous."

"She seems to be handling this pretty decently, so I'm not sure," he stated calmly. "I won't be gone all day, but I do need to check in with the other investigators on the team. They've been awfully slow on the email responses and whatnot."

"They don't want you involved," she declared in a dry tone, "much less in a leadership role."

"Exactly, so they need to know that I'm still here, that I'm still in their face, and that I won't be stepping back just because they're willing me away," he declared, with a fury in his tone. "Now I'll go pick up lunch for the two of us before I go back home. Do you want anything special?"

"That sounds like a lovely idea," Tesla replied. "As much as I appreciate all the care and attention I'm getting here—"

"The hospital food sucks.… I know."

She burst out laughing. "Oh, it is good to laugh," she admitted, when her chuckle wound down. "You don't realize how much of a stress all this is."

"Still no change in Mason's condition?"

"No, though I keep thinking there is.… I keep thinking he's responding, and then the doctors tell me that he's in too deep."

"Don't you listen to them," Jasper stated. "He hears you. He is reaching out to you. Absolutely no way he isn't listening to you, so you talk to him all you want. You tell him exactly what he's supposed to do, which is to get his ass back beside you."

She chuckled again. "I haven't been listening to them," she confirmed, with a force in her tone that he was used to hearing. "I've felt fairly strongly about keeping a hand on him, talking to him, and I haven't had a chance to do much other than that. However, at the stage we are at, he needs to hear me, even if he's still comatose." She took a deep breath. "I want to check out more of that video," she murmured. "Something in it caught my eye."

"Good. Take another look, and maybe you'll have information for me when I pop in with the food," he suggested, and he quickly rang off.

Twenty minutes later Jasper walked into the investigative offices. Almost immediately the noise died down around him, and everyone stopped what they were doing. He looked at them and nodded. "You all seem surprised to see me."

They shrugged. "Not sure why that would be, but we haven't seen you in a little bit."

"That's because the nurse who took the video at the hospital was injured in a hit-and-run." When they sat back in shock, he nodded. "I moved her to my place because somebody was sitting outside her place, watching her. Then they followed us, when I did get her out of there."

"You let them?" Sam asked in a mocking tone.

Jasper completely ignored him, turning to look at Morgan and said, "So, obviously something more is here with her that we need to connect with."

"I did go through the video," he admitted, "but not a whole lot there."

"Yet something is somewhere, as her place was torched after we left."

Shocked silence filled the room.

"I haven't had a chance to see it on my computer, just on my phone," Jasper shared. "So I'll pop over and take a good look at the crime scene right now."

"I'll come with you," Morgan said, and the temperature around the room dropped a few more degrees, as people exchanged glances.

Sam called out, "Yeah, the rest of us will just keep working on the Mason case then."

At the doorway, Jasper turned, standing firm and square. "I'm not sure what your problem is," he replied, with a hardness that surprised even himself, "but you can lose that attitude anytime." And with that, he stepped out and walked away.

Morgan raced to catch up. "Hey, take it easy on him. He's just not impressed that you joined the investigation as it is. We're all on the same team here."

Jasper shrugged. "I have somebody else joining this investigation too."

"What's wrong with us?" Morgan asked, a thread of defensiveness and anger winding through his tone.

"In an investigation like this, where we don't have the time and we don't have the manpower, the sooner we get this solved, the better for all of us. Don't you agree?"

"Sure, but so far all our cameras haven't captured very much."

"That's another concern. Did you track the vehicle at the sniper site?"

"We tracked six vehicles, and every one of them ended up in warehouses unloading, and we lost sight of the drivers inside, so it's as if they knew."

"Because they did," Jasper snapped, glaring at Morgan. "Either the sniper is somebody on base or somebody who has been stationed here before."

"We've searched far and wide," Morgan stated. "We're going through active personnel right now, for anybody who was in that area during those hours. Plus, we're double-checking references and alibis."

"That's great." Jasper nodded in agreement. "That's a start, but how many hours and days have gone by since Mason was shot, and we haven't made any progress?"

"That's one of the reasons why Sam is upset," Morgan explained in frustration. "We got reamed out this morning, pretty good."

At that Jasper stopped and nodded. "I guess that's to be expected, isn't it?"

"Maybe, but we don't like it, and it's not what we want."

"Of course not," Jasper declared, with an eye roll. "None of us want to get told that we can't do our job and that we need to do it faster." Jasper understood the frustration and the lack of progress in this case were bound to tighten the already stretched nerves of these investigators, "but that is a fact of life right now.… As it is, everybody is looking at us for answers, and we haven't got any. Instead we've got more shit happening."

"What's Mason's condition?" Morgan asked.

"He's still in a coma, and won't be out of it for awhile."

"Yeah, that's done on purpose to help him to heal," he muttered.

"Send me any of the statements you have and alibis that have been double-checked," Jasper ordered. "I'll take a look for any loopholes."

"I can't do that," Morgan argued.

"I think you can, and you will," Jasper declared.

Morgan hesitated, then added, "We're also going through the backgrounds of anybody who may have had a problem with Mason."

"And given his long history on base and considering all the missions and takedowns his teams have been involved in, that could be fairly substantial."

"Absolutely, and it is," Morgan stated. "We're already into several thousand pages' worth. Everybody says he is a great guy, but he's got a lot of enemies."

"He's a great guy if you're the honest person who likes to work and if you show up to do the job," Jasper clarified, "and if you do your job well. However, if you're a shyster, a thief, or somebody who can't be trusted, then Mason is your worst enemy." Jasper sent a sharp look over at Morgan. "Keep that in mind when you look at the list of people who have anything against Mason."

"I did notice that," he conceded, with a nod. "Out of the many people he's had issues with, some of them have been kicked out, and some of them have even done time. Mason has got quite a list of people who don't like him, but they all seem to be people he either didn't get along with or were passed over for promotions."

"That always pisses people off, but you've got to be severely pissed off to kill somebody over something like a promotion or a bad review."

"In some cases, maybe they are pissed off enough. I don't know. All I can tell you is that, right now, we're still going through everybody's statements."

"That's why I asked you to send me what you've got, so I can read through it as well."

"Will do, and, for now,… just ignore Sam."

"I won't ignore Sam," Jasper argued, raising a hand in protest, "because his attitude sucks. So, he can stop that attitude, or I'll do my best to get his ass kicked off this team."

"Don't do that, please. He brings skill to the table, and he's been here a very long time, so he knows people. His nose is just out of joint."

"Then talk to him," Jasper declared. "Straighten him out and tell him to pull it back. Otherwise I will." He stated it simply and with a smile, but the threat was obvious in his tone. "You guys are down a boss man right now, aren't you?"

"Yeah, we are," Morgan replied warily.

Jasper asked him, "Will you be it?"

"I've been in it in an ‘acting' capacity. I haven't decided whether I want to pursue it or not."

"I'm bringing Masters on to this investigation. Do you know him?"

"No, I don't know him at all." Morgan stared. "Is that his first name or his last name?"

"Masters is his first name. Masters Woodrow. He's not a guy to mess with."

"Yeah, I would be the same if my name was Masters Woodrow too," he replied, with a laugh. "You're bringing him on?"

"We need to get some movement here, so you can bet I'll be bringing on everybody we need," Jasper stated. "Plus, I've got this other case with the nurse, which must be connected, but I haven't found the link yet. So it's also a pain in the ass."

"So you're working the nurse case just because?"

"I'm doing that because, one, she's somebody in trouble. Two, she's been helping Tesla, and three, she's the one who took the video of the two suspicious men in the ER waiting room for me, and we saw how well that's gone for her."

"No, it's not gone well at all," Morgan agreed. "So it's guilt that has you working her case."

"No, concern," he countered, with a headshake. "I think the two guys she videoed are connected to our sniper and ran her down and then set fire to her apartment. I just need to find the link. So, she's going nowhere, until I can get a handle on this."

"But if somebody burned down her apartment intentionally…"

"Yeah, it's more than personal for the guys who went this far. I've got a call out for any street cameras for the bulk of last night, for both her apartment and for us heading to my house. We had some asshole sitting outside her place, and then, when we left in the dark, we were followed. I lost the tail, but…"

"There's always a but in there somewhere, isn't there?"

"Unfortunately that's true. I saw the one man on stakeout, and I lost the tail, but I don't know whether it was the same man or not. I also don't know whether somebody just replaced him or they got pissed off and just took down her apartment as a warning or were hoping that maybe she'd been left behind."

"That will be a very sloppy scene then," Morgan noted. "I don't understand that."

"Yep, me neither, unless the guy just has a short fuse. However, I won't assume anything at this point. If you can get the rest of the cameras from her street and all the others at the hospital, where she was run down, we just may get a hit."

"All of them?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah, I'm looking for a specific vehicle sitting outside her house. A small two-door Honda, red."

"Red is a hard color to hide, so I would be surprised if that's what they were doing," Morgan replied cautiously.

"You and me both, but maybe that's why he did it. All I can tell you is that's the vehicle that sat outside, and then… this one tailed me." He pulled up his phone and showed him the picture. "A silver Camry. Amber said the car that ran her down was a gray vehicle."

"Crap," Morgan muttered, "you had a busy night."

"I had a very busy night, and I'm pretty pissed off, so I'm not looking for too much more sass from anybody," Jasper declared, with a look back at the room behind them.

"I'll talk to Sam," Morgan stated.

"You do that." Jasper headed for the exit.

Morgan stopped Jasper, offering, "I'll be your legs and go check out the fire scene, take photos, share them with you. One less thing you need to do."

Jasper studied Morgan, then nodded. "I'll hit the street cams."

And, with that, Jasper headed back into the department, toward the room he was using as an office, and closed the door, finally giving himself some peace and quiet to sit down and to get some work done. He ordered the relevant cams to be sent to him. Next he would check out that video Amber had made on the department's big-screen TV. It would give him a clearer and crisper image than anything on his phone, his tablet or his laptop. Something had to be on there. Something they were all missing to date. He would compare notes with Tesla later, after he studied it further himself.

He pulled it up on the monitor and then, using the technology available, put it up on the big screen in front of him. He got up, walked over and slowly, frame by frame, went over it. Tesla had mentioned how she'd seen something, so what did she see?

He wished she'd given him a hint, so he had something to go on as a starting place, and then it hit him. He leaned forward, and it wasn't so much about the two guys in the foreground of the video that Amber had been specifically recording, but the lone guy standing in the background. His cap was pulled down low, his hands in his pockets, and he was leaning up against the wall, but his gaze shifted as he watched. His gaze went everywhere and then finally landed on her. He had immediately stiffened—aware she was videotaping him—and changed his position so his face was more concealed.

Jasper went to his laptop, cut that frame out, and contacted Tesla. "The guy in the background in the waiting room."

"Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of," she confirmed.

"We need his face. What about the hospital cameras? We might get a full-on view of his face."

"Maybe," she muttered. "Have you got permission?"

"The team should have. However, I want to see the security footage myself," he stated bluntly.

"Good, then you run through it, see if you can get me a cleaner picture," Tesla said, "and I'll run that through the database."

"Do you recognize anything about him?" he asked.

"No, and Mason isn't awake to ask."

"He will be," Jasper declared. "You just keep focused and don't let this sideline you."

"Ha, that won't happen," she stated, with a chuckle, "but you get me a photo I can use because this one just won't be clear enough to match."

"I'm on it. Don't you worry. I'm on it." He disconnected, then looked up the hospital board members and made a quick phone call, asking for permission for the security cameras. This time he used his title and his investigative status. When he got the permission almost immediately, he smiled.

An awful lot to be said for having clearance. He logged in, headed back to the expected date and time, and, sure enough, saw the same scene unfolding that Amber had recorded but from a slightly different angle. For several different angles, he brought up multiple cameras. He split the screen and put them up on the big monitor in front of him.

Morgan walked in later and went rigid as he saw the screens. "Wow, which one are you interested in here?"

"This one." Jasper tapped the face. "When Amber was taking the video, she was initially focused in on these two guys in the foreground, who appeared to be having an intense conversation. However, I don't think they had anything to do with Mason's case. Yet our initial focus led us to this guy in the background." He pointed out the guy in the back and added, "Watch." He hit Play and then slowly moved it forward frame by frame.

Morgan whistled. "I think you're right. He's hiding from the cams."

"When I go back earlier on the security cams from the hospital, he arrived just before the ambulance with Mason, and only one way for him to have known the ambulance was on the way."

Morgan grimaced. "Right, if he knew Mason was coming in."

"The only way to have known that was if he had something to do with the sniper shots at Mason."

*

Tesla responded tothe phone message and the snippets of videos that kept coming in from Jasper. She studied them intently, looking to see where and what. It didn't take long for her to patch from internal hospital videos to external cams focused on the parking area and catch sight of the vehicle the guy arrived in.

She quickly phoned Jasper. "I caught the vehicle outside that he came in," she said, by way of a greeting. "I just barely got the license plate." She quickly rattled it off.

"I'm on it. Was it a silver Camry by any chance?"

"Yes." She froze. "How did you know?"

"That vehicle tailed us last night."

"Damn," she whispered, "so you think he's the one who torched Amber's apartment?"

"I don't know. He might have come back and done it just out of temper."

"Asshole," she muttered.

He chuckled. "And Mason?"

"Mason is just the same," she muttered, glancing at the bed where her husband slept.

"So, the docs aren't saying anything?"

"No, other than he needs more time to heal, thus the medically induced coma," she repeated, with a biting tone, "and I'm trying not to let it get to me."

"Good," Jasper replied, understanding, not minding her mood swings at all. "Sometimes the doctors get it wrong. And yet they could be right to give him more time. Better more time than not enough. Let's not worry about it right now."

"No,… I'm not planning on it. I trust that Mason is coming back to me," she stated, tears coming to her eyes, and now sniffling. "That's all I can do."

"You don't have to trust anything. You already know inside that he would do whatever it takes to be there for you. So give it a little bit of time, and you'll be just fine."

Only after she hung up did she relax and whisper, "Come on, Mason. Pull through this, please."

Almost as if by magic, she swore she saw him shift just the slightest. She raced to his bedside, then kissed him. "Hey, anytime you want to wake up, I'll be happy to see you."

She waited, cuddled him a little bit longer, still seeing no change. Then she gave a hard sigh and sat back down again.

One of the nurses walked in just then. She immediately noted Tesla's downcast expression. "Don't be depressed. We've seen a lot of patients come through this."

Tesla looked up at her and smiled. "I don't know if that's such a good thing to say," she murmured, "because I would like to think that this doesn't happen all that much."

"Unfortunately it does, but this is a healing coma, as far as we can see. We don't have any reason to worry that he's been in any way hurting or that he is having an abnormal reaction."

Tesla nodded and watched as the nurse went through the regular routine of checking him over. Tesla had met with Evan's wife, the operating room doctor, on the second day that Mason was down. Tesla needed to get a feel for exactly what the nurses should be doing versus not doing with her husband. Evan's wife had been so thorough about setting forth the proper routine that Tesla should look for with each nurse. So far, absolutely nothing had set off Tesla's warning bells, but she couldn't take the chance that something might happen as soon as she let her guard down.

So Tesla at least did her best to always be awake or to alert one of the two guards outside Mason's room. She couldn't guarantee that she always knew whether or not somebody came in. Hopefully the guards took note if Tesla had nodded off and stepped in with each nurse, just to be sure. Tesla was determined to keep watch, no matter the hardship on her, just as long as Mason was left alone to heal and to come back to her.

She wiped away the sleep from her eyes. She couldn't sleep here in the same way. She was tired. She was worn out, and it just never seemed to change. She loved this man to the end of the earth. Mason was her everything, and seeing him like this was breaking her up. She shifted position and relaxed, grateful that Jasper was on the investigation. Sad that it took something like this to get him to jump back into the field where he excelled, but she understood his hesitancy after such a personal betrayal. Tesla was glad that something good came out of his pain.

After once bitten by a betrayal, such as Jasper had experienced, it was no wonder he had hesitated to dive back into his investigative work. Tesla imagined how Jasper must have created a certain amount of distance from that betrayal, while on leave. Surely the memories still taunted him, a remnant of everything that had gone wrong before. He must be forever looking to keep a delicate balance between not judging something in a way that wasn't fair, maintaining his healthy skepticism, and yet rebuilding the ability to trust, even in his own abilities and instincts.

Tesla knew that was partly why Jasper had held off jumping back into work. He'd had weeks if not months off, certainly more than he needed to recover physically. She'd lost track of time, she had to admit, but he was such a damn good person and so good at his job that she wanted him here, wanted him helping. Still, it frustrated her that absolutely nobody could find anything on the sniper yet.

She knew certain areas of the base had been searched and security footage reviewed. She heard that they had tracked several vehicles to warehouses, then followed up on each. One vehicle escaping the sniper scene area had been found empty and abandoned on a road somewhere. Of course the car had been stolen anyway, so that was a complete dead end. She didn't know about this Camry that kept coming up and trusted that somebody would get back to her with the information on its owner and the possible current GPS position on the car. But the waiting?… Damn it to hell, waiting was hard.

*

Mason shifted onceagain in the bed.

All he could do was run. It seemed like he'd been running for weeks. He was getting away from some asshole, and somehow it kept leading him back to Tesla. He would do anything to save Tesla, so no way he would let this asshole get close to her. She was everything good in this world, even if Mason didn't deserve her. No way he would let somebody like him come after her. The fact that anybody was even after her scared the crap out of Mason because he didn't understand why.

Why would someone be after Tesla?

Something was wrong with this whole picture. He moaned, wishing for something to ease the pain, but he didn't even know where the pain was coming from. It kept breaking into his world and shifting him from his focus, and that just pissed him off too. So rare for him to have pain to the point that he couldn't control his reaction to it. Therefore, he didn't know what the hell was wrong this time.

But every time he tried to blank it out or to move past it, something dragged him back under again. Frustrating, infuriating, and so not like him.

He stopped and turned to look around once more, wondering if he was still being followed. There. Sure enough, just as he turned, he saw the stranger duck behind the corner too. Swearing, Mason turned, and, instead of going home, he detoured once again into the shadows, always leading the pursuer away from Tesla and his three-year-old son. No way in hell he was bringing danger home to them.