Page 72 of Handcuffed to the Bear

By the time she got to their rescue, she was yawning again.

“You should sleep all you can,” Cho said. “It helps a lot. I’ll be back in the morning. In the meantime, do you have anyone who can swing by your place and pick up some clothes for you? Anyone I should call?”

Casey tried to think. There was a neighbor she was kind of friendly with. Hadn’t she given Mrs. Hung a key that one time, when she needed to have the plumber let in and couldn’t stay home? Maybe Mrs. Hung could send one of her sons over ...

And this made her think of something even worse. “Oh, my God. My keys and my wallet and all of that. I have no idea what happened to any of it.”

“Yeah, we ran into that with Jack, too,” Cho said. “Most likely, the Fallons dumped your things. Probably destroyed them. I’m sorry. You’re going to be in for a hassle, getting your driver’s license and all of that again. I’ll see if the SCB can help expedite the process.”

“Thanks.” Casey rubbed a hand through her hair, noticing in passing that it was clumpy and stiff. God, she needed a shower. “My neighbor has a key, I think. I don’t know her number, though.”

“Do you have any family nearby?”

“No,” Casey said. “No family.”

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow this turned into Cho promising to go talk to Mrs. Hung and pick up some clothes for her to wear the next day. “If it’s any trouble, you don’t have to,” Casey said for what felt like the tenth time.

“It’s no trouble, really.” Cho grinned impishly. “Otherwise I’d have to go back to HQ and fill out forms. This way I can claim I’m on an errand related to a case—it’skindarelated to a case, right?”

When Cho got up to go, Casey chewed her bottom lip for a moment before bursting out, “How is Jack doing? I mean, Agent Ross.”

She was never going to be able to think of him as Agent Ross, but they were back in the regular world now, and she didn’t know what he would want her to call him. Especially around his co-workers.

“The idiot actually talked them into letting him go home this evening,” Cho said. “Mostly by making a pain of himself until they did, I expect. They’re used to dealing with him.”

“Oh.” That hurt, an unexpected sharp pain. She would have thought he’d at least stop by to say ... hello? Goodbye?

What happens on the island stays on the island, I guess.

She was not at all in the mood for company after that. Seeming to recognize her mood, Cho quietly withdrew.

* * *

In the morning Casey was finally allowed to take a shower. Even with her leg wrapped in plastic and nothing to change into afterward but a clean hospital gown, since Cho hadn’t come back with her clothes yet, it was pure bliss. Then, at Dr. Lafitte’s urging, she did some walking practice in the hall to get used to the crutches.

In the process of wandering around, she learned that the clinic wasn’t quite what she’d thought. When she’d heard “private clinic,” Casey had immediately thought of a sort of spa, a rich person’s getaway so they didn’t have to mingle with the riffraff of a regular hospital. Nothing could be further from the truth, she found. The clinic did have some wealthy clients, but it was also a source of first care for the local shifter community, with payment on a sliding income scale. Some of the SCB agents, as well as various former patients, volunteered here when they had the time.

Cho and Avery showed up around midday. Avery carried a brown paper bag with a couple of sausage McMuffins in it. Casey fell on them like a starving wolf; breakfast had beenhoursago. And Cho had a bundle of clothing for her, as well as her phone.

“Oh, hey!” She’d forgotten that Roger Fallon had instructed his employees not to bring their phones on the cruise.Let’s not mix work and play, the email memo had said. Quite a few people violated the guideline and brought them anyway, but Casey had obediently left hers at home. At least it was one thing she didn’t have to replace.

“Do you have a car?” Cho asked. “I asked your neighbor, but she didn’t know.”

“No. I take public transportation.”

Actually, she hadn’t realized how little of a footprint she’d left on the world until stepping out of it and coming back. There were no new messages on her phone, no new personal emails.

She’d gone missing and almost died, and no one had noticed.

And Jack, who she’d fought with side by side, who had kissed her and held her hand, wouldn’t even say hello to her before leaving the clinic, and probably her life, forever.

Maybe it was all of a piece with her lack of reaction to her near-death experience. The devastation she’d expected, that everyone else seemed to expect for her, still hadn’t set in. She’d accepted some referrals from Dr. Lafitte for therapists who dealt with the clinic’s patients, but wasn’t sure if she was actually going to call them.

She escaped into the bathroom under the pretext of changing into the loose sweatpants and sweater that Cho had brought for her. But mostly, she just wanted to be alone.

What’s wrong with me?

All was quiet outside the bathroom door. Probably they’d left.

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