Page 48 of Cyn
But wait, Devil was a people doctor, so why hadn’t Cyn called her?
“Why not call Devil?” he asked when she ended her conversation.
“We love Devil. She is my sister in every way but blood. But she has zero bedside manner. That’s why she’s in research. We all decided long ago that if anything happened to Six or me, we’d call Nora first, and if Nora decided we needed more than what she could offer, then she’d call Devil. Nora gets the short stick, though, since if anything happens to her, she has to go straight to Devil.”
He grinned at the elaborate and apparently long-in-place protocol. “What happens if Devil gets hurt?”
“She goes straight to the hospital. If she’s hurt badly enough to admit to needing some help, she’s beyond Nora’s capabilities. And she’s a terrible patient, too, so none of us ever want to be in the position of trying to treat her. We’d rather run interference between her and the hospital staff.”
“Does it happen often?” he asked as he started to clear the table. He both wanted and didn’t want to know the answer to that.
“Not as often as you’d think,” Cyn said, joining him in the task and carrying the empty salad bowl to the sink. “It’s probably not unlike the Navy in that sense. I’m sure it isn’t all action or bombs and guns like the movies portray. The intelligence business isn’t either. Sometimes it’s dangerous, but most of the time, it’s sitting in front of the computer or watching—watching situations, watching people, watching places, that sort of thing.”
“When was the last time you got hurt before today?” he asked, placing their plates in the dishwasher as she wrapped up the rest of the pizza.
“Five years ago,” she answered. “I’m not counting the dungeon Meleak and I ended up in, though, and that was three years ago. I wasn’t injured. Although it pricked my pride to have gotten caught.”
“How did you get out of that?” he asked. She’d mentioned the situation a few times, but he hadn’t ever asked how they’d escaped.
She poured herself a glass of water, then leaned against the counter. “Meleak is a Robin Hood figure in the region he comes from. He has his own merry band ofveryloyal followers. They broke us out. It wasn’t as dramatic as it might sound, but it did get my heart rate pumping a touch.”
He shook his head at her understatement and was about to ask how she’d ended up there in the first place when her phone dinged, signaling Nora’s arrival at the gate. He’d learned that Cyn’s friends all had the ability to let themselves in, but even so, her security system would alert her when the gate was being opened.
“Where do you want to be seen?” he asked.
Cyn made a face. “I’m going to have to take my sweater off, so probably in front of the fire would be best. The light in here is good, too, although I don’t anticipate this taking too long.”
A minute later, Nora walked into the kitchen carrying a black bag. A mutt with two very blue eyes and wearing a blue blanket trailed behind her.
“Tulah!” Cyn exclaimed when the dog came into view. As if waiting to be acknowledged before showing any emotion, Tulah leapt off all four feet and her tail started wagging like a helicopter rotor. When her feet landed back on the floor, she scrambled into a run and tore off to where Cyn was sitting. Coming to a skidding halt, her nose all but hitting Cyn in the stomach, Tulah started to nuzzle and grunt, obviously pleased with the attentions Cyn was now lavishing on her.
“Tulah’s our support dog,” Cyn said, when she finally lifted her head from showering the dog’s head with kisses and rubs. “She was the first dog Nora got when we moved here and while we love all of Nora’s pets, Tulah’s special.” That also made her on the older side since the women had moved to Cos Cob twelve years ago. Given Tulah’s antics upon arrival, that surprised him. But perhaps being a mutt and having a vet for your person added years—and life—to a dog’s life.
“Hey, Joe,” Nora said, setting the bag down on the table. “Welcome to our world, such as it is.”
He gave a resigned shrug. There wasn’t much he could do about their jobs and although he didn’t like the idea of any of them being hurt, he wasn’t about to suggest Cyn quit. First, he didn’t even know if that was possible. And second, and perhaps more importantly, it would make him the biggest hypocrite on the planet if he asked his partner not to do dangerous but important things while he was the chief of police.
“Take it off,” Nora said, gesturing to Cyn’s sweater. Without hesitation, Cyn complied, and seconds later, she was sitting in the glow of the fireplace in her bra, a large butterfly bandage marring her left arm.
Gently, Nora gripped Cyn’s arm and pulled the bandage off. Joe’s eyes stayed glued to the wound that was being revealed centimeter by centimeter. When the bandage was fully removed, he and Nora got their first good look at the damage.
It was a single clean slice, just as Cyn had said. He wasn’t close enough to see how deep, but he had no reason to believe it was other than the inch Cyn had told him. The skin around the wound looked healthy, though it was starting to bruise.
Nora prodded the slice, then reached inside her bag and pulled out a syringe. “Angelica did a good job cleaning it out. It’s not worth stitching up now, but I’ll flush it out again with some antiseptic and then seal it with skin glue. That should get you through. Joe, can you go grab some towels from the mudroom?”
Nodding, he left to fetch two towels and when he returned, Nora put him to work holding one of them under Cyn’s arm. She let out a low hiss when the liquid first penetrated the cut and her body stiffened under his touch, but she said nothing as the fluid dripped onto the towel he held. Thankfully, the job was a fast one, and moments later, Nora was wiping the wound dry before sealing it up.
“I’ll put a waterproof bandage on it for now and will leave you with a few extras. You probably don’t need them, not with the skin glue, but it can’t hurt,” she said, then she handed Cyn back her sweater. “Now, how about a glass of wine and you tell me what you found today?”
Knowing his place, Joe dutifully retrieved a wineglass from the cabinet, poured a healthy amount, and set the glass down in front of Nora. When he held the bottle up, silently asking Cyn if she wanted a top off, she shook her head.
“I took some ibuprofen and I don’t want to mix it with too much alcohol.” Tulah was curled in front of the fire with her nose on Cyn’s feet, and Cyn reached down to rub her ears as she answered.
Nodding, he returned the bottle to the kitchen island and lingered there as Cyn filled Nora in on everything she’d already told him. Rather than listen again, he pulled up the photos she’d sent him and started to give them a deeper look than he’d given them earlier.
It was hard to see much detail on the small screen of his phone, and he hoped Cyn had a program to pixelate the images when they viewed them on the larger screen of her computer. Based on what he was seeing, there was every possibility that they could pull some information from the ammo packaging that would allow them to discover where—and by whom—it had been purchased.
He heard Cyn start to tell Nora about the room diagram, and he pulled up the photo she’d taken. Unfortunately, everything Cyn was saying was accurate—the diagram didn’t give much away. It was not an architectural drawing or any kind of drawing that would have been submitted as part of a permitting process, so there was no way to track it through those mechanisms. No, this was more of a reasonably detailed amateur attempt to depict a room.
