Page 94 of Deadly Evidence
Neither would a woman like her, with calluses on her hands and ranching in her blood, and too many responsibilities to even name.
A man looking to enjoy life would never land here.
“I’ve got a meeting with the other agents in the morning,” he said. “After that, I’ll stop at your ranch to say goodbye to everyone.”
This was it, she realized. Already, she felt emptiness seeping into her bones. “So now, you’ll go on...though I guess you can’t say where, right?”
His faint shrug said it all.
She stiffened her spine and offered her hand in farewell. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. “Thank you...for everything.”
She held her breath as his gaze settled on her, his eyes weary and accepting, and infinitely sad.
And then he shook her hand and walked away.
When the house phone rang at midnight three days later, Anna knew it meant trouble.
“Ms. Remington? Mr. Banuelos is asking for you. If you want to see him, you’d better come soon. He’s still in intensive care, second floor, but he’s not doing well.”
Thankful that Mia was still at the ranch to watch over Jonah and Lacey, she ran for her truck and floored the accelerator.
Three days after his emergency surgery, Gil was still drifting in and out of consciousness and had yet to acknowledge Anna when she came to see him.
With damage to his liver, small intestines, and spleen, he’d been close to death when he hit the operating table. Since then, he’d been fighting a raging infection that wasn’t responding to antibiotics.
She had so many questions. And there was so little time.
After reaching the hospital parking lot, she raced for the emergency room entrance, and took the stairs rather than waiting for an elevator.
At the expression of alarm on a nurse’s face, she glanced down at herself.
She’d rushed to El Paso in her cowboy boots, jeans, and a faded sweatshirt—the clothes she’d worn all day while working on a hundred-twenty-three calves with Vicente, and the veterinarian.
Chute work was never easy, and it was never, ever clean.
Darting into a ladies’ room just outside intensive care, she splashed water on her face and ran her fingers through her hair, then scrubbed her hands.
When she came out, the nurse at the station eyed her dubiously. “Maybe you should leave those boots here,” she said, waving a hand toward the door.
“Gladly. How is Gil doing?” Anna toed off her boots and crossed the aisle in stocking feet. “Any change?”
The brunette behind the desk ran a forefinger down a clipboard and viewed the monitors in front of her. “No worse, no better—he’s holding his own. The only time he said anything was when he wanted you to have the right to visit him here. You can go in for fifteen minutes if you’d like—he hasn’t had anyone here for an hour or more.”
“He hadvisitors?”
“A man came earlier. Tall, dark hair, broad shoulders. He stayed the full fifteen minutes and left.” She gave a sigh of pure admiration. “Realnice guy, but he seemed distracted.”
Probably Brady, hoping to get some answers, too. She hadn’t seen him since the morning he left the ranch, and she’d felt melancholy ever since.
Lost dreams were poor company during the long and lonely nights when there was too much time to think.
And Brady hadn’t called. Not even once.
It was for the best, she knew—a quick, absolute resolution, with no uncertainty to drag out any hopes or useless efforts on either side.
Anna nodded to the nurse and strode to the cubicle just opposite the station.
Gil lay there as he had before, on his back, the head of his bed raised, tubes and wires and IV stands crowded shoulder to shoulder with monitor screens and equipment she couldn’t begin to name.
