Page 2 of Grissom
Murphy sucked in a breath, knowing what was coming next.
Sure enough. Grissom blinked and then yawned, as if his poor brain had just rebooted, and he woke up in the middle of the same nightmare. “Well, hey, Murph. You come to win back the cash you lost playing poker with me last night?”
Interestingly, he still wouldn’t make eye contact. Murphy made a mental note to ask Grissom’s doctor what was going on and what that lack of eye contact meant. If anything.
“Just came for a visit. How are they treating you here?”
“Here?” Grissom blinked once again, his gaze on the door of the room that’d be his home for as long as it took for him to remember who he was and why he was there. Four cream-colored walls and a comfortable bed with a navy-blue comforter, a mostly empty closet, a dresser, and a desk. A private bath and a single window framing bullet-proof, unbreakable, polycarbonate glass. No one could get in and Grissom couldn’t get out. For now, the world was safe.
There were no pens or pencils on the desk. No paper clips either. The desk’s legs were bolted to the floor and the dresser’s drawers were painted on. The bed was bolted down as well, and the blinds on the windows were enclosed inside two more panes of polycarbonate. No drawstrings to hang himself with or to fashion a garrote. Nothing anywhere to fashion any sort of deadly weapon with. Which didn’t mean squat when the man inside this room was a trained killer.
“Where am I?” Grissom asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes.
Murphy sucked in a bellyful of patience and sat back down. Grissom’s nerves were shot and his heart had been blown away with them. He just didn’t know it yet, and there was no way to help him understand. He’d lost touch with reality when he’d rear-ended that FedEx truck, and judging by the way this visit was going, he wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
But then…
I’ll be damned…
Grissom did something he hadn’t done since becoming a full-time resident of Shady Creek Asylum. His gaze scrolled from the door to Murphy. “She left me this time, didn’t she? Pam ran off with that guy who’s been hanging around my place. She doesn’t think I know, but I do. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? She took my sons, and she dumped them somewhere in” —he closed his eyes and touched two fingertips to his right temple— “where, Murph?” His nostrils flared and his belly inflated with a deep breath.
Murphy could only guess that the pain of not knowing where his sons were had somehow gotten through. Grissom needed those boys. Good fathers always did. But the stark sadness in his voice was a knockout punch Murphy hadn’t seen coming. Neither did he expect Grissom to lift to his feet, plant them like he was ready to fight, and declare, “Help me find my boys or get the hell out of my way. I’m leaving.”
“Now hold on a minute.” Murphy put both palms forward, but he knew better. There was no way he could stop or placate a man the size of Grissom. He stood a good foot over Murphy. He was as tall as Agent Shane Hayes, bulkier than Agent Beau Villanueva, and his hazel eyes were two pissed-off death rays, mean for the first time in days. He leaned over Murphy like a dragon over the knight he meant to chew up and spit out. “I said move, old man.”
Murphy allowed a faint smile. Sass was a step in the right direction. Belligerence was better. “Call me old man again, and I won’t sign-off on them letting you out of here.”
“I don’t need you signing anything for me. I sign my own shit. Get out of my way.”
“You’re not going anywhere—”
“The fuck I’m not!”
Grissom’s roar blistered over the top of Murphy’s wispy combover. But rules were rules, and he could bellow, too. “Back off, buster! If you’d shut up and listen for a guldarned minute, you’d understand that you can’t go—” damned if this junior agent’s hands didn’t ball into fists “—ALONE! You big dummy!” Murphy yelled, before Grissom could cock that hammer-of-a-fist and knock him on his ass. “One is none and two is one! Remember? You’ve got to be smart about how you handle this. Take someone with you. Hell, take everyone. We’re all on your side, and you know better!”
Grissom’s chest heaved, and Murphy knew his time to reason with this bull moose of a man was running out. Either he got through to Grissom now, or he lost him for good. Righteous rage was one thing, but Grissom going rogue could get a lot of people killed. Including himself.
“Your mission, the one I’m giving you right now,” Murphy added hurriedly, “is to locate your sons without killing anyone, you hear me? Yes, Pam took Tanner and Luke to Central America. We’ve tracked them that far.”
An angry grunt was all he got for an answer. He kept talking, not sure if he should tell Grissom that Pam was dead or not. “Which agents do you want on your six?”
“Alex.”
Murphy shook his head. “No. He just retired, this time for good. Who else?” Alex would only remain retired until this shit hit the fan, but Murphy refused to let Grissom punch that ticket.
“Leisha Warner.”
“Not Leisha, sorry. She twisted her knee two nights ago. Can’t walk. Might be looking at surgery. Who else?”
“Cassidy Dancer.”
Murphy gulped at how Grissom’s tone kept wrapping higher. Maybe not everyone could support him. “She’s on maternity leave.” He seemed focused on female operators, so Murphyoffered, “Phoenix Bond and Jenna Bates are already in Costa Rica. So are Everlee Yeager-Hayes, Izza Maher, Camilla Garner, and—”
“I want Taylor Armstrong, Cord Shepherd, and Walker Judge.”
At last, agents who were available. Murphy shrugged off the tension fisting the hell out of his shoulders. “They’re yours. They’ve been working with Mother, but they’ll be glad to go with you. Anyone else?”
Mother was the genius office assistant who managed all things technical, as well as most everyone’s personal business when she could get into it. Or so she thought. Sasha Kennedy hadn’t earned the moniker of Mother just because of her astute ability to hack federal and non-federal databases throughout the world. The woman was inherently nosy, but she was a genius, and, in her annoying way, she was motherly. Sort of.
