The pain in her head was terrible; it felt both heavy and light at the same
time, throbbing in some areas whilst others felt lanced, filled with
needles. She took a deep breath to overcome the nausea and almost cried
out as her abdomen contracted. Here the pain was lancing again, the
needles piercing her kidneys and the corner of her liver, stomach and
pancreas, spilling blood and acid into the cavity between her organs. It
took all her effort to force her eyes to open, and she groaned as the
eyelid movement broke a line of dried blood, the scab breaking into
thousands of glass-like shards, which stabbed the corner of her now opened
eye.
She groaned without thinking and raised a hand, a pain free movement, to her side, where she encountered a thick layer of white bandage, soft and flaky, surprisingly dry against the soggy feeling of the skin underneath. She suspected that her earlier concerns about her blood filled abdomen were exaggerated, although she wasn't sure by how much. After she'd blinked the shards of dry blood out of her eye she was able to make out the ceiling square white tiles with thick gray boarders, and a fluorescent light further down the ceiling nearer her feet.
After surveying her surroundings and securing herself in the knowledge she was safely inside her hospital room she shut her eyes, waiting patiently for the pain to soften into a dull throb, which was about the same time as a doctor came in. "We were wondering when you were going to wake up, miss...uh..." Nina waited whilst he found her sheet and saw her name, "...Myers..." His voice hit the very core of her head trauma, and she wanted to hit the man for being so chipper this early in the...late in the....
"What time is it?"
The doctor laughed, assaulting her mind. "It's certainly not the first time I've been asked that, but it is one of the strangest questions I've been asked when..." Nina began to sit up, not opening her eyes, reaching for the bed, which she was sure, had moved out from underneath her. She became nauseous, dizzy and pulled one of her hands up to hold her head.
In the darkness she felt the doctor's hands on her shoulders pushing her back down onto the bed. "Whoa there horsie!" he exclaimed, to close to her, and she felt the pillow on the back of her head, impacting her like a truck.
She opened her eyes as soon as she sensed the doctor had moved away again, "What time is it?" she questioned again, looking around the room for her clothing.
"It's twelve forty." The doctor reported, Nina watched as he glanced at his watch. She wondered where hers was. "It looks like you've been in the wars, Miss Myers."
It occurred to her that she wasn't quite sure why she was in the hospital, she just knew that she was in pain. Her mind flashed to the most recent thing she could remember, answering a telephone call from someone, they gave her a creepy feeling. Jack burst into her peripheral vision. "Hey!" he greeted her, his low baritone less assaulting, comforting even to her head.
He came right up to the bed and placed a hand on her arm, "How are you feeling?"
Nina's eyes fluttered shut as she contemplated adding a little levity to the conversation, "Depends on how many trucks there were." She eventually whispered. She felt Jack's hand on hers, gripping it, and it confused her, this was way beyond their normal familiarity. She was comforted by it just the same, he leant his free hand over her and brushed back some hair that had landed on her face. "Jack what happened?" she asked, trying not to sound too desperate.
Nina opened her eyes slowly, but with enough time to see Jack nod at the doctor, silently asking him to leave the room. He shut the door on his way out, and when Jack was sure they were alone, he let his hand begin to stroke her hair. "A block of concrete fell on you. You were up on the twenty-ninth floor." He continued filling in details as Nina frowned at him, unsure what he was talking about. He began to get worried. "How much can you remember?" he eventually asked.
"Walsh called, we went to some warehouse and were working on a..." Nina's forehead creased as she thought, and she winched in pain as the cut on her forehead complained.
Jack rubbed her head, "Don't think so much."
She nodded, which made her feel motion-sick. "Dave..." she muttered knowing it was relevant.
"The bomber." He prompted, frowning, increasingly worried about how much she'd forgotten. Nina's eyes widened in recognition suddenly and the last two days came flooding back to her as she recalled phone calls, bombs, dead bodies and sniffer dogs, and Jack in a room without a view.
"Right, how is the case coming? Has anyone examined the scene?" she asked in a flurry, raising herself, slower this time out of the bed. Jack, like the doctor before him, lightly pushed her arms until she began to lower to the bed, except her put a hand underneath her head until it reached the pillow.
"Yes, but I don't know if I'll be filling you in on that just yet." He muttered. She scowled at him.
"Why not?"
"Well let's just remember that a few seconds ago you weren't entirely sure what case it was..." he reminded her. He finally stopped stroking her hair and moved to grip her hand with both hands. Nina rolled her eyes and bit the corner of her mouth. "What happened to me then?" she asked him, raising her free hand to touch the souchers on her forehead underneath her line of clean, but badly dried hair.
"Concrete, big slab, a security guard pulled you out, brought you downstairs. You've been here for the last two, three hours." He told her. Nina nodded, holding her forehead with her fingers as though she was afraid it would fall off. She eventually shut her eyes again as the dull throbbing intensified, and Jack called out for a nurse.
"I'm fine." she told him.
"Nina, just take a pain killer." He argued.
"Fine," she relented, deciding that he didn't really have to push, she'd prefer to take one. "Just don't let her talk if she has a high pitched voice." He smiled at this, even though she couldn't see to check.
Jack spoke to the nurse when she arrived, asking her to give her something for her pain. Nina told the nurse that it was fine, and a few seconds later the woman was injecting a painkiller into her IV drip. "That's the security guy." He commented, and nudged his head towards the television fixed to the wall in the corner of the room. Nina glanced over, where a news reporter was interviewing a security guard. He wore a green uniform, complete with radio, nightstick and name badge, and had seemed to be quite nervous at the presence of cameras. He kept glancing from the reporter to the camera, and back again.
"Well obviously when the bomb went off, I was quite shocked...I mean, I know I was told that there could have been a bomb in the building, but I never actually believed..." He was saying before a reporter cut him off.
"Were you scared at any point?" asked a young black woman whose back was to the camera.
"No, no, I mean...when I was up there I, like I said, I was shocked, but I wasn't afraid, my kids are always saying that I'm their superhero, and today, I just feel like I proved it."
The young woman seemed to lose interest in the story here, transferring back to the studio, "I'm sure the FBI agent you saved is thankful that you were there for her today." She turned her back on him, inadvertently giving the other journalists more time. "That was Paul Davison, and I'm Maureen Kingsley."
The pain in Nina's head took second fiddle for a moment, there was an overwhelming sense of unease about this guy. The superhero part, unfortunately her memory was a little rough at the moment, but she could recall the caller saying something about wanting to be a superhero. Jack turned back to her after he'd turned the volume down again. "He's phoned the hotline twice to find out if you're okay." He commented.
Nina ignored him, "He's the guy."
Jack was surprised, but he generally trusted her judgment. He turned to her and gave her a look that asked her to explain, without actually saying it, he didn't want to question her outright. "The superhero comment, and his voice... I know his voice."
He nodded, and leant back, letting go of her hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed Copell's mobile number whilst Nina used his shoulder to steady herself as she sat up, "What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Coming with you." she told him as she propped herself up on the headboard, Copell answered the phone, and Jack didn't get to say anything to her. The signal was weak, so he got up off the bed and walked over to the door.
Jack ordered to Copell to find out the security guard's address and see about getting a warrant from the judge whilst he watched Nina get out of the bed. She slid her feet off the bed and stood, gripping the bed rails with almost white hands as she began to sway. Jack considered moving to support her, but she was steady before he could.
Nina watched Jack out the corner of her eye as she reached under the bed for the bag of her clothing that she knew was there. She emptied the bag onto the bed, and was shocked to see her watch and necklace fall out amongst her things. The thought of putting back on her crumpled clothing didn't exactly fill her with happiness, and as if by telepathy, Jack pointed under the bed. She held the cotton cover up, and saw the bag from the boot of her car underneath. She was thankful she'd changed the clothing inside it recently, although she couldn't remember what to. When she unzipped the bag she glanced over at Jack, a thank you, and pulled out a clean pair of underwear and slipped them on under the hospital gown. She had to push several items aside to find a pair of trousers, which she slipped on the same way. Jack pushed the door shut as she undid the back of her hospital gown, and turned his back long enough to let her pull it off and put on her bra. When he turned back she had her bra on, and was pulling a gray jersey on top.
Nina collected her watch and slipped it on, followed by her necklace, she stuffed her clothes from the last three days into the bag and searched for a pair of socks, ankle tights or similar, which were decidedly harder to find. She slipped one sock on as the pain in head flared up again, and she shut her eyes, pressing her hand to her temples before pressing it to her drip in her arm, checking that it was still there. She the pain seemed to build to a crescendo and then subside, slowly. As the pain began to flow away, she heard a click, Jack's phone shutting, and then felt the bed depress.
She pulled on the other sock on and prodded about on the floor with her foot for her other shoe. "You should stay here." He told her.
"I'll be fine." She told him, not realising that the pain was completely gone now, focusing instead on their potential next move. She pull her watch tight around her left wrist and had to concentrate to undo the hook on her necklace. "Anything interesting turn up at the scene?" Nina asked, attempting to secure the thin gold strap around her neck.
"Carrey recovered most of the device. He's found much less wiring in this one than the last one, he says there weren't as many fail safes." Jack replied, he'd quizzed Fred Carrey on the device, but he had had to ask for the layman's version of the facts, as he wasn't familiar with the intricacies of bombs.
"He wasn't as worried about it going up ahead of time." Nina surmised, "Which fits, right?" She was waiting for his agreement, not realising he was waiting for her to form a theory. She looked over at him for confirmation she could continue, she stood, and covered her bad balance and low blood pressure by continuing. "If he was placing the bomb when he was calling he had plenty of time to get out."
"But the security guard..." he paused here, trying to remember the name, unfortunately, whilst he had a net the names of the bad guys, he'd taken this man at his word, and presumed that the name of the guy who saved Nina's life wouldn't have been important beyond its initial use.
Nina however had an eidetic memory, she could recall ninety percent of the information that she'd seen in the recent past, which for Nina seemed to go back the last six years that she'd worked for CTU. "Davison." she provided, jerking the IV drip out with one fast fluid movement. It only left a little scar, she hoped that all the painkiller had dripped into her before she took it off.
"Right, he was in the building when the bomb went off." Nina turned, having collected all of her belongings, she was ready to go.
"Maybe he knew the blast radius, knew where to avoid until the bomb went off." Nina rationalised, catching his eye for a few seconds before she zipped up her bag. She fingered the zipper, and then took a sharp intake of breath as she realised. "He asked me what I look like, and then he picked me up and carried me out of the building." Jack raised himself from the gurney slowly, nodding, some how this guy had garnered enough information about her to know she'd run into the bomb scene. "How did you know I had a bag in my car?" she asked him, lifting it over her shoulder.
"I do." He provided, and walked over to the door. "I don't like this." They walked through the door and out into the corridor, headed for the admissions desk.
"You need me." Nina whispered, as she noticed the doctor making his way over from another patient. She noticed, much to her content that Jack didn't object to that comment. Nina came to a halt at the point where the doctor would have intercepted them had he been walking a little faster.
"You can't leave, you've got a bruised pancreas, an unexplored blunt trauma to your head. We need to keep you here to have you worked up by a surgical consultant for a laparoscopy." The doctor informed them, his voice decidedly less high pitched now he was irritated.
"And I've got a man who's blown up a train and an office building, and may do so again. I need to be there." She walked around him and Jack led her to the admissions desk.
"We need to do a laparoscopy..."
She cut him off, "Which is to assess the extent of my injuries. Doctor, I know LA hospitals are understaffed, but if you were desperately worried about me, you'd have had me in surgery by now." She put her hand down on the desk, with enough pressure to make a nearby nurse and desk attendant look over. "I'm signing out." She told him.
The doctor reached over the counter and brought up a chip wood clipboard, handing it to a sigh. "I hope you realise you're doing it against medical advice." He told her.
Nina smiled, and took his offered pen, "It's certainly not the first time I've signed out AMA, doctor, and it won't be the last." She muttered, and filled in the relevant details on the form. The doctor took the clipboard and his pen back and Nina turned to Jack. "Shall we go."
He nodded, and walked in the general direction of the parking garage. "No strenuous physical activity." The doctor called after her. Nina looked over at him after his first syllable, and after he'd spoken, she felt Jack's finger's on her shoulder, he pulled the bag off her shoulder, and put it over his own, he started back to the car before she turned back to him. Nina shook her head at his back, following him out to his car.
-24-
When Jack's mobile rung, twenty minutes later, they were stuck in grid locked traffic, five miles from the hospital, nearly joining the freeway. Jack had played a hunch and decided to head for the second sector that they'd got a trace for, but unfortunately they hadn't counted on lunch time traffic, people going out for a meal, or getting in some Christmas shopping. Nina let Jack answer his phone, as it was plugged into the car stereo system, and there wasn't much to concentrate on as far as driving was concerned. He reached up and pressed the 'answer call' button, as she reached for the control on the radio, turning it down two clicks. "Bauer." He answered the phone.
"Yeah, this is Johnson, I'm over at San Amelia Road, Copell's gone down to this guy, uh, Davison's apartment, he said to call you with the address." His voice came out loud and clear over the speakers. Nina rummaged for the pen that Jack had let her borrow yesterday, and found a scrap of paper in the glove box, a receipt for petrol, she decided to write the address down on the back of it.
"Shoot." Jack said, having checked that Nina was ready to take it down. Johnson spieled off an address that was inside the residential area that the phone call had been made from. They were both happy they'd hit something.
"Okay," Jack said once he'd read off his address, "We're heading over there now, but we've hit traffic on riverside, so we're going to take a while, where are we meeting?" he asked, leaning his head towards the phone despite the fact that Johnson would hear him perfectly regardless of where he was in the car.
"It's a diner about a half mile down the road, called the Sunset Diner." Johnson told them. "We've taken over the back room for the SWAT team, the SAIC was going to hold off until you got there."
"Good, has he got surveillance in place?" Jack asked, nodding during the phone call as though Johnson could see him, the same habit Nina had been trying to kick for the last few days which only reared it's head when she was weak, tired or had too much to drink. Nina flipped the mirror down and held back her head so she could look at the blunt trauma that the doctor had talked about. Just under her fringe close to her hairline, there was a huge square of bruised skin that had an assortment of cuts across it, each one carefully stitched. She half listened to the conversation at the same time.
"Snipers on the roof, a listening floristry van outside, a man checking the fuse box. No one's seen any movement from his apartment, but his car is outside and there are sounds from the apartment." Nina let her fringe dropped down and assessed her hair, at some point whilst she was unconscious she had been bathed, and her hair had dried awkwardly. The damage she could make out from the front was nothing that wouldn't be healed by a couple of hours, and so she shut the mirror, hoping Jack wouldn't notice her checking her hair in the mirror.
Johnson dispensed a few bits of traffic advice and then they disconnected, and using his advice managed to avoid what they were told was the worst part of the traffic jam, and make it to Davison's residence in another half hour.
-24-
When they got to the Sunset Diner Nina took longer to remove herself from the car than usual. Standing upright was painful after her body had gotten used to sitting down for so long. She had to use the car door to stabilise herself before she could walk on her own, and so it took her longer to shut the door. Jack didn't miss this detail, although he chose not to comment on it, realising that she hated being weaker too.
Inside the diner, Copell was standing over a map on a desk. It was of the immediate area around Davison's apartment, with the diner being one of the furthest points marked. Copell was delegating the entry points of the SWAT team when they came in. "Johnson managed to get you around the traffic then?" he said instead of a greeting.
Jack and Nina nodded, "I think you were right about this guy," Copell filled them in, handing them Davison's FBI file. "Check it out." He said as Jack opened the file and held it so Nina could see.
"Did some time in the military, advanced explosives." Copell summarised, as they read down the list. Paul Gregory Davison had spent twelve years in the military, only promoted once, even by the length of his service he should have been promoted three times, except he hadn't, he'd been held back because of various disciplinary actions, all pertaining to explosives, it seemed he was a little trigger happy.
"He left, but I got it on good authority from a friend of mine that he resigned only to avoid a dishonourable discharge." Jack waited for Nina to finish before he turned the page. "I interviewed one of his colleagues, last night Davison volunteered for the night shift. As well as working this morning." Nina raised an eyebrow, she wondered why anyone would want to work as much as they had over the last few days, other than to plant a bomb.
"Jerry's been working on the tapes of the recordings…" Copell paused for a moment to lead them the three feet to the table where a sound technician they'd met previously had set up all his equipment. He let him take over, "Jerry." He prompted.
Jerry swiveled his chair to look at them for a minute. "We took the two conversations apart." He turned quickly back to his laptop and clicked on a play button at the top of the screen. It was a section of conversation they remembered from earlier in the evening. Davison's voice played out of the speakers. "…always saying that I'm their superhero, and today…"
He clicked on a second play button, lower down on the screen, this time it was an excerpt of the phone call, "…who I am, like the perfect superhero….Piece…." The technician cut Dave off in mid sentence.
"Now, if we compare the words…" He synchronised the play back and had both conversations play at the same time, so they both said superhero at the same time. The computer drew two sets of lines oscillating up and down to correspond to the voice patterns, and then beeped when both men had finished. The 'superhero' sections matched up. "Bingo." Said Jerry, he swiveled in his chair, and was met with less than amazed faces. "Obviously I have to compare other words for it to be court admissible, but this is a pretty good indicator."
"And, get this..." Copell said in a tone, that showed them how proud he was, escorting them back to the table, "he's never mentioned a family before to anyone."
Nina raised an eyebrow at Jack. "He wanted to feed us that superhero line." Jack surmised.
"He's escalating, he was closer to the second explosion..." In Jack's mind he went back to the building and looked over at Davison again, he could make out burns on the guys hand, "...might have even been too close. If he's inside his apartment, I wouldn't take it to mean its safe, I think he might blow himself up."
"But the guy's an explosives expert Jack, he knows what this stuff can do, in intricate detail..." Nina began, but Jack cut her off.
"You've spoken to him, Nina." He began, "He's got a reverence for explosions, he doesn't know their ins and outs because of the explosives training, he probably joined up to learn about them." Jack snapped the file shut. "I think he wants to know what its like to go up in his own creation."
"But he seems to be all about publicity..." Nina wasn't exactly arguing with him, although that was the impression that others must have received, she was providing the opposing point of view, simply to allow him to fully form his own opinion.
"And because he is, he may try and take a few agents with him, say the SWAT team..." Copell and Nina nodded, an act, which Nina instantly regretted. Touching her fingers lightly to her forehead, she closed her eyes briefly.
"Alright, but we need to get in there soon." Copell prompted, passing Jack the entry plan. Jack scanned the A3 page, and Copell gave him a few brief notes, Nina didn't hear them, the pain making her dizzy. Every agent in the room saw, and as she began to worry about falling she reached out and caught the edge of the desk, hooking her fingers around the edge of the handbag hook.
"Okay, go on this, I'll take point and you aren't going in." He pointed at Nina as he said the last few words. She opened her eyes and mouth to object but Jack wasn't going to let her try and take on several pounds of Kevlar and an assault rifle when she was dizzy just supporting her own weight. "You can't handle it right now, Nina, you're not going in."
Eventually Nina nodded. Coppell tossed Jack a bulletproof vest, complete with FBI emblazoned across it and Nina caught it, holding onto it until he had taken off his own coat. They swapped and she rolled his coated up as he fastened the Kevlar coated Velcro straps. Jack pulled his gun out of his holster and checked the clip, which was full, as he expected it to be. He slotted it away. "Okay, guys, we're going in."
-24-
A younger agent kicked the door in on the count of three, and two more ran inside Davison's apartment, checking the corridor. They yelled "Clear." loud enough so that the entire building could hear, and Jack let another two agents run in before he walked through the door. The four agents that had run in first went with Copell to one side of the entryway, and he and another two went in the other direction.
The corridor was dark wood, and the entire corridor smelled like spices. The smells from the Indian takeaway downstairs were overwhelming, and Jack wondered how he managed to live with it all the time. He tried to remember talking to him outside the building, but he couldn't recall any similar smell, but then he might have not been close enough to him to smell it. He nodded to another agent, and he kicked a door open. It was the bedroom, Jack walked in, surveying the room, checking out the window, looking for anything to do with the case, whilst the two agents checked under the bed, in the closet, looking for an immediate threat from a person or a large explosive. There was a door to another room, slightly ajar. Jack pushed it open wider as one of the agents slowly crept into the room. A bathroom. Clear too, although they checked the bathtub, and the towel cupboard. "Jack, you'd better take a look at this!" he heard Copell's voice from the next room.
Jack ran to the source of the voice, calling back to the two agents. "Check for devices." On the other side of the corridor there was a kitchen and living room, and then another room with a door, Copell was behind that door, in the room that had been outfitted to his workshop.
There was a desk in the centre of the room, completely clean, and several metal open shelves around the room. There was little on the shelves, a few plastic bags, and a drum of something in the corner. There was a large analogue recorder similar in design to the ones they had at their base of operations on San Amelia road, and there was a sketchbook of drawings, notes and the yellow pages on a corner desk. There was only one chair in the room, pushed under the corner desk.
Jack approached Copell; he scanned the papers as they came into view. "Look at this stuff, he hasn't got much, but it's all top of the line." Remarked an agent behind him. Jack froze as he recognised a number on the papers.
"That's Nina's cell." He revealed quietly to Copell.
Copell offered him a single latex glove, which he snapped onto his right hand. "That alone justifies the warrant for him, we should put out an APB, call the networks, get his face circulating..."
"No, that's Nina's cell." He couldn't put enough stress on her name. "It's her personal cell phone number, I have it memorised." How could he forget it? She was his second in command and he had to call her more times than he had to call home and his wife's mobile combined.
"Check." Copell said. Both of them knew he wasn't wrong, but they didn't like the idea that this guy had such confidential information on one of the investigative agents. Jack pulled out his phone and found Nina's cell phone number in the memory. He checked it digit by digit twice before he spoke again. "How the hell did he get her personal cell?"
She groaned without thinking and raised a hand, a pain free movement, to her side, where she encountered a thick layer of white bandage, soft and flaky, surprisingly dry against the soggy feeling of the skin underneath. She suspected that her earlier concerns about her blood filled abdomen were exaggerated, although she wasn't sure by how much. After she'd blinked the shards of dry blood out of her eye she was able to make out the ceiling square white tiles with thick gray boarders, and a fluorescent light further down the ceiling nearer her feet.
After surveying her surroundings and securing herself in the knowledge she was safely inside her hospital room she shut her eyes, waiting patiently for the pain to soften into a dull throb, which was about the same time as a doctor came in. "We were wondering when you were going to wake up, miss...uh..." Nina waited whilst he found her sheet and saw her name, "...Myers..." His voice hit the very core of her head trauma, and she wanted to hit the man for being so chipper this early in the...late in the....
"What time is it?"
The doctor laughed, assaulting her mind. "It's certainly not the first time I've been asked that, but it is one of the strangest questions I've been asked when..." Nina began to sit up, not opening her eyes, reaching for the bed, which she was sure, had moved out from underneath her. She became nauseous, dizzy and pulled one of her hands up to hold her head.
In the darkness she felt the doctor's hands on her shoulders pushing her back down onto the bed. "Whoa there horsie!" he exclaimed, to close to her, and she felt the pillow on the back of her head, impacting her like a truck.
She opened her eyes as soon as she sensed the doctor had moved away again, "What time is it?" she questioned again, looking around the room for her clothing.
"It's twelve forty." The doctor reported, Nina watched as he glanced at his watch. She wondered where hers was. "It looks like you've been in the wars, Miss Myers."
It occurred to her that she wasn't quite sure why she was in the hospital, she just knew that she was in pain. Her mind flashed to the most recent thing she could remember, answering a telephone call from someone, they gave her a creepy feeling. Jack burst into her peripheral vision. "Hey!" he greeted her, his low baritone less assaulting, comforting even to her head.
He came right up to the bed and placed a hand on her arm, "How are you feeling?"
Nina's eyes fluttered shut as she contemplated adding a little levity to the conversation, "Depends on how many trucks there were." She eventually whispered. She felt Jack's hand on hers, gripping it, and it confused her, this was way beyond their normal familiarity. She was comforted by it just the same, he leant his free hand over her and brushed back some hair that had landed on her face. "Jack what happened?" she asked, trying not to sound too desperate.
Nina opened her eyes slowly, but with enough time to see Jack nod at the doctor, silently asking him to leave the room. He shut the door on his way out, and when Jack was sure they were alone, he let his hand begin to stroke her hair. "A block of concrete fell on you. You were up on the twenty-ninth floor." He continued filling in details as Nina frowned at him, unsure what he was talking about. He began to get worried. "How much can you remember?" he eventually asked.
"Walsh called, we went to some warehouse and were working on a..." Nina's forehead creased as she thought, and she winched in pain as the cut on her forehead complained.
Jack rubbed her head, "Don't think so much."
She nodded, which made her feel motion-sick. "Dave..." she muttered knowing it was relevant.
"The bomber." He prompted, frowning, increasingly worried about how much she'd forgotten. Nina's eyes widened in recognition suddenly and the last two days came flooding back to her as she recalled phone calls, bombs, dead bodies and sniffer dogs, and Jack in a room without a view.
"Right, how is the case coming? Has anyone examined the scene?" she asked in a flurry, raising herself, slower this time out of the bed. Jack, like the doctor before him, lightly pushed her arms until she began to lower to the bed, except her put a hand underneath her head until it reached the pillow.
"Yes, but I don't know if I'll be filling you in on that just yet." He muttered. She scowled at him.
"Why not?"
"Well let's just remember that a few seconds ago you weren't entirely sure what case it was..." he reminded her. He finally stopped stroking her hair and moved to grip her hand with both hands. Nina rolled her eyes and bit the corner of her mouth. "What happened to me then?" she asked him, raising her free hand to touch the souchers on her forehead underneath her line of clean, but badly dried hair.
"Concrete, big slab, a security guard pulled you out, brought you downstairs. You've been here for the last two, three hours." He told her. Nina nodded, holding her forehead with her fingers as though she was afraid it would fall off. She eventually shut her eyes again as the dull throbbing intensified, and Jack called out for a nurse.
"I'm fine." she told him.
"Nina, just take a pain killer." He argued.
"Fine," she relented, deciding that he didn't really have to push, she'd prefer to take one. "Just don't let her talk if she has a high pitched voice." He smiled at this, even though she couldn't see to check.
Jack spoke to the nurse when she arrived, asking her to give her something for her pain. Nina told the nurse that it was fine, and a few seconds later the woman was injecting a painkiller into her IV drip. "That's the security guy." He commented, and nudged his head towards the television fixed to the wall in the corner of the room. Nina glanced over, where a news reporter was interviewing a security guard. He wore a green uniform, complete with radio, nightstick and name badge, and had seemed to be quite nervous at the presence of cameras. He kept glancing from the reporter to the camera, and back again.
"Well obviously when the bomb went off, I was quite shocked...I mean, I know I was told that there could have been a bomb in the building, but I never actually believed..." He was saying before a reporter cut him off.
"Were you scared at any point?" asked a young black woman whose back was to the camera.
"No, no, I mean...when I was up there I, like I said, I was shocked, but I wasn't afraid, my kids are always saying that I'm their superhero, and today, I just feel like I proved it."
The young woman seemed to lose interest in the story here, transferring back to the studio, "I'm sure the FBI agent you saved is thankful that you were there for her today." She turned her back on him, inadvertently giving the other journalists more time. "That was Paul Davison, and I'm Maureen Kingsley."
The pain in Nina's head took second fiddle for a moment, there was an overwhelming sense of unease about this guy. The superhero part, unfortunately her memory was a little rough at the moment, but she could recall the caller saying something about wanting to be a superhero. Jack turned back to her after he'd turned the volume down again. "He's phoned the hotline twice to find out if you're okay." He commented.
Nina ignored him, "He's the guy."
Jack was surprised, but he generally trusted her judgment. He turned to her and gave her a look that asked her to explain, without actually saying it, he didn't want to question her outright. "The superhero comment, and his voice... I know his voice."
He nodded, and leant back, letting go of her hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed Copell's mobile number whilst Nina used his shoulder to steady herself as she sat up, "What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Coming with you." she told him as she propped herself up on the headboard, Copell answered the phone, and Jack didn't get to say anything to her. The signal was weak, so he got up off the bed and walked over to the door.
Jack ordered to Copell to find out the security guard's address and see about getting a warrant from the judge whilst he watched Nina get out of the bed. She slid her feet off the bed and stood, gripping the bed rails with almost white hands as she began to sway. Jack considered moving to support her, but she was steady before he could.
Nina watched Jack out the corner of her eye as she reached under the bed for the bag of her clothing that she knew was there. She emptied the bag onto the bed, and was shocked to see her watch and necklace fall out amongst her things. The thought of putting back on her crumpled clothing didn't exactly fill her with happiness, and as if by telepathy, Jack pointed under the bed. She held the cotton cover up, and saw the bag from the boot of her car underneath. She was thankful she'd changed the clothing inside it recently, although she couldn't remember what to. When she unzipped the bag she glanced over at Jack, a thank you, and pulled out a clean pair of underwear and slipped them on under the hospital gown. She had to push several items aside to find a pair of trousers, which she slipped on the same way. Jack pushed the door shut as she undid the back of her hospital gown, and turned his back long enough to let her pull it off and put on her bra. When he turned back she had her bra on, and was pulling a gray jersey on top.
Nina collected her watch and slipped it on, followed by her necklace, she stuffed her clothes from the last three days into the bag and searched for a pair of socks, ankle tights or similar, which were decidedly harder to find. She slipped one sock on as the pain in head flared up again, and she shut her eyes, pressing her hand to her temples before pressing it to her drip in her arm, checking that it was still there. She the pain seemed to build to a crescendo and then subside, slowly. As the pain began to flow away, she heard a click, Jack's phone shutting, and then felt the bed depress.
She pulled on the other sock on and prodded about on the floor with her foot for her other shoe. "You should stay here." He told her.
"I'll be fine." She told him, not realising that the pain was completely gone now, focusing instead on their potential next move. She pull her watch tight around her left wrist and had to concentrate to undo the hook on her necklace. "Anything interesting turn up at the scene?" Nina asked, attempting to secure the thin gold strap around her neck.
"Carrey recovered most of the device. He's found much less wiring in this one than the last one, he says there weren't as many fail safes." Jack replied, he'd quizzed Fred Carrey on the device, but he had had to ask for the layman's version of the facts, as he wasn't familiar with the intricacies of bombs.
"He wasn't as worried about it going up ahead of time." Nina surmised, "Which fits, right?" She was waiting for his agreement, not realising he was waiting for her to form a theory. She looked over at him for confirmation she could continue, she stood, and covered her bad balance and low blood pressure by continuing. "If he was placing the bomb when he was calling he had plenty of time to get out."
"But the security guard..." he paused here, trying to remember the name, unfortunately, whilst he had a net the names of the bad guys, he'd taken this man at his word, and presumed that the name of the guy who saved Nina's life wouldn't have been important beyond its initial use.
Nina however had an eidetic memory, she could recall ninety percent of the information that she'd seen in the recent past, which for Nina seemed to go back the last six years that she'd worked for CTU. "Davison." she provided, jerking the IV drip out with one fast fluid movement. It only left a little scar, she hoped that all the painkiller had dripped into her before she took it off.
"Right, he was in the building when the bomb went off." Nina turned, having collected all of her belongings, she was ready to go.
"Maybe he knew the blast radius, knew where to avoid until the bomb went off." Nina rationalised, catching his eye for a few seconds before she zipped up her bag. She fingered the zipper, and then took a sharp intake of breath as she realised. "He asked me what I look like, and then he picked me up and carried me out of the building." Jack raised himself from the gurney slowly, nodding, some how this guy had garnered enough information about her to know she'd run into the bomb scene. "How did you know I had a bag in my car?" she asked him, lifting it over her shoulder.
"I do." He provided, and walked over to the door. "I don't like this." They walked through the door and out into the corridor, headed for the admissions desk.
"You need me." Nina whispered, as she noticed the doctor making his way over from another patient. She noticed, much to her content that Jack didn't object to that comment. Nina came to a halt at the point where the doctor would have intercepted them had he been walking a little faster.
"You can't leave, you've got a bruised pancreas, an unexplored blunt trauma to your head. We need to keep you here to have you worked up by a surgical consultant for a laparoscopy." The doctor informed them, his voice decidedly less high pitched now he was irritated.
"And I've got a man who's blown up a train and an office building, and may do so again. I need to be there." She walked around him and Jack led her to the admissions desk.
"We need to do a laparoscopy..."
She cut him off, "Which is to assess the extent of my injuries. Doctor, I know LA hospitals are understaffed, but if you were desperately worried about me, you'd have had me in surgery by now." She put her hand down on the desk, with enough pressure to make a nearby nurse and desk attendant look over. "I'm signing out." She told him.
The doctor reached over the counter and brought up a chip wood clipboard, handing it to a sigh. "I hope you realise you're doing it against medical advice." He told her.
Nina smiled, and took his offered pen, "It's certainly not the first time I've signed out AMA, doctor, and it won't be the last." She muttered, and filled in the relevant details on the form. The doctor took the clipboard and his pen back and Nina turned to Jack. "Shall we go."
He nodded, and walked in the general direction of the parking garage. "No strenuous physical activity." The doctor called after her. Nina looked over at him after his first syllable, and after he'd spoken, she felt Jack's finger's on her shoulder, he pulled the bag off her shoulder, and put it over his own, he started back to the car before she turned back to him. Nina shook her head at his back, following him out to his car.
-24-
When Jack's mobile rung, twenty minutes later, they were stuck in grid locked traffic, five miles from the hospital, nearly joining the freeway. Jack had played a hunch and decided to head for the second sector that they'd got a trace for, but unfortunately they hadn't counted on lunch time traffic, people going out for a meal, or getting in some Christmas shopping. Nina let Jack answer his phone, as it was plugged into the car stereo system, and there wasn't much to concentrate on as far as driving was concerned. He reached up and pressed the 'answer call' button, as she reached for the control on the radio, turning it down two clicks. "Bauer." He answered the phone.
"Yeah, this is Johnson, I'm over at San Amelia Road, Copell's gone down to this guy, uh, Davison's apartment, he said to call you with the address." His voice came out loud and clear over the speakers. Nina rummaged for the pen that Jack had let her borrow yesterday, and found a scrap of paper in the glove box, a receipt for petrol, she decided to write the address down on the back of it.
"Shoot." Jack said, having checked that Nina was ready to take it down. Johnson spieled off an address that was inside the residential area that the phone call had been made from. They were both happy they'd hit something.
"Okay," Jack said once he'd read off his address, "We're heading over there now, but we've hit traffic on riverside, so we're going to take a while, where are we meeting?" he asked, leaning his head towards the phone despite the fact that Johnson would hear him perfectly regardless of where he was in the car.
"It's a diner about a half mile down the road, called the Sunset Diner." Johnson told them. "We've taken over the back room for the SWAT team, the SAIC was going to hold off until you got there."
"Good, has he got surveillance in place?" Jack asked, nodding during the phone call as though Johnson could see him, the same habit Nina had been trying to kick for the last few days which only reared it's head when she was weak, tired or had too much to drink. Nina flipped the mirror down and held back her head so she could look at the blunt trauma that the doctor had talked about. Just under her fringe close to her hairline, there was a huge square of bruised skin that had an assortment of cuts across it, each one carefully stitched. She half listened to the conversation at the same time.
"Snipers on the roof, a listening floristry van outside, a man checking the fuse box. No one's seen any movement from his apartment, but his car is outside and there are sounds from the apartment." Nina let her fringe dropped down and assessed her hair, at some point whilst she was unconscious she had been bathed, and her hair had dried awkwardly. The damage she could make out from the front was nothing that wouldn't be healed by a couple of hours, and so she shut the mirror, hoping Jack wouldn't notice her checking her hair in the mirror.
Johnson dispensed a few bits of traffic advice and then they disconnected, and using his advice managed to avoid what they were told was the worst part of the traffic jam, and make it to Davison's residence in another half hour.
-24-
When they got to the Sunset Diner Nina took longer to remove herself from the car than usual. Standing upright was painful after her body had gotten used to sitting down for so long. She had to use the car door to stabilise herself before she could walk on her own, and so it took her longer to shut the door. Jack didn't miss this detail, although he chose not to comment on it, realising that she hated being weaker too.
Inside the diner, Copell was standing over a map on a desk. It was of the immediate area around Davison's apartment, with the diner being one of the furthest points marked. Copell was delegating the entry points of the SWAT team when they came in. "Johnson managed to get you around the traffic then?" he said instead of a greeting.
Jack and Nina nodded, "I think you were right about this guy," Copell filled them in, handing them Davison's FBI file. "Check it out." He said as Jack opened the file and held it so Nina could see.
"Did some time in the military, advanced explosives." Copell summarised, as they read down the list. Paul Gregory Davison had spent twelve years in the military, only promoted once, even by the length of his service he should have been promoted three times, except he hadn't, he'd been held back because of various disciplinary actions, all pertaining to explosives, it seemed he was a little trigger happy.
"He left, but I got it on good authority from a friend of mine that he resigned only to avoid a dishonourable discharge." Jack waited for Nina to finish before he turned the page. "I interviewed one of his colleagues, last night Davison volunteered for the night shift. As well as working this morning." Nina raised an eyebrow, she wondered why anyone would want to work as much as they had over the last few days, other than to plant a bomb.
"Jerry's been working on the tapes of the recordings…" Copell paused for a moment to lead them the three feet to the table where a sound technician they'd met previously had set up all his equipment. He let him take over, "Jerry." He prompted.
Jerry swiveled his chair to look at them for a minute. "We took the two conversations apart." He turned quickly back to his laptop and clicked on a play button at the top of the screen. It was a section of conversation they remembered from earlier in the evening. Davison's voice played out of the speakers. "…always saying that I'm their superhero, and today…"
He clicked on a second play button, lower down on the screen, this time it was an excerpt of the phone call, "…who I am, like the perfect superhero….Piece…." The technician cut Dave off in mid sentence.
"Now, if we compare the words…" He synchronised the play back and had both conversations play at the same time, so they both said superhero at the same time. The computer drew two sets of lines oscillating up and down to correspond to the voice patterns, and then beeped when both men had finished. The 'superhero' sections matched up. "Bingo." Said Jerry, he swiveled in his chair, and was met with less than amazed faces. "Obviously I have to compare other words for it to be court admissible, but this is a pretty good indicator."
"And, get this..." Copell said in a tone, that showed them how proud he was, escorting them back to the table, "he's never mentioned a family before to anyone."
Nina raised an eyebrow at Jack. "He wanted to feed us that superhero line." Jack surmised.
"He's escalating, he was closer to the second explosion..." In Jack's mind he went back to the building and looked over at Davison again, he could make out burns on the guys hand, "...might have even been too close. If he's inside his apartment, I wouldn't take it to mean its safe, I think he might blow himself up."
"But the guy's an explosives expert Jack, he knows what this stuff can do, in intricate detail..." Nina began, but Jack cut her off.
"You've spoken to him, Nina." He began, "He's got a reverence for explosions, he doesn't know their ins and outs because of the explosives training, he probably joined up to learn about them." Jack snapped the file shut. "I think he wants to know what its like to go up in his own creation."
"But he seems to be all about publicity..." Nina wasn't exactly arguing with him, although that was the impression that others must have received, she was providing the opposing point of view, simply to allow him to fully form his own opinion.
"And because he is, he may try and take a few agents with him, say the SWAT team..." Copell and Nina nodded, an act, which Nina instantly regretted. Touching her fingers lightly to her forehead, she closed her eyes briefly.
"Alright, but we need to get in there soon." Copell prompted, passing Jack the entry plan. Jack scanned the A3 page, and Copell gave him a few brief notes, Nina didn't hear them, the pain making her dizzy. Every agent in the room saw, and as she began to worry about falling she reached out and caught the edge of the desk, hooking her fingers around the edge of the handbag hook.
"Okay, go on this, I'll take point and you aren't going in." He pointed at Nina as he said the last few words. She opened her eyes and mouth to object but Jack wasn't going to let her try and take on several pounds of Kevlar and an assault rifle when she was dizzy just supporting her own weight. "You can't handle it right now, Nina, you're not going in."
Eventually Nina nodded. Coppell tossed Jack a bulletproof vest, complete with FBI emblazoned across it and Nina caught it, holding onto it until he had taken off his own coat. They swapped and she rolled his coated up as he fastened the Kevlar coated Velcro straps. Jack pulled his gun out of his holster and checked the clip, which was full, as he expected it to be. He slotted it away. "Okay, guys, we're going in."
-24-
A younger agent kicked the door in on the count of three, and two more ran inside Davison's apartment, checking the corridor. They yelled "Clear." loud enough so that the entire building could hear, and Jack let another two agents run in before he walked through the door. The four agents that had run in first went with Copell to one side of the entryway, and he and another two went in the other direction.
The corridor was dark wood, and the entire corridor smelled like spices. The smells from the Indian takeaway downstairs were overwhelming, and Jack wondered how he managed to live with it all the time. He tried to remember talking to him outside the building, but he couldn't recall any similar smell, but then he might have not been close enough to him to smell it. He nodded to another agent, and he kicked a door open. It was the bedroom, Jack walked in, surveying the room, checking out the window, looking for anything to do with the case, whilst the two agents checked under the bed, in the closet, looking for an immediate threat from a person or a large explosive. There was a door to another room, slightly ajar. Jack pushed it open wider as one of the agents slowly crept into the room. A bathroom. Clear too, although they checked the bathtub, and the towel cupboard. "Jack, you'd better take a look at this!" he heard Copell's voice from the next room.
Jack ran to the source of the voice, calling back to the two agents. "Check for devices." On the other side of the corridor there was a kitchen and living room, and then another room with a door, Copell was behind that door, in the room that had been outfitted to his workshop.
There was a desk in the centre of the room, completely clean, and several metal open shelves around the room. There was little on the shelves, a few plastic bags, and a drum of something in the corner. There was a large analogue recorder similar in design to the ones they had at their base of operations on San Amelia road, and there was a sketchbook of drawings, notes and the yellow pages on a corner desk. There was only one chair in the room, pushed under the corner desk.
Jack approached Copell; he scanned the papers as they came into view. "Look at this stuff, he hasn't got much, but it's all top of the line." Remarked an agent behind him. Jack froze as he recognised a number on the papers.
"That's Nina's cell." He revealed quietly to Copell.
Copell offered him a single latex glove, which he snapped onto his right hand. "That alone justifies the warrant for him, we should put out an APB, call the networks, get his face circulating..."
"No, that's Nina's cell." He couldn't put enough stress on her name. "It's her personal cell phone number, I have it memorised." How could he forget it? She was his second in command and he had to call her more times than he had to call home and his wife's mobile combined.
"Check." Copell said. Both of them knew he wasn't wrong, but they didn't like the idea that this guy had such confidential information on one of the investigative agents. Jack pulled out his phone and found Nina's cell phone number in the memory. He checked it digit by digit twice before he spoke again. "How the hell did he get her personal cell?"