He couldn't believe he was thinking it, but Sam asked, "did you have something to do with the accident?" When she didn't look at him, he growled. "Callie."
"Easy Sam." Spike said and kept his gaze on Callie. "Callie? Did you see what happened? We're cops remember? We can help."
Callie knew, even though it meant they would probably hate her, she could not tell them. "No. We were talking and all of a sudden she swerved. I only remember screaming and blackness after that."
Sam criticized her face. "You're lying."
"No. I'm not." She cried. She sat back against the pillows and closed her eyes as Sam stormed out of the room, followed by Spike.
"Well, you can keep your mouth shut." Candace opened the cracked door to the dark bathroom and stepped out. "Good thinking Marksen. You ever tell them and you're dead." She moved forward menacingly. Her demeanor changed in a flash when Spike reentered the room.
Spike looked at the girl. Her face said innocence, but her body language was threatening and tense. "Hi."
"Hi." The girl smiled although it was extremely fake. She looked at Callie and said, "well I'm glad you're ok and I hope you can come back to school soon. I'll see you soon ok? Bye-ee." She turned and walked out of the room closing the door behind her. She left it a crack and stood there for a minute.
"Who was that?" Spike moved back to the seat by her bed.
"Just a friend from school." Callie shrugged. "It was nice of her to stop by huh?"
"Yeah." Spike looked back at the door and saw the shadow there. He turned back to Callie. "What's her name?"
"Candace. Why?" Callie looked at him, imploring him with her mind to stop asking questions. No doubt Candace was lurking by the door, she was good at that.
Spike shrugged and said, "any friend of yours is a friend of mine." He looked back at the door and saw the shadow disappear.
Satisfied, Candace moved down the hall, avoiding the waiting room she saw the blond guy go into. She slunk to the stairs and headed down and out of the hospital. She had to get home before her parents discovered her gone and call Mitzy.
Spike watched the door for 10 seconds and then turned back to Callie. "Seriously, who was that girl?"
"I told you. My friend Candace."
Spike heard her nearly choke on the word friend. Why is she protecting that girl? She obviously was afraid of her and covering up something. It'd taken a lot for him to calm Sam down. He knew Callie was hiding something and it at least had to do with the accident. If anything happened to Jules, Spike wouldn't be able to protect Callie from Sam's rage. He doubted he could control himself.
"Ok." Spike let her off the hook for now but tomorrow he and the team would be doing some background checks on this Candace girl and her associates.
They made small talk and talked about Jules' condition until Wordy walked into the room. "Hey Spike. Hi, I'm Wordy. I'm a friend of the teams." He looked at Spike then the girl in the bed.
"Hi." She half smiled.
"I thought you'd want to know Jules got through the surgery fine. They had to put a couple screws in to get things back in place but she's doing ok."
Wordy put a hand on Spike's back. Spike looked up at him and gave him a relieved smile. "Did they say if that would keep her from the SRU?"
"They're not too worried about that right now, but Ed did ask and they said that with PT it should be fine." Wordy could see that something was going on by their faces so he grabbed a seat. He could feel the elephant in the room. "So, what's going on in here?" He looked at Spike then back at Callie.
"Nothing." Callie shrugged.
"Spike?" Wordy could see his friend stewing about something.
"I should go check on Sam." Spike stood and walked to the door, then paused and looked at Callie. "I'll be back." She nodded and Wordy stood too. He told her he'd be back too and followed Spike out into the hall.
When Spike stopped in the hall and started pacing, a hand to his mouth Wordy stopped. "What's going on?" When Spike stopped and looked at him he gave Spike a knowing look. "I haven't been out of the SRU so long that I'm not able to see when something's wrong."
Spike looked at him. Of course he would know, he thought. "Ok. I think she knows what happened, she just won't say. There was a girl in there when I went back in that was acting totally fake. Her body language was aggressive, threatening and tense. Callie tried to pass her off as a friend that was visiting, but I could tell she's afraid of her."
"Ok, so who is this girl?"
"Callie called her Candace. She didn't give a last name. I think there's something going on between Callie and Candace. Something not good. I'm going to check the school registry tomorrow and see if I can find this Candace girl. Get some background on her."
"Ok. I'll check with guns and gangs tomorrow. It may be unlikely, but kids get into gangs younger and younger these days." Wordy nodded. "Until then we keep someone with Callie. Try to keep this Candace girl at bay until we can figure out what she's up to."
"Good thinking. One of us or a plain clothed. Her mom won't be able to be here much with her two jobs." Spike agreed. "And we keep Sam away. He's too angry to be near her right now. He knows she's lying about what caused the accident."
"Copy that." Ed said breaking into their conversation. Sam had come back from Callie's room in a rage. It had taken he and Spike to keep Sam from ringing the girl's neck.
Spike nodded towards the waiting room, walked to it followed by Wordy and Ed and made sure Sam was with Jules before he told them what he'd told Wordy. They made a plan for what they were going to do tomorrow. They were basically down two members since Sam would not leave Jules' side so Greg had already made sure they were on days off, at least until they knew Jules would pull through.
##### Jules' room #####
Sam sat next to Jules, tears falling freely as he held her hand by his mouth."Please don't leave me." He whispered. "I need you." He stayed that way until he couldn't keep his eyes open any more.
I'll just put my head down for a second, he thought.
He jumped when he felt a hand on his head and fingers running through his hair. "Jules." He smiled in his sleep then realized where he was and sat up.
The sun was already past the 3rd story window when he looked out trying to figure out what time it was. He looked at the clock opposite her bed. 0700. He'd slept for nine hours. He could tell he'd stayed in the same position because his neck was sore when he turned towards Jules. He put a hand on it and rubbed the knot.
She had her eyes open and was looking around frantically. He stood and bent over her, kissing her forehead. "Hi sweetheart."
She felt like she'd been hit by a truck. Why did she have a tube in her throat? Why did her lungs hurt? And her ankle? She frowned and looked at Sam. She picked up her hand and made a writing motion.
Sam picked up a pad of paper from the nightstand and a pen. He handed them to her.
She wrote, "accident?'
Sam put a hand on her head and smoothed her hair. "Yes. You wrecked the jeep."
"Bad?"
"Collapsed lung, several broken ribs and they did surgery to fix your ankle." He nodded and gave her the rundown.
"No wonder I feel like shit."
"Yeah." He leaned down and kissed her cheek. "You scared me dammit." He said into her ear.
She scratched at the paper and turned it. "Can't get rid of me that easy."
Sam laughed and let a tear slip.
"If I could smile I would. I'm awake and ok." Shock appeared on her face and she turned the page of the notebook. "Callie?!"
Sam nodded, trying to keep anger from his face. "She's fine. Some cuts and a concussion. They may let her out today."
A nurse came in and smiled. "Good to see you awake Juliana. How's your pain?"
Jules wrote, "Jules please. About a 7."
Sam read it and looked at the nurse, concerned.
The nurse saw his look and moved to the bed, a syringe in hand. "Don't worry, I came prepared." She took the cap off the needle and stuck it in the port in the IV. "Should kick in right away."
Jules nodded and felt the wave of numbness flow over her. That's better, she thought. She wrote on the pad again. "Why angry at Callie?"
"Don't worry about it. We can talk about it when you're better." He sat back down in his chair.
Huh, a non-answer. "What's going on?"
Sam shook his head. She pointed to the pad hard with the pen. He nodded. Stubborn and commanding even with a tube down her throat. "I think she knows how the accident happened, but she's lying about it."
"Why lie?"
"I don't know. She's protecting someone. I think there's more going on with her than we know."
"No trust yet."
"I know. But if she caused the accident-" the anger had reached his eyes and he looked at Jules the pain of seeing her like this mixed in. "I don't know if I could forgive her if anything happened to you."
She flipped the page back and pointed to "awake and ok."
He nodded. "The team's out there. Would you be up to having them in? I know they'll want to say hi."
She nodded. He left and returned a few minutes later with Ed, Sarge, Wordy and Leah.
She wrote. "Hi guys." Then, "get those looks off your faces. I am OK."
They all let out nervous laughs. They knew she still had tubes coming out of her, but it was still hard to see her that way.
"You had us worried Jules." Greg gave her a concerned smile.
She pointed to "I am OK." Then wrote, "won't be back for awhile Boss, sorry."
"Don't worry about it. I'm sure you'll be back as soon as you can convince them to let you."
"Hell yeah. Tomorrow?"
Everyone laughed when they read it. "Not quite." Greg patted her arm and stepped back so Ed could sit down.
"Hey Jules. I thought you were going to help this kid with homework and stuff, not get yourself all broken up." Ed kidded.
"Wasn't the plan. Is Spike with her?"
"Yeah." Ed nodded. "He said to tell you he's glad you're awake and he'll stop by later."
She nodded. Leah sat down next. "Hey Jules. I hope you don't mind but I called Wordy. I figured you'd need all of your family here."
"You're the best. Thanks Leah."
"You bet. Rest up and let me know if you need anything." She stood and let Wordy sit down.
Despite the tube, Jules did her best to smile. "Hey."
"What did I tell you about driving like your ass is on fire?" Wordy took her hand and squeezed. The people behind him grinned. They all knew Jules only drove like that in the SUVs and when she had to. In her personal vehicle she was always five under the speed limit.
"You know me."
"Yeah." Wordy squeezed her hand again. "I do. I'm glad to see you awake Jules. The girls will be thrilled to know Aunty Jules is feeling better."
"Tell them I said 'love you' and 'see you soon'."
"Will do." He gave her hand one last squeeze and stood. "We should let her rest." He said to the group. He turned to Sam. "You too."
"I'm good. I slept here." Sam moved to go past Wordy when the bigger man put a hand on his chest. "Come on Sam. You at least need to go home and change. Come have breakfast with us."
Sam looked at Jules who waved her hand at him and let her eyes flutter shut.
"She needs to sleep." Wordy said gently.
"Ok." Sam said reluctantly.
Ed and Wordy put a hand on either side of Sam's neck and steered him out of the room.
Two hours later, Sam stepped back into Jules' room, belly full, showered and shaved. She was still sleeping. He turned on the tv, sat by her bed and waited.
Spike had spent the night in Callie's room, keeping watch. Her mom showed up at 0800 after she'd gotten some sleep after her convenience store job. She was only able to stay an hour before she had to head for her day job. During the time Maggie was with her daughter, Spike got the news that Jules was awake from Ed. He'd been so happy he crushed his cup of hot coffee and spilled it all over his hand.
A nurse came running when she heard his shouts and took him to a sink to run cold water over it and have it looked at. Luckily, it was only 2nd degree burns and they just wrapped his hand up in gauze.
Spike look at his hand and thought, well this is going to make researching Callie's so called friend Candace a little more difficult. You idiot. He left the hospital, knowing that a plainclothes officer was sitting with Callie.