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"Your father," he said, and the world dropped out from under me.
"It was a heart attack," Mark said.
I couldn't stop sobbing. Couldn't catch my breath long enough to get the facts. Dad was in the hospital, that much I got, though at first I thought that it was too late. At first I'd thought that he was already gone.
"How bad is it?"
"Bad. He's weak. He's exhausted. I know that sounds obvious but he just fought through the last bunch of shit and now he's fighting through this. I know you'll call the hospital and I know they'll be reluctant to tell you the truth, but will you believe me?"
I swallowed so hard I knew he could hear it. "Yes." Mark didn't lie. He wasn't overly sympathetic or caring, he put his own profession and his own needs ahead of pretty much everything else. But he wouldn't lie.
"I think his chances are fifty-fifty."
Cautiously I said, "That sounds better than I thought."
"Yeah," Mark said, and I could suddenly picture him, standing in his scrub pants and nothing else, his chest bare and strong. He'd be holding the phone to his ear with one hand, the other up behind his head as he ran his hand through his hair, back arched, feet bare. Unintentionally sexy AF.
There was silence between us for a few minutes and then Mark said reluctantly, "Look, I got your number from your mom. She's pretty much broken by this. You get it, right? I can tell her that the chances are even, I can tell her the truth because she asks and she wants to know."
I wasn't sure about that but I didn't say so. She wouldn't, for example, have ever wanted to know the truth about me.
"But the half people hear when they're terrified is the dark half. You know that."
I did. It was so hard to talk. "Yes." It came out a whisper.
"I took her phone. She doesn't even have your number in it, love."
Love. I'd always loved hearing him call me that. "She – wait, what?" Without thinking about it, I was starting to move around the room of the Extended Stay America, putting things back into my suitcase.
"I know," he said, as if I'd only evidenced surprise. "Your dad has your number, and it's not under Annie."
Lily? I thought wildly, but Dad had no way of knowing what I was called on that last job. Nobody did but Jesse and the men I rode with. "What is it?"
"Cupcake Bakery," he said.
I frowned for a second, wondering if we'd just figured out some of the problems behind dad's health scares, then slowly I understood and sat down on the ratty couch and started laughing.
"Love," Mark said. "Don't cry. Tell me where you are and I'll – "
"I'm not crying," I said. "It's wonderful. He's always called me Cupcake. Cuppers. Stuff like that. It's from the Newhart Show when they were all in Vermont running an inn."
Mark had no idea what I was talking about.
"There was this really rich heiress who got mad at her family and ran away and got a job as a maid and her new boyfriend who was the epitome of late 80s or early 90s slick preppy cool, he called her Cupcake and Cuppers."
Mark clearly thought I'd gone hysterical. He started to say about three different things, then paused. "Oh. That makes sense."
"But it wouldn't to anyone else."
"That's for certain."
There was another silence between us but this one wasn't as tense. I remembered why I loved this strange serious man. We'd both changed. He'd become – in truth – more arrogant. Probably that meant he'd be a great doctor. I'd become more secretive. I'd leave it for someone else to decide if that made me a great narc.
"Can you tell me where you are? I don't think you're on assignment."
He wasn't stupid and he didn't have any wish to see me dead. Some of my paranoia really was paranoia. I still would be getting a different phone and I probably wouldn't give him the number but we could worry about all that later. I'd give the number to my father – please, please let him survive and need it – and he could put it under Stephanie Vanderkellen for the character's name on Newhart. If Mark wanted to find me, he'd have to watch enough seasons to figure out Stephanie was the real name of Michael Harris's girlfriend. For now, I really wasn't on assignment and there was no reason he couldn't know where I was. It certainly wouldn't reveal anything about Cole to him.
"I'm in Vegas," I said, and waited while he processed that as best he could.
