Killer Countdown (Man on a Mission 6)

“Yeah. Want to work one up?”

“No problem,” Mike said. “But what are you going to tell them?”

Shane considered this. “Probably the best thing to say is the Phoenix police and the FBI have asked me not to discuss the details of the case—which is perfectly true.”

“Yes, but...” Mike trailed off.

“But why was I at the Mayo Clinic in the first place?” Shane finished for him.

Mike’s eyes met Shane’s. “You haven’t even told us. Well,” he amended, “you haven’t told me. I don’t know what you told everyone else. All I know is you were there for observation. Observation of what?”

Shane glanced across the aisle at his other three aides. They seemed completely oblivious. Two were watching the in-flight movie, and the third was dozing with his head propped against the window.

“No one knows any more than you,” he reassured Mike. “And I didn’t tell any of you because I didn’t want to put you in the position of lying to the press should any questions arise.”

“Cancer?”

Shane shook his head. “Worse. At least...in the perception of the general public.”

“What could be worse than cancer?”

He considered what if anything he should tell Mike and quickly reached the conclusion he’d been fooling himself thinking he could keep the diagnosis secret. He made a mental note to contact Carly regarding the promised exclusive—she’d kept her word, hadn’t mentioned his illness when she’d reported on the assassination attempt, so he needed to keep his word, too. Then he said, “Epilepsy. And it’s not curable.”

“Epilepsy?” Mike looked blown away. “But you don’t... I mean...you haven’t...”

“Yeah, my symptoms aren’t what most people think of when they think of it.”

“Jeez.” After a moment the younger man said, “What symptoms? You never said.”

Shane quickly recounted what he’d told Carly. “I’ve been having these episodes for about six months now. The first physician I consulted had no idea what was causing them. He thought maybe I was depressed and wanted to prescribe an antidepressant.” He snorted. “I knew I wasn’t depressed, so I insisted on seeing a specialist. A whole slew of specialists, in fact, an endocrinologist and a neurologist among them. Nobody could put a name to what was wrong with me. I was complaining to a doctor friend from my Marine Corps days that even with all the medical advances, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and he suggested the Mayo Clinic.”

“And that’s the diagnosis they came up with? Epilepsy?” Mike shook his head. “Maybe you should get a second opinion.”

Shane laughed, but the humor was lacking. “Don’t need one. And you wouldn’t suggest it if you read the literature they provided me with. What I have isn’t all that common, but it is a specialized form of epilepsy—the symptoms are unmistakable. And even if they weren’t, the tests they performed—”

“You mean all those electrodes?”

“Yeah. Those electrodes were for EEG tests. They were actually able to trigger two episodes with their stress tests. The nurses observed the goose bumps on my arms and legs—that’s the reason they wanted me to wear running shorts and a short-sleeved shirt in bed, by the way, so they could observe the physical manifestations—and they talked to me during each episode and recorded my responses. Just as I’d told them, each incident lasted about a half a minute then went away, and I never lost consciousness. But the EEG recorded what was happening in my brain each time. Sure enough, I was having tiny seizures.”

Mike didn’t respond for several minutes as he digested this. “And it’s not—you said it’s not curable? What are you going to do?”

“It’s controllable but not curable.” Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out a little pill bottle, the prescription he’d had filled before he left the hospital. “Twice a day, and it’s supposed to control the seizures.”

“And that’s what you want me to include in your statement to the press?”