Samir nodded weakly.
Eli had been bleeding badly but conscious. He listened long enough to understand that Samir was trying to warn them about another device or cache. Then another blast threw both men against the wall.
Samir woke with Eli beside him.
“He give tag,” Samir said. “Paper. Say Captain Natalie. Say she listen. Say tell her everything.”
Natalie could no longer feel her fingertips.
“Was Eli alive when you left him?”
Samir’s eyes filled.
“For little.”
The answer hurt more because it was careful.
Natalie looked down.
Eli had known he was dying. In the middle of smoke and blood, he had used part of his last strength not to ask for revenge, but to create a path for information to reach someone he trusted to listen.
Reeves’s voice softened. “Where is the second location?”
Natalie looked at the physician.
He nodded once. One question.
Samir whispered a description of an irrigation shed east of the market, marked by a blue water tank and a collapsed stone wall. He gave the route the group intended to use after dark and said the explosives were already there.
Reeves left the room before Samir finished the last sentence.
This time, Natalie did not mistake urgency for cruelty. He was using the information exactly as it needed to be used.
Within minutes, a team outside the hospital was redirected. The area was cleared. Explosive specialists later found the cache where Samir said it would be. No second attack occurred that night.
Natalie learned that only much later.
Her job remained inside the ward.
Samir required another surgery before sunset. He nearly died twice. Investigators waited because Reeves ordered them to wait.
When one of them protested that every hour lost intelligence value, Reeves answered from the doorway.
“If he dies because we destabilize him, we lose all of it. Medical controls access.”
Natalie heard him.
She said nothing.
After surgery, Reeves found her washing her hands at a sink long after the water had gone cold.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
Natalie turned off the faucet.
“You owed the patient a safe decision.”
“I owed both.”
