Heavenly Moonlight

~26~

"Hey, Katherine," Ruben said over the phone, pondering over what Victoria and Christian had asked him about earlier.

"Hey," she said. "What's up?"

"Just checking in. How are you doing?"

"I'm feeling better, though I'm nowhere near ready to be released yet, and even after I do leave, I have to go to rehab for one of my arms. How about you?"

"I'm healing. The doctor told me if I continue to improve, I can be released as early as next week."

"That's good."

"Yeah, it is. I can't wait to get out of here."

"Oh, I feel the same way. I want to get back on the field."

He frowned as an inexplicable sure of protectiveness surged through him. "Won't you have to complete your rehab first?"

"Yeah, I'll complete my rehab, do some physical tests, then I'll be as good as new and able to be back on the field."

"Are you sure, Katherine? The building exploding was really life threatening and it might not be safe--"

"Ruben, I've been an agent for years and have had quite a few dangerous incidents that's put me in a hospital, but I've always been able to get back on my feet. Besides, my job does require me to go through some dangerous stuff, but I know how to protect and take care of myself. Don't worry, okay? Besides, I won't be automatically jumping back into action. I'll give myself some time to heal and everything. Right now I'm just really missing being in the action."

He grunted in understanding, knowing how passionate she was about her job and that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, but he still didn't like the idea of her being back in the line of fire.

"Have you talked to the kids today?" Katherine asked, changing the subject and bringing him back to the main reason why he'd called her.

"Yeah, I did. They're doing okay, but they asked about Laura's brother and sister for some reason. I found out that Laura had never even told them that she had siblings."

"Really?" Katherine asked in surprise.

"Yeah. Do you know anything about that, why she wouldn't tell them or anything?"

She was quiet for a moment, then answered. "We fell off a few years after we graduated. She was too busy with the kids and I was busy training to become an agent. We talked every now and then through the years, more of a 'hey, how are,' we weren't as close as we were. She didn't tell me anything about not telling the kids about her siblings."

"While we were in school, did she ever confide in you about her relationship with her family?"

"Oh yeah. She never got along with them. She was like the black sheep in the family. She would go on about how her parents wanted her to be this perfect girl and she would rebel against them, do anything to piss them off. Her and her parents would fight a lot, and her brother and sister would do something and set her up for the blame. She always hated being home, she would call me in the middle of the night crying because of how her family was treating her. She'd been bullied at her other school--that's why she was transferred to Starlight Academy--and she told me how her parents said that she was making it up, that they didn't believe she'd ever been bullied and it drove a huge wedge between them."

His eyebrows rose at the news. "I knew she had some family problems, but I didn't realize to that extent."

"She kept quiet about it for a while but she really needed someone to talk to 'cause it was starting to get too much. She always told me that as soon as she turned eighteen, she would get away from her family and would never talk to them again. Why was Christian and Tori asking about her siblings?"