by Kay Hooper
“Of course.” He shot her a quick glance. “But why?”
“Hallways. I’m looking for one I can recognize from my dream. It probably wasn’t in Dinah’s office building—why would I have been creeping around a place she had to have been far more familiar with?—but it’s something else to check, just to be sure.”
“We also need to go to the building where you worked. Talk to your supervisor again, co-workers.”
“Yes.”
Kane patted the inner pocket of his jacket, where he carried his cell phone—a restless gesture he had repeated several times that morning. “With a little luck Noah will call later today to tell us what he found out about that restricted file.”
More appalling and mystifying facts about her past? Faith tried not to shiver. Despite her brave words to Kane, she wasn’t sure she could take many more such revelations.
Not many at all.
Faith pretty much stayed out of the way in the busy emergency room while Kane pursued the answers he wanted. He appeared to have a knack for getting people to talk to him despite the rules and issues of legality, and as she watched him patiently work his way through the tangle of red tape, she could only admire both his persistence and his self-control.
It had to be hell for him, this endless, tedious piecing together of one tiny fact or bit of information after another, and yet he had been at it now for weeks. The strain of the search showed in his face and haunted his eyes, but despite the exhaustion he had to feel, he showed no sign of willingness to slow down or give up. He was utterly determined to find his Dinah.
I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him she’s dying.
He wouldn’t believe her anyway, that’s what she told herself. Wouldn’t believe such a horrible truth unless or until the proof was undeniable.
Like a body.
SIX
Faith shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts, rubbing her hands up and down in an effort to find warmth. Or comfort. But there was little of either in the cold desolation of her thoughts. Dinah was dying, and Faith was desperately afraid they wouldn’t be able to find her in time.
“Excuse me—are you a patient?”
She jumped when a hand touched her arm, then gazed up at a harried young doctor. “No. No, I’m not.”
He frowned at her, mild blue eyes puzzled behind the lenses of his glasses. “You look familiar.”
Faith got a grip on herself. “A few weeks ago, I was a patient here. They brought me in after a traffic accident.”
“That probably explains it then. I never forget a face.” He smiled at her. “Well, you look fine now. Was there some reason why you—”
“Faith.” Kane was suddenly there, and she was a little surprised when he put an arm around her and drew her toward him—and away from the young doctor—in a gesture that was curiously protective. “I see you found Dr. Blake.”
Faith blinked at the name tag on the doctor’s green scrubs. “I guess so,” she murmured, feeling oddly out-of-sync.
Kane said, “Doctor, if you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about the day Miss Parker was brought in here—”
Sound seemed to be fading in and out. She’d hear a few words of what Kane or Dr. Blake said, then the words would fade and she could hear only a distant rushing sound, like … water? Maybe. Like water from a fall, or gushing out of a pipe under great pressure …
It was the strangest experience, not frightening but unsettling. She looked around her, seeing people talking, seeing noises she should have heard and yet didn’t, like the crash of several boxes falling from a shelf, and the despairing wail of a woman bent over the still body of an injured child.
All she could hear was the rushing water. It went on and on, filling her ears, all her other senses, her mind. She looked at Kane, watching his lips move, saw Dr. Blake respond, his face serious and a bit perplexed.
She realized she was barely aware of Kane’s physical nearness; she stood in the shelter of his arm, yet felt as if she were somewhere else, where water rushed and the musty smell of cold earth surrounded her. Where she felt a smothering sense of claustrophobia, the panic of being trapped and helpless. She was alone. And she didn’t know which was worse, the awful musty smell and cold or the devastating knowledge that she couldn’t … that she’d never …
Faith groped for knowledge just out of her reach, and found only blackness. She could hear the water, smell the moldy earth all around her, but the emotions had faded once more into silence. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and concentrate, but remembering the abrupt unconsciousness of another such attempt stopped her.
That wasn’t all that stopped her. She was afraid and she knew it. Afraid of what she might see if she closed her eyes and really looked at that place she could hear and smell. Afraid of what awaited her there. It was fear of the unknown, of a nightmare, of the darkness that lay just beyond what the mind understood.
She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to feel those horrible emotions or to see—
“Faith?”
Like a soap bubble popping, the sounds of rushing water were gone, and as she looked up into Kane’s concerned eyes, what she heard was the normal activity of a busy emergency room. “Yes?” Her voice sounded absentminded even to her.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
Kane frowned at her. “Are you sure?”
She wondered when the doctor had left them. “Quite sure. But I’m afraid I … I wasn’t listening. Did Dr. Blake tell us anything helpful?”
He looked around and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
He put her in his car and drove them a few blocks to a restaurant that wasn’t crowded; they were given a booth near a window, where the waitress quickly brought them coffee and left them alone.
Still distracted, Faith said, “What did Dr. Blake say about the accident?”
“The way he remembers it, preliminary tests showed some ambiguous results. Maybe there were alcohol and muscle relaxants in your system, and maybe not. All he knew for sure was that your vital signs were strong and your injuries fairly minor—and that something had put you into a coma. He didn’t think it was the head injury and suspected something more toxic than alcohol and medication in your system, so he ordered further tests. He went off duty shortly afterward. When he came back the next day, he was told you’d been transferred upstairs. He assumed that happened because you were stable, and that your regular doctor had taken over your case.” Kane paused. “Funny thing, though. The paperwork that’s supposed to be kept there in the ER seems to be missing.”
“Could it have been sent upstairs with me?”
“A copy should have been, and some paperwork was certainly part of the file that ended up with Dr. Burnett. But the admitting records should be on file in the ER. They aren’t.”
“I don’t suppose we have much chance of finding out what happened to them?”
“You saw how busy that place was—and on a Monday morning, hardly their busiest time. My guess is that we’ll never be able to trace what happened to those records between the time you were admitted and when you were put under Burnett’s care. But we can assume any number of people had access and could have tampered with the test results.”
“What about the lab that did the tests?”
“It’s there in the hospital. Their procedure is to keep a copy of all results in their own files. But in this case—”
“Let me guess. Missing paperwork.”
“Afraid so. And the blood and tissue samples they used for the tests were destroyed afterward, per standard procedure.”
“Am I being paranoid in thinking all this missing and misplaced paperwork means something other than simple human error?”
“I don’t think so. When there are this many glitches in a normally efficient system, it usually means someone’s been tampering.”
Faith sipped her coffee, grateful for the warmth because she’d felt chilled
ever since her strange experience in the emergency room. “Then it’s a safe bet that we’ll never know for sure if there was actually alcohol in my blood or I was drugged intentionally.”
“Probably not. But I’m willing to put my money on your having been drugged.”
“It seems strange to hope that that’s what happened, but I really didn’t want to find out I’d been stupid enough to drink and get behind the wheel.”
Kane’s gaze was intent. “No, I doubt you were so reckless.”
She wondered what he was basing that doubt on, but didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “If I was drugged, the question is, who did it? I guess the why is obvious—they wanted me out of action.”
“Yeah. Grabbed you in the parking garage would be my guess. It was a bit after hours, the area likely to be deserted, so it’s a good possibility.”
“So why didn’t I just go for a phone and call the police once they let me go? Why did I attempt to drive?”
“You may have already been disoriented from the drug, not thinking clearly. They probably held on to you long enough to make sure of that. We do have half an hour or so unaccounted for, from the time you left the garage to the crash only six miles away.”
“I suppose.” But Faith remembered the flash in which she had reminded Dinah that they couldn’t trust the police. Had she, even in a drugged and panicked state, felt that the only thing she could do was get to Dinah as soon as possible?
It might have been better if you had. It might have been so different.…
“That’s the answer then,” he said with bitterness rather than relief, calling from another pay phone. “Just like you thought. She’s gone to MacGregor. They’re in a restaurant right now, heads together and talking up a storm.”
“Get back here now.”
“But shouldn’t I follow—”
“We’ve found out what we need to know for the moment. She’s gone to him, and you can bet he’ll keep her close, hoping she can lead him to Dinah.”
“What if she can? What if she can lead him to us?”
“We’ll have to make sure she doesn’t, won’t we? Get back here now.”
“Right.”
“Faith?”
She looked at him, shook her head. Whose voice? Not quite alien in her head, it could have been her own, her subconscious, the healed part of her mind trying to nudge the part still unable or unwilling to remember. Or it could have been Dinah’s.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She tried to think clearly, still not sure of that voice in her head. “So somebody wanted me out of the way and arranged an accident. I end up in a coma, presumably no longer a threat. But then—something happened. Something must have changed. Dinah became a threat to them somehow. Maybe they hadn’t even connected her to me until she visited me in the hospital. Then they … watched her, maybe? Saw her go to my apartment, maybe leave with my laptop?”
“Maybe. And maybe it was just common sense that she would become an enemy sooner or later. She’s a journalist, a good one. Once they connected her to you, they might have been convinced you had told her whatever damaging information you had.”
“I don’t think Dinah became a threat because they realized she knew me. I think she became a threat when they realized something of theirs was missing.”
“This evidence you believe you’d found?”
Faith frowned at her cup without seeing it, trying to make the pieces fit. “They keep asking her where it is. Over and over. That’s why they didn’t just kill her outright. And it has to be whatever I found, don’t you see? They never searched Dinah’s apartment, but they’ve searched mine twice—both times since she disappeared.”
“So they have to be convinced you have whatever it is they’re looking for, but that Dinah knows where it’s hidden?”
“It’s the only possibility that makes any sense to me.” She looked steadily at Kane. “I took something from them, and they either didn’t know about it until after the accident or thought they were safe once I was out of the way. Then they realized there was a connection between me and Dinah—a smart journalist with a knack for breaking big stories. So they grabbed her to try to make her talk. Only she’s not talking.”
“You said she refused to talk because she was protecting someone.” Kane’s voice was almost as level as hers had been. “You?”
Faith shook her head. “The last time she saw me, I was in a coma. I was … safe.”
“Maybe they told her you came out of it.”
“I suppose they could have, but why would she feel her silence was protecting me? If I was the one she was concerned about, hearing I was out of the coma would make her more likely to tell them what she knew. Wouldn’t it? So they wouldn’t come after me.”
Kane nodded slowly. “Then who does she believe she’s protecting?”
Faith rubbed her forehead fretfully. “I don’t know. How can we know that until we know what it is I found? And who’s threatened by it?”
He grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away from her face. “Maybe you should take a break for a few hours. I can take you back to the apartment—”
We don’t have a few hours. Dinah doesn’t have a few hours.
“I’m fine.” She carefully avoided any glance at the hand still holding her wrist, and even managed a smile. “But we don’t seem to have accomplished much, really. Speculation, supposition, guesses. Maybe we’re right, but even if we are, it doesn’t get us any closer to finding Dinah.”
Kane’s fingers tightened around her wrist for a moment. Then his gaze went to that connection between them and he frowned slightly. He leaned back, releasing her wrist. “We have to figure out who’s got Dinah, and to do that we need to find whatever it is you found once before.” His voice was abrupt. “The best possibility is that you’ll remember what you found or where you found it. Why don’t we visit the office where you worked and see if that jars your memory?”
Faith nodded and rose to her feet. There was a clock near the door, and she could hear it ticking. Or maybe she imagined it.
Ticking.
“You knew your job.” Marianne Camp, Faith’s supervisor in the department where she had worked, was matter-of-fact. “You had some prior experience working for a construction company, and that gave you a solid base from which to handle your duties here.”
Faith wondered if she had done something to annoy the woman, or if her attitude was so chilly with all those she supervised. Then again, maybe she didn’t view aftereffects of a coma as a good reason not to return to work.
Kane smiled at her. “And those duties, Mrs. Camp?”
“Secretarial, for the most part.” The supervisor shrugged, possibly impatient to leave on her lunch break, since it was nearly noon. “Entering data into the system, filing paperwork, coordinating the schedules of the various inspectors.”
“Was I friends with any of my co-workers?” Faith asked.
“Not as far as I was aware,” she replied stiffly. “You kept to yourself. Very quiet and dependable.”
Kane said, “According to what you told me, Mrs. Camp, you spoke to Miss Parker for about five minutes before she left the office the day of her accident.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what you talked about?”
“After all these weeks? Not really. I should imagine it was something to do with the paperwork she had stayed late to complete.”
“I see. Do you always remain late yourself if someone else is working after hours?”
“Usually but not always. I had paperwork of my own to take care of.”
Kane glanced at Faith as she shifted slightly in the other visitor’s chair, then said to the supervisor, “Were you both working on the same project?”
“No, Mr. MacGregor. No one in my department is assigned a specific project the way you mean. We take care of work as it comes in, on a rotation basis. As I recall, Miss Parker was transcribing three different field reports and collating inspection form
s from at least half a dozen construction sites. It was by no means an unusual workload.”
“Would you happen to know which construction sites those were, Mrs. Camp?”
“Not specifically.” Her voice was indifferent.
“Could you find out for us?”
“I don’t see how, Mr. MacGregor. There’s no reason for our files to show which clerk handled the various pieces of paper.”
Faith spoke up then. “Why was I late, Mrs. Camp?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said I was dependable. So why did I have to stay late to complete that paperwork? Didn’t I have time to get it done during regular hours?”
The supervisor frowned at her. “You took a long lunch that day. Two hours.”
“Do you know why I did that?”
“You said you had a doctor’s appointment.” There was the faintest emphasis on the second word.
Slightly dry, Faith said, “I guess I didn’t have a note.”
“No.”
There didn’t seem to be much more they could ask, so after thanking the supervisor for her time, Kane and Faith left her tiny office.
“Good question,” he said as they stood in the hallway outside the suite of offices that made up the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning. “It never occurred to me to wonder why you stayed late that day.”
“The answer doesn’t seem to help us much.” She shrugged. “I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment that day, at least not with Dr. Murphy, so I could have been lying to Mrs. Camp about why I took the long lunch. But we don’t have a clue what I might have been doing, or where I went, and after so many weeks it’s doubtful we’d find anyone who might have seen me and remembered, even if we knew who to ask.”
“And you don’t recognize this hallway?”
Faith looked around again. The Office of Building Inspections and Zoning was on the fifth floor of the busy downtown office building, and up and down the hall on this floor and others were more city offices. The hallway itself was generic, almost featureless and without charm, and struck no chord of memory within Faith.
