by JJ Lamb
Prologue
Vlad Folo looked at the woman splayed on the bed. Her legs were spread wide, held down with strips of satin. Her thin arms were tied together high above her head.
No matter how hard he tried, he never could get it right. It never matched his dream.
Daggers of fear screamed from her eyes, but she was voiceless, silenced by a black, spit-shiny rubber ball jammed into her mouth, held there with a strip of gauze wrapped twice around the base of her skull.
Vlad raised his arms and clasped hands, stretched his naked, sweat-soaked body from side to side. He stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at the woman’s soft, milky skin; her voluptuous jiggling breasts, and her wiggling hips, all struggling for freedom.
Drops of sweat continued to crawl down his torso; he could feel his cock stir.
But he was in no hurry.
He wanted to feel something other than curiosity, or lust, or that she was only a vessel of relief. He wanted something to crawl inside his skin, crawl inside his gut and make it zing. He wanted to cringe with that helpless feeling, as she must, of being totally at someone else’s mercy.
He couldn’t imagine it.
He tried, felt nothing.
Nothing!
Watching his every move, the woman’s eyes widened while his engorgement reached its maximum. Guttural grunts from her throat were the sounds of a trapped animal.
Oh, yes, he was going to fuck her. The only question was: Would he kill her, too?
Chapter 1
Tuva jumped onto the sofa and carefully placed one paw at a time onto Gina and Harry’s legs, then sprawled across both their laps. She looked up at Gina with big yellow eyes, waiting patiently for a neck scratch.
“Looks like you’re finally beginning to trust us, Gina said, leaning over to talk to the cat.
“And it’s only taken two years!” Harry smiled, watched Tuva’s tail twitch back and forth.
“I’m glad we whisked her away from the shelter.” Gina stroked Tuva’s grey-and-white-striped fur. Soon the cat sounded like a well-tuned motorboat.
Harry put his head on Gina’s shoulder. He turned and kissed her throat, smiled up at her. “I swear this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.”
“Funny, I thought by now you’d be restless, wanting to hit the road again—hook up to a new travel nurse assignment.” She turned and kissed his lips and rubbed her cheek against his. “It’s been a whole year.”
“I’m enjoying the ICU gig at Ridgewood.” He put the cat down on the floor and folded Gina into his arms. “You can’t imagine how much I miss this when I’m on the road.”
“Careful, next thing I know, you’ll let the hospital lull you into becoming a charge nurse.” She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, rats, how will I live with you and a swelled head.”
He nuzzled her neck again.
Gina ran her fingers through his mop of curly hair and stared into his soft, blue eyes.
It’s finally time. The right time.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the critical question of when we should get married.”
It took a moment for it to sink in. Harry stiffened, held her at arms’ length. “You mean it ... you really mean it?”
She nodded.
“Don’t feel pressured,” he said. “You know what I want, but you have to be sure.” Before she could answer, he pulled her back into his arms. “I mean ... no backing out this time ... please!”
“It’s taken a long time, but it’s finally sunk into my thick head—my ex-husband is really dead. And every morning for the past month, I’ve been feeling free. Really free.”
Harry was up, headed for the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” She could hear him banging things around, and in a few minutes he returned with a bottle of champagne and two tall flutes. He set them on the coffee table.
“I wondered what that bottle in the back of the fridge was for,” she said. “I kept meaning to ask you.”
“Well, if you were really paying attention, you’d realize it’s been in there for more than a year.” He gave her a silly grin. “I kept biting my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything ... didn’t want to push you, wanted you to know we didn’t have to get married ... that I was here for you no matter what.”
Harry undid the twisted wire at the top of the bottle, took off the foil, and popped the cork. The noise made them both laugh.
She watched him fill their glasses and said, “Let me toast first.” He first looked surprised, then disappointed. “Please!”
“Go for it!”
“To the man who’s stood by me, believed in me when no one else did—not even myself.” She kissed his hand. “To you.”
He lifted his glass. “To my beautiful Gina ... the only one I’ll ever love.”
* * *
They stumbled back into the apartment after a long dinner celebration. A huge meal at Mario’s—their favorite local Italian restaurant. Both were tipsy from the earlier champagne and the red wine they’d downed with a chicken parmigiana/spaghetti dinner. They were also high from the plans they’d tossed back and forth across the table—everything was finally coming together.
Gina flung her sweater across the purple sofa and started dancing around the room. Harry turned on a digital Santana and they danced together for several minutes She plopped down on the couch, her head spinning, her heart racing and watched his hips grind and bump her way. The heat in her groin was making her feel breathless—then the phone rang.
Gina jerked around to scan the receiver’s window. “It’s ... it’s Lolly Stentz!”
“Your friend from the Bronx?” Harry turned down the music.
Gina nodded.
“Well, hi there, stranger,” she said into the phone. “It’s about time. You’ve been here for two months and I haven’t heard word one from you.”
She pressed the phone closer to her ear. “What? I can barely hear you. Talk louder.” Gina pressed the speaker button so Harry could listen in on the conversation.
Lolly’s harsh whisper raised goose bumps.
“I think someone is about to be murdered.”
Chapter 2
Gina moved quickly through a crew of construction workers near the new, almost-completed Cardio-Surgical wing. Once finished, the new addition would be a totally independent unit within Ridgewood Hospital. It was exciting.
She knew the hospital pretty well after four years—it was the first place she worked after her move from New York to California. She’d started in Oncology as a full-time staff nurse, and worked in a number of other departments after that. She’d had her ups and downs, but overall, she liked Ridgewood. The large facility offered a lot of nursing opportunities and room for personal growth that some smaller institutions couldn’t match.
For most of the four years she’d been away from New York, she’d lived in fear of Dominick coming to kill her, possibly Harry, too. He couldn’t hurt them anymore. She was a free woman.
Gina had even toyed with the notion of moving back to New York. She hadn’t mentioned it to Harry, and had no idea how he would feel about it.
She’d been so homesick when she first came to the San Francisco Bay Area, but things had changed and she now realized that moving back to the Big Apple was no longer a real consideration. She had blossomed into a diehard Californian—a truly successful transplant from the East Coast.
Many of the construction men who were building the new CCU connecting hallway recognized Gina. They waved at her—some even gave a respectful hello. There were none of those eye-popping leers; these men had a much better attitude toward nurses than the gorillas she’d had to plow through when she was working in the Bronx.
The in-progress hallway was lit with spotlights, even in the daytime. T
hey tended to blind you more than help you to see.
Sometimes when she worked late and the construction people were gone for the day, the empty hallway felt creepy. It reminded her of the dark alleys she’d been forced to walk through when she was a kid. Even after all this time, she still had terrible memories of being beaten and almost raped. She couldn’t purge those horrors from her mind—nightmares still forced her into dangerous landscapes where she was running from someone or something.
Thinking about it now gave her the chills.
The big plus about her childhood was her brother, Vinnie. She loved the jerk and was so happy he was not only finished with the military, but was slowly recovering from PTSD. It was good to have him right here in San Francisco and working as a nurse tech in Ridgewood. Not only that, he’d fallen in love with her best friend, Helen. It felt almost incestuous.
The Bronx also made her think about Lolly Stenz and her weird call last night. Lolly had insisted on meeting here in person—didn’t want to use email or the telephone. She’d suggested lunchtime, around 12:30.
“I’m new on the unit,” Gina had said. “I can try, though. The cafeteria?”
Dead silence.
“Lolly! What’s going on? What makes you think someone is going to be murdered?”
“If you can’t make the lunch thing, call me. Please! I’ll meet with you anytime, anywhere.”
As she thought about their brief talk, an eye started twitching—never a good sign.
One thing was obvious: her childhood friend, Dolly Lolly, was truly spooked.
* * *
Gina reached the Coronary Care Unit, which had grown into a small independent medical city for heart disease patients. The docs were now doing surgery in their own separate OR.
She had transferred out of Internal Medicine and was now working in CCU, but her eventual slot was to scrub in for procedures in the Cath Lab. She was looking forward to it.
The Cardio Room had all the latest equipment, which meant a lot of up-to-the-minute technology. It was like being in a space ship—without being weightless.
Everything was compact, from viewing monitors to digital X-Rays. But what really captured her attention was a ceiling-mounted Image Intensifier, with a no-squinting-your-eyes flat viewing screen.
Pretty darn impressive.
She tried to visualize the room the way a patient would. Seeing the arteries and chambers of your own heart up on the wall had the potential to freakout any person. Gina didn’t know how she would feel about it if she were lying on the table. Probably try to pretend her throbbing heart belonged to someone else.
And, with a little bit of Versed and Fentanyl juice mixed into your IV, she probably wouldn’t give a damn.
Chapter 3
Gina hurried through the cafeteria line. She could see Lolly Stenz sitting at a table near one of the windows of the crowded cafeteria. It was obvious she was lost in her own thoughts.
Lolly jumped up the moment Gina set her tray down and crushed her in a tight bear hug. Her friend was trembling and she kept hanging on every time Gina started to pull away.
“Hey, hey, girl, what’s going on?”
“Oh, Gina, I’m so happy to see you.” Lolly finally held her at arm’s length and a gush of tears rolled down her face.
Gina yanked a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at the face of one of the prettiest women she knew—Lolly was the kind of woman most men have fantasies about. Her natural blonde hair was almost white and her eyes were such a startling light blue, it was hard to look away.
They finally sat down.
Lolly hadn’t gone through the food line—there was nothing in front of her other than an almost empty glass of water. It made Gina feel gluttonous with her tray piled high with red pepper soup, French bread, and a chicken taco. “How about sharing my food. I bought way too much.”
“Gina, I can’t eat. I’ve hardly had a bite in the last two days.”
“So tell me, what’s going on?”
Lolly looked around, leaned over the table and repeated sotto voce what she’d said the night before, “Someone’s going to be murdered.”
Gina could see terror in her eyes.
“Why do you say that? What’s going on?”
Lolly took her hand and squeezed it. “Please, Gina, lower your voice. I’m really scared.”
Old fears clutched at her chest. Gina stared at her food and then pushed her tray away. “You’ve only been here two months and already someone’s trying to kill you? This is San Francisco, not the Bronx ... cool it!”
Gina’s smart-ass remark went nowhere.
Lolly started crying again. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” Gina said. “Of course I believe you. Me, of all people, should know better. I’m one of the most suspicious women on the planet. But you’ve nailed a job at one of the biggest and most successful cardiology practices in the Bay Area—how bad can it be?”
“I know I should be ecstatic. And you were the one who helped me get my foot in the door. I really appreciated your talking to Bob Cantor on my behalf.”
“He’s a great physician, easy to know and to work with. I thought you and he would be a match made in heaven.” Gina couldn’t stop herself—she reached out for a chunk of French bread, tore off a piece, dipped it in the soup, and started chomping on it.
“It’s not Cantor or Jon Brichett, but I’m working with their third partner,” Lolly said.
“Mort Tallent is the problem?”
Lolly looked around and whispered, “I’m telling you, someone is going to die.”
“What makes you think so?”
“It’s his books.”
“His books? What books?”
“His accounting books ... financial records.” Lolly took a deep breath, leaned across the table, and whispered into Gina’s ear, “He’s committing fraud, Gina. Big time malpractice.”
Lolly’s voice was so low Gina almost didn’t get what she said. When it sank in, she was incredulous.
“How did you get into his books?” Gina said. “Between surgeries, consults, and long office hours, the man must barely have time to breathe. What made you even check into his books? You’re his nurse, not his bookkeeper.”
They were so engrossed they didn’t notice Harry arrive. They both jumped when he sat his tray down with a clump.
Harry leaned over and gave Gina a kiss on the cheek, looked up, and said, “Hi, Lolly. Or should I say, ‘Hello, Dolly Lolly?”
Neither one responded to the teasing.
“Oops! Sensitive about your old name? Hey, you want me to leave? I mean, you seem to be pretty tight into something” He shrugged. “No problem.”
“No, no, Harry, stay. It’s just that there’s not much to joke about today,” Gina reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand. She could tell Lolly wasn’t too keen on Harry being there.
“Start from the beginning,” Gina said. She moved her tray closer and took a spoonful of soup, which was now cold. She passed the chicken taco over to Lolly, along with a fork. Lolly pushed it back and shook her head. Her face had blanched to the color of the sour cream in the little cup at the side of the taco.
“It all looked so hopeful,” Lolly said. “I thought I’d be working with Bob Cantor. He’s a really great doctor; he loves working with patients and he was the one who began showing me the ropes. But I was never going to work with him. After orientation, I became Tallent’s nurse.”
“It still sounds like a job made in heaven,” Gina said.
“Yes! I love the job. I’m not only counseling cardiac patients, I’ve started doing their stress tests, along with giving IV sedation.”
“Weren’t you supposed to work your way into assisting with cardio procedures?” Gina said.
“Well, that’s up next for me. I’m just easing into it.” She reached over and took a bite of Gina’s taco. “I’ve just started placing sheaths into the femoral artery. That’s a little scary.” She chewed the foo
d slowly. “I’m not used to hanging that far out there.”
“Lolly, you can do anything.”
“I know I can do it. It’s just a little unnerving.”
“So you use lidocaine,“ Harry said. "That should numb the entry point and not hurt the patients too much.”
Gina was at the bottom of her soup bowl and sopping up the last drops with the French bread. Talking about the job and the medical procedure seemed to calm Lolly. Color was coming back into her cheeks.
“It is fascinating,” Harry said. “Once the sheath is placed, the catheter is passed through and it’s not supposed to be painful at all. Really incredible. Blows my mind. That catheter allows them to see all the vascular structures, the heart, the whole circulatory system. I wouldn’t mind working with that. I’m really into all that technical stuff.”
“Yeah, but there’s so much that can go wrong,” Lolly said.
“All right, you two,” Gina said, her voice very low. “We can talk shop later when we’re not on a lunch break. Right now, I want to know why you think Mort Tallent is a murderer
Chapter 4
Morton Tallent sat at his desk sipping a second Mocha Grande. He was trying to work up the energy to see his first afternoon patient. He looked out through the panoramic window of his penthouse office, but instead of enjoying the spectacular view of San Francisco, all he saw was the dreary rain that had descended on the city.
Trying to put off the inevitable, he stalled by glancing at the framed degrees and certifications hanging on a wall. They should have made him proud.
He’d invested fourteen years to create a foundation for his career, which allowed him to sink in another fifteen years creating a practice and building a reputation. He’d accomplished a lot, from Pre-med to his Cardiology Fellowship, but now all he saw was his life slipping away. When he looked at the wall of certificates, all he saw was the documentation for as lost life.
Yes, he’d built a huge fortune over an extended period of time. But his head and heart told him he should have been climbing mountains, sailing the seas, exploring ancient ruins, surfing around the world—being the spoiled scamp of wealthy parents. Now those years were gone and he was locked up in a cell filled with academia and medicine that his parents had forced him into.
