TRUTH OR LIES

by Kylie Brant

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

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  Prologue

  ^ »

  The dim spill of light from the nearby street lamp barely disturbed the oppressive shadows deep in New Orleans's City Park. Even the glow of the night's half moon couldn't penetrate the thick canopy of trees. Darkness held untold fears for some, but for others it provided a much-needed cover. Some business was best conducted far from the light of day.

  "He's late." Detective Cade Tremaine checked his watch. "I thought you said he was dependable."

  "Freddie's reliable as long as he hasn't been shooting up or snorting." Brian Hollister, Cade's partner, shrugged. "If he's using again, I can't vouch for him."

  Scanning the area, Cade said, "We'll give him a couple minutes." He wasn't thrilled with the idea of losing any more sleep. But the snitch represented a chance for a lead in a case that had been damn short of clues lately. And catching the dealer responsible for at least three deaths from overdoses was well worth the inconvenience.

  He heard footsteps moments before a figure stepped out of the shadows. "Is that him?"

  "Yeah." Hollister straightened, waited for the man to get closer. "You must have us confused with one of your junkie bitches, Freddie. We don't much like being kept waiting." The words were accompanied by a slap alongside the man's head.

  Freddie flinched away. "Stuff came up, Hollister. You know how it goes."

  Cade shoved the snitch under the street lamp, noted the pinpoint pupils, the glassy stare. "He's high," he said with disgust. Releasing the man's filthy shirt, he turned to his partner. "Let's go. We're wasting our time."

  "No, hold on," the snitch said hastily. "You wanted information and I have some for ya." He gave a look around as if they were in danger of being overheard and lowered his voice. "That guy you're investigating? The one who's putting pure stuff on the streets? I can get you in contact with someone who knows him."

  "Then start talking, Freddie, 'cause we're ready to walk," Hollister said impatiently.

  "Okay, okay." The man turned to the side, dug in his pocket. "I got his name written right here on this napkin. Not the dealer, but the guy I told ya about. I can tell ya where he hangs out, too."

  He'd finally managed to get Cade's attention. Not that he was ready to believe a hopped-up junkie, but a name would give them a contact they didn't have right now. Hollister stepped forward to snatch the creased napkin from Freddie, and while he unfolded it, Cade moved closer.

  In the next moment, however, Freddie was backpedaling furiously, the words tumbling from his mouth. "Got you what you wanted, didn't I? So pay up, guys, pay up."

  At first Cade thought the words were directed at them. Then he saw the glint of metal. "Gun!" Reacting instinctively, he reached for his own weapon. He'd barely cleared it from his holster when the first bullet hit him in the chest, the impact sending him stumbling backward. He squeezed off a couple of shots before the next two slugs hit him, knocked him to the ground.

  After the first searing jolt there was no pain, only a cold numbness that seemed to spread from one internal organ to the next, shutting down physical functions. Distantly Cade was aware of more shots being fired, shouting, but he couldn't move. Couldn't feel. He could only lie on the sidewalk, cheek pressed to its gritty surface. It took every ounce of his rapidly draining energy to drag his eyes open. He saw the stream of blood eddying out from him to join an ever-widening pool. Saw his partner's body crumpled in a heap next to his.

  Cade didn't see his life flash before his eyes. Didn't see a powerful white light that drew him deeper into its center. Death was a yawning black hole that sucked the life from his body bit by bit until there was finally only darkness.

  Then there was nothing at all.

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  Chapter 1

  « ^ »

  Two months later

  "Gunshot wound to the abdomen. Blood pressure is one-ten and dropping. His name is Jon LeFrenz." The paramedics helped transfer the moaning patient from the ambulance cot to an emergency-room cart. They ran alongside as the Charity Hospital E.R. employees rolled it through East Hall to triage.

  "Room four is open," Dr. Shae O'Riley said to her colleagues. Then she addressed the closest paramedic. "How're his sounds?"

  "Lungs are clear. But we had trouble stopping the bleeding. That's the third pressure dressing. We already gave him a unit of O negative. He's lucid and responsive."

  Nodding, she said, "Okay, thanks." She left the ambulance crew behind as the cart was rolled into the tiny trauma cubicle. The area was jammed with people and equipment. Drawing the curtain to separate the area into two separate compartments left barely enough room to move. "Okay, Jenna, type him and get a couple of units of blood ready." The lab tech nodded, reached for the patient's hand.

  Shae looked up, saw the lines the ambulance crew had put in to replace fluids. Both IV bags were nearly empty. "Let's get another couple of bags in him. How's his blood pressure doing?"

  The emergency room RN looked at the screen. "One hundred over sixty."

  Not dangerously low yet, but dropping. "Roll him to his side." Shae leaned in and lifted the dressing used to staunch the bleeding on the abdomen. The bullet had torn through the flesh, leaving a relatively small entry. She looked up at Boyd DuBois, the emergency-room resident. "Is there an exit?"

  He lifted the dressing on the man's back and nodded. Shae moved around the cart and looked at the angry gaping hole, which was oozing sullenly. "Wessels and Lyndstrom still on duty in surgery?"

  DuBois checked his watch. "I think so."

  Shae looked at the triage nurse next to her. "Could you give them another call, get someone down here for a consult?"

  "I called as soon as we heard he was coming in."

  "But no one's here yet, are they?"

  The woman shrugged and headed to the phone on the wall. The consultation would be merely a formality. Virtually all gunshot wounds to the abdomen had to be explored.

  Shae turned her attention back to stabilizing the patient. The paramedics had cut his blood-soaked T-shirt up the center, baring his chest. He was awake, his face sheened with sweat. No more than twenty, she guessed, although it was difficult to tell for sure with pain and shock twisting his surprisingly innocent features. Leaning down, she shone a flashlight into each eye, noting normal pupil reaction.

  The patient turned his head from the light, raised his hand to knock the flashlight away. "Get that outta here." The oxygen rebreather mask the paramedics had placed on him made his words difficult to make out, but his meaning was clear enough.

  "You're in Charity Hospital, Mr. LeFrenz, and we're going to help you." She put a stethoscope to his chest to check his sounds. "You will probably require surgery. Do you have any family you want us to call?"

  "No," he muttered, turning his head back toward her. His eyelids fluttered open and he stared fixedly at her. Then he reached up and dragged down the mask. "Must be alive. Ain't no angels where I'm going."

  Shae pushed it back into place. "We're stabilizing you now, and a surgeon will come to assess your condition." As she spoke, she pressed lightly on the skin surrounding the wound, watching his face carefully for signs of increased pain. When he flinched and moaned loudly, she said to Boyd, "Slight swelling to the upper quadrant." She probed the area a bit longer. The belly was hard, rigid, indicating possible internal bleeding. "Let's do a DPL and see what's going on in there."

  She stepped aside to allow the RN to prepare an area on the skin where they could insert the catheter. Moving back up to the patient's head, she spoke evenly, pitching her voice above the man's loud moaning. "Mr. LeFrenz, we're going to do a
test that will let us know the extent of the bleeding in your abdominal cavity. The discomfort will be minimal, but one of us will let you know what we're doing every step of the way."

  "No! Just patch me up and let me go!" He'd pulled his mask down again to scream the words. Then he spewed a stream of obscenities as he rolled from side to side, grimacing in pain. Boyd made a grab at him, but not before one of his flailing arms had knocked Shae back a step.

  With no more than a look she directed two of the staff to restrain the man. Preparing the plastic catheter, she performed the direct peritoneal lavage and withdrew the catheter, handing it to the RN. "Get that to the stat lab and have them do a cell count." The woman nodded and exited. It was only then that Shae noticed the man leaning against the far wall.

  Her first thought was that he was a family member. She immediately realized her mistake as second and third impressions followed on the heels of the first. She didn't need the gold shield hanging around the man's neck to identify his occupation. There was cop in his eyes, in the cold steady way he was regarding her.

  "Detective Cade Tremaine," he said by way of an introduction. "I need to talk to him. Is he lucid?"

  "Pressure's dropping, Doctor. Ninety-eight over sixty."

  Shae acknowledged the resident's words with a quick nod, but never looked away from the detective. "He's as lucid as anyone would be with a bullet in his belly. Did you put it there?" She wasn't even certain where the note of censure had come from, but she heard it in her voice.

  If it had any effect on him, it didn't show in his expression. "Yes." He brushed by her, took up a stance next to the patient. "Hello, Jonny." The patient abruptly stopped struggling. Tremaine turned to look at Shae. "Does he need that mask on?"

  It was on the tip of her tongue to assure him that the man did. To tell him in no uncertain terms to get out of her trauma room and wait as long as it took for his little talk. But that urge sprang from the personal side of her, not the professional. So instead, she stepped in next to him, took out her stethoscope and listened to the patient's breathing. It was shallow, but still even. Without a word, she reached up and pulled the man's mask down.

  "Sorry it took so long." Jenna appeared around the edge of the curtain, holding two units of blood. "The lab was pretty backed up."

  Shae looked up at the monitor again. The pressure was still dropping. "Use a power infuser to transfuse him." The device would warm the blood and deliver it far more rapidly than an ordinary infuser.

  "You gonna keep protecting him, Jonny? What the hell for? You don't see him here asking after your health, do you?"

  The conversation between the detective and her patient diverted Shae's attention as she flushed the wound of particles of fabric and dirt. There was no doubt in her mind which of the pair was the more dangerous. Tremaine's six-foot-plus frame seemed overly spare, his unshaven angled face just shy of gaunt, as if he'd recently been through his own trauma. But the aura of quiet menace that radiated from him effectively quelled any sympathy his appearance might have elicited.

  "I got nothing to say to you. Angel Eyes, get him away from me." LeFrenz grasped her fingers.

  Shae gave Boyd a sharp glance and the resident restrained the man again. The monitor beeped and her gaze flicked to the screen, noting that the pressure was hovering at ninety-six.

  Tremaine shoved his face closer to the patient's. "All you need to do is give me a name. No one has to know where it came from. That kid's death is on your hands, LeFrenz."

  "Not my hands," LeFrenz wheezed. His face twisted in pain and he cried out at Shae's ministrations. "His choice … to take it … all at once."

  "But you're the one who sold it to him." The detective's voice was unforgiving. "If you cooperate, I can arrange for your protection, but otherwise you're going down for this kid's death. I'll bury you."

  "Doctor, I've got the labs."

  It took a moment longer than it should have for the lab tech's voice to register, for Shae to turn away from the human drama unfolding before her. As she was looking over the results, Dr. Lyndstrom hurried into the room.

  She looked up at the surgeon, then pointedly at her watch. "Busy up there?"

  "We're starting to stack them up, so don't give me any grief. It'd be best if your guy could wait an hour or two."

  "I don't think so." Deliberately Shae shifted her attention from the detective's hard persistent voice, LeFrenz's moans interspersing his belligerent replies. Handing the results to the surgeon, she gave him a rundown of the case, ending with, "His count is high. There's rebound tenderness in the upper quadrant and his BP is dropping, despite two transfusions. His liver may be bleeding."

  The surgeon's muttered curse was drowned out by the RN's voice. "Blood pressure's ninety."

  Shae leaped back to the patient's bedside, elbowing the detective out of the way. DuBois and Lyndstrom joined her, and the cubicle became a flurry of emergency maneuvers to save the patient from flat lining.

  "Let's get him upstairs." Lyndstrom and Shae helped

  Boyd shove the cart out of the room, the RN running alongside with the IV stands and infuser.

  "Wait a minute. Where are you taking him?" The detective jogged after them to the elevator.

  "Surgery." Shae switched her attention to the intern, Sara Gonzalez. "Stay with him for the duration, okay?" The woman nodded.

  "LeFrenz." Frustration laced the detective's voice. "Dammit, LeFrenz, do the right thing."

  The elevator doors opened and the surgeon and intern stepped in, pushing the cart. The patient had gone silent, pale, his limbs shaking with shock. Shae threw up an arm to prevent the detective from following the patient even as the doors began to close. And when the man rounded on her angrily, she met his gaze with a steady one of her own.

  "He's unconscious. You aren't going to get anything more from him right now." She watched the man tuck away his frustration and fury with a control that looked as dangerous as it was deliberate. And when he turned the intensity of his focus on her, it was all she could do not to take a step back.

  She had enough experience dealing with cops to last her a lifetime, but she'd never met one like this. The gold shield he displayed didn't in any way mask his lethal air. "Is he going to make it?"

  "Since I don't have my crystal ball handy, I really couldn't say." Shae turned to walk away, but she didn't get more than a step before a hard grip on her elbow spun her back around.

  "In your professional opinion, Dr.—" his gaze dropped to her name tag before recapturing hers again "—O'Riley, what are his chances?"

  Boyd DuBois passed them, turning to quiz Shae with raised brows. Aware that her reaction to the detective hadn't gone unnoticed, she forced a neutral tone. "I'm sorry." And she was. There was little she despised more than allowing her private life to splash over into the professional. "It's been pretty wild today with the crash on Interstate 10." Most of the victims of the pileup had been transported here, straining both emergency-room personnel and surgery.

  "I heard about that." His gaze never left hers. His eyes were an unusual shade of dark jade, and every bit as unyielding. She imagined his penetrating stare was used to great advantage during interrogations.

  The observation wasn't a comfortable one. Shae began walking toward the front desk, and Tremaine fell into step beside her. "I really can't predict what LeFrenz's outcome will be. He lost a lot of blood and it's a good bet there's still bleeding going on inside. His chances for surviving surgery depend on the path of the bullet and the extent of the internal damage."

  "How long before he's out of surgery?"

  Again she shrugged. Reaching the front desk, she sneaked a glance at her watch. Seven o'clock. Technically she was due to go off shift, but there were still reports to be dictated and paperwork to sign off on. "It could be four hours or more. It's hard to tell."

  He gave a short nod, started to turn away. "I'll be back then."

  "You'll be wasting your time." Shae didn't know what made her say it. S
he was more than ready to part ways with the enigmatic detective. But she couldn't shake the impression that he'd recently been ill. He possessed a runner's body, taut and lean, but his bordered on gaunt. "No use losing sleep. From surgery, LeFrenz will go directly to a PACU—post-anesthetic-recovery unit. In all likelihood you won't be able to speak to him until tomorrow morning."

  "Don't worry." It was clear from his tone that he'd misinterpreted the cause of her concern. "I'll leave my rubber hose at home."

  "It's not him I'm worried about." She made no effort to soften the bluntness of her words. "You look like one of the walking wounded. We can't really spare an extra bed if you collapse during your all-night vigil."

  Oddly her tart remark brought an almost smile to his lips, a softened expression that was as arresting as it was fleeting. "Despite your underwhelming concern, I'll be back in a few hours. Maybe I'll see you then, Angel Eyes." He sauntered away, leaving her to burn over his use of LeFrenz's name for her.

  Turning back to the desk, she snatched down the most recent patient's chart, aware that DuBois was eyeing her.

  "You know, that guy looks familiar."

  "Yeah, well, he's a cop. They all look alike."

  Her attempt at humor fell flat. Boyd continued to stare in the direction of the double doors Tremaine had disappeared through. "No, I mean I think we worked on him not long ago." The E.R. resident stared into space, as if searching his memory. "A month ago? No, more like two. Maybe it was when you were out on personal leave."

  She flipped over a page on the chart, continued to make notations as if uninterested. In actuality every nerve was on alert. It was far more comfortable to attend to the reason for Tremaine's visit here two months ago than on the reason for her leave at the same time. "What'd he present with?"

  DuBois had already given up trying to remember. He took down another chart and began to read through it. "I don't recall. I wasn't primary. Aren't you supposed to be going off duty?"