Exclusive

by Sandra Brown

  “Yeah, right,” he said sarcastically, knowing them to be Spencer Martin’s heavies.

  “We’ve been following you all evening, Mr. Welsh,” said the one who was obviously in charge. “Did you really think we’d fall for that stupid-looking doll? We’re not idiots, you know. A woman who never speaks, never moves?”

  “Is that a legitimate question or a commentary on your sex life?”

  His quip didn’t amuse the man, who spun him around, flattened him against the fender, and pulled his hands together behind his back, securing them with a plastic cable tie as he Mirandized him.

  “What are you arresting me for? I haven’t done anything. Unless inflatable dolls have become illegal. What do you want with me?”

  “We want to talk to you about your houseguests.”

  “What houseguests?”

  “I bet he’ll cooperate if you yank that tube out of his nose,” one of the others suggested to the leader.

  Daily fought off panic. If they disconnected him from his oxygen tank, he’d be dead in no time.

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” the leader said. “Not yet.” Daily’s knees went weak with relief, but his next words indicated that Daily’s reprieve was only short term. “Our boss is real pissed off at you and your cronies.”

  “As if I give a damn. Isn’t Spencer Martin man enough to come pick me up himself? Or is he scared of Bondurant?”

  “Spencer Martin?” the man repeated, playing dumb. “Don’t you watch the news? Mr. Martin is taking a brief leave of absence from his duties at the White House.”

  “Yeah, yeah. He’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you’re the best he can recruit for his nasty little army.”

  The three men shared a look among them.

  Daily guffawed. “What? Surprised that I know? You thought it was a secret? Guess again.”

  The leader said, “Old man, you’re way out of your league. You’d be wise to cooperate with us. Where are Barrie Travis and Gray Bondurant tonight, and what are they up to?”

  “Suck my dick, asshole.”

  The man took an angry step forward, but one of the others held him back. “Where are they, Welsh?” he shouted.

  Daily knew that he was up shit creek. Even if he told them what they wanted to know, he wasn’t going to see another sunrise. These guys weren’t just his interrogators, but his executioners.

  His assignment had been to keep the bad guys busy, providing Gray and Barrie time to liberate Vanessa Merritt from Tabor House. As long as he had breath, that’s what he would do. It wasn’t exactly like going out in a blaze of glory, but it was a spark, anyway.

  Belligerence wasn’t working very well, so he took another tack and faked a swoon. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Tell us where they are, and we’ll see that you get some rest.”

  Yeah, permanent rest. “Some motel,” he mumbled.

  “What motel? Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where?”

  “Something with Washington in the name.”

  “Do you know how many motels there are around here with Washington in the name?”

  “No,” Daily replied innocently. “How many?”

  The man grabbed him by his lapels and lifted him until the tips of his toes were barely touching the pavement. “If you want to see Miss Travis and Mr. Bondurant alive, you’d better get your memory back real quick.”

  “It… it’s out toward Andrews,” Daily stammered. “I went there with them once. I can’t remember exactly where it is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” The man shoved Daily forward with such impetus, the cannula was jerked out of his nostrils.

  “My oxygen!” he cried. “I’ve gotta have it.” He frantically and futilely struggled against the hand restraints.

  “Relax, Mr. Welsh. We don’t intend to let you suffocate. Not until we know what your friends have planned for tonight.”

  The tubing was reinserted into his nostrils. His oxygen tank was taken from his car and transported, along with him, to the gray sedan. When they pushed him into the backseat, Daily was comforted to see that Dolly’s remains also had been brought along.

  At least he wouldn’t die entirely alone.

  * * *

  “If anyone stops you and asks, you’re filling in for someone who’s sick.”

  Gray had been giving Barrie instructions for ten minutes, ever since their adulterous driver had left his pickup to report for work. As anticipated, the guard at the gate had waved the truck through without checking the camper. They were on the grounds, but not yet inside the hospital.

  Gray had produced clip-on photo IDs with phony names for them to wear. “They won’t pass muster on close inspection, but at a glance they look authentic.”

  “Dolly Madison?” she said, reading her name. “Speaking of Dolly, I hope she and Daily are all right.”

  “He’ll do okay. Remember, there will probably be monitored security cameras, so even when no one’s around, someone could be watching. Walk naturally and—”

  “Purposefully. I know, I know. You’ve told me at least a dozen times.”

  “I just don’t want us blown before we locate Vanessa.”

  “Will there be security guards on the inside?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If there are, will they be armed?”

  “Possibly. The Secret Service, definitely. But I’ll take care of them.”

  “One more thing. Once we have Vanessa, how do you plan on getting out of here?”

  “Plan A, I’ll hotwire this truck. You and Vanessa can ride back here.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Great,” she muttered. But it was she who opened the camper door and stepped out first.

  Tabor House was more extravagant than Gray’s description of it. Built in a U shape around a center garden, the house had three floors. Avoiding the grandiose front entrance, they went to the employee side entrance, which Gray had spotted during his reconnaissance the day before. Shifts were changing. Doctors, nurses, and other personnel were leaving as others were reporting in for the graveyard shift.

  “I’ll go first,” Gray said as they approached. “Wait a few minutes and then follow me.”

  “Follow you where?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” He started off, then turned back. “Barrie, if something happens to me, get the hell out. Understand? Hide in somebody’s car and ride out the same way we rode in. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You won’t, will you?”

  “No.”

  With a frown of disgust, he turned and disappeared through the employee entrance door. Trying to appear casual, she opened her satchel and, without taking out the video camera, checked all the mechanisms to make certain they were working properly. She also checked the tape deck to make sure she had remembered to load a cassette. It would be just like her to make history but forget to put a tape in the camera.

  As she headed for the entrance, she was assailed by a thousand misgivings. But only one certainty. If she didn’t do this, Vanessa Merritt would die in this building. So she kept her eyes focused on the floodlight above the entrance, letting it guide her as a lighthouse guides a sailor through a perilous reef.

  She entered through what had probably been a mud room when Tabor House was a private residence. That anteroom led into a large, well-lighted, well-equipped commissary/lounge where the staff took their breaks. There were various vending machines for food and drinks, a commercial coffeemaker, an industrial icemaker, several microwave ovens, tables and chairs, and two doors designating rest rooms. A bank of metal lockers took up one wall. A roster of telephone extensions had been made into a poster, large enough to be read from any point in the room.

  The shift change was almost complete, so the crowd had thinned out. One man, who was dressed like an orderly, was waiting for his meal to
heat in the microwave. A nurse was talking into a pay telephone. Another was fiddling with something inside her locker. Two men wearing jumpsuits like the one Gray had on were seated at a table drinking coffee and talking about turbine engines.

  No one paid her any attention. She walked through the room as though she did it every night at eleven o’clock.

  Beyond that room, the hospital underwent a drastic personality change. Outside the bright sterility of the commissary was a corridor suggestive of hushed voices and stiff formality. The walls had a wainscot, embossed pastel paper above, paneling below. Brass wall sconces provided subdued lighting. The floor was carpeted. Barrie followed that hall to another that intersected it.

  Left or right? Left or right? Don’t look covert, look purposeful. Eeny-meeny, miney-moe. Okay, right!

  The corridor she’d selected led toward the front of the building. Along it she saw offices, dark now, a formal reception/parlor area with a baby grand piano, and a solarium filled with tropical plants and ferns among cushioned rattan furniture. All very fancy, absent anything that looked clinical.

  The atrium entry was quite impressive, with its sweeping staircase and a skylight fifty feet above the marble floor. In the center of this rotunda was a round foyer table on which stood an enormous floral arrangement, the gladiolus stems upward of four feet tall.

  There was no one around except a janitor who was kneeling in front of a wall socket, tinkering with a screwdriver. Barrie went around the table to speak to him. “I might become a coke-head just to have the privilege of staying here.”

  “You can’t afford it,” the janitor said as he came to his feet. “There’s nothing on the first floor except offices and meeting rooms.”

  “A records office?”

  “Undoubtedly. But I’m sure the files are locked, and I didn’t bring the tools for picking them. Besides, it would take too much time.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “A computer terminal,” he said. “There’s bound to be a patient roster that’s constantly updated.”

  “Good idea. Onward and upward?”

  “You take the elevator. I’ll use the stairs.”

  “Meet you on two.”

  The elevator was an iron cage that had more aesthetic properties than mechanical. Barrie was grateful that it made it up one flight. She stepped through the wrought iron doors, turned to her left, and came face to face with a nurse, who was as shocked to see Barrie as Barrie was to see her.

  “What are you doing in that thing? It’s a deathtrap.”

  “Uh, I’m new,” Barrie said, laughing nervously, which under the circumstances wasn’t hard to fake. “Next time, I’ll take the express. Dolly Madison,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Please, no jokes about my name. Believe me, I’ve heard them all.”

  “Linda Arnold.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  Barrie caught a peripheral glimpse of Gray as he reached the top of the staircase. Taking advantage of the diversion she’d created, he slipped behind the charge nurse’s desk. There was no one else in sight.

  “When did you start working here?” the nurse asked.

  “This is my first night. I’m assisting Dr. Hadley,” she said, recalling one of the names she’d seen on the telephone roster in the commissary.

  “I thought Dr. Hadley was on a six-month sabbatical.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “You mean she.”

  “I said she.” Barrie placed her hand on Linda Arnold’s arm and leaned in close. “Between you and me, it’s not going as the doctor planned. She’s supposed to be working on a book, although I doubt she’ll ever pull it together.”

  “Really? That’s surprising. She’s already so widely published.”

  “True, true,” Barrie said, wishing writer’s block upon Dr. Hadley, whoever the hell she was. “But this time, she’s struggling.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. She has so much to share, and she’s such a gifted doctor.”

  “She is a dear, isn’t she?” Barrie gushed. She had a view of Gray’s back. He was hunched over a desk. Had he found a computer terminal?

  “What’s all that?” The nurse indicated Barrie’s heavy shoulder bag.

  “Research materials I’m gathering for Dr. Hadley.”

  “All that?”

  “Uh, yeah, and, well, I can’t go anywhere without my, uh, Slim-Fast. I never leave the house with less than two cans, just in case. Always an extra pair of shoes. I have awful bunions. Magazines. You know, stuff. My husband teases me about my stuff all the time.”

  “Weren’t you assigned a locker downstairs?”

  “Yeah, but the gizmo thing…” She pantomimed working a combination lock. “I couldn’t get it to work. Until I get the hang of it, I thought I’d better cart this crap around with me.”

  Nurse Linda Arnold tilted her head. “You look familiar to me, but I can’t quite place you.”

  She recognizes me from TV!

  “Where did you work before you became Dr. Hadley’s assistant?”

  “Oh, a zillion places. I get bored with the same old job, so I sort of, you know, go with the flow.” Behind the nurse, Gray was giving her a thumbs-up. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to meander around and try to get my bearings.”

  “Can I help you—”

  “No, no, I do better when I learn my way alone.” She laughed. “I already know not to take that creaky old elevator again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Gray had approached them and tapped Linda Arnold on the shoulder. She turned to him. “Are you the one who called for the light bulb to be changed?”

  “No. It wasn’t me.”

  “Must’ve been the third floor. I thought she said second. Sorry.” He doffed his cap and headed back to the staircase.

  By the time Nurse Linda Arnold turned back around, Barrie had slipped out of sight.

  * * *

  “They’re not there.”

  The report came back to the main man via one of his dour sidekicks, the one who’d so viciously ended Dolly’s brief life. It had taken them an hour and a half to “find” the motel.

  “This is it,” Daily said, wheezing hard. “I’m sure of it. The Washington Inn. Room one-twenty-two.”

  “There’s a teamster in there, mad as hell ’cause I woke him up,” the agent said, glaring at Daily.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, looking helplessly from one to the other. “She said she was meeting Bondurant here tonight.”

  “You dropped her in a parking garage, didn’t you?”

  “How’d you guys know that?”

  “Where was she going?”

  “Here! That’s what she told me, anyway. Swear to God. I was supposed to drive around with the dummy and be her decoy.”

  “This is bullshit,” one of them said. “He’s been jerking us around all this time.”

  To make his act more convincing, Daily began to beg. “Don’t hurt me. Please. I had to do it. I’m scared shitless of him.”

  “Who?”

  “Bondurant. He told me that if I fucked up, he’d kill me. And he will, too. Have you ever looked into his eyes? They’re spooky as hell. The man’s a natural born killer. If he finds out I brought you here, he’ll kill me.”

  “Knock it off!” the leader snapped.

  “Please, take me home,” Daily pleaded. “If they’re not here, I don’t know where they are. Bondurant probably lied to me. Maybe he lied to Barrie, too. He could’ve been setting a trap for her. Have you thought of that? But what do I know? I’m just an old man. I don’t know anything.”

  “He’s lying,” one of the agents said.

  “Hell, yes, he’s lying,” said the leader. “Let’s go.”

  In the car, the leader used his cellular telephone. “Welsh was lying about the motel. They weren’t there.” He listened for a moment, then said, “Yes, sir. I’m sure you can get more out of him than we’ve been able to.”

  Daily didn’t
like the sound of that. He liked even less what the gauge on his oxygen tank indicated. “I haven’t got much air left,” he said as soon as the man was off the phone.

  “Sounds like a personal problem to me.”

  The other two didn’t even bother to respond. From the floorboard, Dolly stared up at him with wide, dead eyes.

  It was a long drive back to the city. Their destination turned out to be an innocuous-looking office building. As they escorted Daily to an emergency exit door at the rear of the building, he looked up at the sky. No stars could be seen, of course, because of the city lights. But there was a pretty moon.

  That was nice.

  They took a service elevator to the seventh floor. Their heels echoed along the deserted corridor as they marched Daily to the door at the end of it. The wheel on his oxygen trolley was squeaking. He never had gotten around to oiling the damn thing.

  One of the men moved out in front and knocked on the door. A voice ordered him to come in. He opened the door, then stood aside. As Daily crossed the threshold into the room, he had a fleeting thought as to what form his torture and death might take.

  His ominous host was backlit by the single lamp in the room, but Daily recognized him by his silhouette. “Mr. Welsh,” he said in a voice that was almost friendly. “You’ve been awfully busy tonight. Aren’t you almost out of oxygen by now?”

  And Daily thought, Oh, shit.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The broken water pipe in the storage room on the third floor of Tabor House produced the desired effect. Nurses and aides congregated as near as they could get to the door of the flooding closet. For as many staff as were involved, there were that many suggestions on how best to solve the problem. A nurse said she’d seen a janitor working in the storage room a few minutes before the geyser erupted, but he couldn’t be found to assist in the containment and cleanup.

  Barrie hadn’t known what Gray intended when he left her in the stairwell, telling her to wait for him there and to “look busy” if anyone came by. When he returned several minutes later, his overalls and cap had been discarded, and he was once again in suit and tie. A water pipe had mysteriously burst. It wasn’t too difficult to figure out what he’d been doing.