by Karen Rose
‘It’s done, Professor,’ Rawlings said, keeping it short and sweet.
He let out a silent sigh of relief. Rawlings always came through. Having to kill him was going to be a shame. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked, keeping his tone casual.
‘Yep. Saw her body myself. You’ll make good on our deal?’
He slathered on moisturizer because the glue dried his skin. ‘Meet me tonight. You know where. Once you cut this brick a few times, you’ll be the richest guard on the prison block.’
A dry chuckle. ‘I’d settle for staying alive, Professor.’
He froze for a moment, a mere split second. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked quietly, injecting just the right note of personal outrage.
‘It means that my mama didn’t raise a fool. I just took care of an important prisoner for you, and before I did, I took the extra precaution of checking the people who’d visited her over the last few days. She’s had a lot of visitors – detectives, Feds, lawyers. I don’t know why you want her dead, but I’ve worked the prison system for a long time. You wouldn’t have taken such a risk if she hadn’t been very dangerous to you.’
His blood went cold, but he kept his tone casual as he carefully set the moisturizer bottle in its place in the medicine cabinet. ‘Has nothing to do with me. I told you. I’m just a middleman. That’s it. I was hired for this job because I had contacts in the prison system. That includes you.’
‘Do your contacts also include Sidney Siler?’
Rage bubbled up from his gut. Oh Rawlings, you were going to die painlessly. Now? You’re gonna hurt. ‘I know her. Why?’
‘Yeah, well, I know she visited Alice yesterday, using a fake ID. I also know she was found dead of an apparent overdose this morning. Rumor is dirty coke.’
There is nothing dirty about my coke, fuckhead. ‘That’s a shame. I liked her. She should have bought from me. She wouldn’t be dead.’
Rawlings chuckled again. ‘Well, I have to hand it to you. You’re a cool sonofabitch. I hope you won’t be offended, but I’ve added you to my list of people I’ve done favors for. That list is somewhere safe. If I show up dead of anything, even a hangnail, my representative knows to make the list public. It’s just a little insurance. I’m sure you understand.’
Oh yeah. I understand that you’re a dead man. Or you’ll wish you were. ‘Of course. I make sure I’m equally insured.’ Because I’m not a moron, asshole. He knew things that Rawlings didn’t know. Like even if the Professor is outed, nobody can connect him to me. He’d been taking that precaution for nearly two decades. But he also knew that Rawlings’s oldest kid had a problem with drug use. Little Timmy Rawlings Jr really liked coke. A lot.
He wasn’t going to make any threats. He’d take action and Rawlings Senior would figure it out. Rawlings Senior was smart that way. ‘So we’re still meeting tonight?’
‘Absolutely. See you then.’
He hung up and blew out a breath. The Alice loose end was now snipped. He’d take care of Rawlings’s kid later. He had time before tonight’s meeting.
For now, Special Agent Davenport was his chief concern. He had a few other people inside the hospital, but those he didn’t want to risk. He needed them exactly where they were. If he couldn’t prod the one he already had in there into action, he might just have to take care of Davenport himself. And that would suck.
He needed to eliminate Davenport so that he could focus on planning the upcoming video shoot. His newest customers had very specific requests for the acting talent and were willing to pay for his trouble. And if they liked what they saw, they’d be a source of business for years to come.
The individual drug sales, like to Roy and Sidney, didn’t bring in enough cash to pay his bills. Up until last week, his sales of coke, heroin and meth to Alice and her father had been his primary source of income. He needed to secure a new distributor who’d buy the same volume, but that would take some time. Until then, the porn videos and the sale of their starring actors would have to pay the bills.
A year ago he would have had trouble providing the actors his porn customers wanted, only because the actors had been expensive and relatively hard to come by. McCord hadn’t believed in buying American, choosing instead to source their assets through Alice and her father. It was supposed to have added layers of security to their operation – no one could trace the teenagers because no one knew them. No family would search if they disappeared. And if anyone got caught, it would have been Alice and her father, and they supposedly had the resources to evade the cops.
He’d gone along with it at the beginning, because he’d been the student, McCord the expert. McCord had all the contacts for the porn – both supply sources for the actors and distribution channels for the videos and the actors themselves when he’d been finished with them. They’d come from a myriad of countries, speaking different languages, all of which made grooming them a lot harder than it needed to be.
He wanted his actors happy on camera, not scared and crying. It was bad for business.
But then McCord got himself caught and everything had unraveled from there. Now I’m the expert. He’d made a lot of changes and everything was much better. Now his assets were home grown. Given the time, he could groom the actors to perform as directed. No coercion required.
He could still buy assets when he needed to, and for a lot less money than McCord was paying, so his profits were considerably increased. A mother would sell her own soul for a hit – but usually she parted with her kid first. He should know – he’d been cultivating his personal group of addicts for years. He kept up with many of them, scratching their names from his list when they got clean. Or died. Mostly they died.
Personally he didn’t want to be in the same room with a skeezy addict who’d sell her own kid for drugs, but he did what he had to to get by. Just like everybody else out there.
I just do it better.
Five
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Thursday 13 August, 12.15 P.M.
‘Details, please, boss,’ Kate said into her phone from behind clenched teeth. Alice was dead. Their key lead – the only one who knew for sure the identity of McCord’s partner – was dead.
‘How did they get to her?’ Troy added into his own phone. ‘We had her in a secure area.’
The light from the hospital’s fourth-floor waiting room window highlighted the angry red flush rapidly spreading across Troy’s cheeks, the snap of his dark eyes, the grim set of his jaw. Her new partner looked just as stunned as she felt. And just as furious.
She hadn’t seen him furious before. Good. Troy had fire. She’d hoped he would.
‘Not secure enough, obviously,’ Zimmerman said curtly.
Kate dragged a plastic chair close to the window and sank into it, her knees suddenly wobbly. I’m tired, she thought wearily, but shoved the exhaustion aside. She’d sleep later. Maybe. She blew out a breath. Tried to rein in her temper.
‘Part of me wants to find Bishop and throttle her,’ she said honestly. ‘If she’d simply told us when she found out last week that McCord didn’t commit suicide, instead of protecting the Ledger folks’ privacy, we might’ve put a heavier guard on Alice.’
‘That was my first response as well,’ Zimmerman said, sounding just as weary. ‘I had actually dialed all but the last digit of her LT’s phone number before I calmed down. We thought we’d gotten all the pornographers when we took down McCord. Bishop thought so too.’
Kate rubbed her forehead. ‘Cause of Alice’s death?’
‘Appears to be poison. May have been in her breakfast. The ME’s there now, checking her out. Alice was taking her meals in her cell, so she wasn’t among the gen pop. She was apparently a celebrity,’ he added, his voice cold.
‘So whoever did this had access to her food,’ Troy said. ‘Depending on how tight sec
urity is, this could be a narrow field or wide open.’
‘I’m thinking it’ll be the second one,’ Zimmerman said grimly. ‘The warden did take some precautions, like feeding her in her cell, but there’s some major covering-up going on, so I don’t know what or who we can believe right now. Dr Washington will, of course, expedite the autopsy, but her initial time-of-death estimate was earlier than the warden’s. It looks like Alice was dead for over an hour before the warden called me.’
‘Dr Washington is good?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes,’ Zimmerman said. ‘If there’s a COD to be found, Carrie Washington will find it. Alice got her meal around nine and was dead by ten, so the poison was fairly fast-acting.’
‘Someone didn’t want her to talk,’ Troy said. ‘Could be McCord’s mystery partner, but who knows how many people she could have incriminated? I’m actually surprised someone hasn’t taken her out before now.’
‘Whoever it is, they’re snipping off . . .’ Kate trailed off, her body jerking like she’d touched an electric fence. Oh God. ‘Shit. Decker. Decker woke up and now Alice is dead.’ She saw the flicker of understanding in Troy’s eyes and together they started running for Room 426. ‘He’s snipping off loose ends and Decker is the critical one. Gotta go, boss. Call you in a few.’
Kate hung up and dodged an orderly pushing a food cart. ‘Shit. It’s meal time.’ She flashed her badge in the air as several nurses came out from behind the desk, shouting at her to stop, threatening to call Security. She ran faster, dodged a few more carts, then took a hard right into Room 426 and skidded to a horrified stop.
Decker was breathing, but his breaths were jagged. He was blinking hard and irregularly. His skin wasn’t just pale, it was ashen, and his lips . . . Holy God. His lips were blue.
A woman in green scrubs stood at the foot of his bed, holding a lunch tray. Her badge identified her as a nurse’s assistant. She’d frozen in place, staring at Kate, fear in her eyes.
‘Put that tray down!’ Kate ordered, and the woman dropped it immediately. It fell to the floor with a clatter, food going everywhere. The woman put her hands in the air and backed up, her face pale.
‘Kate.’ Decker reached out for her, his voice raspy. ‘Wrong. Something’s wrong.’
‘I know.’ It didn’t look like he’d touched any of the food on the tray. ‘Has anyone given you medicine? Anything?’
‘Just the IV.’
It was possible. Kate ran around the bed and clamped the IV bag to stop the flow, just in case, then turned to the nurse who stood in the doorway, glaring at them. Her badge said she was Jen Choi, RN.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Choi demanded, marching to the bed. About fifty, she managed to be intimidating despite being quite petite. ‘This is a hospital, not a—’
‘His lips are blue,’ Kate snapped, interrupting her tirade. ‘Do something.’
‘Dammit,’ the nurse hissed out. She called the desk to have them summon the doctor, then began taking Decker’s vital signs. ‘What did you do to him?’
‘Me?’ Kate stared at her.
‘Yeah, you.’ The nurse’s eyes popped wide when she saw the IV. ‘You clamped his IV? I don’t know who you are, lady, but Security’s on their way to haul your ass out of here.’
The woman’s outrage had a strangely calming effect, and Kate was able to shove her own panic aside so that she could think. ‘I’m Special Agent Kate Coppola, FBI. This is Special Agent Davenport. He’s been given something. Or he’s having a reaction, or something.’
Don’t let it be poison. He couldn’t have fought so hard to live, only to be taken out by doctored hospital food. She leaned over the rail so that she could hear him. ‘Did you eat lunch, Decker?’
‘No.’ He was fighting hard to stay with her. ‘Not yet. Breakfast, yes.’
Shit, damn, fuck. Alice had eaten breakfast, too. ‘What time?’
He blinked at her. ‘After . . . after they took out the tube. Don’t know the time.’
Kate looked at the nurse. ‘When was that?’
The nurse was frowning at her. ‘I don’t know exactly. Sometime before ten.’
‘So two hours.’ Alice had died in one. ‘What’s in the IV?’
Choi glanced up at her, her irritation clear. ‘Saline and antibiotics. Same as he was being given in ICU. In fact that is the bag he came down with.’
‘Nurse Choi, it cannot be the same thing he was being given in ICU. His lips were not blue in ICU. Now, either give him something to reverse the effects of whatever’s causing this, or get someone in here who can.’
The nurse, bent over Decker’s bed, looked up, stunned. ‘You think we did this?’
Kate drew a breath. ‘Three minutes ago we were given reason to believe that Agent Davenport may be a target for someone who wanted him dead. We come in his room and find this. What do you think?’
‘Kate.’ Decker struggled to meet her eyes, blinking rapidly. ‘Don’t fuck with the nurses. They’ll own your ass.’
Kate snorted a surprised laugh. ‘You’re right.’
He nodded, once. ‘You are too. Someone did change the bag. Not her.’
Drawing another breath, she sobered and faced the nurse, whose expression was now horrified. ‘I need to take this IV bag as evidence. Please get a fresh one.’
The nurse just nodded. ‘We’ve called the doctor. He should be here within the next minute. This looks like an opioid overdose. Mr Davenport will be given something to counteract it.’
‘Okay.’ Kate looked around the room and realized that Troy wasn’t there. He was probably dealing with Security, but she directed her next request at the nurse because she had too much energy and felt like she was going to supernova any goddamn second. ‘We’ll need a copy of any security videos of this floor and a list of anyone who’s touched his IV bags.’ She looked at the nurse’s assistant who’d been holding the tray. ‘You can leave that on the floor. I’ll be taking it as evidence too. Please wait outside in the corridor. Do not leave. I will come and find you.’
The woman nodded, her eyes huge in her thin face, and hurried from the room.
‘Badass,’ Decker whispered.
‘You’d better believe it.’ Kate brushed her fingers over his face. ‘How’s the breathing?’
‘No tube. Please.’
‘If they think you need one . . .’
‘No. No damn tube.’ He blinked hard and looked up at the nurse. ‘You hear that?’
‘Your lips are blue, sir. You are oxygen-deprived. If that continues, you’ll have brain damage. Is that what you want?’
Decker gave Nurse Choi a dirty look. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so. Tell me how you felt immediately before your friend Speedy tore up my floor, jumped hurdles over my staff, and caused a general panic trying to get to you.’
‘Only general panic?’ he asked between labored breaths. ‘Not utter chaos? Slacker.’
‘You stop it,’ Kate scolded. ‘Save your breath to answer her.’
Decker turned his head toward the nurse. ‘Sudden fatigue. Trouble breathing. It was like a wave, dragging me under.’ His brow furrowed as he stretched his non-IV hand toward Kate, almost absently. She grasped it without hesitation, giving it a slight squeeze. ‘Metallic taste, too,’ he added. ‘Nasty. Just want to sleep.’
The doctor rushed in then, frowning as he saw the food on the floor. ‘Somebody clean that up,’ he said and then scowled at Kate. ‘You touched a patient’s IV.’
‘It may be tainted.’ She lifted an eyebrow that dared him to disagree. ‘Humor me, Doctor. Start a new one. Fresh. And don’t even think about asking me to leave.’
Rolling his eyes, the doctor did many of the same checks the nurse had already done. ‘If you could move to the other side of the bed and give me room to work,
’ was all he said to Kate before turning to Decker. ‘I’m going to give you a drug called Narcan.’
‘Show her,’ Decker said, closing his eyes. Trusting Kate to keep him safe.
Kate let go of his hand to walk around the bed, giving the doctor room, but Decker reached for her again, and again she didn’t hesitate. The man seemed to crave tactile sensation, but that might be a side effect of having been in a coma for a week. The doctor held up the vial so that Kate could read it. ‘Assuming it hasn’t been tampered with, it’s what he says it is.’
‘Then just do it,’ Decker said wearily.
The doctor talked as he worked. ‘Narcan will reverse the effects of opioids in your system.’
‘And if it’s something else?’ Troy asked from behind Kate. He’d slipped in so quietly she hadn’t heard him. Or maybe she was that focused on Decker. Which meant she was too focused. She needed to be more vigilant about anyone coming through that doorway.
‘Then it does no harm.’ The doctor injected the drug into Decker’s vein, then watched him intently. ‘It’s safe enough that it’s being given to first responders to treat heroin overdoses in the field. If they’re wrong and it’s not heroin, then no harm. Why is there food on the floor?’
‘We have reason to believe that a person associated with one of Agent Davenport’s cases was poisoned through food in an institutional setting,’ Troy answered.
‘I was taking no chances,’ Kate added. ‘I told the assistant to drop the tray and she unfortunately took me literally.’
‘I don’t blame her, the way you came charging in here.’ The doctor hadn’t taken his eyes off Decker. ‘Will you scrape it into an evidence bag or something? Somebody’s going to slip on it.’
‘In a minute,’ Kate said quietly, squeezing Decker’s hand. ‘Decker? You okay?’
He nodded slowly, then about fifteen seconds later gasped in a huge breath. ‘Yes. I can breathe better now. No tube.’
‘He just got one removed this morning,’ Kate told the doctor.