by Nancy Bush
“Stone,” he rasped.
“It’s Claire Norris.” She sounded slightly panicked. “I’m sorry to bother you. Cat’s gone. Jane Doe!”
Her voice washed over him, strong and full of emotion. It took a moment for him to hear her words. “Gone. How?”
“Maria, one of the night nurses from Side A, just called me. She went to check on Cat and her room was empty. Cat left her hospital gown but took her shoes. I was going to get her clothes but I haven’t yet. I don’t know what she’s wearing, where she could be. There’s been an all-out search of the hospital, but no one can find her.”
Lang blinked several times, trying to get his brain in gear. “Okay, slow down. Could she get past the doors to the medical offices?”
“I don’t see how,” she said, then, “I called Dr. Freeson, who already knew about Cat’s disappearance because Maria phoned him first. And Avanti was on call, so I’m playing catch-up. Freeson said they’d apparently looked everywhere. Even checked Side B, but she would have been seen on the monitors, and anyway, I don’t see how she could get past any door. She doesn’t have a keycard. She doesn’t know the code.”
“Did anyone come in to see her?” He was out of bed, searching for his clothes in the dark. “If she’s really gone, someone had to help her.”
“No one’s been to see her. She doesn’t have visitors.”
“Claire, consider this. Could she have been faking all this time?”
“No.” She was positive. Then, “At least not in the beginning. She was out of it.”
“What about now?” he pressed.
“She’s been reactive. You saw. And able to walk. She just hasn’t spoken to anyone yet.” She inhaled sharply suddenly.
“What?” he demanded.
“Well, Gibby—Bradford Gibson, one of the patients—says she talks to him. But Gibby thinks everyone talks to him and that’s not necessarily true.”
“You’re on your way to the hospital?” He looked around for a clock but the room was pitch black. His watch was on the bathroom counter, so he stumbled into the bathroom and flicked on the light. 10:30 P.M.
“I should be there in thirty minutes.”
He should have stayed at the coast. “It’ll take me two hours to get there,” he said, pissed all over again that he hadn’t completely moved to Tillamook, where he would be forty-five minutes from the hospital on the outside.
“I called you just to let you know. Because of the investigation. But there’s no need for you to come to the hospital tonight.”
“I’m coming. If she’s up and moving around, maybe she’s able to talk more than we’ve thought.”
“She’s got to be on the premises. I just…wanted you to know.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” she said humbly.
He snapped the cell phone shut, stubbed his toe on the edge of the bathroom door in his hurry, swore violently, and hopped back into the bedroom to find the rest of his clothes and boots.
Rita parked the car in her mother’s driveway. Delores would be asleep, and if she wasn’t, Rita had sedatives that would take care of that matter. She couldn’t bear the thought of her mother’s nagging. She had important matters to deal with.
Tasha’s eyes were closed, her whole body clenched. She was breathing shakily and moaning. At first Rita thought it was an act, which infuriated her, but now that they were stopped and she could look at her, she thought maybe Tasha was really in labor.
The baby was coming!
She couldn’t leave her in the car while she dealt with Delores. She didn’t trust that Tasha wouldn’t run away, although how far she would get in her condition, Rita couldn’t say. Not far.
Rita hurried around the back of the car to the passenger door, her hair wet and straggling in the rain. She yanked open the door and pulled Tasha out by sheer willpower and strength. The girl dropped to her knees in a mud puddle but Rita prevailed, arms under hers, dragging her toward the short flight of wooden steps that led to the back door. She banged inside, smacking her elbow. Tasha groaned and jerked, but she was only half-conscious. Good.
“Rita? What are you doing?” her mother called from the bedroom.
Rita manhandled Tasha to the couch, a sagging affair with worn cushions and arms. Tasha was soaked to the skin and pale in the faint light thrown from the windows of the nearest house, the only light available as the community didn’t have streetlights.
A sorry place to live. A sorry place to be. Rita Feather Hawkings and her child were going to run far away from here. They had to.
She felt a pang for the job she’d briefly enjoyed, but it was nothing. Nothing!
She was going to have a baby. Hers and Rafe’s!
“Rita!”
Tasha’s eyes moved behind closed lids. She was trying to wake up.
Rita hesitated briefly, then scurried to the kitchen. Quickly, she poured a glass of water and shook out a tumble of pills from the bottle she kept inside a high cupboard. One sedative normally did the trick, but two would guarantee Delores would remain under longer. Deeper.
She took three. A gamble. But worth it. Hurriedly, she crushed the tablet on a small plate with the back of the spoon. Then she slid the powdery dust into the glass, stirring it quickly with the spoon.
“Rita! Stop ignoring me at once!”
A quick look in on Tasha. She was writhing on the couch.
“Rita!”
“Coming, Mother,” she called, racewalking down the hallway, balancing the glass.
“What are you doing? Why are you banging around, making so much noise? Who’s here? Did you bring someone home with you? You’re late!”
Delores was in bed. She was ambulatory, though she walked very slowly and precisely, but she chose to stay in bed and let Rita wait on her if she could. Now she glared at her daughter as Rita handed her the glass. Delores took the drink and threw it onto the floor. “What are you trying to do?” she yelled.
Rita stared at the dripping liquid spreading on the thread-bare carpet. “Mother!”
“I don’t want a drink. Do you know how late it is? I haven’t had dinner yet!”
Rita couldn’t think. Could not think. Her brain whirled and whirled, but no thoughts evolved. “What about Sharon?” she finally asked, referring to the woman who lived down the end of the block and helped out when Rita’s hours prevented her from getting her mother’s meals ready. This dependency of Delores’s was new and growing bigger, a yawning, sucking hole of quicksand that Rita was determined to escape.
“Sharon has a family. Like you do. She can’t be here every minute. Where have you been?”
“The hospital. My new job.” Rita stumbled back toward the kitchen and the pills. She would force them down her mother’s throat if she had to.
Her hands shook. She poured out three more tablets. Shook out a fourth. For a long moment she looked at all the tablets in the bottle. Her mother wanted dinner. There was nothing in the house except canned goods.
“I’m making you soup,” she called loudly.
“I don’t want soup!”
Cold fury ran through Rita’s veins as she turned on the only working electric burner, grabbed a can of chicken noodle soup from the cupboard they used to store their meager supplies and a saucepan from its place on the dish rack where Sharon had left it. Then she yanked out a handheld can opener from the drawer, furiously turned the handle until it was open, and dumped the contents into the pan.
Soup was what her mother was going to get.
She crushed four tablets and added them into the mix. Maybe she should make it five?
As if coming out of a trance, Rita suddenly realized she hadn’t heard Tasha moaning.
She stumbled into the living room and to her disbelief realized the blond bitch was gone! Gone!
How? She’d been unconscious. In labor.
Hadn’t she?
Rita raced outside and glanced around, shielding her eyes to the rain. There was
blackness all around. And wind and flying leaves and small sticks.
“You can’t hide!” she screamed into the night, lurching around the corner of the house.
Tasha bent over, hidden behind a stack of fir chunks three houses away, her hand clamped over her mouth. The contractions were still coming, but they weren’t as intense as she’d led Rita to believe. What she’d thought were labor pains had lessened. She was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t the baby coming immediately. Maybe it was false labor. Or her body’s reaction to extreme fear.
Whatever it was, she was capable of movement. Escape.
She could find help.
She knew where she was. She’d listened hard to Rafe’s loose accounts of his life and how he knew Rita Feather Hawkings. They lived in the same community. A small town in the foothills of the mountains, not all that far from the lodge. She also knew, probably far more than he did, that his community had been founded by Native Americans. The people in the foothills served Tasha’s ancestors at the lodge and the town of Deception Bay. Rafe was half Native American, and Tasha thought she might be distantly, distantly related to him. She’d stumbled upon the fact that a member of her family had once had a torrid affair with an Indian shaman. Catherine denied that fact as fable, but Tasha knew Catherine would do anything to keep Tasha and her sisters from knowing anything about their past, and Tasha hoped it wasn’t the shaman who’d scared her as a child.
But Rafe was no longer here. Rafe. Innocent, trusting father of her child.
Rain ran down Tasha’s face and she brushed water from her eyes and off her nose.
And then she saw Rita rush into the road, whose shallow ruts were rapidly filling with water, the scattered gravel nearly flooded. She was staggering in the downpour, her head whipping from side to side. Fearing detection, Tasha folded herself even farther behind the woodpile and pressed herself to the concrete basement wall of the adjoining house.
She wished she’d had time to get a knife from the hospital.
She had to get away from Rita.
Had to save herself and her baby.
But how?
And who? Who could help?
Rita threw herself forward, half-running into the rain, and Tasha, peering from behind the woodpile, soaked to the skin, suddenly knew where she could hide.
All she had to do now was find the place.
Why did you call him? Claire asked herself. Why? What do you want from him?
She wheeled the Passat into the nearest spot to the hospital portico, wheels sliding in the standing water. At the corner of the building one of the drainpipes was dumping a torrent of water onto the saturated ground.
She wanted to thunk her palm to her own forehead. She was losing it. She found him attractive, too attractive. Hadn’t wanted to see him leave earlier.
But it was professional suicide to bring him to Halo Valley, right into the snake pit with Freeson and Avanti.
“Damn,” she muttered fervently, jumping out of the car. She flipped up the hood of her raincoat, holding the two sides close with one hand, not bothering with the zipper. Hurriedly, she ran through the rain to the portico, pulling out her keycard and punching in the code. Lori was long gone from her desk but there were floor lights illuminating the rug and dimmed overhead can lights keeping the place from total darkness.
Avanti, Freeson, Maria, and Greg were standing in a tight circle in the foyer. They waited for her to enter, then waved her toward the meeting room, heading that way themselves before she’d actually crossed the hospital threshold. She hurried across the carpet and caught up to them as Avanti pressed the button and flooded the meeting room with light.
“She has to be here,” Claire said, before anyone could speak.
“She can’t be gone,” Avanti agreed. He looked bedraggled and kind of rumpled, far from his usual sleek, in control self, but then the weather was horrendous.
Freeson said, “Well, she’s nowhere. Explain that.” He seemed to expect an answer from Claire.
“You’ve checked all the rooms?” She turned to Maria, who looked half-panicked.
“She wasn’t in her room,” the nurse said, shaking her head. “She left her hospital gown.”
“She’s naked?” Freeson looked scandalized.
“Tell me what happened,” Claire said, ignoring him.
“I was making sure everyone was in their room before I turned on the alarm,” Maria said. “It was about nine. But when I got to Cat’s room, it was empty.”
“What about Marsdon?” Claire asked.
Avanti said flatly, “His door was, and is, locked. He’s inside. This has nothing to do with him.”
“His room was checked?”
“Yes.” Avanti was positive.
“About half of the rooms were checked before it was lights out,” Freeson said. “Marsdon’s was one, even though it’s always locked.”
Claire nodded. Although most of the patients could come and go as they pleased during the day, the rooms were equipped with alarm locks at night, which kept patients from wandering the halls but also alerted the staff that they were trying to get out, which could mean they needed help. Maribel, for instance, could never remember to press the lighted button on the call buttons that were located in both her bedroom and bathroom. If she needed something, she banged against the door until someone came to her aid.
“She was definitely gone by nine P.M.,” Freeson said.
“Naked,” Avanti reminded.
“Someone would have noticed if she didn’t have clothes,” Claire said. “She had to have been dressed.”
She then asked which rooms still needed to be checked and Freeson swept a hand toward the north hall.
“So you haven’t checked Gibby’s room yet?” Claire asked.
Maria shook her head. “Maybe we should wake him and ask him about her.”
“What’s he going to say?” Freeson turned to Avanti as if he couldn’t believe Claire’s questions. “You’re in charge of Jane Doe’s care now, Claire. Has anything happened recently? Has she said something? Did you notice anything different?”
“She’s become more responsive, but you already know that. Gibby might be able to help.”
“Well, it’s too late tonight,” Freeson said.
Claire’s cell phone rang at that moment. She paused before looking at the caller ID, dreading what she knew she would see: Lang’s number. She said, “I have to take this.”
“At this time of night?” Avanti asked. “Who is it?”
“Langdon Stone,” she admitted, punching the answer button.
“Langdon Stone?” Avanti sputtered and Freeson made a strangled sound.
Claire turned her back to them and took the call.
“I’m making good time,” Lang said. “I’ll be there in an about an hour.”
“I’ll let you in.” Claire hung up.
“He’s coming here?” Avanti’s nostrils flared.
“No!” Freeson was appalled. “You told him? Called him? I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t expect him to come.”
“For God sake, Claire. You’ll get yourself fired and all of us brought before the board. Unbelievable.” Freeson was furious.
Claire didn’t relate her own worries about inviting Lang, not the least being she was attracted to the man. She knew she would have to do a self-examination of her motivations later, and she already suspected she wouldn’t like what she learned. Claire Norris didn’t fall for men. Even her ex had been the one to do the chasing, and she’d let him. She hadn’t fallen for him, either, really. Had just chosen the path of least resistance, and it hadn’t worked out in the end.
And she especially stayed away from controlling, demanding, unattainable men who were clearly bad for her. Langdon Stone fell into that category completely.
“I think we should wake up Gibby and talk to him,” she said, which met with a chorus of disapproval.
“You know Gibby. He won’t be able to tell us anything,
” Freeson said. “Certainly nothing that matters.”
“He’s lucky you’re not his doctor,” Claire said.
His jaw dropped open. He was infuriated, but Claire had suffered all she could stomach.
Avanti ordered, “You need to call off Detective Stone. It’s ridiculous, his involvement. I don’t want to hear he’s let the world know we temporarily lost a patient!”
Claire pointed out, “He could let the world know far worse if he puts a call into Pauline Kirby about Heyward being moved to Side A.”
Both Freeson and Avanti stared at Claire in horror. “What?” Freeson whispered.
“I can’t call him off,” she said. “He’s investigating the attack on Cat. We need to talk to him.” Deal with it, she thought fiercely.
They argued about whether they should enter any of the patients’ rooms that hadn’t been searched yet, this late at night. Avanti wanted to go home and Freeson seconded that opinion, but neither of them would budge until they were assured Claire wasn’t going to let Lang inside the hospital. Claire used the time of their indecision to check down the halls herself and ended up herding Donald Inman, who refused to go to bed, sure he could be of help, back to his room.
Finally, her phone rang again. She answered to learn Lang was about to turn into the hospital’s long drive and she clicked off to inform the others. When she got to the hospital foyer, she saw Avanti and Freeson standing with arms crossed over their chests, waiting like sentinels.
“He’s almost here,” she said, taking out her keycard and waiting by the front entrance.
And then she saw him, ducking his head to the rain as he strode toward the glass doors. Claire punched in her code and used her key, and the doors slid open as he stepped inside. For just a moment he and Claire were very close to each other, long enough for her to inhale a lungful of his scent, a dampness mixed with something male and spicy and surprisingly sensual. Her head whirled a bit. Too long a day. Too much wine. Too many events and revelations.
“Lavender,” he said to her, and Claire felt the blush sweep upward. He’d smelled her scent as well.
“Most of Side A has been searched except for some of the patients’ rooms,” she told him, trying to get back on an even keel. “Maria and I were going to check Gibby’s room. Bradford Gibson. He’s kind of a friend of Cat’s.” She looked around for Maria, who was waiting for her while Greg had gone back to his duties.