And Sam wasn’t even a married man. Oh, God, haven’t you taken enough from me already?
But Raye wouldn’t see it that way. To a sociopath, people’s transcripts, their fortunes, their loves, their very lives, were there for the taking. Jessica closed her eyes. Stop. She breathed deeply—once, twice, a shivering third time. Don’t panic. Use your brains, Jessica, that’s what they’re there for. First, what does she want? My life?
She put her eye to the breathing hole and peered out. Raye still sat, red-nailed fingertips curled round Jessica’s arm—sorrowful best friend. Swallowing her revulsion, Jessica thought. Raye came up here the first time, because she was afraid I might recover, then talk.
But once she’d seen me, if she’d thought I was a danger, I’d be dead by now. Because Raye could move around the hospital day or night with no one lifting an eyebrow. A back stairwell gave the staff access to every floor. Raye could have slipped up the back stairs the first night after visiting hours with a syringe full of insulin, or a barbiturate, or—Jessica shuddered—perhaps succinylcholine, used to paralyze the skeletal muscles during surgery? A drug to make the patient stop breathing on his own. A drug that metabolized rapidly—hours later, it was undetectable in the body.
Besides, if a comatose patient stopped breathing in her sleep, no one would be thinking murder, looking for lethal drugs at her autopsy—if her parents even permitted an autopsy. And that wasn’t likely. Her mother would want her presentable for the funeral.
Her breath was accelerating again. She caught it and exhaled. Okay, okay, I get the picture. But I’m not dead yet, so Raye must’ve decided I wasn’t any danger. She grimaced. Only too true, so far. So why’s Raye here today— to check on me?
Raye could do that by phone—the head nurse would be happy to report her condition. So—she put her eye back to the breathing hole—she’s here for Sam. Why?
That didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out, she thought grimly, studying Sam’s profile. If Raye had it for a woman, whatever “it” was, Sam had it in spades for a man. Any woman would get a case of the hot fidgets, looking at his dear, rugged face. And once he started drawling…
I can’t stand it. I won’t! It was one thing to think of Sam involved with some faceless woman—perhaps another scientist at his lab. Much as it pained her to imagine such a relationship, it would hold only pleasure for Sam. And pleasure was what she wished for him. To be cherished by a wise and wonderful woman was what he deserved. But if Raye somehow slithered into his life…! And she wouldn’t stop with just his body, Jessica realized, or even his soul.
Sam held patents to synthesized genes, biochemical processes. His salary at the research lab probably equaled or surpassed her father’s yearly earnings as a top surgeon. There’d been that book of his a couple of years back that had crossed the line between professional obscurity and lucid, even fascinating science for the layman. Sam’s bank account had to be as alluring as the man himself. To a wolf like Raye Talbot, Sam must look like a six-foot sheep for the shearing. Fun in the sack, then fun in the sacking. How could she resist, and whyever would she?
Her whiskers stood straight out, feeling for danger, zapping electric shocks to her brain each time they brushed a surface. I won’t permit this. I will not. It’s bad enough she wrecked my life with no more qualms than if she’d stepped on a june bug, but this—hurting Sam—this I will not permit. No way. This is war, Raye Talbot, all-out war. If it takes my last breath, I’ll stop you.
But how? For the rest of the morning, long after Raye had touched Sam’s cheek, then departed in response to her pager’s beep, Jessica sat there, wondering how.
The simplest way was to warn Sam. He was more than a match for Raye, if only he realized she was dangerous. I have to warn him.
No simple task that. From her position, draped on the pillow alongside her own body’s head, she glanced aside to where he now slouched in the visitor’s chair. Apparently he’d forgotten they’d been poised for a breakthrough when Raye interrupted. Or he’d put the moment out of mind. Denial—simple, effective, almost impossible to crack. “You knew it was me, here in the cat, for a minute there. I swear you did.”
“Puss-puss?” Sam reached absently to scratch her ears, but his eyes stayed fixed on his laptop screen. “We’ll take a coffee break in two shakes, Jez. Just let me finish my e-mail.” Frowning, he reread a message, then fired off a key-rattling response. “It’s like herding cats, Jess,” he growled. “You turn your back for two minutes, and they’re wandering off every which way, or having spats, or getting into the catnip. And the better they are, I swear the worse they are. Heinemann here’s about to blow the doors off Tanaka’s theory on the nef gene’s function. What does he do last night? Gets himself arrested for riding his mountain bike through a hotel lobby full of Daughters of the American Revolution buck naked—him, I mean, excepting his helmet. Nigel says they’d have never caught him, except he tried to do a turn around the fountain, no hands, and some ol’ blue hair nailed him with her purse.”
“They’re like your family, aren’t they?” she asked softly, but his grin had faded. She leaned past his elbow to read his next message.
You haven’t forgotten that you testify before the Senate week of the 8th? his secretary Liza had written. Re continued funding for the Genome Project. Don’t even think about wriggling out of that one, Slick—too many people are counting on that ol’ Texas charm.
“That ol’ Texas charm is wearin’ pretty ragged,” Sam growled. He typed, “Nope,” signed it and signed off, then slapped the lid down on his Powerbook.
The latch’s tiny, emphatic snick might as well have been the door of a safe clanging shut. She had no way to open it.
Sam stood, drew the tape player from his valise, and punched a button. Jobim’s heart-tugging, liquid guitar purled out into the room. Sam set the player on the pillow. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes or so, Jess. Can I get you something? Ice-cream soda? Harley-Davidson Softtail? The Taj Mahal?” Kissing his fingertip, he touched it to her mouth, butterfly-brushed the rise and fall of her upper lip from corner to corner, then watched intently.
There was not a tremble of eyelid, nor quiver of lip in response. He sighed. “Back in a flash, babe. If you wake up, wait for me, hear?”
Out on the lawn, not far from the spot where she’d tried to construct her “help” message days before, Sam unzipped her carrier. “I take it you know on which side your bread’s buttered?” he drawled as she hopped from the bag. “No running off, okay?”
“Wouldn’t think of it. Not while you can’t be let loose without a keeper—I can’t believe you let Raye touch you like that back there. If you knew what she’d done…” She wandered between some nearby bushes and Sam’s legs, thinking as she walked. “But how could you, if I don’t tell you? Sticks didn’t get the message across. Pencil’s useless. ESP gets me nowhere, you rock-headed Texan. No, I’ve got to get into your laptop, but how?”
Sam pulled the lid off the foam cup of coffee he’d purchased on their way out, took a swallow and grimaced. “Lord, I hate hospitals, and everything about ’em! How can they cure people if they can’t even make coffee?” He set the container down in the grass.
“It’s drinkable, if you think of it as caffeine, not coffee.” Jess wandered back and stropped herself against his shins, still thinking. If I had a chisel, I could open that latch. Of course, if she could use a chisel, she could simply open the blasted laptop. If she could use a chisel, she wouldn’t need Sam’s computer to type him a message.
Sam turned to follow the course of a motorcycle ripping up the hill past the hospital. Jessica circled his legs and found herself face-to-face with his coffee cup. Ah. She took a sniff, grimaced—it smelled much worse than usual.
Still, she could use a jolt. She tucked in and sucked down, lapping greedily. This is awful! Cattoo awoke and agreed wholeheartedly. Jessica lapped faster. She’d hardly slept last night at all—or if that had all been a dream, then her subco
nscious hadn’t slept. Either way, she walked the ragged edge of exhaustion today—too unnerved by Raye’s appearance to collapse, so tired that everything had the hard-edged brightness of a fever dream. But every doctor learns the cure for that condition his first night on callcoffee, if you could call this that.
“Hey, you little beggar!” Sam nudged her with his foot. “Out of there. That can’t be good for you.”
“I could say the same about Raye Talbot, but do you listen?” She got in a few last licks.
Hoisting her out of the cup, he held her aloft, their noses almost touching. “I said quit.“
“Were you always this domineering? Or do you only bully cats?” She reached to touch his cheek with a velvet paw as Cattoo sometimes did with her. “Never mind, I don’t care. Sam, about last night…”
He blinked, the pupils of his eyes expanding with shock.
“Sam?” You see me; Sam.
His chin jerked in half-formed denial. “I’m going stark, ravin’—”
She let out a startled squeak as he swooped her down— then stuffed her into the bowling-ball bag. “Hey!” He yanked the zipper shut between her ears. “You’re a coward, Sam Kirby, that’s what you are! You can’t face up to the evidence of your own senses! I’m Jessica, your wife—I mean your ex-whatever, and you damn well know it! Admit it and you’d save us both a truckload of heartache.”
“Meow,” he mimicked, carrying her across the grass. “Mew, mew, mew-Meoww! You plannin’ to shut up, so we can go inside, or do I have to take you home?”
“No, you don’t.” She clenched her teeth. I have work to do, pal. And with a human-size dose of caffeine roaring through her veins, it was all coming crystal clear. She needed a computer to type out her warning, but who said it had to be Sam’s?
Her opportunity didn’t come for several hours. Jessica prowled the room, submitting to Sam’s dropping her on the bed every so often—by his lights, she had a job to do, rousing her body. But she couldn’t sit still. The room felt like a trap, with danger prowling ever closer—Raye Talbot, eyes agleam, teeth bared. Jessica’s heart slammed out a textbook example of tachycardia, and her coat roughened along her spine. Too much coffee, but do I care? Let me out of here.
She was pacing the wide windowsill, staring out at their own mill building beyond the highway, tail lashing, when the knock came on the door. Sam jumped off the bed and reached for her—she leapt down to the floor.
“C’mere!” he hissed, spinning and grabbing at her tail.
She slipped through his fingers and ducked under the bed.
“Son of a blue-nosed baboon!” he whispered as a nurse pushed a cart into the room. He bent to inspect his shoelace.
“Hellooo,” she caroled, “and how are we today?”
“We’ve been better.” Sam’s eyes flicked to below the bed, where Jessica stared back at him, owl-eyed. He showed his teeth, then stood.
Jessica turned the other way. Beyond the bed’s sheltering darkness, the wheeled cart gleamed in the fluorescents. Might do. Its lower shelf was a bit lower than she’d like, but how many carts had come along today?
Sam subsided to the windowsill, where he sat, his whistle elaborately casual, the one foot Jessica could see jiggling in triple time. No doubt he expected her to saunter out from under the bed at any moment, say something inane, like “Meow,” then perhaps strop the nurse’s shins for good measure. The image was tempting—who would be more dismayed, Sam or the nurse? But this was the caffeine talking, making her reckless. Nope, get to work, girl.
When the nurse drew blood from her body’s arm nearest the window, Jessica slipped under the cart. She lurked there, jittering silently while the series of samples were collected. This was the last room on the ward, the one closest to the back stairwell, she’d noted on their coffee break. In general that was bad—it would be easy for Raye to reach her body unseen. But for now this worked in her favor. She was probably the last patient the nurse needed to sample on this floor. At least she hoped to high heaven she was.
“There—that’ll do for now,” the woman chirped. “Sorry to bother you.” She pushed the cart toward the door.
“No problem.” Sam hurried to open it for her. “And thank you, ma’am.”
As the cart rolled away, Jessica skulked beneath, legs bent, ears brushing the underside of the shelf. And just where precisely is my tail? Let the tip hang out the back, and her cover was blown. She hunched forward a few inches, to keep her nose level with the front wheels.
The cart picked up speed, the nurse’s feet tramping steadily behind, and Jessica scuttled faster. This wasn’t half as easy as she’d pictured!
Back in her room, Sam would’ve checked under the bed by now. He’d search the corners, under the sink, the chair. He’d check the tiny bathroom, since that door had been left ajar. Then he’d conclude she’d dodged past him somehow, that she must be hiding in her carrier. But once he’d searched that…
Just as the cart reached the nurses’ station, the door to her room cracked open. Jessica didn’t dare look back. He’d be peering out into the hall, swearing, still confident she hadn’t gone far.
The nurse brought the cart to a halt by the elevator. She punched the button, then turned toward the desk. “Now that’s what I call a hunk—in room 909? Eleven on a scale of ten. The husband, I mean, not the sleeper.”
“Ex-husband,” corrected an unseen woman. “Or so I hear. Can you believe? He’s absolutely glued to her bedside. Pigs’d fly before my ex would—”
“Shh! Here he comes!” hissed another voice.
“Howdy, ladies,” Sam said too heartily. “Beautiful day…still.”
Jessica looked over her shoulder to see his size twelves halt a few feet away. They turned as he looked down the intersecting corridor that led to more rooms.
“Just stretching my legs,” he explained, though no one had asked. He strolled across to the waiting room beyond the elevator.
It would take him perhaps a minute to check under all the couches. Come on, she silently urged the elevator. Come on!
The doors opened just as Sam returned, and Jessica choked off a groan. Within the elevator, a forest of legs rose beyond her field of vision—the car was packed. They’d have to wait for the next one.
Or maybe not. “If you’d just squeeze back there a tiny bit,” the nurse coaxed, steely determination underlying the sweetness.
Sam’s feet moved closer. “Here, ma’am, I’ve got the door.”
As the cart was eased into their midst, the passengers’ feet shuffled grudgingly backward. Skin tingling with apprehension, Jessica skulked aboard. Once the cart was wedged in place, she turned cautiously around to face the door. A few feet from her face, the nurse moved to one side of her cart and also rotated. “Thank you, Mr. Kirby.”
Shut the door. Let’s get out of here! Jessica glared at his feet. Give him a moment’s peace to focus, and he’d pick up her thoughts, guess where she was. For better or worse, they were attuned.
The doors rolled together with all the deliberation of a glacier sliding south. Jessica watched his toes. He hadn’t realized—wouldn’t for a minute more. She’d done it!
The nurse shoved the cart back four inches, and suddenly Jessica found herself staring directly up into Sam’s widening eyes.
His lips parted. His hand jerked up—the doors closed, and the elevator dropped.
Made it! Inching backward into darkness, Jessia let out a gasp of relief. But what now? She’d originally planned to accompany the cart down to the pathology lab in the basement. At that level, there wasn’t much foot traffic. It would have been easy to reach the back stairs, climb them to the third floor, then reach her office in the professional building via the passage that connected it to the hospital.
But now, with Sam in hot pursuit? He’d ask the nurses on her ward where the cart was headed, then catch the next elevator. Darn you, Sam. You’re supposed to be helping me, not making this harder!
Several floors down, the
elevator stopped to let two pairs of tennis shoes and a pair of scuffed Top-Siders depart. From Jessica’s angle, she couldn’t tell which ward this was, but it was a busy one. No go.
The doors shut, and she danced impatiently. C’mon, c’mon. She could imagine Sam, floors above, also jittering as he waited for the elevator’s return. Or what if he decided not to wait, decided, instead, to run down the stairs to the basement? Visitors weren’t allowed to use the stairwell, but there wasn’t the woman alive, from nine to ninety, whom Sam couldn’t sweet-talk his way past. If he took the stairs, Jessica might dash straight into his arms. Blast!
But what other choice had she? The basement was a sure loser—it was the one level he’d be bound to check. The elevator stopped again. On this floor, Jessica could see three pairs of feet, all of them clustered around the nurses’ station. A pair of Italian pumps stepped off the elevator to aim their toes at the desk, as well. The gap between the doors narrowed, steel plates about to clash—Jessica shot from under the cart.
Behind her she heard a squawk of surprise, cut off as the doors met. Looking neither right nor left, Jessica streaked down the hall, her ears tipped backward, tail following straight as an arrow.
But she heard no cries of surprise in her wake. Good, good, good. It was amazing what people missed down at floor level.
Ahead of her, a door to a room creaked as it opened. Jessica dodged under a gurney that stood along the wall and crouched there, panting, while feet clad in white tennis shoes marched past, headed back to the nurses’ station. She gave them thirty seconds while she caught her breath, then she sprinted again for the door at the end of the corridor.
She reached the stairwell door with no further adventures—to find it, as always, closed. What I’d give for a pair of hands! Taking cover in the deep embrasure of the nearest window, she waited, ears swiveling, heart pounding, one side of her plastered to the glass. Come on! The house staff used the stairwell almost constantly; someone was bound to come along.
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