by Karen Rose
Mia looked at Dana. “I see you got the clothes.”
“I did. Thanks. Mia, did you find Nurse Simmons?”
Mia smiled. “Yeah, we did, just a little while ago. She’s fine. She’d taken the phone off the hook, trying to get some sleep after her shift. We finally broke the door down. Scared the poor woman to death. Hopefully her heart is back to normal by now.”
Dana slumped in relief. “Then Sue must have called me herself.”
“We watched the hospital for about two hours,” Reagan said, “but if she was there, we didn’t see her. She may have been watching from somewhere else.”
Dana drew a breath. “Did you find she’d been in the hospital close to Caroline?”
“Yes,” Mia answered honestly. “She brought a flower arrangement to the nurses’ station, but the name on the card didn’t exist on their patient chart. While the nurse on duty was trying to figure out which floor to send her to, she kept her eyes open. Saw Simmons talking to Max. It was all on the surveillance tape.”
Dana’s empty stomach churned, thinking of Sue that close to Caroline. Thinking of Evie in her hands right now. “She’d never met Max,” she murmured.
Mia shrugged. “She’d met David. That was close enough. We also checked out your old neighborhood, Mrs. Vaughn. A gray Olds Eighty-eight was seen driving slowly past the wreckage of the Lewises’ house. The car matched the one stolen from the old woman we found in Sandy Stone’s car. The old woman is recovering, by the way. The Olds was found abandoned later.”
“What about the Internet café she used to send yesterday’s e-mail?” Ethan asked.
Mia glanced at Abe, then back at Dana, and Dana felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. “She used a prepaid credit card,” Mia said. “The name on the card was Faith Joyce.”
Dana felt every drop of blood drain from her face and could only stare up at Mia. Mia stared back down, deep regret in her round blue eyes. Dana shook her head, disbelieving what she thought she’d heard. “What?”
Mia bit her lip. “It was the same card used to reserve the Vaughns’ room at the Excelsior Hotel, Dana. The reservation was made yesterday afternoon at about three.”
Everything seemed to go silent and all Dana could hear was the pounding of her heart echoing in her head. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. She felt Mia’s hands pushing her head down, somebody else pulling her chair away from the table. Ethan. Ethan was kneeling beside her, his face worried. Then his face started to spin.
“Who is Faith Joyce?” she heard Clay ask, but Mia was pushing on her head again.
“Give her some space. Don’t you dare faint on me, Dana. Abe, can you get her water?”
Dana drew huge gulping breaths and when she opened her eyes the room was stationary again. She struggled against Mia’s hands. “Let go of me. You’re going to break my damn neck.” Instantly Mia released her hold.
“Then sit up slowly. When was the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday.”
Mia scowled. “Shit, no more sense than a snot-nosed kid.” She glared at Ethan who still knelt at her side. “You were supposed to make sure she ate, Buchanan.”
Dana took the water Abe offered. “Leave him alone, Mia,” she said wearily. “He tried. I just couldn’t eat.” She sipped at the water. Commanded her stomach to settle. “It was Beverly. I dropped her off at the bus station yesterday.”
Mia swallowed hard. “Damn,” she whispered. “I was afraid of that.”
Clay stood up, his face one big frown. “Who is Faith Joyce?”
Ethan gently tugged her chin so that she looked at him, and without taking his eyes from hers, he answered, “Dana’s mother.” When she only stared at him, he brushed his thumb across her chin. “I couldn’t sleep last night. So I checked.”
“I don’t understand,” Randi said quietly. “Why would Sue use Dana’s mother’s card?”
Dana pressed her fingers to her trembling lips. Focused on Ethan’s steady green eyes just as she had done so many times before. “When women leave Hanover House to go to other cities, we give them a prepaid credit card to use until they’re settled. If they stay with us long enough, they can make money at a job to put toward the card. Like a savings plan. We use the name Faith Joyce. Joyce was my mother’s maiden name.”
Ethan took her hands and held tight. “I read about it, Dana. I know what happened.”
She squeezed his hands and lifted her eyes to Mia’s, conscious that every eye in the room was on her. “Beverly earned almost nine hundred dollars.” Dana’s voice broke and she cleared her throat. “I dropped her off yesterday morning. She was going to California.”
Mia gripped Dana’s shoulder, hard. “What was Beverly carrying, Dana?”
Dana caught Ethan’s puzzled frown from the corner of her eye. He hadn’t figured this part, she thought, and looked up at Mia, who had. Who’d maybe known all along. “A driver’s license. A social.” She pursed her lips hard. “And a passport.”
Mia’s head dropped back and she groaned softly. “Shit, damn, fuck.”
Dana blew out the breath she’d been holding, dropped her chin to her chest. “Mia, Beverly might be dead. Please send someone to the bus station to see. I hate to think of her lying there . . . like that.”
There was silence around the table as Abe dialed the bus station. When he hung up, Dana raised her head. “Well?” Please, not Beverly, too. She was going to have a life.
“They found her this morning when the garbage truck came to empty the Dumpsters. She was pushed between the Dumpster and the wall.” Abe looked so sad. “I’m sorry, Dana. They’ve taken her to the morgue, labeled her a Jane Doe. Can you identify her?”
Dana nodded numbly.
“What name was on the ID, Dana?” Mia asked in a low voice.
“Carla Fenton,” she whispered.
Stan Vaughn stood up and leaned forward. “If I am to understand,” he said coldly, “the woman who kidnapped Alec now has a passport so she can leave the country?”
Mia turned, a forbidding scowl twisting her face. “You gave her twenty-five thousand dollars, Mr. Vaughn. If she hadn’t stolen Beverly’s ID, that was plenty enough to buy another. Sit down, please, until we get this sorted out.”
Jaw clenched, Stan sat.
Dana closed her eyes. “If she plans to use Beverly’s ID, she’ll have to dye her hair brown and get brown contact lenses. Check the optometrists.”
“Do you know how many optometrists there are in Chicago?” Mia growled, then swore. “Hell, at least it’s a place that she hasn’t been yet, instead of us showing up after the fact.”
Abe stood up, walked around the table. Knelt on one knee in front of Dana. “I’ll get a list so we can get started. But first, where did Beverly get the IDs, Dana?”
Dana shoved down the sob, locked it away. Looked Abe Reagan in the eye. And lied through her teeth. “I have no idea, Abe. I just take the pictures for the passports.” Thank you, David, she thought fervently.
“Your photography business,” Ethan murmured, and dropped into his chair.
She turned to look at him and saw he understood. “Yes.”
Abe looked up at Mia, his tongue in his cheek. Mia shrugged. And said nothing more. “Let’s start checking optometrists,” he said. “We’ll start with the ones in the mall she visited last night.” He stood up. “But first, let’s check our Jane Doe. We could be wrong.”
Ethan helped Dana to her feet. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to,” she murmured.
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Yes, I do.”
“So we just stay here?” Stan demanded.
Abe looked like he was losing his patience. “Unless you want to take a trip to the morgue, yes. When we’re done, I’ll take you to the airport so you can make it look like you’ve come in on that flight from D.C. Someone will be tailing you at every moment until you get to the hotel. We’ve had people in the room already this morning, posing as housekeeping, pl
anting listening devices. I hope our preparations meet with your approval,” he added sarcastically.
“Oh, there is one more thing,” Ethan said, his arm tight around Dana’s waist. “On one of the tapes I saw Conway reading books about Paris. If she has a passport . . .”
Abe gave Ethan an impressed nod. “We’ll check it out. Now, Dana, let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty
Chicago, Thursday, August 5, 10:30 A.M.
She’d seen a lot of human suffering in her career, Mia thought. But very little matched the pain on Dana Dupinsky’s face when Julia’s assistant uncovered Beverly’s face. But Dana never faltered. She just stood there at the viewing window and nodded, Buchanan’s hands on her shoulders. It wasn’t until the assistant had pulled the sheet back up that Mia saw the crack in Dana’s composure. Mia had taken a step forward when Buchanan turned Dana around and held her tight as the dam finally broke, rocking her as she sobbed.
“She’ll be all right,” Abe murmured beside her. “She’s strong.”
Mia swallowed at the sound of Dana’s weeping, muffled by Buchanan’s shoulder. “Nobody’s that strong, Abe.”
Abe said nothing for a moment, then quietly asked, “How long have you known, Mia?”
Mia turned and looked up at him with a blank stare. “What, about Dana taking pictures for passports? Awhile. She even took mine.”
He tilted his head closer. “You know what I mean.”
He would have been intimidating if she hadn’t known the kind of man he really was. “Abe, let it go. Please.”
He narrowed his eyes. Then rolled them. “Fine. You owe me one, Mitchell.”
Mia turned back to Dana, still weeping in Buchanan’s arms. The sight made her own eyes sting. In all the years they’d known each other, Mia had never seen Dana cry. Not like this. “Fine.” Mia straightened her spine when the head ME emerged from the morgue.
“Is your friend going to be all right?” Julia asked.
Mia jerked a nod. “Yeah. Well?”
Julia shrugged. “Your gal is nothing if not consistent. Looks like the same model as all the others, nine mil with a silencer. Did this woman have any family?”
“Just Dana. Can you hold the body for a little while, Julia? Just until all this is over? Dana will want to make the arrangements.”
“I’ll try, but I’m nearly at capacity.” She frowned. “You guys got to stop this.”
“Thank you, Julia,” Abe said dryly. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
Julia winced. “You know what I mean.”
Abe squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, I do. You’ve been busy.”
“I haven’t been home for more than ten hours in the past two days.”
“But Jack’s holding the fort at home, right?” Mia asked, watching Buchanan pull a handkerchief from his pocket and tenderly dab at Dana’s eyes. Found herself unable to turn away when Buchanan tilted Dana’s head up and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Perhaps something good might come out of all this.
Julia smiled. “Jack and I . . . we’re good.” Her smile faded. “I had a reporter call. I told him no comment. But it’s only a matter of time before this leaks out. This is an abnormal level of GSWs, even for us.”
Abe sighed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Buchanan leaned down to murmur something in Dana’s ear and she stiffened. Then turned her head to meet Mia’s eyes and gave a shaky nod.
“She’s all right now,” Mia said. ”Let’s go. We need to get the Vaughns to the airport.”
Abe lifted a dark brow. “And while we’re there let’s find out if ‘Carla Fenton’ purchased any tickets for Paris.”
Chicago, Thursday, August 5, 10:15 A.M.
“What now?” Clay asked from behind the wheel. Dana and Ethan sat in the back, her hand gripped hard in his. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Crying that hard had given her one hell of a headache and had solved nothing. Beverly was dead. Dr. Lee was dead. Sandy was dead. Evie might be dead this very moment.
“Stop thinking,” Ethan said quietly. She opened her eyes to find his steady green gaze fixed on her face. To Clay he replied, “I need something to eat.” Then he smiled, a mere baring of teeth. “Then we’re going to that Internet café we tracked that e-mail to last night.”
There was a grim resolution about him that felt oddly comforting. “What are you going to do?” Dana asked him.
“Something Mitchell said in there got me thinking. That Stan had given Sue twenty-five thousand dollars and that she could’ve bought any ID she’d wanted.”
“She didn’t have to,” Dana murmured. “I practically gave it to her.”
Ethan took her chin firmly. “From here on out I do not want to hear any more I should haves or should not haves. You did not know. If you had, you never would have taken her in. You would have called the police to come and take Alec away. Am I understood?”
His grim resolution surrounded her, lifted her straighter. “Yes.” Her lips quirked. “Sir.”
He smiled back, brushed his thumb over her lips. “That’s better. I’m tired of being Sue Conway’s victim. The first thing we’re going to do is take away her financial freedom.”
“That money’s long gone by now, Ethan,” Clay protested. “It would take us days to get into her offshore accounts.”
“Not days.” Ethan eyed the fast food places that lined the road. “After lunch, I’m going to go find some cookies for dessert.”
Dana frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Ethan sat back, a satisfied smile on his face. “Computer geek-speak. Every time you visit a Website, you leave behind information. It’s called a cookie.”
“I always wondered what that was,” Dana murmured. “I set my computer to accept none because I was paranoid.”
“I’m counting on the Internet café not being paranoid. Those rental computers are like well-used hookers. You have no idea where they’ve been or how many people have been on them. In last night’s e-mail she said we’d done well with the practice deposit. That means she checked her account, and she might have done it online.”
Dana processed the information, pushing the throbbing pain aside. “So when Sue typed in her offshore account numbers, they were saved on the computer in a cookie.”
“But you’d still need her password,” Clay objected, then shook his head. “Never mind.”
Ethan shot him a patronizing look. “Child’s play. If”—he glanced back at Dana—“I have some information about her background. Most people use passwords that have personal meaning although you should use random numbers. If you can get me Sue’s background—more than Randi was able to tell us—I should be able to break into her account.”
Dana watched as Clay pulled into a burger place, feeling a grim determination of her own. “Get me a single with extra pickles. And a large order of fries.”
Ethan pulled her close in a hard hug. “Good girl.”
Dana leaned into the hug, realizing how much she’d come to depend on his strength in so short a time. When this was over and he went home . . . Brusquely, she pulled away. “Are we going to separate or stay together?”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “If you think you’re getting out of my sight, you’re crazy.”
He’d actually flinched when she’d pulled away. “I meant do you want to go to the computer place while Clay drives me to Social Services. I’m not stupid, Ethan. I promised I wouldn’t go anywhere alone and I won’t.”
“Why don’t we all stay together?” Clay inserted smoothly. “If Conway is keeping tabs on Dana, I can sit outside and watch for her while the two of you check things out at the computer place.”
“Then we’ll go down to Sandy’s office,” Dana added. “Sue hated social workers so much, she’s got to have a file. If it’s in Chicago, someone in Sandy’s office will have it.”
“You may want to let the detectives ask those questions,” Clay said softly.
Dana shook her
head. “If Sue’s records are sealed, they won’t be able to hand those records over to Mia without a court order. And after what happened to Sandy yesterday, somebody will be mad enough to talk to me without one.”
Ethan looked troubled. “Clay, I’m just dragging you deeper. We can go ourselves.”
“Shut up, Ethan,” Clay said mildly, pulling up to the drive-thru. “I’m not searching for cookies on an empty stomach.”
Chicago, Thursday, August 5, 12:10 P.M.
“It’s not perfect, but it’ll do just fine,” Sue murmured as she picked her way across the littered basement floor of the abandoned apartment house. It was identical to the basement two buildings down, which was the one she’d really wanted. Unfortunately people lived in the apartments in the building two buildings down. But nobody had lived here for a very long time. The lock on the door was broken and anyone could come and go as they pleased. She kicked an empty beer can, one of many. Under some trash she saw used condoms. A few needles. This was good. It meant the neighbors were used to wild parties down here. Nobody would notice a little loud music. Maybe a scream or two.
She and Donnie and the boys—hell, they’d blend right in.
She moved some cardboard boxes, sending a pack of mice scurrying across the floor. She’d been pleasantly surprised that the light worked. This was good, too.
She kept moving until she reached the back wall, behind the storage cages. And frowned when the very bad memories came rolling back. It was here where she’d hid. She’d been out, doing a job, only to come back to cops crawling everywhere, raiding Randi’s place, two buildings down. She’d run to Donnie’s, but they were there, too. Donnie was being hauled away in cuffs. The cops took everything from Donnie’s, all their merchandise. So she’d run. Back to Miranda’s place, two buildings down. Where she’d stashed some emergency cash in a hole in the wall behind the stove. She’d held out for nearly two days with no food or water, until she thought the cops had gone away. She’d emerged, crept up to the apartment, only to find the money gone. And a cop waiting. Where’s your baby? It was all about the damn kid. Or Miranda. Where’s Miranda? Did you kill her, too? She could still hear it in her mind.