“Seems likely.”
Karl’s perpetually stern expression became even more menacing. “Mia’s whereabouts are pretty well accounted for since Nana was last seen. She was either here or with Dr. Hansen the whole time.”
“You’re assuming Mia is responsible.” He cracked his gum. “In police work, assumptions can be lethal.”
“If the police had done their job, and found Todd, this conversation—and my assumptions—wouldn’t be happening.”
Chuck leaned back in his creaky chair. He didn’t know where this case was going, or how it was connected to Mia’s son, but his cop instincts were buzzing a warning that something wasn’t right. “I heard you have power of attorney for Mia. You’re gonna be like her legal guardian, make the decisions for her while she’s supposedly not capable of making them herself.”
Karl raised one eyebrow. “Supposedly? My nephew’s wife has tried to kill herself three times, and has most likely murdered her own son.”
“She’s alleged to have tried to kill herself three times and murdered her son.”
“Semantics, Deputy Campbell. Semantics.”
“So this power-of-attorney thing. It puts you in charge of her estate, right? Gives you access to a lot of money.”
Karl’s frown morphed into a menacing scowl. “What are you implying?”
Chuck shrugged innocently. “People kill each other all the time for the change in each other’s pockets. Mia is worth several million. Several tens of millions, in fact, if I got my decimal places and commas right.”
Karl Serrat lurched angrily to his feet. “I came here to file a missing person’s report on my sister, not to be accused and interrogated.”
Chuck met his furious stare steadily, trying to read the truth behind the furor. Honestly, he was having a hard time working up any sympathy for the man who’d fired his best friend in a hallway, in front of Chuck, Mia and a handful of deputies and hospital staff. In a small town like Eternal, gossip traveled fast. He’d bet Ty hadn’t even been out the front door before phones all over town had been ringing with the news.
But none of that was an excuse for unprofessional behavior, nor did it alleviate his obligation to investigate Nana Serrat’s disappearance to the fullest.
Chuck picked up the missing person’s report. “I’ll see that this is passed on to the detectives.”
Karl nodded curtly, turned on his heel and marched away. When he was gone, Chuck tagged the report urgent, added a yellow sticky note to the front asking the detective assigned to the case to call him, and sent it to dispatch for processing.
Back at his desk he pondered the mess his friend had gotten himself into. Chuck never would have thought Ty was the type to throw away everything he cared about for a woman—and a patient at that. Just went to show that no man was immune from the occasional propensity to think with his—with parts of his anatomy other than his brain.
Still, must be a hell of a woman to pull a standup guy like Ty so far over the edge so fast.
His curiosity piqued, he went to the evidence room and signed out the box of odds and ends belonging to Mia seized when the search warrant was executed on her house just before she’d been arrested. He’d seen something then he meant to follow up on and hadn’t had time yet—
There it was, a fat yellow book with well-worn pages and a pretty waterfront landscape on the cover. Her journal.
He sat down and squirmed once before beginning to read. It wasn’t comfortable, even for a cop, to pry into another person’s most private possession—her diary. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the intimate details of Mia’s life, especially given her state of mind over the last few years. But he figured he owed it to Ty, and to the kid, Todd, wherever he was, to turn over every stone in this investigation. Or in this case to turn every page.
He started on page one—when she’d still been in the hospital in California. The journal was an assignment from her doctors, he learned, to be her own record of how she felt day-to-day and a way to see her progress over the coming weeks and months.
The first entries were dark, filled with grief over the death of her husband, shame over what she’d done to herself, guilt for abandoning Todd. But over time, Chuck began to see glimpses of what he guessed Ty had seen. It was like her mental muscles were healing. He began to feel the strength in her words, the resilience. Months later, there were moments of pain, but there were also days and weeks of intense joy. A true gratefulness at being alive, having her son at her side. Her son. Most of the entries over the last two months dealt with Todd. Her pride in him. A little worry about him. Her love for him.
Didn’t sound like a mother who would hurt her son, but then, he was no psychiatrist.
He reached an entry dated a month ago, and pulled the now-tasteless gum out of his mouth.
Now that was interesting. He’d almost missed it. It was a small addition at the bottom of a page, but it’s magnitude was huge.
Standing, he settled his flat-brimmed hat on his head and checked his watch before he started out toward his patrol car. It was getting late, but that was too bad. He had a few more questions for the Serrat family.
Mia sat cross-legged on the floor of her unfurnished room. No cute little quarters with a rocking chair for her this time. No, this time she was in the max security. All she had was a thin little sleeping pad on the floor and a camera in the corner watching her every move.
She peered at the three little pills in her white paper cup, then up at the nurse who had handed them to her.
White. White shoes, white hose, white dress. Why did they have to wear all white? It wasn’t very practical really. Too hard to keep clean. They must go through gallons of bleach. Probably just lined everyone up each night after their shifts and hosed them down with it from a pumper truck.
She laughed at the image and realized it wasn’t funny. It was the drugs.
She shook her head trying to clear her mind. The drugs they’d given her at the police station still hadn’t worn off, and here they were with more.
“If you don’t take them, we’ll have to give the medication by injection, and that’s no fun.”
No, she’d been down that route before. It wasn’t fun at all.
Given no choice, she downed the pills, then raised her chin, opened her mouth wide and lifted her tongue for the nurse to see that she’d swallowed them without waiting to be asked. She knew the drill.
The nurse left, but to Mia’s surprise, her exit wasn’t followed by the loud click of the lock. Mia curled up on her side on the little mattress and let her thoughts swim in the pharmaceutical cocktail she’d been given.
She saw colors, so pretty, shifting like the ever-changing patterns inside a kaleidoscope. Eventually she saw pictures in the patterns. She saw Sam and she saw Todd, and she cried over them both.
Todd’s mouth began to move, grinning wide and red like a circus clown’s painted lips. He reached out to her, called her to sled down the hill with him one more time. He begged, he pleaded, and she could deny him nothing when he was smiling, happy. Her heart bloomed to see him so happy.
But as they zoomed down the slope, the painted lips began to drip. The red coloring ran down his chin like blood. A pear-shaped teardrop the size of a nickel appeared beneath one of his eyes, also painted in red, and scrolled down his cheek leaving a trail of crimson. Todd began to cry for real, and then to scream. He wouldn’t stop screaming. She begged him to stop. She tried to hold him tight, but he seemed to disappear in her arms and all she was left holding was his coat.
His bloody coat.
Mia awoke with a start. The drugs muddling her mind made her slow to comprehend that she was not outside. She was in the hospital. There was no sledding hill. No coat.
There was also no Todd.
Moaning, she curled herself into the smallest ball she could and rocked herself, her arms locked around her legs.
What had she done? What had she done?
Nothing. She would never hurt her son.<
br />
Would she?
She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t think. Her mind jumped from the school pageant, with Todd yelling that he hated her, to the sledding hill, to Ty, holding her, loving her, telling her everything would be all right.
He’d lied. Everything was not going to be all right.
Chapter 17
Ty sat on his couch in his darkened living room, his feet on the coffee table next to a bottle of beer that had gone warm hours ago, open but untouched. It hadn’t been dark when he’d sat down. Sunshine had streamed through the windows. He realized that must have been hours ago—had he really been sitting here that long?
He was too tired to get up and turn the lights on. Too depressed to get up and go to bed.
He picked another textbook up off the floor and chucked it into the fireplace. Tomorrow he’d actually build a fire. Burn them all.
Christ, he was getting morose.
He forced himself to get up before he went comatose. Walked to the kitchen and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and twisted off the cap.
A few moments later it sat abandoned, also untouched, next to the beer.
He’d screwed up big-time. Made a mistake—a misdiagnosis—that might have cost a little boy his life. Could have cost Mia her life, too, if Nana had been just a few minutes later getting home and finding her locked in the garage.
He’d let his personal feelings cloud his judgment. He’d wanted Mia to be well, so he’d seen her as well.
It didn’t matter that the Kaiser had fired him; he didn’t deserve to be a doctor.
The thing was…he still saw her as well. Even as he’d accused her, as he’d berated her and begged her to tell him where Todd was, he’d seen the strength in her eyes. The conviction.
The eyes could be deceiving.
Maybe he was grasping at straws because he just didn’t want her to be guilty, but his mind wouldn’t stop playing scenarios. Who would want to hurt her? Who would want Todd out of the way? It all came back to one thing every time: money.
Chuck had told him it looked like Karl would be granted power of attorney. That made him the most likely suspect. Could he have orchestrated all this? The attempts on Mia’s life and Todd’s disappearance?
It was possible, if not probable. Hell, not even remotely plausible. A one-in-a-million chance.
But it was possible.
And now Mia was in the Kaiser’s hospital, all alone. No one on her side. No one to believe her. Believe in her.
Ty picked up his coat, cell phone and keys on his way to the door. He stopped at the threshold and dialed Chuck, one last sanity check. Hell, call it an intervention. If anyone could make him see the insanity of going back into the lion’s den, Chuck could, but the call rolled to voice mail.
He stepped into the hall and latched the deadbolt on the door behind him.
One in a million was one too many for his peace of mind. If he was honest with himself, he’d admit he also just wanted to see her again. Even if it was on a four-by-four-inch black-and-white security screen.
Despite his attempts at stealth, the floor nurse caught him skulking down the second-floor hallway toward his office.
“What are you doing here?” Renee asked. “I heard you were…you know.” She shrugged sympathetically.
“Yeah, I know.” So did the rest of the hospital staff, obviously. The rumor mill must have been in high gear today.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
“I flip a mean burger.”
“Flipping burgers isn’t going to get you too far in paying back your student loans.”
He really didn’t want to think about that just yet. “I’ll get by. I always do.”
She shifted uncomfortably, then went with an easier topic. “What are you doing here?”
“Just came to pick up some things from my office.” The lie flowed off his tongue too easily. “Personal stuff.”
She looked at her watch. “At this time of night?”
“Thought I’d get it done when he wasn’t likely to be around.” No need to explain who he was.
“I don’t think he’s going to be happy about this, whether he’s here or not.” She looked uncertain. “How did you get in?”
“They haven’t shut off my key-card access yet.” He hoped that meant they hadn’t revoked his computer IDs, either. “What’s the harm? I don’t want some stranger pawing through my stuff.” He gave her his best charming grin. “What’s the matter? Don’t trust me?”
She gave in. “All right. Try to make it quick though, huh, before anyone else sees you.”
“Will do.”
He whistled lightly as he shuffled into his office trying to appear as if he hadn’t a care in the world, then closed his door and slumped into his chair.
Sure enough, his computer codes were still good. He quickly hacked into the security network and brought up the Web cam shots. All the rooms in max security had cameras in the light fixtures. Patients on suicide watch were kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance from the nurses’ station.
He found the video stream coming from her room, saw her huddled in sleep on her pad. Unbidden, his finger lifted to touch the image of her face. The screen was cold, lifeless, so unlike her, and yet it was a long, long time before he could make himself pull his hand away.
Mia came awake slowly this time, gradually becoming aware that she wasn’t alone. “Todd?”
She’d been dreaming about her son again. Thankfully this time there had been no blood.
“Todd?” she called again, more desperately.
“No, Mia, it’s Citria.”
Finally she pried her eyes open far enough to make out her sister-in-law’s blurry features. Citria’s head floated above her, seemingly disconnected from her body.
It was the drugs, had to be. She still couldn’t see straight.
Mia’s head rolled forward and back on her shoulders. Belatedly, she realized she’d drifted off again and Citria was shaking her.
“Mia, you’ve got to wake up. I’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Out?” Mia managed a little bit more focus. “Why are you wearing that uniform?”
“I had to dress like a nurse to sneak in here. Luckily I know where Uncle Karl keeps his keys.”
“I don’t understand.” Citria slung Mia’s arm over her shoulder and hefted her up. Mia felt as if all of her muscles had been replaced by Jell-O. She tried to walk at Citria’s urging, but couldn’t take a step without help. “Where are we going?”
“Away from here.” Citria half dragged, half carried her toward the door. “You’re in danger here, Mia. I’m taking you somewhere safe.”
“Danger.” Mia frantically tried to make sense of what she was hearing. She wanted to leave, wanted it more than anything in the world except to have Todd back, although having Ty believe her rated up there pretty high, too, but there was a reason she couldn’t go. What was it? Oh. “Can’t leave. Under arrest.”
She resisted Citria’s attempts to drag her forward.
“Come on, Mia, we have to go.”
“Can’t.”
“Mia, Todd is waiting for you.”
That blew some of the cobwebs out of Mia’s brain. “Todd?”
“I found him, Mia. It was Nana. She had him all along.”
“Nana? Why?”
“She knew you were going to take him away from her, move back to California. She didn’t want to lose him, and she didn’t want you to have him. She always blamed you for Sam’s death, you know.”
“Blamed…me?”
“He moved to California because that’s where you lived. If he’d stayed here, he would never have been in that accident. But we don’t have time to talk about this now. I have to get you out of here. It’s not safe here. Uncle Karl is in on it, too. He just wants your money. I have to get you somewhere he can’t find you. I have to get you back to Todd.”
Mia nodded drunkenly, almost afraid to hope that it was true. That her so
n was safe, that she was going to be with him soon. “Todd…”
Digging deep, she found the strength in her legs and the will to stumble out of the little locked room with Citria.
The pain in Ty’s back roused him from a fitful sleep. Damn cheap chair. The antique swivel desk chair was hell on his posture. Of course, sleeping with his head laid on his folded arms over the desk wasn’t much good for his spine, either.
Oh well, he wouldn’t have to worry about the old chair anymore. He didn’t work here any longer.
Remembering why he was here, he lifted his head and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. The computer monitor slowly came into focus. Only, instead of seeing Mia’s room, all he saw was a gray screen. He turned up the brightness button on the monitor. Tapped a few commands on the keyboard.
Nothing.
A pit of dread spread in his belly. In the year he’d worked here, he’d never seen the security equipment fail like this. He had a bad feeling…
All vestiges of sleep were gone in a heady rush of adrenaline, his long strides ate the distance to Mia’s room in seconds. A quick look through the window confirmed his worst fear.
Mia was gone.
Inside, he reached up to the lens of the security camera, and dread turned to fear.
Oh God, she’d been telling the truth all along.
The night nurse, Renee, hurried into the room. “What are you doing here—”
“Mia’s gone, call the cops.” He was already on his way down the hall toward the side door. They had to have gone out the side. The other direction would have taken them directly by Renee’s desk.
“She escaped?”
“No,” he called back. “The lens on the security camera has been spray-painted. Someone took her.”
Ty wound through the hospital corridors, mentally ticking off the seconds in his head. Seconds Mia was in danger. Seconds he was losing trying to find her.
Finally he reached the side door. Exterior doors in this section were alarmed. A key was necessary to open them without setting off a racket designed to draw a lot of attention very quickly. Yet the halls were silent.
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