by Jenna Ryan
Vachon turned his head and saw them entering the tavern. Manny was guiding his companion to a corner booth across the crowded room. There was no mistaking the woman. Wild mass of red-brown curls, big brown eyes, guarded and wary, sweet, childlike features and a smile on her face that said it all.
“Don’t stare, Vachon.” Nikita jiggled his forearm. “They’ll see us.”
“They’re not exactly skulking, Niki.” But he looked away. “Manny and Deana,” he repeated. Were his eyes playing magician’s tricks on him? “That’s why he’s out for Martin’s—No, it can’t be.”
But it was, and any fool would have seen that if he’d been in the restaurant right then. Manny was utterly and completely besotted with Deana Sorensen.
Which opened up any number of new and not at all pleasant possibilities.
“IT’S NONE of your business,” Deana stated to Nikita the next day. “I asked you to come and help me fetch the last of the medical supplies from the cellar, not to give me the third degree. Honest to God, Niki, you’re as bad as Daddy.”
“I’m not,” Nikita replied, “and you know it.”
“Well, he’d prefer Manny to Martin, but you’re right. I hate to think how he’d react to his little girl getting snaggled in an extramarital affair.”
“He’d probably strangle—uh.” Nikita caught herself and substituted hastily. “Are you sure about this, Dee? Manny may look more like Prince Charming than Martin, but he’s so disagreeable.”
Deana shoved the cellar door open and punched on the overhead light. “He’s very nice to me. Sweet and thoughtful.”
Verity had said the same thing about Martin. Nikita took a resigned breath and preceded her friend down the narrow staircase.
Deana didn’t speak again until they were making their way through the underground maze of wood and brick corridors. “He’s a good cop, Niki. He’s upstairs with Vachon right now, questioning the staff about Tom. Don’t you understand? He loves me for me. Martin never did, not really. He just thought he should have a wife, and I was there, available. Persuadable.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“More than you can imagine. I let him use me for years before I woke up. Now, I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t stand the idea of watching Daddy gloat and hearing him say I told you so—so I put up with Martin’s affairs and with his lies. It bothers me that he thinks I believe him, that he could actually think I’m that gullible, but I’m coping. I know everything will be fine in time. I’ll show my detractors what I’m made of—well, you know the drill.”
She did, Nikita reflected, but knowing didn’t make it any easier to accept that her brother’s wife could care about a cold fish like Manny Beldon. Either she didn’t know Deana as well as she thought or she’d missed something in Manny’s personality. Vachon seemed to like him. She’d have to try to get past the surly bouts of anger and grim facade, maybe be a little less jaded in her view of the man. Still, Nikita reflected, her loyalty really should be to Martin.
“Dee.” She tried again.
“No more,” her friend said, cutting her off.
“I was thinking about the hospital, about…” She gnawed on her lip. “Do you think it should be closed?”
Deana frowned. “Of course not Yes, I know,” she said before Nikita could interrupt “We’ve had three murders here in seven days, but it’s one person. The police will find her—or him. Whatever. This isn’t the outer limits. I’m the temporary director here. The master dictates the dance.”
“Even if she doesn’t know what the dance is?” Nikita challenged.
“The police will solve the case, Niki,” Deana repeated. “The murderer’s bound to slip up eventually.”
After how many more deaths, though? Nikita wondered.
An uninviting murkiness pressed in on them as they walked. “It’s like a tomb down here,” Deana noted with a shiver.
A creak of something—wheels perhaps, or a door—reached Nikita’s ears before she could respond. Setting a hand on Deana’s arm, she halted her friend.
“What?” Deana demanded after a protracted silence.
“I heard a noise.”
“All I can hear is my heart thumping away like a bass drum.” Clearing her throat, she called, “Sammy? Are you here?”
Nikita scanned the gloomy corridor. Twin trails of dust marked the black floor tiles. “That’s funny,” she said, and moved forward to examine them. “They look like wheel treads.”
Deana rubbed anxious palms together. “They probably are. Sammy was moving stuff, remember?”
“The trails end at a wall, Dee. Vachon and I found similar tracks upstairs. They stopped at a hidden door.”
“Fine. Sammy used a hidden passageway to move the stores. Does it matter? Let’s get what we came for and blow this creepy place.”
Reluctantly, Nikita abandoned her search for a spring release. “Maybe the tracks were made going from the wall to the storeroom,” she mused. “They look fresh.”
Deana cast her an irritated glance. “How can you tell?”
“I can’t I said they look fresh. They might be a day or more old. The dust is loose, though. As soon as we walk through it, it’ll smudge. And despite our dislike of cellars, people come and go from the labs all day. Surely somebody would have disturbed the marks by now. What time is it?”
“Two-thirty.” Deana tugged on her arm. “Forget the tracks, Niki. We have rounds to complete upstairs.” Her head moved. “What was that?”
“My knees?” Nikita suggested with a thin attempt at humor.
“It was a creak. Damn you, Niki, now you’ve got me inventing ghosts.” Deana spread her fingers. “Let’s just get what we came for and get out of here, okay? I’ll hire a new orderly tomorrow, and we can forget this horrible grotto exists.”
They should have taken the elevator, Nikita decided, dusting off her coral pants. It opened closer to the old storeroom than the rear staircase did.
Their low-heeled shoes made sharp clicking sounds on the tiles. Like the rattle of bones, Nikita reflected grimly. Then she shook herself. “We’ve got to stop being so maudlin about this place,” she said to Deana. “It isn’t helping.”
“Speak for yourself.” Deana peered down a poorly lit corridor. “I’m better when I’m on edge. Each of my body parts takes on a life of its own.”
“You mean you can run fast,” Nikita clarified. “That was Dr. Holbaum’s theory in college, wasn’t it? I think—”
What she thought, however, vanished when, from the darkness—from the side corridor, to be precise—a beefy arm snaked out to wrap itself around her throat. A second hand emerged to shove Deana roughly onto her backside. When she tried to scramble up, a large foot caught her in the stomach and kicked with far greater force.
Nikita caught only a glimpse of a florid face, but it was enough. “Sammy, you bas—” She choked as the arm around her throat gave a vicious upward jerk.
Her head rolling against the wall, Deana moaned thickly, “Quick trip to the…Oh, damn…Niki?”
Sammy took a precious moment to insure that she was still down. Nikita felt a fractional release of pressure on her windpipe and reacted to it instantly. After the assault upstairs, Vachon had told her precisely what to do. She spiked the big man’s foot with her heel, thrust both elbows into his stomach, then twisted when he yelped and raked her fingernails hard along his cheeks.
“Dee!” She broke free and ran to her friend’s side. “Dee, wake up!”
Sammy’s shrieks would have woken the dead. Unfortunately, there was little chance of anyone except perhaps Donald hearing him.
Nikita pulled desperately on Deana’s arm. “Get up,” she ordered.
Deana responded too slowly. Sammy was recovering. Bleeding from her fingernails and more red-faced than a cartoon bull, he kept his head lowered and raised enraged eyes to her. “You’re gonna pay for that one, pretty lady.”
With a succinct curse, Nikita fled. As she expected, he blundered
after her, a wild boar on a rampage.
Where could she go? She needed a telephone—or a bell.
Skidding to a halt, she searched the brick walls for a fire alarm. She spied one halfway down the passageway and ran for it.
Sammy barreled after her, shouting obscenities and threatening to hurt Deana if she did anything rash.
Nikita ignored the threats and yanked the bar down.
The alarm sounded immediately, jangling her nerves and causing Sammy to lunge at her. It surprised her that the kick she leveled at his groin should reach him, but it did, and clearly with more force than Sammy had anticipated.
Howling in pain, he dropped to the floor and curled into an agonized ball.
Nikita waited, her spine plastered to the wall. Panting to catch her breath, she watched Sammy’s face closely. “Vachon,” she whispered between breaths, then more softly, “Deana.”
But Deana was safer than she was at this moment, and Vachon had a gun and handcuffs. Nikita ran for the nearest telephone.
There was one in the old medical supply room. She raced inside, noting Sammy’s dolly. It was stacked with crates topped with a bulging green canvas backpack.
Even as her frantic fingers punched out Vachon’s cell phone number, there was no doubt in Nikita’s mind what she would find in that pack. Bottles, vials, packets of pills. God knew how many drugs Sammy might have pilfered in the two years he’d been on staff.
“Pick up, Vachon,” she begged when the ringing continued. “Please answer”
“What?”
She disregarded the blunt greeting. “Vachon, it’s Niki. I’m down in the base—”
“Yaah!”
A horrible cry accompanied Sammy’s lurching movement as he burst through the door, seized the phone cord and ripped it from the wall.
“No one,” he breathed, his round face streaked with blood and taut with tension, “does what you did to me and gets away with it. No one!”
Nikita backed away as he advanced. “You’ve been stealing drugs, haven’t you, Sammy? Was Tom in on it with you?”
For an answer, Sammy toppled one of the crates. Nikita winced at the sound of shattering glass.
“I hate uppity women,” he snarled. His beady eyes locked on hers. “Yes, Tom and I were partners. But I was the brains. Who else in this loony bin would have seized such a golden opportunity except me? You’re all so good, so saintly. So sickening. ‘Poor Laverne,’ you cluck like sympathetic hens. But not one of you liked her. Maybe you cared about Patti Warneckie, but face it, Doc, a whore’s a whore whether she’s inside a nuthouse or out” Thready beams of light glinted off his teeth as he leered at her. His breath came in heavy spurts. “You’re a whore, too, aren’t you, Niki? You wouldn’t soil your pretty hands with me, but you’d hop into the sack with that longhaired cop in a minute.”
There was nowhere left to go. Nikita’s back bumped the wall. A split second later, Sammy’s ham hand whipped out to cup her under the chin and snatch her forward.
Nikita fought him with all her strength and no small amount of panic. He thought women were whores. He’d specifically mentioned Laverne and Patti. He’d been partners with Tom stealing drugs. There had to be a connection.
Prepared for her kick this time, Sammy spun her around, wrenched her right arm behind her back and used his left to make a choke hold on the tender part of her throat. “Spike me again, Doc,” he snarled, “and I’ll rip your arm off. Then, I swear, I’ll throttle you.” He shook her hard. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You had to show up in the wrong place at the wrong time and bring that cop with you.” He gave her arm a painful twist “You almost blew my plan to hell. Well, your interfering days are over, sister. We’re gonna take a walk in the woods, you and me, to the cottage near the pond.”
The rest of his threat was blotted out by the painful throb of blood in her ears. His grip on her throat was too tight. She could hardly breathe.
Black patches bobbed before her eyes. Dizziness swept through her, causing her knees to wobble.
Sammy gave her arm a cruel jerk to rouse her. “Snap out of it,” he barked.
The words speared through her right ear to her brain.
Right, left. Something in that, as well. He’d hit her, that was it. Sammy was left-handed, and a left-handed person had struck her in the cellar on Saturday afternoon.
“Let’s go,” Sammy ordered, thrusting her toward the door. “Before your white knight shows up and pulls his gun on me again.” He gave a sarcastic laugh. “Oh, yeah, he’s a tough one, that Vachon. Man, I could bench press him any day of the week.”
“Sammy.” Nikita pried ineffectively at the hand on her throat.
“Shut up,” he retorted. Blood mingled with sweat on his face. His breath smelled sour, like stale whiskey and coffee. “Move, and don’t make a sound.”
Panicked thoughts chased each other through Nikita’s mind. What had she said to Vachon? Where was Deana? Would she revive enough to run for help? She’d seen Sammy, and she was strong. But she might be bleeding badly.
Sammy’s snarling shove caused Nikita to stumble. She tried to drag her feet, but his response was to tighten his grip on her throat “No tricks,” he growled thickly in her ear. “We’ll use one of the passages.”
“No.” Nikita’s reaction was cut off by Sammy’s sweaty fingers.
The corridor went on forever. Nikita had no idea where they were. They hadn’t passed Deana.
Sammy used his toe to release the wall panels. Nikita struggled despite his choke hold. Black patches swam with alarming frequency before her eyes. She’d lose consciousness eventually. Then what would he do with her?
Behind her, Sammy’s beefy body gave an unexpected jerk. He pulled his arm back, increasing the pressure on her throat so severely that she thought her head would explode.
Then, suddenly, inexplicably, she was free. She heard Sammy’s yelp of pain, but couldn’t focus to see what had caused it. Bracing herself with a hand pressed to the wall, she struggled to breathe. Because the second she could breathe, she needed to run, as fast and as far away from Sammy Slide as possible.
Through a haze and a welter of shifting shadows she sensed movement. Sammy grunted, then let out a bellow that filled her head and sent her stumbling blindly sideways.
A hand gripped her arm. “Get out of here, Nikita,” Vachon said in her ear.
She turned, relief and shock flooding her giddy brain. “Vachon! But how—”
“Not now.” He gave her a firm push, then seemed to vanish into the darkness.
Nikita blinked, uncertain. Had she imagined him?
“Niki?” It was Deana’s tension-filled voice that whispered to her, Deana’s cold fingers that tugged and twisted on her arm.
In front of them, Sammy let out an animal growl. Nikita’s vision had cleared sufficiently for her to see the grappling movements of the two men.
“Watch out!” she cried in alarm as Sammy sprang at Vachon from behind.
Vachon reacted like a cat, sidestepping the attack and catching Sammy’s collar. Both women flinched as the orderly’s skull cracked against the wall.
It astonished Nikita that he didn’t go down. Sputtering and furious, he swung, apelike, and took aim at Vachon’s throat.
“He’s got a head like a battering ram,” Deana whispered fearfully. “Come on, Niki. We’ll get help.”
But Nikita had no intention of leaving Vachon to Sammy Slide’s dubious mercy.
She ran to the supply room and tore open the green knapsack, Bottles, vials, boxes and packets scattered on the floor. On her hands and knees, she searched through the mess until she located what she wanted. She tore into one of the longer packets, pulled out a syringe and jabbed it into a small bottle, then raced into the corridor.
She saw Vachon elude two right hooks then catch Sammy with a fist in the stomach. Sammy roared but didn’t go down.
“Why doesn’t Vachon use his gun?” Deana demanded shakily when Niki
ta returned.
“Some honor-among-males thing probably.” Nikita checked the syringe for air bubbles. “Most people would be flat on their faces by now, but Sammy’s built like a hulking ox.”
She forced her hands not to tremble as she inched forward. Deana said harshly, “Niki, don’t.” The words barely registered. The men were in a scrum, pushing and shoving like mismatched wrestlers. Extremely mismatched, Nikita thought, grimacing as Vachon’s spine hit a timbered wall beam.
He got Sammy, though, used his head to butt the larger man’s chest and send him staggering backward.
Nikita’s body reacted before her brain, catapulting her forward so swiftly that Sammy almost crashed into her. Using both hands, she jammed the syringe into the fleshy part of his upper arm.
His howl of pain ricocheted off the walls and ceiling. He wheeled and would have wrapped his fingers around her throat had it not been for Nikita’s quick sideways jump and Vachon’s even quicker kick to Sammy’s kidneys. The orderly staggered through the hidden door and sprawled half in, half out of the passageway.
Her breathing ragged, Nikita peered over Vachon’s shoulder at the felled grant. Her fingers curled about his right arm. “Are you all right?” she asked hoarsely.
He slid his hand to her nape and drew her head onto his shoulder. “I’ll live.”
Like the curious mop top she resembled, Deana went on tiptoe behind them, seeking a better view. “We should call you Jack, Vachon. Giant killer, not Ripper,” she hastened to add. A tremulous breath escaped her. “God, what a horrible thirty minutes. Are you sure he didn’t hurt you, Niki?”
“Not me.” Nikita glanced at Vachon’s cryptic features. “But he admitted that he and Tom Pratt have been stealing drugs from the supply area. I’d be willing to bet that one or both of them were involved in the death of Laverne Fox and Patti Warneckie.”
Chapter Eighteen
Inside the stark interrogation room, Vachon rubbed tired hands over his face and tried again. “You have no alibi, Slide, for any of the murders. You attacked Nikita Sorensen on several occasions. You had a stranglehold on her and were attempting to shove her into a hidden passageway when I discovered you today. You injured Deana, stole drugs from the hospital supply room and on top of that, we found an unregistered revolver in your locker. It’s only a matter of time before we prove that you murdered Patti, Laverne and undoubtedly your partner, Tom. Why don’t you make it easier on all of us and just admit to your crimes?”