Danger in a Red Dress

by Christina Dodd

  “Caring for me. I know. But I’ve got about another hour to go before I can hit the drugs again.” The sharp lines around his mouth told too clearly how difficult that hour would be.

  She swallowed the pill. She climbed into bed, lay down, and pulled up the covers.

  “You don’t think I would poison you, then?” he insisted.

  “I don’t know what you’d get out of it if you did.” She yawned, and turned on her side to face him. He was more than merely intense. He was weird. “Besides, isn’t that the bottle the pharmacist sent over? Sure looks like it.”

  “It is.”

  “That’s not poison—that’s pain relief.”

  “Is that how you look at it?”

  She lifted her head off the pillow and stared at him. “Huh?”

  His expression twisted as if he were in anguish. As if he were in pain.

  Okay. She knew what to do. “Where are you from?”

  “Why?” He shot the question at her.

  “I thought we’d chat for a while, distract ourselves from how lousy we feel.” It was a tactic she’d used before on her patients many times.

  “Ah. Well.” He seemed to need to think about his answer. “I’m originally from South Texas.”

  She didn’t think he was lying, but he was not being any too detailed. “You do have the slightest bit of an accent. Is your family still there?”

  “I was in the foster system until I was about eleven. Then I got adopted. The parents were killed and I was alone again.” His recitation was dry.

  “I’m so sorry!” That explained the harsh cast to his face; the body that was both solid and whipcord thin. This man was a fighter. “But look at you! Look at this place! You grew up and made something of yourself.”

  “I suppose. How about you? Are you from Texas?”

  “No, I’m from the East Coast, and like you, I have no family.” She meant to stop there, but he shifted uncomfortably, and the nursing directive Distract the patient kept her babbling on. “My mother raised me alone. She didn’t tell me much about my father, just that he was in the service when he met my mom, and that once she was pregnant with me, he took off.”

  Gabriel had been composed as he told his story. Now his green eyes kindled with anger. “What an ass.”

  “Yeah. We lived in a small town and the other kids made fun of me.”

  “I can relate.”

  She was starting to think her earlier alarm was simply the middle-of-the-night jitters, because Gabriel was really nice. Of course, as the pill kicked in, she was growing more gregarious and the world looked like a rosier place. . . . “So I used to imagine he was an international spy who’d had to go on a mission and was trapped behind enemy lines. I used to sit in social studies and dream that he would walk through the door, and all the mean kids would be in awe, and Mom and he and I would be a family.”

  “Kids do have their imaginations.” Although he obviously didn’t know what to make of hers.

  “I grew up and graduated from high school, and he never showed up. My mother died about that time. . . .” Hannah’s voice faltered. She cleared her throat and wished she hadn’t started this story, because she was embarrassing herself with memories she’d thought long forgotten and sentiments Gabriel didn’t want to share. But the drugs must have kicked in, because words kept burbling out of her like water out of a fountain. “I went to nursing school across the state. As far as I knew, my father was in a different universe. Then one day, I was training at the hospital, I walked into a Navy veteran’s room to talk to him about his physical therapy, and his wife and daughter both saw what I couldn’t. The guy in the bed, recovering from shoulder surgery—he was my father. Then I recognized the face. And the ears.” She laughed with almost no wobble. “It was my face, and my ears.”

  “They couldn’t have been as pretty on him.” Gabriel leaned across and dimmed the bedside lamp.

  That made it easier to keep talking. “His wife kept saying things like How dare you?, like I’d come in on purpose, and she pushed me out the room, while the patient—my father—looked embarrassed. Annoyed.” Hannah clamped her mouth shut. There. She was resolved. Not another word.

  “Did you see him again?”

  So much for her resolution. “After his wife went home, I hung around, expecting he’d call for me. He didn’t. He was born and raised two towns over, his parents still lived there, and he’d gone back to retire. He didn’t want to know me. My existence was nothing more than an inconvenience and all the bright imaginings of my childhood died that day.” Oh, my God, that sounded so poetic and pathetic, and worse, tears were trickling onto the pillow. “Could I be any stupider? Crying over a father who was never there and never wanted to be there.”

  “You’re crying because it’s a tragedy.”

  “Not a new tragedy by any means.”

  “But it’s your tragedy.” He plucked a tissue out of the box on the nightstand and handed it to her.

  “Thanks.” She blotted at her face and closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him.

  Gabriel Prescott was an interesting guy. His voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. . . . If she only concentrated hard enough . . .

  And she slid right into sleep.

  Gabriel painfully came to his feet and looked at her. He supposed the story was true. That was the interesting thing about her—she didn’t lie or cheat. She didn’t have any faults except for a tendency to collect money unfairly. Oh, and to murder her patients.

  Leaning closer, he listened to her breathing. He put his hand on her shoulder and rolled her over. The pain meds had put her under. Tucking his crutch under his arm, he limped to the backpack she guarded so jealously. Taking it into the living room, he dumped it out on the coffee table.

  From the master bedroom doorway, Daniel asked, “Find anything interesting?”

  “Not yet.” Gabriel cast him a sharp glance. “Did you catch forty winks?”

  “My alarm just went off. You’re due for your meds in fifteen minutes.” Daniel walked over and examined the hodgepodge of stuff Hannah carried. “She should be a Boy Scout. She’s always prepared.”

  A second pair of thread-bare jeans, three pairs of panties, five pairs of socks, twine, duct tape, a small pair of scissors, a canteen.

  “What’s in it?” Daniel asked.

  Gabriel unscrewed the cap and sniffed cautiously. “Water.”

  Bandages, a tube of generic antibiotic ointment, a long, sharp knife—Gabriel handed that to Daniel. “Let’s keep that out of her hands.”

  One worn, limp tennis shoe.

  Gabriel held it and looked at Daniel, then stuck his hand inside. The cloth on the inner sole was pilled and worn, and when he pressed on it, he felt the outline of something underneath. He pulled out the liner—and found Hannah’s money card, the one she’d weaseled out of that idiot banker in Becket, Massachusetts. Gabriel weighed it in his hand. “What do you think?”

  “Let her keep it,” Daniel said immediately. “If she gets away—”

  “We can track her. Right.” Gabriel put it back, tucked the sole back in, and they finished the search.

  A small, cheap notebook and a pen were stuck in an outside pocket.

  Gabriel flipped through it. It was blank. All it held was a wedding photo, torn to remove the groom, leaving only a young Mrs. Manly, her face shining with hope and happiness.

  Gabriel closed his eyes in pain.

  “I’d say she was collecting souvenirs of her kills, except she doesn’t have anything from anyone else.”

  In knee-jerk defensiveness, Gabriel said, “The Dresser family exhumed old Mr. Dresser’s body, and he died of nothing except old age.”

  “I know. Except for that video, Miss Hannah Grey is clean as a whistle.” Daniel turned the backpack inside out and examined the canvas.

  There was nothing here that gave information on where and how to access Manly’s lost fortune.

  Daniel put the backpack back t
ogether. “Are you going to call your brother Carrick and tell him that you’ve got her?”

  “No. He’d ask whether I had the code, and why not, and when I told him I’d been shot, he’d be blank, like he didn’t understand what that had to do with the situation.”

  “You’re getting sort of skeptical about your brother.” Daniel’s voice was totally neutral, which in its way, said everything Gabriel needed to know.

  “He’s just a boy.” Gabriel handed over the twine and the tape.

  “He’s twenty-seven. What were you like at twenty-seven? How many jobs had you held? How many millions had you made?” As if he couldn’t be silent anymore, Daniel shot the questions at Gabriel.

  “He’s had special challenges.”

  “Your other brothers have all had to face the challenges of being illegitimate, and losing their father, and learning to become men in a world that would just as soon crush them under its heel. They’re all the kind of guys who make me proud to be a guy. They’ve got morals and self-respect and wives who adore them and who they adore.”

  This kind of honesty was what came of having a chauffeur and bodyguard who was also a friend. So Gabriel ignored the implied criticism of Carrick, and concentrated on Daniel’s praise for Nathan Manly’s other sons. “They are great, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, and to see you come together this summer, and bring all your families—Mr. Roberto from Italy, Mr. Mac from back east and Mr. Dev from South Carolina—well, that did my heart good. That’s what you’ve wanted ever since I’ve known you, to find your blood kin and be folks with them.”

  Recalling their Fourth of July picnic at Gabriel’s ranch, and how much fun they’d had, Gabriel relaxed. “It was like one huge, rambunctious, extended family.”

  “It wasn’t like that. That’s what it was.” Daniel got right in Gabriel’s face. “And where was Mr. Carrick?”

  “He was . . . busy.” Which Gabriel knew was code for not interested.

  “Huh.”

  Daniel was right. Carrick was no kid, yet Gabriel thought of him that way. He went to clubs, he hung out with celebrities, his only income seemed to come from interviews about his mother’s death, and that showed a ghoulish lack of heart.

  Gabriel knew all that, but . . . Carrick was his brother. In his most assured tone, he said, “I’ll let Carrick know what’s going on when I’ve got all the answers.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Gabriel woke to bright daylight, a thermometer stuck in his ear, and Dr. Bellota’s voice booming, “Prescott, you are the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

  Gabriel opened his eyes a slit. “I was, until you showed up.”

  Dean Bellota boomed with laughter. “I’d say you were surly because you’re convalescing, but these days, you’re always surly.”

  Daniel laughed, too.

  Gabriel was not amused.

  From the head of the bed and off to the side, Hannah said, “Gentlemen, you’re upsetting the patient.”

  Under the cool rebuke, the guys changed their laughs to coughs.

  Hannah. Hannah was here.

  Gabriel pulled himself up into a sitting position and turned to look at her.

  She stood clad in his pajamas and robe, holding an armful of pillows, looking like hell. She was pale, her mouth taut, her eyes shadowed.

  Yet with a reassuring smile, she leaned across the mattress and stacked the pillows behind him. “Dr. Bellota is here to do your exam, but your temp is normal and your color is good. I’m sure this is merely a formality.”

  “For God’s sake, Grace,” Gabriel growled, “sit down before you fall down.”

  At his words, she went from pale to pasty. Leaning against the headboard, she said, “I’m fine.”

  Dr. Bellota put his hand under her arm. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to your doctor. I told you to get off your feet.”

  Gabriel grimaced with pain, but he moved to the side. “Lay her down here.”

  “I’m fine,” Hannah repeated.

  No one paid any attention.

  Daniel placed a pillow.

  Dr. Bellota manhandled her onto the mattress.

  Everyone viewed her prone figure with concern.

  “I’m fine!” she snapped with finality.

  “Let me decide that.” Dr. Bellota checked her pulse, blood pressure, and temperature. He checked her pupils and listened to her lungs. Finally he unwrapped her wrist and looked it over, his brow knit. He cast a meaningful glance at Gabriel.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “You’re right, Grace,” Dr. Bellota said. “You are fine.”

  “I told you so.” She started to sit up.

  Dr. Bellota pressed her back down. “Except that you’re suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition, and I’m sending over a plastic surgeon to look at this wrist. You’ll need stitches, antibiotics, pain relief, not to mention complete bed rest and three meals a day.”

  She tried to object.

  Dr. Bellota spoke right over the top of her. “Plus a few snacks.”

  Daniel slipped out of the room, and came right back with a tray with two steaming bowls. “I was going to serve this to you when the doctor left, but let’s have it now.”

  She watched him organize the meal. “I am making extra work for Daniel.”

  “It’s chicken and dumplings.” Daniel placed the tray across her lap.

  She took a long breath of the rich, meaty, thyme-scented broth, and her complexion flushed.

  Gabriel wanted to swear. She had been on the run. She had been starving. And while he knew she deserved every last misery she’d visited upon herself, he couldn’t stand to think of her suffering.

  “Don’t you worry, Miss Grace.” Daniel put a spoon in her fist. “As long as you stay right here, caring for two cranky invalids shouldn’t be much different than caring for one.”

  “Right here?” She laughed weakly and took the first spoonful. Her eyes half closed in pleasure. “You mean in this apartment.”

  With good humor and an almost-imperceptible twinkle of mischief, Daniel said, “If you were across that big living room, that would be an inconvenience, but as long as you’re sharing this king-sized bed with Mr. Prescott, I can keep an eye on you both.”

  Gabriel shot him an admiring look. Daniel was a diabolical genius. Now she was confined to his bed. With Daniel to stand guard against any murderous “incidents,” the forced intimacy of two people in a king-sized bed, and a little artfully applied flattery on his part, she would soon tell him what he wanted to know.

  She flung a horrified glance at Gabriel. “No, I . . . I can’t sleep with Mr. Prescott!”

  “Now, Miss Grace.” Daniel’s voice rumbled with reassurance. “As badly as you two are banged up, no one’s going to think there’s a horizontal tango going on. Heck, Mr. Prescott’s too weak to even hum the tune.”

  “Daniel,” Gabriel said threateningly.

  Hannah’s pale face blushed a rosy red. “Daniel, you do not want to fix twenty meals a day for me.”

  “Three meals and two snacks,” Dr. Bellota said.

  “Daniel doesn’t cook. He does takeout,” Gabriel said.

  “Since this is going to go on for a while, I’m going to call one of those services that delivers meals to the house.” Daniel headed out the door. “That way, we can control the nutrition.”

  “Good plan, Daniel,” Gabriel approved. Among the three of them, they were closing the door on Hannah’s prison.

  She scowled and tried very hard to sound authoritative—difficult while eating. “I should go back to my job at Wal-Mart.”

  “You can care for Gabriel after you’re feeling better,” Dr. Bellota said.

  “He’ll be feeling better then, too.” She looked down, surprised, as her spoon clattered in the empty bowl.

  Dr. Bellota took the tray away, then shook out her pills and handed them to her with a glass of water.

  “It’s a gunshot wound. I won’t be one hundred percent for anoth
er six months,” Gabriel assured her.

  As if that settled everything, Dr. Bellota whipped out his scissors and said, “Gabriel, let’s see that leg and make sure this foolishness of coming home didn’t cause a setback that will knock you off your feet for a lot longer than six months.” He set to work cutting off the bandage, and by the time he had cleaned the wound, rewrapped it, and scolded Gabriel again for leaving the hospital . . . Hannah was asleep. Not just slightly asleep—profoundly asleep, with her hand tucked under her cheek and her mouth slightly opened like a child’s.

  Dr. Bellota took her pulse again and, with the familiarity of long acquaintance, said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Gabriel Prescott, holding that woman hostage.”

  “Before she came here, she lived in a hospice. Surely this is better than that.”

  Dr. Bellota plowed on as if Gabriel hadn’t spoken. “She’s been a nurse, no doubt about it. Why she would lie, I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

  “I sleep lightly. She won’t turn over without me knowing.”

  “You sleep lightly? You were out like a light when I . . . oh.” Dr. Bellota sighed. “You’re swearing off your pain meds.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a fool, but as long as you keep taking your antibiotics, you’ll be okay,” Dr. Bellota said. “I’m sending Dr. Holloway over this afternoon to work on her wrist, and I’ll be back tomorrow to check you both.”

  “We’ll look forward to that. There’s nothing I like as much as having some ham-fingered guy poke around in an open wound.”

  “Could be worse. Could be a prostate exam.” Dr. Bellota sounded cheerful enough, but he frowned as he packed his travel bag.

  “Dean, I do know what I’m doing.” Gabriel relaxed back on the pillows. “Do you know the saying ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’? I’m keeping her close.”

  “Which is she, a friend or an enemy?”

  Gabriel smiled bitterly. “She’s worse than an enemy. She’s an old lover—and I’m not done with her yet.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hannah stretched as she woke, feeling lazy, thinking she would spend the whole day reading the funnies and watching baseball.