Chương 2
“A surgical cap?” Nurse Carter asked.
Lily nodded.
“Mask?”
Another nod.
“Man or woman?”
“A man.”
Mason said, “How do you know?”
“His hands.”
Grace looked at Lily’s small fingers around the rabbit. “What about his hands?”
“Hair.”
“On the backs of them?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
Lily touched the side of her own thumb. “A moon.”
Mason’s right hand disappeared into his trouser pocket.
Grace saw it.
Nurse Carter saw it too.
Mason’s mouth hardened. “A scar?”
Lily shook her head. “Shiny.”
“A ring,” Grace said.
Lily looked down at the stuffed rabbit’s face. One plastic eye had been replaced with a black button after the original had fallen out in the laundry. Grace had sewn it badly at two in the morning.
“He moved Bunny,” Lily said. “He touched Mr. Vale. Then Bunny smelled bad.”
Grace’s arms tightened around her.
Mason extended a hand. “Let me see the rabbit.”
Lily recoiled.
“No,” Grace said.
“If he touched it, there could be evidence.”
“Then the police can take it.”
The words changed the corridor.
One of Mason’s men looked toward the elevators. The hospital administrator stopped speaking. Mason stared at Grace with an expression she could not read because he had trained it too well.
“We don’t know that police are necessary.”
“A man may have put something in Adrian’s wound.”
“That is not what the doctor said.”
“She said tissue was dying.”
“She did not say why.”
Grace felt Lily’s breath through the thin apron. “Then we can let someone whose job is finding out decide.”
Mason stepped closer, stopping just outside arm’s reach. He smelled faintly of cedar, starch, and the bitter coffee he drank without sugar at Adrian’s house.
Lily turned her face into Grace’s neck.
Her whisper barely moved the air.
“That smell.”
Grace did not look away from Mason.
The operating-room doors remained shut. The red light above them burned steadily. Somewhere beyond it, surgeons were cutting dead tissue away from a man whose decisions had reached farther than Grace had ever wanted to know.
Mason lowered his voice. “Grace, there was an attempt on Adrian’s life yesterday. The people responsible may know you and Lily were here.”
“You told me it was safe.”
“It was supposed to be.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.” His jaw tightened again. “It isn’t.”
The hospital administrator approached with a security officer. “Mr. Reed, we’re restricting access to this floor. No one leaves until our incident team has spoken with them.”
Mason did not turn. “You can speak with my attorney.”
“We will. We are also notifying law enforcement.”
“That would be a mistake.”
The administrator’s face changed by less than an inch. “A potentially deliberate contamination occurred in a critical-care unit. It is no longer your decision.”
Mason looked toward the operating-room doors.
Then he looked at Grace.
“Stay where hospital security can see you,” he said. “Do not go home. Do not call anyone connected to Adrian’s staff.”
Grace almost laughed, though there was nothing funny in her. “You are connected to Adrian’s staff.”
“Yes.”
“And Lily says you smell like the man.”
“Yes,” Mason said after a pause. “She does.”
He walked away before she could answer.
Grace watched him speak to his security men. One left through the stairwell. The other made a call while facing the wall. Mason removed his jacket and folded it over one arm as if the corridor had grown warm.
The cedar smell faded.
Nurse Carter touched Grace’s elbow. “We should put the rabbit in a paper bag.”
Lily clutched it harder.
“No bag,” she said.
“We don’t have to take it from her yet.” Nurse Carter’s voice shook despite her effort to keep it gentle. “But we shouldn’t wipe it or wash it. And try not to let anyone else touch it.”
Grace nodded.
Nurse Carter stared at the rabbit. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I left the station.”
“You said you thought Mason was in the room.”
“I did. He had been there.” She glanced down the corridor before continuing. “He asked me to check whether the pharmacy had delivered Mr. Vale’s private medications. We don’t accept outside medication without verification, but his people brought in a sealed cooler. I told them it had to go through pharmacy. Mr. Reed said it was blood-product documentation and that the family had approval.”
“Did it?”
“I don’t know. The cooler was gone when I came back.”
Grace studied her. “Who took it?”
Nurse Carter pressed her lips together.
“I saw a man in hospital scrubs near the service elevator. I assumed he worked here.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t recognize him now.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I’m telling you.”
“No. Did you tell anyone before Lily hit the button?”
The nurse’s eyes lowered.
Grace understood. Adrian’s name had done what it always did. It had bent ordinary rules until people told themselves they were still standing straight.
A hospital security officer escorted Grace and Lily to a consultation room with no windows. The table had a box of tissues, a plastic pitcher of water, and a bowl of hard candy that looked as if no one had touched it in years. The fluorescent lights hummed.
Lily sat in Grace’s lap and held the rabbit under her chin.
“Is Mr. Vale dead?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Grace said, because lying had begun to feel dangerous. “The doctors are trying to keep him alive.”
Lily considered this, serious and silent.
“Did I make trouble?”
Grace’s throat closed.
She took Lily’s hand and kissed the center of her palm where it had struck the emergency button.
“You made the doctors look.”
“Nurse Evelyn was mad.”
“She was scared.”
“You were mad.”
“I was embarrassed.” Grace rested her forehead against Lily’s. “That was my mistake.”
Lily touched the white apron over Grace’s housekeeping dress. “Because I yelled?”
“Because I cared what grown-ups thought before I listened to you.”
The child frowned. “That’s silly.”
“Yes.”
May you like
Lily squeezed the rabbit. Its patched stomach sighed.
Grace had brought her to the hospital because their neighbor’s son had developed a fever and the day-care center would not accept an unscheduled drop-off. Adrian’s house manager had called before dawn and ordered Grace to bring clean clothes and personal items to the private hospital room. When Grace said she had Lily, the manager told her Mr. Vale’s floor was secure.
