Chương 4
Ethan pulled the truck beneath an overpass and stopped.
“Vi, listen to me.”
“No.”
“I need you to stay with Dr. Patel.”
“You left me.”
“I should have stayed.”
Marcus looked up.
The admission hung in the truck, plain and inadequate.
Violet said, “Are you coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Because you said that before.”
“I’m coming now.”
A man’s voice sounded near her. Calm, authoritative, almost warm.
Grant.
“Violet, we only need a few more details.”
Ethan reached for the phone as though he could pull her through it.
“Put Dr. Patel on.”
Grant said, “Is that your father?”
“Don’t answer him,” Ethan told her.
The call ended.
Ethan stared at the dashboard.
Marcus shifted in his seat. “We should go.”
Ethan did not move.
Rain drummed on the overpass above them, softer than it had on the warehouse roof. A delivery truck passed, spraying water against the passenger door.
Marcus said, “He won’t hurt her in a hospital.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He doesn’t like witnesses, but he likes looking innocent more.”
Ethan put the truck in gear.
Harbor General’s emergency entrance was crowded with police cruisers, ambulances, and private cars nosing through the rain. Ethan parked in a loading zone. Marcus reached for the door.
“You stay here.”
“No.”
Ethan looked at him.
Marcus’s hand remained on the door handle. “Grant tracks the phone. If I sit here, I’m a sign with an arrow over it.”
“You walk into the hospital, somebody identifies you from the home invasion.”
“Then I’m surrounded by cops.”
“Grant is a cop.”
“Right. I’m starting to understand the problem.”
Ethan removed Marcus’s phone and Ray’s driver’s license from his jacket. He placed the phone beneath the passenger seat.
“Lock the doors. Keep your head down. If Grant approaches, call 911 and say Detective Owen Grant is threatening a witness.”
“You think that works?”
“It creates a record.”
Marcus gave a tired, humorless smile. “You really did have a normal job once.”
Ethan entered through the ambulance bay.
A security officer tried to stop him. Ethan gave Violet’s name, showed his driver’s license, and kept walking while the man checked the patient list. He knew better than to run. Running transformed concern into threat in places built around procedure.
He found Dr. Patel near radiology. She was small, gray-haired, and visibly furious.
“You have created a difficult situation,” she said.
“Where is she?”
“In imaging. The scan is finished, but I told the technician to repeat a sequence.”
“Thank you.”
“I did not do it for you.”
“I know.”
“Detective Grant objected.”
“Where is he now?”
“Speaking to hospital administration about my judgment.”
“That may have saved her.”
Dr. Patel studied his face. Her eyes stopped on his scraped knuckles.
“What exactly did you do after leaving here?”
“Something I’ll have to explain later.”
“I don’t enjoy that answer.”
“Neither will my lawyer.”
A door opened behind her. Violet appeared in a hospital gown beneath a white blanket, seated in a wheelchair she clearly resented. A technician pushed her into the hall.
Her long dark hair had been gathered badly at one side. Adhesive marks crossed her temple. A bruise had begun to color the base of her throat where the other man had grabbed her shirt.
Ethan’s body moved before his mind did. He crossed the hall and knelt in front of her.
Violet looked at his wet jacket, his hands, the grime on his knees.
“You found the safe.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It had a tracker.”
“You put a tracker in Mom’s safe?”
“Years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t trust anybody.”
She glanced toward Dr. Patel. “That’s kind of his thing.”
The doctor pretended not to hear.
Ethan put his hand near Violet’s, then stopped before touching her.
“Can I?”
Her fingers turned beneath the blanket, palm upward.
He held them.
They were cold.
“I’m sorry I left,” he said.
She looked beyond him. “Did you find Nora?”
“No.”
“Did you look?”
“I found one of the men first.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Ethan released her hand, though she had not pulled away. “No. I haven’t found Nora.”
Violet’s face tightened.
“She opened the door,” she said. “I saw her.”
“I believe you.”
“She told them where the safe was.”
“I believe you.”
“She heard me upstairs.”
Ethan did not answer.
Violet looked at him then, directly, and he understood what she had been trying not to say.
“She knew I came home,” Violet said.
The radiology corridor seemed too bright. A vending machine hummed behind them. Somewhere nearby, a child complained about the taste of liquid medicine.
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked.
Violet withdrew her hand.
Dr. Patel looked away.
“I called her name from the stairs,” Violet said. “She looked up at me.”
Ethan saw Nora at the kitchen table that afternoon, sealing the birthday envelope. Her reading glasses had been low on her nose. She had complained that the adhesive tasted like dust. Violet had asked why she was licking an envelope in the first place.
Nora had laughed.
Ethan stood.
“Where is Grant?”
Dr. Patel placed herself between him and the administration wing.
“You will not confront anyone in my hospital.”
“He already questioned her.”
“And now he is not near her.”
“He ordered the break-in.”
“I believe that you believe that.”
“I have proof.”
“Then give it to someone who can use it without putting my patient in the middle.”
A voice behind Ethan said, “That would be me.”
Detective Elena Ruiz stood at the end of the corridor. She wore a dark suit under a raincoat and carried a paper cup of coffee she had not touched. She was in her late thirties, compact, tired-eyed, with wet curls gathered at the back of her neck.
Ethan recognized her from his house. She had been the detective photographing the broken basement lamp while Grant spoke to the patrol supervisor.
May you like
Ruiz approached slowly.
“Mr. Cole, Detective Grant says you left the hospital against advice and may be pursuing suspects yourself.”
