CHAPTER 20
Laura opened her eyes with a jolt.
A shadow chased across the
wall.
Justice?
She nearly screamed, then realized it
was a branch swaying outside her bedroom window. Her bedroom. She was safe. . . . For the
moment.
And Harrison Frost was probably on her
couch.
It was just growing light, a gray dawn
casting shadows as the events of the past day and a half flooded
back to her. Justice crowded to the forefront of her mind, and she
pushed him back, pulling an image of Harrison Frost into the place
where his darkness had been. She drew a long breath and exhaled it,
feeling her pulse start to slow its rocketing cadence little by
little.
Throwing back the covers, she climbed
from her bed, tossed on a lightweight robe over her cotton
nightgown, and padded down the hall to the bathroom. She could see
only an edge of the couch from her angle and caught sight of one
bare masculine foot protruding from a blanket. The sight made her
feel safe and relieved.
Emotions she’d rarely, if ever, felt
with Byron.
In the bathroom she gazed at her
reflection.
And a wave of nausea rolled over
her.
Stumbling quickly, she ran for the
toilet, heaving up the remains of the makeshift meal of leftovers
she’d put together for them the night before, just before she’d
reached out to Justice.
Pregnancy.
She waited for her jittery stomach to
calm down, then flushed the toilet with shaking hands. Turning her
face under the faucet, she ran cold water over her cheeks, chin,
and mouth. Next, she brushed her teeth for all she was worth and
then stood with her hands on the edge of the sink, balancing
herself while her whole body quivered.
Was she out of her mind to tweak
Justice’s tail? Undoubtedly. But the other option was to just wait
and hope the authorities caught him, and that didn’t seem like an
option at all.
Maybe the best thing to do was her
first inclination: run away. Go back to Portland. Get the hell out
of here!
But she’d thought that before the baby
was a reality. And before she’d met with Catherine and her
sisters.
And before she’d met Harrison
Frost.
And before she’d determined she would
help get Justice herself.
Now . . . she didn’t know what the
right thing to do was. Justice was evil and determined, and she was
dancing a very deadly dance with him.
Knock,
knock.
She jumped at the sound and stared at
the bathroom door panels, a hand to her chest.
“You okay?” Harrison’s muffled voice
sounded.
“Oh . . . yeah.”
“It didn’t sound okay.”
She was embarrassed that he’d heard her
throwing up. “Just . . . a reaction to everything, you know,” she
said lamely. “I—I’m going to take a shower now.”
“Okay.”
She strained her ears and heard his
footsteps recede, then stripped off her clothes and jumped beneath
a spray of hot water. Ten minutes later, feeling decidedly more
human, she returned to her bedroom, exchanging her robe for her
uniform. Her hair was wet, and she brushed it in front of her
dresser mirror, seeing the edge of her light brown hair peeking out
at the middle part on her scalp. She realized she was through
dyeing it. It wasn’t much of a disguise in the first place.
Certainly not against someone who could reach her by simply using
his mind.
And then there was the baby to
consider.
Her
baby.
Hers and Byron’s.
Oh, Lord.
She couldn’t go there. Not
today.
Harrison was rubbing his growth of
beard as she entered the kitchen. Spying her outfit, he said,
“Thought you weren’t on duty till later.”
“I’m not but we’re shorthanded. I’m
going to go to the hospital and see if they need me.”
“If I didn’t know better, I might get a
complex. Sounds like you’re trying to get away from
me.”
“No, I’m just . . .”
He waited for her to finish, but she
didn’t know where she was going. Her stomach was jumping around as
if it were full of grasshoppers. The image almost sent her back to
the bathroom, and she swallowed hard.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he said,
watching her.
“I’ll be okay at the
hospital.”
“Yeah? How do you know that? You said
you reached Justice last night. That he was coming for you. And he
was pretty graphic. You were freaked.”
“Yeah. Really freaked. I . . . I know.”
She frowned. Justice wasn’t going to send her scurrying for cover,
and in the light of day she felt more secure. “Look, there are a
lot of people at the hospital. I know everyone. Safety in
numbers.”
“I could help.”
“Don’t you have to follow up on your
story, anyway?” When he didn’t quickly argue, she added, “So you
might as well get to it. I don’t want to make you wait around here
with me all day.”
“I can do my work from here,” he
pointed out.
“No, really. This’ll be okay. I’ll see
you . . . later?”
“You said Justice was going to be
pissed. You said you challenged him. I—”
“Please. Harrison.”
He gazed at her in frustration. “I
thought we were on the same page about him and what to do.” He took
a step toward her and Laura shrank back. Her rejection stopped him
short.
“You’ve got a big story to finish up,”
she reminded him again.
“The Deadly Sinners? Justice is a
bigger story. And he’s dangerous to you.” His expression was
grim.
“Follow me to the hospital, then. I
really feel like I should go there. I need to work and keep busy.”
When he hesitated, she laid a hand over his. “Trust me on this,
okay?”
“I don’t like it.”
She grinned then, impulsively brushed
her lips across his cheek. “I know.”
It clearly went against everything
Harrison wanted, but he reluctantly let her have her
way.
An hour later Laura was at Ocean Park,
asking for extra hours, while Harrison drove back to Seaside. Laura
ran into a wrangle with administration over the amount of overtime
the hospital was prepared to pay and ended up heading to the staff
room to sit down heavily at a table while they worked it
out.
After a few moments, she contemplated
what, if anything, she could have for breakfast from the vending
machines. Her stomach was still sending out ripples of unease, the
aftershocks from her bout at the toilet this morning, yet she knew
she needed to eat something.
At least she felt safe, for the moment,
within the walls of the hospital. She picked at her yogurt, scanned
the newspaper scattered across the table, and half listened to the
news, the top local story being the burning of an old sawmill, a
fire that had kept emergency crews working through the
night.
Ten minutes passed, and then Byron
strode into the staff room. Spying her sitting alone at the table,
he draped himself in a chair opposite her. “What’s going on with
you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You look like death warmed over, and
why did you come in early?”
“I thought we were short-staffed, but I
haven’t been granted the overtime.”
“So, why are you still
here?”
He saw too much. She didn’t want to
deal with Byron, and she certainly didn’t want to explain
herself.
“I left some things in my locker and
decided to just sit down a minute or two,” she lied. “You don’t
have to give me the third degree.”
“Don’t I? What was all that mumbo jumbo
with Mrs. Shields and her pancreas? You’re making me look bad when
you start diagnosing with your laying on of hands, or whatever the
hell you do.”
Laura’s interest sharpened. “You found
something?”
“Gave her a new blood test just to
check. Not a lot of insulin being produced. She was in the lower
range before, but nothing to be overly concerned about. But now . .
. looks like there’s something going on. Some kind of pancreatic
tumor developing, possibly, or not. We’ll check. But you sure as
hell got all the little tongues wagging around this
place.”
She saw that she’d made him seem a
little less godlike in others’ eyes and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Her blood levels changed. It’s not your fault.”
“Tell that to her,” he muttered, his
jaw tight. “What the fuck, Laura? Where do you get this
stuff?”
“I just asked if cancer ran in her
family.”
“Bullshit. I know you.” He leaned
toward her.
Laura stared back at him. No, you don’t. You never have.
And then her stomach revolted again,
and she jumped up, fighting the heaves. She ran from the room to
the bathroom, wishing for all she was worth that she could control
this.
Ten minutes later she emerged and found
Byron staring at her with his laser look. “You’re pregnant!” he
accused.
“Dr. Adderley?”
They both looked up toward the young
nurse hovering down the hallway, a nervous smile flitting across
her lips. Her eyes were all over Byron.
“You’re way off base,” Laura told him
in an intense whisper.
“Am I?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze and lied for
all she was worth.
With a last, dark look at her, he
turned to the nurse, his broad hand splaying across her lower back
as he leaned down to her and guided her toward the ER.
Her stomach momentarily under control,
Laura headed for the cafeteria and the faintly appealing thought of
dry toast.
Harrison drove to the Seaside Breeze offices, which were housed in a
flat-roofed, glass-fronted concrete-block building with a
stationery/gift store on one side and a place to buy team trophies
on the other. Pulling into the front lot, he climbed from the
Impala, stretched, ran a hand through his hair, and determined that
as soon as he was finished with the follow-up on last night’s
story, it was time for a shower. Heading inside, he picked up one
of the morning papers, scanned the front page, and
smiled.
SEVEN DEADLY SINNERS
NABBED FOR BURGLARY: LOCAL TEENS CAUGHT IN POLICE
STING
“You sure were Johnny-on-the-spot with
your story,” said Buddy, one of the paper’s stringers who wrote
local-color pieces in the hope of becoming a full-fledged reporter.
Harrison could have told him there was no money in the business,
but Buddy was as eager as Harrison had once been, and money and job
security weren’t really what either of them was after. “How’d you
get your byline out so fast?” Buddy demanded.
“Experience and talent,” Harrison
said.
Buddy snorted.
“Is he still here?” Harrison
asked.
“Went home. Be back around
noon.”
“Okay.”
He was Vic
Connelly, the paper’s owner and editor, a garrulous guy with wild
white hair à la Albert Einstein and a gruff attitude. Harrison had
hoped to catch him and talk about the follow-up articles he planned
to put together and also tell him that he next intended to put all
his energies into going after the Justice Turnbull
story.
After checking in with Buddy and his
office voice mail and e-mail, then dinking around with his
follow-up story for half an hour, he left the offices, heading to
his apartment to run through the shower and make himself feel human
again. Keeping to Lorelei’s side was all fine and good, but her
couch, as she’d said, left something to be desired.
When he was dressed, he pulled the
piece of paper John Mills had given him from his wallet and yanked
out his cell phone. Written on the scrap was the young officer’s
direct cell number. As he placed the call, Harrison examined his
beard growth in the mirror, scowling at his reflection. He looked
like he’d just come from a weeklong bender.
Maybe it was time to spiff up a bit.
Get rid of the down-and-out look he’d cultivated for the Deadly
Sinners. He didn’t need to pretend he was anyone but who he was any
longer, now that his deception with them was over. Not that his
usual look was much more than what he’d been projecting; he wasn’t
exactly the Brooks Brothers type. But now he thought about Geena
Cho and the Tillamook County Sheriff Department’s staff. If he
expected even the least modicum of information from them, it was
best to look a little more tended, somewhere in between his own
scruffiness and Pauline Kirby’s camera-ready
slickness.
“Mills,” a serious voice
answered.
“Officer Mills, it’s Harrison Frost of
the Seaside Breeze. You suggested I call
today? That you might have some information for me?”
“Oh yeah . . .” A pause. A hesitation.
Then, as if Mills had finally connected the dots, he said quickly,
“Bryce Vernon is a developer with property up and down the northern
Oregon coastline. His son Noah is turning eighteen the day after
tomorrow.”
Click.
Harrison hung up thoughtfully. Bryce
Vernon was Noah Vernon’s father and Noah Vernon—N.V.—was turning
eighteen the day after tomorrow. In a very few days he would no
longer be a juvenile, and then all kinds of things could happen. He
might be tried as an adult. He could go to jail. He might want to
talk to a reporter about how misunderstood he was by his parents
and how persecuted by the local police. He might lawyer up, and
then again, he might have a helluva lot to say.
Faintly smiling, Harrison grabbed up
his razor and went to work on his stubborn beard.
Detective Savannah Dunbar entered the
sliding doors to Seagull Pointe and said to the woman at the desk,
“The sheriff’s department got a call from your director, Darius
Morrow?” She flashed her badge.
The receptionist nodded. “Oh. Oh, yes.
Let me page him.”
Savvy twisted the kinks from her neck.
She’d been up half the night with the damned fire at the old Tyler
Sawmill. The blaze had exhausted all the county emergency crews,
and both the fire and sheriff’s departments were stretched thin.
She, herself, had already worked a full shift, and it looked like
she wouldn’t be going home any time soon.
A few moments later a man and a woman
met Savannah in the reception area. The woman was Inga Anderssen,
whom Savvy had met before, but the man was someone new. Darius
Morrow, no doubt. Inga looked disappointed upon recognizing Savvy,
as she said brusquely, “Madeline Turnbull died sometime yesterday
evening.”
“Oh.” Savvy was a little surprised
since she’d just seen Madeline the day before. “You called because
you think it could be the result of foul play?”
“I’m the director of Seagull Pointe,”
the man broke in, holding out his hand. “Darius Morrow.” He had a
horseshoe of dyed black hair around a bald pate and wore a worried
expression that looked perpetual. “We called because when we
checked on Ms. Turnbull, there was, ah, another woman in her room.
Unconscious. Seated in a wheelchair.”
Savvy asked, “Who’s the
woman?”
“We don’t know,” Inga responded, her
voice tight, her lips even tighter. “She’s not a patient
here.”
“Where is she now?”
“We moved her to a bed in an empty
room. She was about to fall out of the chair.”
“Still unconscious?”
“Yes. The doctor on staff isn’t in
today, so we called nine-one-one. They’re sending an
ambulance.”
“She’s alive, then?” Savannah asked.
The vibe here was all wrong.
“The ambulance should be here any
second.” He seemed nervous.
“What about Madeline Turnbull’s?” she
asked. “Her death was expected,” Savvy said, touching all the
bases. “Natural causes. Right?”
“The medical examiner will determine
that,” Morrow said.
“You think there’s a chance of foul
play?” Good God, what had she stepped into when she’d taken the
call? Neither Morrow nor Anderssen answered immediately, and they
seemed to be a tad too careful in not looking at each
other.
“Foul play? No,” Morrow said after some
consideration. Then, tellingly, “We don’t see how.”
“Excuse me for a moment.” Savvy took a
few steps away and called dispatch, confirming what Darius Morrow
had said, that an ambulance was due to arrive within minutes and
that the ME was on his way. “Send another unit here,” she added. “I
just don’t like the feel of this.” She snapped off the phone and
said back to them, “I need to take a look at the Jane
Doe.”
“Of course . . .” The director was
beginning to sweat as he and Nurse Anderssen led the way to a small
room down the end of one long hallway. At the door Morrow hemmed
and hawed and finally left Savvy with Inga. He racewalked away,
either to another situation that needed immediate attention or from
the issue at hand. Inga entered the room first, with Savannah
coming up behind her. The woman lying in the bed had been hooked to
an oxygen supply; her breathing was labored.
What struck Savvy the most was how
young she was; she’d expected someone much older. The atmosphere of
the nursing home/assisted-living facility, she
supposed.
“She’s been strangled,” Savvy said,
seeing the bruise marks forming on the woman’s throat.
“What?” Inga seemed
surprised.
“Didn’t anyone examine
her?”
“Yes, yes, but we were just concerned
about her breathing. . . .”
“What about Madeline Turnbull?” Savvy
had no time for excuses. “Was she strangled as well?”
“Maddie? No . . . I don’t think . . .”
The older woman’s face was full of consternation, and Savvy
realized no one had examined the dead woman that closely; they’d
been overtaken by the more immediate problem of their new,
unexpected patient. By bringing up the staff’s lack of response to
Madeline Turnbull’s death, Savvy had inadvertently embarrassed Inga
Anderssen in a way that wouldn’t do any good in her public
relations with the woman.
“How did she get here?” Savvy asked
aloud, though it was more a rhetorical question than anything else,
as she motioned to the woman lying on the bed.
Inga Anderssen pursed her lips and
folded her arms across her chest. “We aren’t certain.”
“Who found her?”
“I think the morning nurse’s aide, but
I’m not sure,” Inga hedged.
Savvy turned and pinned the woman with
her gaze. “Find out who it was, and send her to talk to me. I’ll
need a conference room, a list of anyone who visited Madeline
Turnbull or had access to her room and this one as well. I want
this facility sealed off and any tapes from your cameras inside
these walls, as well as the film from the parking
lot.”
“But . . . but . . . I don’t think we
have cameras or . . .”
“Then tell the director what I need.
But first, take me to Madeline Turnbull’s room.” She thought for a
moment that Inga would refuse her, but Savannah was the law. Inga
turned on her heel and, stiff-backed, led Savvy through a maze of
hallways to the room where Justice Turnbull’s mother had
died.
There were no obvious strangulation
marks on Madeline Turnbull; her neck did not display the same
bruising. But Savvy bent down and looked closely into the woman’s
eyes and thought she saw the telltale signs of petechial
hemorrhaging that signified constriction of airflow. She glanced at
the pillow, then back at Madeline Turnbull.
Inga bustled up and bent over the
woman’s body, staring into her eyes as well.
Smothered, Savvy
concluded and thought Inga knew it as well.
“I’ll need that private room,” Savvy
said. “Where the hell is your boss?”
“I’ll get Mr. Morrow.”
“Do that,” Savvy said, unable to hide
her irritation with the incompetence of the nursing home staff in
general as she waited for the medical examiner to
arrive.