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  Alex blinked in astonishment. “What are you talking about? Is Bill hurting Jamie in some way?”

  A weak nod. “Ee wiw…thoon ath I’m gone.”

  Alex struggled to understand the tortured words. “Hurt Jamie how? Are you talking about some sort of abuse?”

  Grace shook her head. “Biw—wiw—kiw—Jamie’s—thole.”

  Alex squinted as though trying to decipher some coded text. “Bill…will…kill…Jamie’s…soul?”

  Grace’s head sagged in exhaustion.

  “Gracie…Bill isn’t my favorite person. You’ve always known that. But he’s been a good father, hasn’t he? He seems like a basically decent man.”

  Grace gripped Alex’s hand and shook her head. Then she hissed, “Eeth a monther!”

  Alex felt a chill. “He’s a monster? Is that what you said?”

  A tear of relief slid down Grace’s paralyzed cheek.

  Alex looked at the anguished eyes, then turned and glanced over her shoulder. Bill Fennell was still speaking to Dr. Andrews, but his eyes were on Alex.

  “Ith Biw coming?” Grace asked in a terrified voice, trying in vain to twist in the bed.

  “No, no. He’s talking to the doctor.”

  “Dogtor—duthend—know.”

  “Doesn’t know what?”

  “Whuh Biw did.”

  “What do you mean? What did Bill do?”

  Grace suddenly raised her hand and gripped Alex’s blouse, then pulled her head down to her lips. “Ee kiwd me!”

  Alex felt as though ice water had been shunted into her veins. She drew back and looked into Grace’s bloodshot eyes. “He killed you? Is that what you said?”

  Grace nodded once, her eyes filled with conviction.

  “Grace, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Even with a partially paralyzed face, Grace managed a smile that said, Oh, yes, I do.

  “You can’t mean that. Not literally.”

  Grace closed her eyes as though gathering herself for one last effort. “You…onwe one…ooh can thop im. Too…wate…fuh me. I urd…dogtuh…out thide. Thave Jamie for me…Gay-Gay. Pleath.”

  Alex looked back through the glass wall. Bill was still watching her, and his conversation looked as if it was winding down. Alex had always known Grace’s marriage wasn’t perfect, but what marriage was? Not that Alex was any authority. She had somehow reached the age of thirty without tying the knot. After years of badge groupies and badge bolters, she’d finally accepted a proposal, then terminated the engagement three months later, after discovering that her fiancé was cheating with her best friend. In matters amorous, she was a ridiculous cliché.

  “Sue-Sue,” she whispered, “why would Bill want to hurt you?”

  “Thum-one else,” Grace said. “Wuh-man.”

  “Another woman? Do you know that for a fact?”

  Another half-paralyzed smile. “Uh—wife—knowth.”

  Alex believed her. During her engagement to Peter Hodges, a feeling very like a sixth sense had told her something was amiss in their relationship. Long before there was any tangible clue, she’d simply known there was betrayal. If she had possessed the same instinct about conventional crimes, she’d already be an SAC instead of a hostage negotiator. Correction, she thought, I’m a common field agent now.

  “If Bill wants to be with another woman,” she said, “why doesn’t he just divorce you?”

  “Muhn-ey…dum-me. Would coth Biw miw-yens…tuh do that. Five—miwyen…may-be.”

  Alex drew back in disbelief. She’d known that Bill had been doing well for some years now, but she’d had no idea he was that wealthy. Why in God’s name was Grace still teaching elementary school? Because she loves it, she answered herself. Because she can’t not work.

  Grace had closed her eyes, seemingly drained by her efforts. “Tew…Mom…I tho-we,” she said. “Tew huh…I be waiting fuh hurh…in heaven.” The smile animated the living half of her face again. “If—I—make it.”

  “You made it, honey,” Alex said, balling her free hand into a fist and holding it against her mouth.

  “Well, look at this, Dr. Andrews!” boomed Bill Fennell. “She looks like she’s ready to get up and out of that bed.”

  Grace’s eyes snapped open, and she shrank away from her husband, obviously trying to use Alex as a shield. The terror in her eyes hurt Alex’s heart, and it also thrust her into full-defense mode. She stood up and blocked Bill from coming to the bedside.

  “I think it’s better if you don’t come in,” she said, looking hard into her brother-in-law’s eyes.

  Bill’s mouth dropped open. He looked past her to Grace, who was literally cowering in the bed. “What are you talking about?” he asked angrily. “What the hell’s going on here? Have you said something about me to Grace?”

  Alex glanced at Dr. Andrews, who looked confused. “No. Quite the reverse, I’m afraid.”

  Bill shook his head in apparent puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”

  Alex probed his brown eyes, searching for some sign of guilt. Grace’s fears and accusations were probably the product of a dying woman’s hallucinations, but there was no doubt about the reality of her terror. “You’re upsetting her, Bill. You can see that. You should go downstairs and wait for Jamie.”

  “There’s no way I’m going to leave my wife’s bedside. Not when she might—”

  “What?” Alex asked, a note of challenge in her voice.

  Bill lowered his voice. “When she might…”

  Alex looked at Dr. Andrews.

  The neurologist stepped toward Bill and said, “Perhaps we should give Grace and her sister some more time alone.”

  “Don’t try to massage me like that,” Bill said irritably. “I’m Grace’s husband. I’m her husband, and I’ll decide who—”

  “She’s my blood,” Alex said with bone-deep conviction. “Your presence here is upsetting Grace, and that’s all that matters. We need to keep her as calm as possible. Isn’t that right, Dr. Andrews?”

  “Absolutely.” Meredith Andrews walked around Alex and looked down at her patient. “Grace, do you understand me?”

  “Yeth.”

  “Do you want your husband in this room?”

  Grace slowly shook her head. “I wan…my bay…be. Wan Jamie.”

  Dr. Andrews looked up at Bill Fennell, who towered over her. “That’s good enough for me. I want you to leave the unit, Mr. Fennell.”

  Bill stepped close to the neurologist, his eyes sheened with anger. “I don’t know who you think you are, or who you think you’re talking to, but I give a lot of money to this university. A lot of money. And I—”

  “Don’t make me call security,” Dr. Andrews said quietly, lifting the phone beside Grace’s bed.

  Bill’s face went white. Alex almost felt sorry for him. The power had clearly passed to Dr. Andrews, but Bill seemed unable to make the decision to leave. He looked, Alex thought, like an actor on a DVD movie after you hit PAUSE. Or that’s what she was thinking when the alarm began to sing.

  “She’s coding!” Dr. Andrews shouted through the door, but the shout was unnecessary. Nurses were already running from the station to the cubicle. Alex jumped out of their way, and an instant later Bill did the same.

  “Cardiac arrest,” Dr. Andrews said, yanking open a drawer.

  Because this was an ICU, there was no crash cart; everything was already here. The quiet cubicle suddenly became a whirlwind of motion, all directed toward a single purpose—to sustain the life fast ebbing from the body on the bed.

  “You need to leave,” said a tall male nurse standing behind Dr. Andrews. “Both of you.”

  Dr. Andrews glanced up long enough to give Alex a moment of eye contact, then returned to work. Alex backed slowly out of the ICU, watching the final act of her sister’s life unfold without any hope of playing a part herself. Ridiculous regrets about choosing law school over medical school pierced her heart. But what if she had become a doctor? She would be practi
cing two thousand miles away from Mississippi, and the result would be the same. Grace’s fate was in God’s hands now, and Alex knew how indifferent those hands could be.

  She turned away from the cubicle—away from Bill Fennell—and looked at the nurses’ station, where banks of monitors chirped and blinked ceaselessly. How can they focus on all those screens at once? she wondered, recalling how difficult it was to watch multiple surveillance feeds when the Bureau had a TV rig set up on a static post. As she thought about that, she heard Dr. Andrews say, “I’m calling it, guys. Time of death, ten twenty-nine p.m.”

  Shock is a funny thing, Alex thought. Like the day she was shot. Two searing chunks of buckshot and a half pound of glass had blasted through the right side of her face, yet she’d felt nothing—just a wave of heat, as if someone had opened an oven beside her.

  Time of death, ten twenty-nine p.m….

  Something started to let go in Alex’s chest, but before the release, she heard a little boy say, “Hey! Is my mom in here?”

  She turned toward the big wooden door that had brought her to this particular chamber of hell and saw before it a boy about four and a half feet tall. His face was red, as though he had run all the way from wherever he’d started. He was trying to look brave, but Alex saw fear in his wide green eyes.

  “Aunt Alex?” said Jamie, finally picking her out of the uniformed crowd.

  Bill’s big voice sounded from behind Alex. “Hello, Son. Where’s Aunt Jean?”

  “She’s too slow,” Jamie said angrily.

  “Come over here, boy.”

  Alex looked back at her brother-in-law’s stern face, and the thing that had started to let go inside her suddenly ratcheted tight. Without thought she ran to Jamie, swept him into her arms and then out the door, away from this heartrending nightmare. Away from his dying mother.

  Away from Bill Fennell.

  Away…

  CHAPTER 2

  Five Weeks Later

  Dr. Chris Shepard lifted a manila folder from the file caddy on the door of Exam Room 4 and quickly perused it. He didn’t recognize the patient’s name, and that was unusual. Chris had a large practice, but it was a small town, and that was the way he liked it.

  This patient’s name was Alexandra Morse, and her file held only a medical history, the long form that all new patients filled out on their first visit. Chris looked down the corridor and saw Holly, his nurse, crossing from her station to the X-ray room. He called out and waved her up the hall. Holly said something through the door to X-ray, then hurried toward him.

  “Aren’t you coming in with me?” he asked softly. “It’s a female patient.”

  Holly shook her head. “She asked to speak to you alone.”

  “New patient?”

  “Yes. I meant to say something before now, but we got so busy with Mr. Seward—”

  Chris nodded at the door and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What’s her story?”

  Holly shrugged. “Beats me. Name’s Alex. Thirty years old and in great shape, except for the scars on her face.”

  “Scars?”

  “Right side. Cheek, ear, and orbit. Head through a window is my guess.”

  “There’s nothing about a car accident in her history.”

  “Couple of months ago, by the color of the scars.”

  Chris moved away from the door, and Holly followed. “She didn’t give you any complaint?”

  The nurse shook her head. “No. And you know I asked.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  Holly nodded knowingly. A woman coming in alone and refusing to specify her complaint usually meant the problem was sexual—most often fear of a sexually transmitted disease. Natchez, Mississippi, was a small town, and its nurses gossiped as much as its other citizens. Truth be told, Chris thought, most doctors here are worse gossips than their nurses.

  “Her chart says Charlotte, North Carolina,” he noted. “Did Ms. Morse tell you what she’s doing in Natchez?”

  “She told me exactly nothing,” Holly said with a bit of pique. “Do you want me to shoot that flat-and-erect series on Mr. Seward before he voids on the table?”

  “Sorry. Go to it.”

  Holly winked and whispered, “Have fun with Ms. Scarface.”

  Chris shook his head, then summoned a serious expression and walked into the examining room.

  A woman wearing a navy skirt and a cream-colored top stood beside the examining table. Her face almost caused him to stare, but he’d seen a lot of trauma during his medical training. This woman’s scars weren’t actually too bad. It was her youth and attractiveness that made them stand out so vividly. Almost fiercely, Chris thought. You figured a woman who looked and dressed this way would have had plastic surgery to take care of an injury like that. Not that she was a knockout or anything; she wasn’t. It was just—

  “Hello, Dr. Shepard,” the woman said in a direct tone.

  “Ms. Morse?” he said, remembering that the history said she was single.

  She gave him a smile of acknowledgment but said nothing else.

  “What can I do for you today?” he asked.

  The woman remained silent, but he could feel her eyes probing him as deeply as a verbal question. What’s going on here? Chris wondered. Is it my birthday or something? Did the staff plan some kind of trick? Or does she want drugs? He’d had that happen before: some female patients offered sex for drugs, usually narcotics. Chris studied the woman’s face, trying to divine her real purpose. She had dark hair, green eyes, and an oval face not much different from those of the dozens of women he saw each day. A little better bone structure, maybe, especially the cheekbones. But the real difference was the scars—and a shock of gray hair above them that didn’t look added by a colorist. Except for those things, Alex Morse might be any woman at the local health club. And yet…despite her usualness, if that was a word, there was something about her that Chris couldn’t quite nail down, something that set her apart from other women. Something in the way she stood, maybe.

  Laying the chart on the counter behind him, he said, “Maybe you should just tell me what the problem is. I promise, however frightening it might seem now, I’ve seen or heard it many times in this office, and together we can do something about it. People usually feel better once they verbalize these things.”

  “You’ve never heard what I’m about to tell you,” Alex Morse said with utter certainty. “I promise you that, Doctor.”

  The conviction in her voice unsettled him, but he didn’t have time for games. He looked pointedly at his watch. “Ms. Morse, if I’m going to help you at all, I have to know the nature of your problem.”

  “It’s not my problem,” the woman said finally. “It’s yours.”

  As Chris frowned in confusion, the woman reached into a small handbag on the chair behind her and brought out a wallet. This she flipped open and held up for him to examine. He saw an ID card of some sort, one with a blue-and-white seal. He looked closer. Bold letters on the right side of the card read FBI. His stomach fluttered. To the left of the big acronym, smaller letters read Special Agent Alexandra Morse. Beside this was a photo of the woman standing before him. Special Agent Morse was smiling in the photo, but she wasn’t smiling now.

  “I need to tell you some things in confidence,” she said. “It won’t take much of your time. I pretended to be a patient because I don’t want anyone in your life to know you’ve spoken to an FBI agent. Before I leave, I need you to write me a prescription for Levaquin and tell your nurse that I had a urinary-tract infection. Tell her that the symptoms were so obvious that you didn’t need to do a urinalysis. Will you do that?”

  Chris was too surprised to make a conscious decision. “Sure,” he said. “But what’s going on? Are you investigating something? Are you investigating me?”

  “Not you.”

  “Someone I know?”

  Agent Morse’s eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you that yet. I
may tell you at the end of this conversation. Right now I’m going to tell you a story. A quick story. Will you sit down, Doctor?”

  Chris sat on the short stool he used in the examining room. “Are you really from North Carolina? Or is that just a cover?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You talk like a Yankee, but I hear Mississippi underneath.”

  Agent Morse smiled, or gave him what passed for a smile with her—a slight widening of her taut lips. “You have good ears. I grew up in Jackson. But I’m based in Charlotte, North Carolina, now.”

  He was glad to have his intuition confirmed. “Please go on with your story.”

  She sat on the chair where her handbag had been, crossed her legs, and regarded him coolly. “Five weeks ago, my sister died of a brain hemorrhage. This happened at University Hospital in Jackson.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Agent Morse nodded as though she were past it, but Chris saw held-in emotion behind her eyes. “Her death was sudden and unexpected, but before she died, she told me something that sounded crazy to me.”

  “What?”

  “She told me she’d been murdered.”

  He wasn’t sure he understood. “You mean she told you someone had murdered her?”

  “Exactly. Her husband, to be specific.”

  Chris thought about this for a while. “What did the autopsy show?”

  “A fatal blood clot on the left side of the brain, near the brain stem.”

  “Did she have any disease that made a stroke likely? Diabetes, for example?”

  “No.”

  “Was your sister taking birth-control pills?”

  “Yes.”

  “That might have caused or contributed. Did she smoke?”

  “No. The point is, the autopsy showed no abnormal cause for the stroke. No strange drugs, no poisons, nothing like that.”

  “Did your sister’s husband resist the autopsy?”

  Agent Morse actually beamed with approval. “No. He didn’t.”

  “But you still believed her? You really thought her husband might have killed her?”

  “Not at first. I thought she must have been hallucinating. But then—” Agent Morse looked away from Chris for the first time, and he stole a glance at her scars. Definitely lacerations caused by broken glass. But the punctate scarring indicated something else. Small-caliber bullets, maybe?