Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

"No mention of a prescription bottle," Kane said, frowning. "And no mention that anyone checked afterward to confirm that a doctor prescribed muscle relaxants. just the notation that EMS reported alcohol on her breath, then the emergency room doctor's report and the test results." He paused. "Christ, her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit."

"How could that be?" Faith came into the room and sat on the couch, staring at the report. "I had just left work. There hadn't been time to... to drink so much."

"We don't think it happened that way," Kane told her, and picked up a legal pad covered with notes. "I talked to your supervisor. Listen to this. At five thirty-five that day, she reports that you handed in some paperwork you'd stayed a bit over to complete. The two of you talked for, she says, about five minutes, then you got your purse and left. That building has underground parking for employees, with a gate that requires a keycard. The gate receipt for your car was time stamped at five-fifty." He paused again. "At six-thirty, you plowed your car into an embankment — six miles from your office building."

Faith thought about that for a moment, frowning.

"Maybe it's not so unusual to take forty minutes to drive six miles in rush-hour traffic, but..."

"But it would take a good chunk of that time to drink enough to screw up your reflexes and boost your blood alcohol level to three times the legal limit. And you would have had to be throwing back hundred-proof scotch straight out of the bottle while you were driving."

"Then, if it wasn't possible..."

Bishop said, "Possible, maybe. Likely? No. First of all, there was no bar along the route you must have taken, and we can assume you didn't drink in your car because there wasn't a bottle found in it."

"I could have thrown it out along the way," Faith offered, playing devil's advocate.

"You could have, but since you were on your way to meet Dinah for drinks, why on earth would you have drunk so much before?" Kane said, "And then there's the famous prescription for muscle relaxants, which from all evidence doesn't seem to exist. There was no bottle in your apartment or your desk at work, and none was found in your purse or anywhere in the car. We used the entries in the checkbook you brought from your apartment and called the pharmacy you normally go to. The only prescription they filled for you during the six weeks preceding the accident was the regular one for birth control pills."

Birth control pills. Was there a man in my life after all? Or was I merely prepared for the possibility?

"Faith?"

She looked at Kane and forced her mind to focus on more important matters. "I can check with my regular doctor at that clinic tomorrow just to make sure, but it does sound like those muscle relaxants weren't mine. So how could I have gotten them into my system?"

The obvious answer," Kane said, "is that someone slipped them to you without your awareness."

"While they were getting me drunk in about half an hour?" Faith shook her head. "That's the part I just don't get. To drink so much at all doesn't feel right to me. To drink that much in so short a time ... "

"Unless someone's lying and you had nothing at all to drink," Kane suggested. "Maybe it was a setup from the get-go. I'm willing to bet there are drugs that mimic a combination of alcohol and some kind of prescription med, resulting in death — or coma. Maybe someone drugged you, gave it a few minutes to take effect, then splashed a little alcohol in your mouth and on your clothes and put you behind the wheel, knowing damned well you couldn't drive a block without wrecking the car. In downtown Atlanta traffic, chances were good you'd be killed or seriously injured. And when you survived the crash, how hard could it have been in a busy emergency room for someone to get at the paperwork and make sure it tells the right story?"

"Are we talking about one person here, one enemy?" Faith asked.

"Somebody who influenced everything from the wreck and my hospital records to Dinah's disappearance? Maybe even what happened in Seattle?"

Bishop said, "There may be one person behind everything — always assuming it's all connected — but there'd have to be more than one person involved."

"Aren't you the man who told me once that true conspiracies are almost as rare as hen's teeth?" Kane asked.

"Yeah. But note that I said almost. They do happen. And if Dinah was telling you the truth when she was working on a story involving business, politics, and something criminal, then I'd say that's probably what we have here."

"How could a story like that have any connection to me?" Faith asked.

"That," Kane said, looking at her broodingly, "is the question. And we have to find the answer."

Bishop checked his watch and got to his feet.

"There's a flight out just after six. I'll head for home tonight, and if they don't put me on another plane before I can unpack, I'll see what I can find out about that restricted file tomorrow."

Faith was a little surprised. "Didn't I hear you say you weren't leaving until tomorrow?"

"That was the plan. But something came up." He didn't explain further.

Faith suddenly heard the whisper of a not-quite alien voice in her mind.

He wouldn't leave if he thought I was still alive.

She went absolutely still, conscious of a deep chill as she tried desperately to listen to whatever else that quiet voice might tell her.

But there was nothing else.

Just silence.

"Faith?" Kane's voice now.

She blinked and focused on Bishop. He was staring at her, his sentry eyes narrowed and an arrested expression on his face. As if he knew, as if he'd heard it too...

Faith drew a breath to steady herself and give herself a moment to think. Could she reach Dinah consciously, gain some information that might point them to her or her captors? Until she knew for sure, there was no reason to tell Kane about the voice in her head, no reason to baffle or unnerve anyone else, to try to explain the unexplainable.

"Is anything wrong?" Kane asked her.

"It was nothing," she said, so calm that she nearly convinced herself. "I thought I remembered something, but it slipped away."

Bishop didn't contradict her, but she wondered if he could have.

Faith debated telling Kane about her latest "dream" but decided not to lie because she could see nothing helpful in it either to his search for Dinah or her own search for knowledge of her past. The dream had revealed virtually no detailed information; the area had been too dark and unfamiliar for her to recognize, so she couldn't even provide a location from which Dinah might possibly have disappeared.

Always assuming it had been more than a dream.

That was what worried her most about the dreams and flashes of knowledge at they might well be no more than her imagination coupled with a few lucky guesses. It seemed so incredible that there could be some kind of psychic connection between her and another woman, one so strong that she was actually reliving the other woman's experiences and memories, feeling emotions not her own.

Hearing a voice in her head that belonged to someone else.

How could she believe such a thing?

And yet she did. Despite her worry and nagging uncertainty, she believed that a connection between her and Dinah did exist. She didn't know how or why that bond had formed, but she believed it was very real. If she could only figure out a way to use it to find Dinah ... But she seemed as unable to control that as she was to find memories of her own in the blankness of her mind. The helplessness was maddening. And sitting around doing nothing wasn't helping.

She could use her brain, though, couldn't she?

When Kane returned from seeing Bishop off in a cab to the airport, Faith was sitting on the couch with a legal pad and the small address book she had brought from her apartment.