Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

Didn't want to feel those horrible emotions or to see...

"Faith?"

Like a soap bubble popping, the sounds of rushing water were gone, and as she looked up into Kane's concerned eyes, what she heard was the normal activity of a busy emergency room.

"Yes?" Her voice sounded absentminded even to her.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine."

Kane frowned at her. "Are you sure?"

She wondered when the doctor had left them.

"Quite sure. But I'm afraid I ... I wasn't listening. Did Dr. Blake tell us anything helpful?"

He looked around and said, "Let's get out of here."

He put her in his car and drove them a few blocks to a restaurant that wasn't crowded; they were given a booth near a window, where the waitress quickly brought them coffee and left them alone.

Still distracted, Faith said, "What did Dr. Blake say about the accident?"

"The way he remembers it, preliminary tests showed some ambiguous results. Maybe there were alcohol and muscle relaxants in your system, and maybe not. All he knew for sure was that your vital signs were strong and was fairly normal that something had put you into a coma. He didn't think it was the head Injury and suspected something more toxic than alcohol and medication in your system, so he ordered further tests. He went off duty shortly afterward. When he came back the next day, he was told you'd been transferred upstairs. He assumed that happened because you were stable, and that your regular doctor had taken over your case."

Kane paused.

"Funny thing, though. The paperwork that's supposed to be kept there in the ER seems to be missing."

"Could it have been sent upstairs with me?"

"A copy should have been, and some paperwork was certainly part of the file that ended up with Dr. Burnett. But the admitting records should be on file in the ER. They aren't."

"I don't suppose we have much chance of finding out what happened to them?"

"You saw how busy that place was — and on a Monday morning, hardly their busiest time. My guess is that we'll never be able to trace what happened to those records between the time you were admitted and when you were put under Burnett's care. But we can assume any number of people had access and could have tampered with the test results."

"What about the lab that did the tests?"

"It's there in the hospital. Their procedure is to keep a copy of all results in their own files. But in this case..."

"Let me guess. Missing paperwork."

"Afraid so. And the blood and tissue samples they used for the tests were destroyed afterward, per standard procedure."

"Am I being paranoid in thinking all this missing and misplaced paperwork means something other than simple human error?"

"I don't think so. When there are this many glitches in a normally efficient system, it usually means someone's been tampering."

Faith sipped her coffee, grateful for the warmth because she'd felt chilled ever since her strange experience in the emergency room. "Then it's a safe bet that we'll never know for sure if there was actually alcohol in my blood or I was drugged intentionally."

"Probably not. But I'm willing to put my money on your having been drugged."

"It seems strange to hope that that's what happened, but I really didn't want to find out I'd been stupid enough to drink and get behind the wheel."

Kane's gaze was intent. "No, I doubt you were so reckless."

She wondered what he was basing that doubt on, but didn't ask. Instead, she said, "If I was drugged, the question is, who did it? I guess the why is obvious — they wanted me out of action."

"Yeah. Grabbed you in the parking garage would be my guess. It was a bit after hours, the area likely to be deserted, so it's a good possibility."

"So why didn't I just go for a phone and call the police once they let me go? Why did I attempt to drive?"

"You may have already been disoriented from the drug, not thinking clearly. They probably held on to you long enough to make sure of that. We do have half an hour or so unaccounted for, from the time you left the garage to the crash only six miles away."

"I suppose." But Faith remembered the flash in which she had reminded Dinah that they couldn't trust the police. Had she, even in a drugged and panicked state, felt that the only thing she could do was get to Dinah as soon as possible?

It might have been better if you had. It might have been so different ...

"That's the answer then," he said with bitterness rather than relief, calling from another pay phone.

"Just like you thought. She's gone to Macgregor."

"They're in a restaurant right now, heads together and talking up a storm."

"Get back here now."

"But shouldn't I follow..."

"We've found out what we need to know for the moment. She's gone to him, and you can bet he'll keep her close, hoping she can lead him to Dinah."

"What if she can? What if she can lead him to us?"

"We'll have to make sure she doesn't, won't we? Get back here now."

"Right."

"Faith?"

She looked at him, shook her head. Whose voice?

Not quite alien in her head, it could have been her own, her subconscious, the healed part of her mind trying to nudge the part still unable or unwilling to remember.

Or it could have been Dinah's.

"What is it?"

"Nothing." She tried to think clearly, still not sure of that voice in her head. "So somebody wanted me out of the way and arranged an accident. I end up in a coma, presumably no longer a threat. But then something happened. Something must have changed. Dinah became a threat to them somehow. Maybe they hadn't even connected her to me until she visited me in the hospital. Then they ... watched her, maybe? Saw her go to my apartment, maybe leave with my laptop?"

"Maybe. And maybe it was just common sense that she would become an enemy sooner or later. She's a journalist, a good one. Once they connected her to you, they might have been convinced you had told her whatever damaging information you had."

"I don't think Dinah became a threat because they realized she knew me. I think she became a threat when they realized something of theirs was missing."

"This evidence you believe you'd found?"

Faith frowned at her cup without seeing it, trying to make the pieces fit. "They keep asking her where it is. Over and over. That's why they didn't just kill her outright. And it has to be whatever I found, don't you see? They never searched Dinah's apartment, but they've searched mine twice-both times since she disappeared."

"So they have to be convinced you have whatever it is they're looking for, but that Dinah knows where it's hidden?"

"It's the only possibility that makes any sense to me." She looked steadily at Kane. "I took something from them, and they either didn't know about it until after the accident or thought they were safe once I was out of the way. Then they realized there was a connection between me and Dinah — a smart journalist with a knack for breaking big stories. So they grabbed her to try to make her talk. Only she's not talking."

"You said she refused to talk because she was protecting someone."

Kane's voice was almost as level as hers had been.

"You?"

Faith shook her head. "The last time she saw me, I was in a coma. I was ... safe."

"Maybe they told her you came out of it."

"I suppose they could have, but why would she feel her silence was protecting me? If I was the one she was concerned about, hearing I was out of the coma would make her more likely to tell them what she knew. Wouldn't it? So they wouldn't come after me."

Kane nodded slowly. "Then who does she believe she's protecting?"

Faith rubbed her forehead fretfully. "I don't know. How can we know that until we know what it is I found? And who's threatened by it?"