Linda Howard - Kill and Tell

She stared at him. "I don't know," she said blankly. "You won't let me back into my apartment."

"Do you have family here?"

"No." Her throat closed. "No family."

"Friends?"

"Yes, but I don't—" Piper had offered her house, her company. "Maybe Piper Lloyd. She's a nurse here at the hospital, too." She gave him Piper's number. "Even if I'm not staying there, Piper will know where I

am. Or you can reach me here at the hospital. I work nights."

He gave her a shrewd look. "I bet you won't work tonight."

"Of course I will," she said, automatically rejecting the notion that she wasn't fit. Why did everyone keep acting as if she had suffered more than some minor bruising and a small cut?

He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "Ms. Whitlaw, it's none of my business, but I think you should cut yourself some slack. You handled the situation just about as well as possible, under the circumstances. You kept your head, didn't panic, alerted nine-one-one, and defended yourself with the means you had at hand. But you haven't had any sleep, you've been in a fight—and believe me, you're going to start feeling all sorts of bruises and aches. Look at you. You're shivering and huddling under that blanket, but it isn't cold in here. You're a nurse. What does that tell you?" Shock. Her mind immediately supplied the diagnosis. Her blood pressure had dropped after the surge of adrenaline that allowed her to fight off the burglar. Karen was annoyed. She should have recognized the symptoms and been lying down. This was twice she had been oblivious to what her own body was telling her, she who was one of the best on the surgical floor at looking at patients and quickly summing up their overall condition.

"All right, so maybe I won't work tonight," she admitted. "I need a uniform, anyway. How do I get my things from the apartment?"

"Make a list of what you need, and I'll have a policewoman pack a bag for you."

"How long will it be before I can get back in?"

"A couple of days. I'll try to hurry things along."

"I can't live there again."

He sighed and reached out as if he would pat her knee, then paused without making the gesture of comfort. She diagnosed his hesitation as fear of lawsuits. "No," he said, "I don't guess you can." The sound of running feet caught her attention, and a moment later Piper burst into the cubicle. She was red-faced and panting. "Karen! My God, are you all right? One of the emergency nurses called upstairs and told us you were here. You were mugged ?"

"Not exactly."

Detective Suter got to his feet. It looked like an effort. "I'll be in touch, Ms. Whitlaw. And I'll get your things to you."

"Thank you," she barely had time to say, before Piper shifted from concerned friend mode to nurse mode and pushed her down on the bed.

He hadn't heard from Clancy, who was always prompt about reporting. Hayes waited, growing more annoyed and worried by the minute. Finally, he called his source in Columbus.

"Anything interesting happened today?"

"Ah, yeah. The good guys killed a burglar in a lady's apartment. She was at home, surprised him, put up a good fight and got away. The word is he was a pro; the piece he was carrying had the serial number filed off."

"No shit. Did he have anything else on him?"

"Nothing on him, but a rental vehicle was located in the parking lot, and a wallet with his license and credit cards was found in the glovebox."

Hayes hung up and sat drumming his fingers on the desk. Clancy was dead. How in hell had that happened? He'd been one of the best.

Moreover, nothing had been found on him, so that meant he hadn't found the book. Hayes spared a moment for regret that the book hadn't been on him; it would now be in police possession, but he would know where it was, and getting it out of police possession was child's play. Karen Whitlaw was beginning to worry him. This was twice things had gone wrong. The first time was a logical mistake, but now he wondered why she had moved. To make herself harder to find? How much had her father told her?

Hayes's preference was to find the book, not kill the woman. But, logically, she was the only one who would know where the damn thing was hidden. If he couldn't find the book, then obviously he had to get rid of her.

Chapter 15

«^»

"You see what a problem it is, Raymond," Senator Lake said. The big, gray-haired man nodded in acknowledgment. They sat in the parlor of the senator's Washington townhouse, lingering over their morning coffee. Raymond had gotten a late flight out of Minneapolis the day before and arrived in Washington well after midnight, so the senator had left word for him to get a good night's sleep, and they would talk in the morning.

The senator had gotten, for him, a late start; he had slept until eight, and now it was ten-thirty, the morning sun bright and hot. "I had my doubts about the way Hayes handled the matter of Medina," he said slowly, "and now it looks as if he lied in order to get me to do things his way. I can't imagine any reason why Frank Vinay would deny knowing about Medina's death, if he already knew, or any reason for him to say Medina had no family if in fact he did. I wasn't asking for classified data, and I am chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

"Hayes must have his own agenda," Raymond said, his thick brows furrowed as he thought. He looked like a boxer who had gone one round too many, but there was an agile brain behind the battered appearance.

"That's what I thought, too. I wonder if perhaps he is gathering ammunition with which to blackmail me. Whitlaw could have given him the idea." The one good thing about that scenario, the senator thought, was that it proved Hayes's minions hadn't discovered the notebook and he had kept it himself. If Hayes had

the notebook, he wouldn't need any other means of blackmail.

"You know what I think about loose ends." Raymond shook his head. "They're dangerous. You don't use people you can't trust. You said Hayes used people you didn't know to take care of Medina?"

"Yes. He swore they knew nothing about me, that they thought he was the head, but if he's lied in one thing, then nothing he says is trustworthy."

"Get their names from him," Raymond said. "I'll take care of it." Raymond had always taken care of things. Senator Lake could remember, as a child, hearing the burly man quietly say to his father, "I'll take care of it," and his father had always smiled and nodded, and it was done. It was reassuring now to hear him say the words, to know his affairs were being handled by someone he could trust with his life.

"Do you have Hayes's address?"

"Yes, of course." The senator had made it a point to find out. He had not, however, written it down in his address book or had his secretary add it to his computer files. No, anything to do with Hayes was stored only in his head. In his position, he knew too much about the capabilities of current technology to believe anything in his computer was private, and though he took the security precautions any sane man would take, he didn't assume his system was inviolate. If it wasn't written down, then it wasn't accessible; that was the most secure any information could be. He rattled off the street number to Raymond, whose lips moved slightly as he memorized it.

"I'll get right on it," Raymond said, and the senator knew everything was going to be all right.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Piper asked for the tenth time as she and Karen walked across the hospital parking lot to Piper's car. There was a parking deck, but it was reserved for the doctors and administrative staff, so they wouldn't get wet or have to walk very far. The nurses and other peons, who were evidently all in good shape and not allergic to water, had to use a parking lot that was half a block away from the hospital.