Nerves of Steel (28 page)

"Get out of my house, now!"

"This isn't over."  He pressed a silk handkerchief to his face.  "You'll pay for this, Ella."  He swept a hand across her dresser, scattering the few pieces of jewelry, ceramic ballerina, crystal vase and lamp to the floor with a shatter of breaking glass.

He started to advance on her, his face flushed with outrage.  Cassie held her ground, her feet in a fighting stance.

"What's going on here?" Drake burst into the room at a run, his gun drawn.  He surveyed the damage-strewn room and kept his gun on Richard.  "Hart, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she told him, catching Richard's eye. 

"What happened?"

"Nothing, Detective."  Richard smiled at her as he shook the creases back into his slacks.  He ignored Drake's gun and moved past Drake to Cassie, nodding at her as if they had a bargain.  "Just a little morning rendezvous.  For old times sakes, you know." 

Drake holstered his gun and grabbed Richard by the arm.  "Get your hands off her!"

Richard looked down in amusement, then met Drake's eyes.  "Surely, you're not arresting me, Detective?"

"Like hell, I'm not.  Assault and battery--" Drake began.

Richard's laugh rang through the small room.  "I think not."

"Let him go," Cassie said, the words tasting of ash in her mouth.  Drake kept his hold on Richard.

"You can't be serious.  Hart, think about--"

"She is thinking, Detective," Richard said.  "Thinking of what's best for everyone involved."  He tugged his arm from Drake's grip.  Drake stared at his empty hand, then at Cassie.

"If I ever see you touch her again--"

"It's all right, Detective, I understand," Richard said.  "My wife has that effect on men. Remember what I said," Richard told Cassie as he stalked from the room, smoothing the wrinkles in his Italian silk.  "I'll see you tonight, Ella."

Drake spun to face Cassie.  She knew he wanted to go after Richard.  But she'd bought them a little time.  She couldn't let him ruin that by arresting Richard now.

"Let him go," she repeated.  Confusion swept across his face.  She collapsed on the bed, shaking with adrenalin and anger.

The bed sighed as Drake sat down beside her.  He placed his arm around her shoulders.  She shrugged it off.

She considered telling him about Richard and the tape.  What would she say? 
My ex-husband comes from a rich and powerful family and wants to destroy you?  Now, thanks to me, he has the means to do that.

"Want to tell me what the hell is going on?" he finally said.

She had until tonight.  She could find a way to make things right by then.  She had to.

"Go away," she said.  "Please, just go away." 

After several long moments, Drake stood.  She fell back against Rosa's quilt, the thick velvet embracing her, as she listened to his footsteps echoing down the stairs. 

CHAPTER 46

Cassie wiped her face on a corner of her shirt.  Blood from her nose stained the white cotton.  The least of her worries.  She sat up, rolled her shoulders.  What to do next?  How to fix this mess?

A creak echoed through the stairway, and she tensed.  Richard returning to finish things?  Her pulse hammered in her head, and her palms grew clammy.  She searched for a weapon, grabbed the lamp from the nightstand and crouched near the door.

"Hart?"

Drake.  Cassie almost dropped the lamp in her confusion.  "I--I thought you'd left.  What are you doing here?"

He said nothing but took the lamp from her hand and replaced it on the nightstand.  "He's gone.   I've locked all the doors."

She looked at him in amazement.  What was this man doing in her bedroom, talking as if nothing had happened? 

Drake looked out into the fenced in square of Hart's backyard.  Wind gusted through fallen leaves, creating tiny whirlwinds that swirled across the garden.  His mind reeled in time with the small dervishes.

"You left your cell phone," he said, his face still toward the window.

"I'm glad you came when you did."  Her voice was tentative.

Drake spun around, both hands fisted at his sides.  "What are you hiding from me?  What really happened here this morning?"

She kept her back to him, slumped down, hands dangling lifelessly between her knees.  "It's none of your business," she said after a long silence.

That hurt, especially after last night.  He moved around the bed and stood in front of her.  "None of my business, or none of the police's business?"

She hung her head, veiling her face in a curtain of dark hair and was silent.

"Damn it!  Just tell me."

"Who asked you for help?  Have I ever asked you for anything?"  She bounced to her feet and went to the door, holding it open.  "Thank you for coming, Detective Drake.  Please tell Commander Miller that I'll be in sometime later to give her my statement about last night."

"Want me to tell her you're too busy wallowing in self pity?" he asked, knowing it was cruel, a twist of the knife, but willing to do it if it returned her to her senses.

She glared at him, refused to rise to the bait.  "Tell her the truth," she said in a calm voice.  "I'm exhausted, I haven't gotten much sleep in the past few days."

"Why don't you call and tell her yourself?  I'm not your messenger boy.  I've a task force meeting I'm late for."

"Then I suggest you go now."  

She wouldn't meet his eyes as he passed her, close enough to touch.  Drake reached out a hand, willing to stop this nonsense if she would, but he saw her recoil when he drew near.  He walked down the steps without a backward glance. 

To hell with her, to hell with everything except closing his case.  He let himself out.  Should have known better than to allow a woman to distract him from his work.

The words rang hollow.  Especially as Drake realized they were the exact words he used after he had learned about Pamela's secret.

Miller stood beside Dimeo at the back of the conference room when Drake entered.  Kwon shot him a look that said he was so busted.  He took his customary seat behind Summers and slouched over the table, doodling on a notepad, making eye contact with no one.

"We found Trautman's lab in the basement of his aunt's house," one of the narcotics guys was saying.  "Hazmat will have it cleared for processing later this morning.  No signs of any of the drugs stolen from the pharmacy the night Weaver was killed."

"Phone records show several to his cell from Richard King," Summers said.  "None to or from Hart."

Drake's teeth ground together at the mention of King and Hart.

"What else did Trautman say last night, Summers?" Kwon asked.

Summers darted a glance at Drake before answering.  "Said he caught Hart stealing FX from the ER.  He was blackmailing her, and she asked to meet him on the bridge to, uh, negotiate."

Drake's pen tore through the top pages of his notepad, leaving an ugly gouge behind.  No way.  Trautman was a lying piece of shit, just trying to cover his own ass.  Hart wouldn't, couldn't--

"So, do we believe him or Hart's story that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?" Miller asked the group.

Silence.  Drake felt the weight of his team's eyes upon him.  He remained silent, not looking up, his gaze boring a hole through the table.

"Seems like an awfully big coincidence to me," Dimeo said.

"Did anyone talk to this social worker, Adeena Coleman, yet?  The one who was supposed to be there with Hart."

Drake jerked his head up.  Talking to Coleman wasn't such a bad idea.  "I'll do it," he volunteered, ignoring the stares of surprise the others sent his way.

"Fine," Miller said.  "You take Coleman, and Kwon can interview Hart when she comes in later."

Drake glanced over.  Kwon's smile was that of a predator circling in on its prey.  Who cared?   Hart could take care of herself--wasn't that what she kept telling him?  She didn't need him to defend her with Kwon.  She only needed him to find Weaver's killer. 

In other words, to do his job.

Cassie watched Drake's car pull away from the curb and sighed in relief.  God, the man was stubborn.  And she didn't like the way he could see right through her--almost to her soul, it seemed at times.  No one else had ever done that, except for Rosa, but she'd never felt so confused by Rosa's uncanny abilities.

Drake scared her.  The fact that she was allowing him into her life, her world.  The way her body responded, compelled by the merest glance of him.  Worse, the way she seemed to be coming to rely on him, to depend on him.

She wished he could help her now, but she refused to risk his career.  Or justice for Fran.

She shook her head, chewing on her lower lip.  She could fix this, make this right.Somehow.  She owed it to Drake.

The phone rang.  "Cassie, it's Adeena.  The neurologists said Jane Doe's EEG is looking better.  It might take awhile, but she's going to make it."

At least something was going right today.  "That's great.  How about my other patient, Brian Winston?"

Adeena's silence told Cassie all she needed to know.  Hell.  "They're considering withdrawing life support," she finally said.  "I'm sorry.  When Jane Doe--"

"Sarah," she interrupted.  "Her real name is Sarah."

"How--you found out who she is?"

"Just her first name and a few other hints."  Cassie looked at her rumpled bed.  She wasn't going to get any sleep or any peace, not after what happened this morning.  "I'll be in shortly and explain everything."

A shower did little to revive her.  She jogged up the steps to the ICU at half her usual pace, muscles complaining every step of the way.  Adeena was waiting at the nurses' station.

"I need to apologize about those angry messages I left," the social worker told her when Cassie took the seat beside her.  "I was worried."

"You were right.  I shouldn't have gone on my own."  Cassie shuddered.  "The way those kids are living out there."

"The news said a drug dealer tried to kill you."

"Guy named Trautman, he's an orderly on Orthopedics."

"Did he kill Fran?"

"No.  But I think he's getting Richard drugs that aren't showing up on his urine tests."

"Richard?  You'd think he learned his lesson already."

"If Sarah wakes up, maybe she knows who Trautman is working with.  Can help the police find Fran's killer."  Cassie flipped to the neurologist's note, pleased with the optimistic tone.  She leaned back.  "One of the kids said she was from Indiana or Ohio.  And another," she frowned, trying to remember Sherry's incoherent ramblings, "said something about a horse and buggy when I showed her Sarah's picture.  She was high on something, so who knows what that means."

"I'll add the information to the database."

She walked over to bedspace four.  Sarah looked like any skinny teenager sleeping, as if you could rouse her with a simple prod and a reminder that school was waiting.  But her slumber went much deeper.  Her brain had been oxygen deprived.  It would be a miracle if she woke completely intact.  The neurologists, although now hopeful that someday she would wake, weren't making any bets on that.

Cassie stroked Sarah's hair, tucked it behind the girl's ears.  Adeena joined her.  "Guess there's nothing more we can do but wait."

"There has to be something," Cassie said.  "She's so alone." 

She wished Rosa was here, she'd find someway to help the girl, even if it was just to spoon homemade soup into her, fatten her up.  Thinking of Rosa led to Drake and their conversation the night before when he laughed at the idea of gypsy curses, and she told him about Rosa and Padraic.  How much Rosa sacrificed for Padraic, how she'd been shunned by her own people.

Cassie froze, her gaze riveted on the irregular earring holes in Sarah's earlobes.  "These were all home made, weren't they?"

Adeena leaned forward, looked.  "Probably.  So, she didn't have money to go to Station Square and get them done professionally."

"Most girls her age have their ears pierced--"

"Maybe her parents were cheap.  What are you doing?"  Cassie had opened the girl's mouth and was looking at her teeth.

"They didn't believe in orthodontists either."  She closed Sarah's mouth, hiding the crooked teeth and overbite once more.  "There are a lot of Amish in Ohio and Indiana, aren't there?"

Adeena looked at her and smiled in comprehension.  "Horse and buggy.  I'll get a list of county sheriffs and start calling."  She left for her office.

Cassie held the girl's hand, wishing Sarah would squeeze hers back.  The street-worn drug addict might be a runaway farm girl.  Who would have guessed?  So many things were not what they seemed.  Sometimes you had to keep probing to discover what was hidden beneath the surface.

Fran's last message ran through her mind.  The FX was just the tip of the iceberg, she'd said.  Cassie released Sarah's hand and straightened.  She looked at the clock.  Five minutes before noon.  Perfect timing.  If Fran meant what she thought she meant, she might just have found a clue to her killer.

Cassie planted a quick kiss on Sarah's forehead and rushed from the ICU.

CHAPTER 47

The task force meeting finally broke up, and Kwon walked upstairs to the Major Crimes Squad with Drake.

"My money's on the doctor.  Your friend, Hart.  I'll bet she set up that meet on the bridge."

"No, it wasn't that way," he said, not making eye contact.  "She went to the Barn trying to help her patient find her family."  It sounded feeble even to him.

Kwon made a small clicking noise with her tongue.  Usually that sound indicated that some badguy was about to have his story shred to pieces and fed to him with an accompaniment of sarcasm.

Only this time they weren't talking about some skel from the streets.  They were talking about Hart.

"Look at it, DJ," she said, walking him through the evidence as if he were a rookie.  "You said yourself you had doubts that Trautman was the only actor involved in the FX thefts.  What if the good doctor is in it with him, the brains behind the brawn, so to speak?  We know her ex is a user, why not her as well?"

"She's the one who came to us," Drake reminded her.  "Without her, we'd never have tripped to Trautman."