Hot Pursuit (27 page)

I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow night. …

“Not every relationship needs to be serious,” Maria was saying now. “Two weeks could be a perfect length.”

Jenn turned to look at her friend. She was trying to be supportive, but she sounded just as lame as Jenn had.

“It could be just exactly right,” Maria insisted. “As a professional, you don’t want a relationship that’s
too
short. It’ll raise eyebrows. But two weeks? You can come off of two weeks of great sex with a really hot guy, and look pensive and a little sad, and say,
We tried, but it just didn’t work out
, and everyone’ll call you
brave
instead
of slut.”
She smiled. “Except for me, slut.”

“Shut up.” Jenn threw a pillow at her.

“On a scale from one to ten, with ten being phenomenal,” Maria started.

“Don’t ask me that,” Jenn protested. “I’m not going to answer. It would be crass and undignified.”

“I’ll take that as an eleven,” Maria said.

“No comment.”

“What’s that you’re implying? A never before reported twelve?!”

Jenn laughed. “Stop. I’m not doing this.”

“May I change the subject?”

“Please.”

“Are you sure? It’s to something much less pleasant than fabulous sex with unbelievably hot guys.”

“Please,”
Jenn said. “Change the subject, already.”

“Sam Starrett’s broken rib,” Maria stated.

Jenn sat up. “Yeah. I saw that bruise. Did it happen in the tussle with the homeless psycho-killer guy?”

“No, it did not.” Maria had on her super-serious face. “Jenni, Mick Callahan did it.”

“What?”

Maria nodded. “Jenn, I know you like him, but there’s been something … off with him, right from the start. He freaks me out.”

“Because he’s in love with you,” Jenn said.

“This isn’t just socially awkward unrequited love,” her friend told her. “He really clashed with Alyssa in the office today—while you were out showing the SEAL squad my apartment. You were probably getting jiggy with Dan Gillman underneath my bed. Which also freaks me out, but not as much.”

“I was
not
getting jiggy with anyone,” Jenn said. “It wasn’t until later that… Never mind what happened
when
. Mick clashed with Alyssa how?”

“To start with, they just both really rubbed each other the wrong way,” Maria said. “Alyssa got kind of icy while Mick went directly to pretty rude. And then, when she came into my office to talk to me, he said some things about her, to Sam, that were shocking.”

“To
Sam?”
Jenn couldn’t believe it. “What is Mick? An idiot?”

“He claims he didn’t know they were married,” Maria said. “But I don’t know what to believe anymore when he’s around.”

“God,” Jenn said. “And what about Sam? I know he’s a friend of Savannah’s, but why do we just trust what
he
says over—”

“Jenn, Sam was leaving a voice mail to Jules Cassidy, and everything Mick said to him about Alyssa was recorded.”

And
that
would be a good reason why they believed Sam over Mick.

“It was ugly and misogynistic and violent,” Maria continued. “Sam lost his temper and pinned Mick to the wall, which got kind of noisy, so we came out, and there they were, and then Alyssa said
stop
, so Sam let him go, at which point Mick actually drew his gun—”

“Seriously?” Jenn said. She closed her mouth. She’d been sitting there with it open.

“I was there,” Maria told her. “He made Sam get on the floor, hands on his head, the whole perp position, you know? And when he was down there? That’s when Mick kicked him and broke his rib.”

Oh, God, no …

“I saw him do it, Jenni,” Maria continued. “It was vicious. I know you like him, but we need to put some distance between him and us. I don’t want him coming into the office anymore. He makes me uncomfortable.”

“Mick’s a constituent,” Jenn pointed out. “I don’t think we can—”

“I don’t want him coming in to see
you,”
Maria rephrased her request. “He’s just pretending to be friends with you—”

“He is not.”

True, Jenn hadn’t known Mick for all that long, but their friendship was the instant kind. Mere days after they’d first laid eyes on
one another, she’d bumped into him in the bookstore. They’d ended up at O’Brien’s, a local bar, where he’d told her all kinds of tales, both harrowing and funny, of life as a New York City cop.

“Okay, fine,” Maria said, although she clearly didn’t believe it. “He’s not pretending. But this latest incident was too much. Don’t encourage him.”

“Are you telling me that, as my boss—”

“No,” Maria said. “As your friend. And I will kick your butt if you go out with him again to that bar where he drinks, which I
know
that he does too much and too often, and you, of all people, should know better than to go there with him.”

“I just… I like him,” Jenn defended herself. “He’s a good person—”

“Jenni, you didn’t see him—”

“Who isn’t perfect,” Jenn continued, “and doesn’t always make the right choices. His job is impossible—”

“He told Sam that what Alyssa needed was a good gang bang.”

Oh, Mick. Jenn sighed. “He can be a real jerk, but I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

“Then he shouldn’t’ve said it,” Maria countered. “Will you please do me a favor and not call him anymore? At least not until the FBI catches Maggie’s killer.”

Jenn looked at her. “You don’t actually think that Mick … ?”

“You should’ve seen him,” Maria said again. “Frankly, I don’t know what to think. He’s on my list of suspects.”

“Maria, come on, he’s a
cop!”

“Well, Jules and Alyssa asked me about relationships, and Mick’s asked me out about four million times in a very short amount of time. He actually cornered me—on Thursday—in my office. You weren’t there and … I honestly didn’t know what he was going to do. Thank God Douglas came in. Which was awkward, because I’m not sure
he
didn’t think he was interrupting something mutual but
inappropriate. But my point here is that Mick makes me uncomfortable. Plus he’s got a better motive than some crazy homeless man.”

“Crazy is motive enough,” Jenn said.

“But crazy plus motive needs to be investigated.”

“What’s Mick’s motive?” Jenn asked. “Spurned suitor?”

“It’s a classic,” Maria pointed out, “on the motive’s list of greatest hits.”

“He’s going to love being investigated,” Jenn told her.

“It’s his fault,” Maria said, “for being mean and vicious. Just promise me that you’ll—”

“I promise,” Jenn said, lying back on the bed again. “I’ll keep my distance. God.”

They sat—and lay—in silence for several long moments, then Maria said, “Assuming I don’t end up with my heart in, like, the mayor’s assistant’s desk drawer—”

“Don’t say that!” Horrified, Jenn turned her head to look at her friend. “You’re safe, and we’re going to make sure that you stay safe.”

“Assuming that we do,” Maria said, “do you honestly think that an unmarried woman, or even a married woman without children, could ever get elected President?”

Jenn sat up again. Where had
that
come from? “I’m not sure of anything,” she answered, “since we haven’t gotten as far as
woman
yet. Although I’d bet the big bucks that having a family could be extremely important to some of the more conservative voters.”

“And I don’t have one,” Maria pointed out the obvious.

“I said
could be,”
Jenn pointed out. “And
some.”

“If I’m going to have a baby,” Maria said, “I should have one soon. Before we position me for the senate run.”

“All this talk of crazy people,” Jenn said, “is making you crazy.”

“I’m just trying,” Maria said, “to make sense of all of this. Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it?”

“Except for the things that happen for absolutely no reason,”
Jenn countered. “Of which there are an awful lot in this whacked-out world.”

“But what if my being targeted like this, and what if Maggie’s murder,” her voice shook, “for which I will never forgive myself—”

“Maria, my God, honey, this isn’t your fault,” Jenn interrupted her. “Not at all. You didn’t ask for this, you don’t deserve it, and you are absolutely
not
responsible for it.”

Maria nodded, as if she were trying to convince the emotional part of her to embrace what her logical side surely already knew to be true. “It feels like my fault,” she said quietly.

“It’s not.”

“But what if,” Maria said, “something good can come from it? Like you and Dan.”

“Okay,” Jenn said, “I don’t think the whole twelve on a scale from one to ten thing really counts as something good coming from Maggie’s murder.”

“But what if you fall in love with him,” Maria persisted. “Dan. And what if he falls in love with you—”

“That’s not going to happen,” Jenn told her. The second part, anyway. The first part—what if she fell in love with Dan—was already dangerously close to moving from possibility to reality. Oh, God, she was in trouble here. And if that first part happened without the second part, that wasn’t exactly good news either.

“But it’s not impossible,” Maria said, and she was so fierce in her hope, in her belief that light could come from darkness, that Jenn couldn’t bring herself to argue.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It’s not impossible.”

It was, however, very,
very
highly unlikely.

Hospital bed number 14C held a weeping, vomiting toddler and her extremely concerned parents.

“Excuse me,” Jules said as he knocked softly upon the door and leaned into the tiny room. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but… have you been in here long?”

“About an hour and still no doctor,” the girl’s mother said grimly.

“An hour.” Jules looked at Alyssa, and then tried to intercept a nurse. “Excuse me … I’m sorry, would you tell me …”

The nurse sped past him.

The emergency room here at St. Sebastian’s was crowded. The waiting room was wall-to-wall people of all ages, from crying babies to gangbangers to dazed-looking elderly men and women—all jockeying for their chance to see a doctor.

When Jules had called, he was told that their John Doe—a homeless man brought in with a possible head injury—was in bed 14C.

There was no sign, either, of the FBI agents who had been sent in from the New York City office to guard him or take him in for questioning, should he be released from the hospital.

Another aide approached, pushing a computer on a rattle-wheeled cart, and Jules tried again. “Excuse me.” He leaned in to read the name tag pinned to her chest. “Ms. Duddy. Pam.”

“Can’t stop,” she told him.

But he stepped in front of her, and it was stop or run him down. She stopped. She was in her early forties, with a sweet, round face that broadcasted her exhaustion. She was clearly overworked and overwhelmed and she sighed her exasperation. “Sir…”

“Nice socks,” Jules said, and Alyssa looked down to see that she was, indeed, wearing unusual socks—adorned with little dolphins. She also had a
Mister Spock Rocks
sticker on her computer cart, along with another that said
Fan of All Things Joss
.

“I really can’t stop,” the woman told Jules.

“Maybe not for a fellow
Buffy
fan,” he said as he took out his ID and held it out to her with an apologetic smile. “But for the FBI?”

That got him her full attention.

Particularly when he added, “We’re looking for the man who’s supposed to be in fourteen C, because we think he might be connected to a murder in which a woman’s heart was cut from her chest.”

“Connected to?” Pam Duddy asked.

“As in he might be the killer,” Jules told her. “Which is why we’re kind of perturbed that he’s not actually
in
bed fourteen C.”

He pointed to the occupied bed, and she pulled her cart out of the stream of traffic.

“What’s the patient name?” she asked.

“You have him as Doe, John.”

She shot him a humorous look. “Oh, good,” she said, fingers moving across her keyboard, “that makes it so much easier. We have seven different Does, Johns tonight. He was brought in … what time?”

“Around twenty hundred,” Alyssa said, translating to civilian, “Eight p.m.”

“This him?” she asked, spinning her laptop to face them.

There was a slightly blurry digital photo of the man that Sam had dubbed Don Quixote in the right corner of her computer screen. He was on a gurney and unconscious, his eyes closed, but… “That’s our man,” Alyssa confirmed.

Pam pulled her computer back around, and typed in several commands and … “Got him,” she said. “He’s in … bed fourteen C, which is what you already knew. Sorry. I’m not finding …” She looked up from her computer, an apology in her warm blue eyes. “Here’s what we do know: He wasn’t released. At least not officially. He might have done what we call a self-release. Also known as a walk-away.”

“Has the hospital been this busy all night?” Alyssa asked, as Jules took out his phone.

“Yes, and sir, there are medical reasons why you can’t use that in here. We’re not just being difficult, I promise you.”

“Sorry,” Jules said, adding, “Thank you so much for your help,
Pam.” With a keep-talking-to-her nod at Alyssa, he headed back out into the waiting area. He was, no doubt, calling his contact at the FBI headquarters, hoping that the confusion was only on the hospital’s end.

Although he was supposed to have gotten a call, should the homeless man be taken into FBI or police custody.

Pam looked as if she were getting her computer cart ready to roll, so Alyssa stepped forward to block her path. “Do you get many indigent patients here?” she asked.

“We’re one of the few hospitals in this part of town that takes them,” Pam told her. “So again, yes. But we don’t go to Herculean efforts to keep them from wandering off.”

“Is it possible he’s doing his wandering in the hospital?” Alyssa asked.

“That’s unlikely,” she said. “With his wrist bracelet on, he’d be easily ID’d as an ER patient, and brought back down here.”