Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (16 page)

“Okay.” She hung the bag, then scurried out of the room, probably to call her union rep. I figured she knew this was a lawsuit waiting to happen and would have liked to spirit that little IV bag away before anyone noticed it. And I didn’t blame her. Nurses get sued, too.

I looked up at the bag. It had another patient’s name on it, and a different room number. The label read Insulin.

Shaking my head, I looked at the judge’s body in the bed. “What were you gonna tell us, Judge Howie? What the fuck were you into?” I even tried touching his hand, waiting for a vision. But Judge Howie didn’t give me a thing.

* * *

There was no sign of the nurse—if she even was a nurse—who’d hung the IV bag. She was long gone by the time we realized what had happened and went looking. And from there the afternoon had been endless, as Mason and Vanessa interviewed witnesses and I stood around trying to pick up on their underlying issues.

And I did. I knew, for example, that a hunky orderly was sleeping with a female surgeon who didn’t want anyone to know.
He
did, though. He was busting with pride, and it was written all over his face. I knew that the nurse in charge of the floor at the time of the judge’s murder was scared to death of being blamed and losing her license. She had that look people have when they get caught doing something unforgivable and have been found out. I thought she was blaming herself more than anyone else would, and hoped she didn’t lose her job or her license over it. I mean, it happened in a roomful of cops, an FBI agent and me. How the hell could she blame herself?

I got lots of shit like that. Nothing useful.

The insulin had been taken from another patient’s room. There was a tiny bit of video surveillance footage of the imposter nurse walking out of the room and down the hall with the IV bag in hand, going directly into the judge’s room and leaving again. She had a way of fitting right in, moving with that quick, confident efficiency nurses always had, and keeping her face averted from the cameras all the time.

I’d been going over it in my head nonstop, wondering what good this extra sense of mine was if people could commit murder right under my nose without me even fucking noticing.

I
had
noticed, though. I’d felt a dark little niggling in the back of my neck when she’d walked past me, even wondered why she was hiding behind all that gear. Why the hell hadn’t I trusted that feeling? I could’ve kicked myself.

I didn’t need to keep going over it in my head in search of details about the murderer. There was video footage. But it didn’t do a hell of a lot of good. The woman had been dressed in clothes normally used in the O.R. I hadn’t even noticed the shoe covers. Aside from female and five-four, we had no clue who she was. She probably didn’t work for the hospital. She had some medical knowledge. Enough to know the right dose of insulin to use to kill and how to operate an IV pump. Although they were uncomplicated enough, I supposed, for an amateur intent on murder to figure out ahead of time. She’d taken a crowded elevator when she’d left the judge to die. The police were still going over security camera footage on every floor where it had stopped, but there was no footage of her getting off. They suspected she’d removed her getup a piece or two at a time, as other people got on and off, and eventually exited with a group, probably looking entirely different than she had earlier. She might have even ridden up and down a few times to throw off the search. It was going to take time to identify and rule out every person picked up on video. And she’d probably kept her face averted from the cameras, anyway.

In the meantime, I was home, and it was a warm night. A beautiful night. Almost like an early taste of what the coming summer was going to be like. Mason had dropped me off, and we’d gone our separate ways.

But it had hurt more than it usually did this time. I don’t know why. Being around all this death shit, maybe. I took Myrtle out on her leash, but only to keep her from slipping and falling into the lake. We walked down across the lush lawn and the little dirt road, and then down the sloping grass to the big dock I’d had built near the water’s edge. It was time to get the patio set out of the garage and set it up out here. Time to drag out the barbecue grill I’d bought. This was going to be my first sighted summer as an adult, and I intended to enjoy it. I might even get a boat.

I didn’t go out onto the dock but down to the water’s edge beside it. Myrt started sniffing immediately, front paws in the water, her entire butt wiggling in joy. I saw an unsuspecting frog a foot or two ahead of her and waited. Soon she sniffed her way nearer, and just as she bumped the creature with her nose, it sprang away and splashed her in the face. She wriggled and barked for sheer joy, then started sniffing for another.

I didn’t know what she’d ever do if she caught one. Not eat it. There wasn’t a mean bone in Myrtle’s body. Though she
was
perpetually ravenous, so I supposed there was a slight chance. More likely, though, she’d try to hold the thing still with a forepaw so she could sniff it thoroughly and it would wind up squashed.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. If she caught a frog, I’d make sure not to let her squash it.

I sat down in the grass, and let her wander and sniff to the end of her lead. It was one of those extending ones, so she had plenty of room to explore. I sat there looking out over the water, watching the sun sink slowly on the other side. It was gonna be one helluva sunset. Damn, it was a shame Mason wasn’t here to see this.

My phone rang. I pulled it out, saw his face on the screen and got all mushy inside. This was rapidly approaching pathetic.

I touched the screen. “How’d you know I was thinking about you?” Oh, God, did I really just say something that sappy? Gag!

“Maybe I’m the one who’s psychic.”

I didn’t flinch or cuss at the word. I supposed that was progress. “I’m out by the dock with Myrt. The sunset’s going to be killer.”

“You want some company?”

“You’ll never make it in time.”

“Yeah, I will. I’m at the end of your road. With the boys. And an entire vat of takeout from Uncle Louie’s Backyard Barbecue.”

“What were you doing in Cortland?”

“
Lords of Battle Seven
was sold out everywhere else.”

“Lords of Battle Seven?”
I repeated.

“For Xbox.”

“Ah, of course.”

“I promised the boys we’d get it on release day. I just forgot to preorder.”

“Hence the forty-minute drive. After the day we just had.” I shook my head, because it hit me how good he was. He really was just plain good right to his bones. That was something I didn’t think most people were. I didn’t even really think I was. At least not compared to him. I’d have ordered the game on Amazon and told the boys the world would not end if they got it a few days after release day. I’d have told myself it was a good life lesson and refused to feel any guilt about it.

Yeah. He was good.

“So we grabbed the best takeout known to man and we were heading home when Josh asked if we could bring you some. He misses you.”

“He misses my dog, and it’s only been two days.” But I was smiling like an idiot and wondering when I’d developed such a mushy spot in my heart for an eleven-year-old.

“I don’t want to stomp all over your serenity, Rache. I know it’s been a rough week.”

“It’s too damn quiet around here, to be honest.” My stomach growled. “And you know, there’re the ribs.”

“And a surprise for dessert.”

I smiled and looked up the winding dirt road. “I can just see your headlights.”

“I can’t see yours at all from here.”

“Smart-ass.”

* * *

The sunset was spectacular. I was standing there on the little patch of lawn on the reservoir side of my dusty dirt road, my arms loaded down with deadfall I’d gathered for firewood. Mason was on the dock, setting up my lawn furniture. He’d dug it out of the garage for me after we’d devoured the ribs in my dining room. Four woven folding lawn chairs now surrounded our small but burgeoning campfire, and the wicker set was almost ready for use on the dock.

I dropped the firewood and turned to look his way. And there he was, on the dock, a silhouette against the red-orange blaze of the sun just kissing the distant hilltops on the far side of the lake.

“Wow.”

He looked up from his deep study of the white wicker patio set that included a love seat, two side chairs and a glass-topped coffee table, and straight at me. His brows went up. “Wow, what?”

I smiled. No way was I gonna reply with a breathy “you,” as much as that was what I was feeling. Instead I nodded, aiming over his left shoulder, and he turned around to look out across the water. The lake’s surface reflected the fiery sunset like a mirror. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Wow.”

“I think it’s the best sunset I’ve seen so far,” I told him. Barely taking my eyes off the spectacular display, I knelt and started laying some of my gathered wood on the fire, using slightly larger pieces than were already taking hold.

“You’ve been keeping track, I’ll bet.” He gave the coffee table a last adjustment, then came off the deck and toward the fire, nodding in approval as the flames snapped and licked at the newly added logs. Then he looked across the road to where the kids were. Jeremy was messing with their fishing rods in the back of the Jeep, and Josh was rolling around in the grass with Myrtle, who had apparently reverted to puppyhood.

“Give me your phone, Mason.”

He pulled it out and handed it over, and I snapped a few shots of Josh and Myrt.

“At first I was taking pictures of every sunset I saw. And every sunrise. Fall, oh, man, fall! And then winter...” I shrugged. “My computer has more than seven thousand pics on it, a thousand of them just of Myrtle. But I’m...easing up a little bit.” I handed him back his phone.

“Why’s that?” he asked, pocketing it before heading across the grass to where a few young willow trees dipped their long fingertips into the shallow water. He pulled out a jackknife and started sawing off some branches from a nearby apple tree.

I added some even larger wood to the fire. “I think I’ve finally accepted that I can’t really capture the beauty of being able to see, and that I don’t need to. I’m going to keep on seeing it day after day, sunset after sunset, stupid dog trick after stupid dog trick, for the rest of my life.” I shrugged then. “And if I lose my eyesight again, pictures aren’t going to be much help.”

“That’s very practical.”

“Yeah, well, how many sunset photographs does one person need, right?”

He came walking back, sharpening the ends of his sticks, and stripping off their twigs and greenery. He sank into one of the lawn chairs and kept on working. “This is your first spring. Maybe you should keep taking pics at least until it’s fall again.” He set his knife down, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket again and said, “Here,” just as he tossed it my way.

I caught it like a pro and crinkled my brows at him.

“What?” he said. “Take a pic of that sunset. You might have plenty, but I don’t.”

By now the fast-sinking sun was almost down to half. Grinning, I snapped a shot, then another.

A second later he joined me, slid an arm around my waist and spun me around, while stealing back his phone with his free hand. Guy could’a been a pickpocket. He held the phone up and tugged me closer to his side. “Smile, Rache.”

“Been smiling since you came over and grabbed me, big guy.”

He snapped a selfie of us. Then he tucked the phone away, leaned down and kissed my neck. “You ready for that surprise dessert?”

I looked at the sticks he’d been working on and the lightbulb finally snapped over my head. “S’mores?”

“Oh, yeah.”

And I felt something just then. Something very slightly...off. “Why did you come over here tonight bearing ribs and chocolate?”

“I told you, it was spur-of-the-moment.”

Then why did his energy sort of flicker when he said that? “Spontaneous, huh? And the fishing poles just happened to be in the Jeep?”

“They’re in the Jeep from April to October.”

“I see. And you just happened to take the Jeep instead of the Beast tonight?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t got around to taking her off the road for the summer yet. Figured I’d give her a glory run.”

“Winter rats don’t rate glory runs. Feels more like this was planned because you’ve got something to tell me that you think I’m not gonna like.”

He held my eyes for one more second, then rolled his. “Why do I even bother trying?”

“Damned if I know. What is it?”

“Cantone,” he said. “She’s after the chief’s job.” Then he whistled to get the boys’ attention and waved them over. “Bring the grocery bag.”

So I was left without much time to rant about the underhanded federal agent swooping in to steal Mason’s dream job.

Okay, not
his
dream job. My dream job for him. Because as much as I didn’t want to get overly attached to the guy, I’d be pretty damned devastated if anything happened to him. And in his current job, that was a constant threat. Day in, day out.

And yeah, I was breaking one of my own multi-published cardinal rules of life here by thinking
I’d feel better if only he would...
Doesn’t matter what you use to fill in that blank, it’s always the same result. In my case, the blank was filled with “get a nice, safe desk job.”

One of my other cardinal rules for living was to do what you loved, not what you felt you should. Yet I was expecting him to do what he should, what would be better for the boys and better for me, though I hadn’t mentioned that part. I was pushing him—subtly, but still pushing him—to do what we wanted him to do, rather than what his own soul wanted. And it wasn’t because I didn’t agree 100 percent with my public stance on the matter. No, in this case what I wrote wasn’t bullshit at all, and I knew it. My happiness was my job, no one else’s, and the notion of “I’d be happy if only he would” was a false one anyway.

And still I was feeling like I’d be happier if he would take the nice safe chief’s job. Because I was scared he’d get himself killed, and I didn’t think I could handle that.