She suspected she knew more than Ana did. She thought she now understood the motive behind Franklin White’s murder, and that was the most disturbing puzzle piece of all.
She fishtailed into the hospital lot and took a reserved space.
She rummaged through the toolbox she always kept behind her driver’s seat—a few simple items that opened most doors. One was a stethoscope.
She tucked it in the front pocket of her blazer and headed toward the lobby.
As she walked, she thought about Tres.
She’d slept in his bed last night. The pillows smelled like him. The cat curled between her feet, but the sheets weren’t warm enough.
The longer Tres and she were together, the more she missed his warmth when they slept apart. He was always hot—always just a degree shy of a fever.
She woke to winter sunlight through bare pecan branches, the creaking of pipes and the smell of melting butter and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls downstairs.
Despite her uneasy stomach and her sense of foreboding, she ate breakfast in the kitchen with Sam and Mrs. Loomis.
Even with a bandaged ear, Sam was in an excellent mood. He ate three cinnamon rolls with bacon and had two cups of coffee.
He thought Maia was one of his operatives. He kept asking her questions about clients. Maia did her best to fabricate good answers.
Mrs. Loomis talked about her children—two boys, both grown and moved out of state. Her husband the policeman had died when the boys were very young. She’d raised them on her own, hadn’t seen either of them now for several years.
“That’s a shame,” Maia said.
Mrs. Loomis spooned scrambled eggs onto their plates. “Oh, it’s not so bad. I miss them . . . but mostly I miss them being young. They drove me crazy so many years. I can’t help getting nostalgic.”
Maia must’ve looked perplexed, because Mrs. Loomis laughed. “You’ll understand when you have a child, dear.”
When. Not if.
A decade ago, Maia would’ve protested. She’d fended off many such comments, resented the assumption that because she was a woman, she would someday be a mother.
The last five or six years, those comments had become fewer and fewer.
Maia was almost grateful to hear someone make the assumption again. It sounded . . . optimistic.
Maia ate her eggs. She tried to push away the image of her father grieving, his years of anguish and worry finally breaking him, turning his bones brittle as surely as the disease that had taken his ten-year-old son, Xian, wrapped in funeral white.
Maia knew she had to get going, but she didn’t want to leave the comfort of the kitchen. She felt safe here, part of the makeshift family of Tres’ foundlings.
She thought about her own apartment in Austin, the view of Barton Creek out the kitchen window. She’d only been away from it twenty-four hours, but she had trouble picturing what it looked like. She had even more trouble thinking of it as home.
“Undercover work on the loading docks today,” Sam told her. “Be careful nobody finds you out.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised.
She met Mrs. Loomis’ eyes. The older woman smiled as if she’d just seen a photo from her own past—something simple and poignant, with faces of children who had long since grown.
“IS DR. GAGARIN IN ICU?” MAIA asked, using a random name from the hospital directory.
The hospital receptionist looked up. What she saw: an Asian woman in an expensive black pantsuit, a stethoscope in her pocket and a confident, impatient expression—a woman who was used to having her questions answered. “I don’t know, Dr.—”
“Never mind,” Maia said. “I’ll go up myself.”
“I can page—”
“No, thank you. No time.”
Maia strode down the hallway to the elevator.
Nobody stopped her.
Maia wasn’t surprised. She’d played doctor numerous times. Never once had she been challenged. She liked to think that was because of her great acting skill, but she feared it had more to do with hospital security. They weren’t any better than police stations.
Maternity wards were the worst. Maia had already put that on her list of things to worry about, six months from now . . .
The elevator opened on the third floor.
As Maia feared, no police officers were stationed outside Ana DeLeon’s room.
Sunday morning, off-duty cops could make big bucks directing traffic for the local churches. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince the uniforms to take off this shift.
Maia walked toward Ana’s room. Halfway, she froze. At the far end of the hall, by the nurse’s station, Etch Hernandez was standing with his back turned, talking to an orderly.
If he’d already done something, if Maia was too late . . .
Morning sickness snaked its way through her stomach. She fought down the nausea and slipped into the room.
Ana’s heart monitor showed a strong pulse. Her eyes were closed. She still looked wasted and pale, but the improvement over yesterday was striking.
Her face had some color to it. Her chest rose and fell with regular breathing.
Maia suddenly felt foolish.
Perhaps she’d been wrong about Hernandez. He’d been here before her. He hadn’t done anything. Would he be in the hallway, casually chatting with an orderly, if he was planning murder?
Maia went to the bedside and held Ana’s hand. Ana’s gold wedding band felt warm against her skin.
Maia prayed Tres had gotten her phone message. It had been a desperate, stupid thing to do—trusting White’s daughter, but Maia had been shaken. She’d felt a compulsive need to explain Tres—to protect him. And she’d sensed something in the young woman’s voice—a receptiveness. God, if she was wrong . . .
The DNA match would be announced anytime. It wouldn’t be long before someone in White’s household heard the news.
The pain in Maia’s gut was getting worse. She wanted to lie down, curl into a ball, but she couldn’t give in to it—especially not this morning.
Ana’s eyes moved under her lids, as if she were dreaming.
“You’ll be okay,” Maia told her shakily. “You’re a tough lady.”
She heard footsteps coming down the hallway.
Maia slipped behind the bathroom door and aimed her cell phone camera through the space between the hinges.
Etch Hernandez came into the room.
He was well dressed as usual—a chocolaty wool suit, teal shirt, mauve silk tie. He regarded the woman on the bed with his usual sad expression, as if he’d simply come as a dear friend. Then he reached in his jacket and took out a syringe and a small vial.
Maia snapped a picture.
Hernandez moved toward Ana’s bed. Maia pulled her gun and stepped out of the bathroom. “Lieutenant.”
Hernandez turned, his eyes as glassy as a sleepwalker’s. He was right next to Ana. The syringe was full.
“I got a nice picture of you about to poison your protégée,” Maia said. “Try it and I’m going to blow a hole in your fucking Italian suit.”
Hernandez regarded Ana. The needle was three inches from her forearm. “I should’ve killed you first, Miss Lee. That was a mistake.”
“I think we can agree that your priorities are fucked up,” Maia said. “Now step away from Ana.”
Hernandez focused on a spot in the air, as if he were listening to some other voice. “Miss Lee, you don’t understand. I’m not interested in saving my own skin.”
“No,” Maia said. “You’re interested in saving Lucia’s memory. And if you don’t cap the syringe, I’ll tell everyone the truth about Frankie’s murder.”
She wasn’t sure she truly understood until that moment, when his eyes turned cold and bright. “You’ve shared your thoughts with Navarre and Arguello?”
“You’re going to do that,” she said. “We’re going to go see them right now.”
“And why should I agree?”
“Because you want the truth to come out. Deep down, you won’t be satisfied with someone else taking the blame. Part of you wanted Ana to pick up that cold case. You wanted to hurt her. You wanted Ana to know, Etch.”
She’d never addressed him by his first name before, and it seemed to unnerve him.
He lowered the needle. He wiped it with his handkerchief, capped it, put it back in his jacket pocket. “You plan to walk out of here holding a police lieutenant at gunpoint?”
“Not at gunpoint,” Maia said. “I’m taking your sidearm and putting mine away. We leave together. If you try anything, I’ll break your neck with my bare hands.”
THEY LEFT THE HOSPITAL TOGETHER. HERNANDEZ was calm. Way too calm. He made no attempt to run or yell for help.
When they got to Maia’s BMW, he took the wheel without complaint. Maia got in the passenger’s seat and took out her gun. Second time in one weekend, she thought grimly, that she’d had a hostage chauffeur.
She doubted Hernandez would remain compliant once she told him they were going to the White mansion.
She was about to give him his driving directions when her phone rang.
The sound distracted her only for a second, but that was enough. Morning sickness dulled her reflexes. Before she knew what was happening, Hernandez had wrenched the gun out of her hand and was pressing the muzzle under her jaw.
The phone kept ringing.
Maia sat perfectly still, her heart pounding.
“Change of plans, Miss Lee,” Hernandez said. “You’ll be driving. This is going to end where it began.”
Without taking his eyes off her, he managed to find her purse and fish out the phone. He answered it on the fifth ring.
“Mr. Navarre,” he said. “What a surprise.”
Chapter 18
AFTER THE CALL, I DIDN’T CARE MUCH ABOUT THE KITCHEN burning around me, or the men with guns outside. All I cared about was getting out, getting to Maia.
“Twenty minutes?” Ralph cursed Etch Hernandez with Spanish epithets even I had never heard. “That’s impossible, vato.”
“Bigger fire,” I advised.
We splashed more brandy, piled on grocery bags and washrags and cardboard boxes, and in no time we had a nice blaze going along the back wall. Soon the curtains and the back door were in flames.
Ralph smashed out a window with his baseball bat. He threw a Molotov cocktail toward the driveway and was rewarded with a loud BA-ROOM and some surprised yelps from the men outside.
“The kitchen’s on fire!” one of them yelled.
Full points for powers of observation.
They banged on the back door, found it too hot to touch.
“Around to the front!” somebody yelled.
Perfect.
The guys on the interior door hammered away with newfound zeal. The refrigerator rattled and rocked.
“Another few seconds,” Ralph said.
“Smoke,” I warned. “No time.”
I could barely see. Forget breathing.
Ralph climbed onto the kitchen sink. He kicked open the only window that wasn’t in flames and jumped. I was right behind him.
The diversion almost worked. At least, there was no one waiting to shoot us as we crashed through a pomegranate bush and tumbled onto the back lawn.
