Stealing Shadows - Hiding In The Shadows Part 16

They brought me in after a traffic accident."

-That probably explains it then. I never forget a face." He smiled ather. "Well, you look fine now.

Was there some reason why you-"

"Faith." Kane was suddenly there, and she was a little surprised when heput an arm around her and drew her toward him-and away from the youngdoctor-in a gesture that was curiously protective. "I see you found Dr.Blake."

Faith blinked at the name tag on the doctor's green scrubs. "I guessso," she murmured, feeling oddly out-of-sync.

Kane said, "Doctor, if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions aboutthe day Miss. Parker was brought in here-"

Sound seemed to be fading in and out. She'd hear a few words of whatKane or Dr. Blake said, then the words would fade and she could hearonly a distant rushing sound, like ... water? Maybe. Like water from afall, or gushing out of a pipe under great pressure ... It was thestrangest experience, not frightening but unsettling. She looked aroundher, seeing people talking, seeing noises she should have heard and yetdidn't, like the crash of several boxes falling from a shelf, and thedespairing wail of a woman bent over the still body of an injured child.

All she could hear was the rushing water. It went on and on, filling herears, all her other senses, her mind. She looked at Kane, watching hislips move, saw Dr. Blake respond, his face serious and a bit perplexed.

She realized she was barely aware of Kane's physical nearness; she stoodin the shelter of his arm, yet felt as if she were somewhere else, where water rushed and the musty smell of cold earth surrounded her. Where shefelt a smothering sense of claustrophobia, the panic of being trappedand helpless. She was alone. And she didn't know which was worse, theawful musty smell and cold or the devastating knowledgee that shecouldn't ... that she'd never ... Faith groped for knowledgee just out ofher reach, and found only blackness. She could hear the water, smell themoldy earth all around her, but the emotions had faded once more intosilence. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and concentrate, butremembering the abrupt unconsciousness of another such attempt stoppedher.

That wasn't all that stopped her. She was afraid and she knew it. Afraidof what she might see if she closed her eyes and really looked at thatplace she could hear and smell. Afraid of what awaited her there. It wasfear of the unknown, of a nightmare, of the darkness that lay justbeyond what the mind understood.

She didn't want to look, didn't want to go there.

Didn't want to feel those horrible emotions or to see- "Faith?"

Like a soap bubble popping, the sounds of rushing water were gone, andas she looked up into Kane's concerned eyes, what she heard was thenormal activity of a busy emergency room. "Yes?" Her voice soundedabsentminded even to her.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine."

Kane frowned at her. "Are you sure?"

She wondered when the doctor had left them.

"Quite sure. But I'm afraid I ... I wasn't listening.

Did Dr. Blake tell us anything helpful?" He looked around and said,"Let's get out of here."

He put her in his car and drove them a few blocks to a restaurant thatwasn't crowded; they were given a booth near a window, where thewaitress quickly brought them coffee and left them alone.

Still distracted, Faith said, "What did Dr. Blake say about theaccident?"

"The way he remembers it, preliminary tests showed some ambiguousresults. Maybe there were alcohol and muscle relaxants in your system,and maybe not. All he knew for sure was that your vital signs werestrongand was fairly normal that something had put you into a coma. He didn'tthink it was the head Injury and suspected something more toxic tha.n.a.lcohol and medication in your system, so he ordered further tests. Hewent off duty shortly afterward. When he came back the next day, he wastold you'd been transferred upstairs. He a.s.sumed that happened becauseyou were stable, and that your regular doctor had taken over your case."

Kane paused. "Funny thing, though. The paperwork that's supposed to bekept there 'in the ER seems to be missing." 'Could it have been sentupstairs with me?"

"A copy should have been, and some paperwork was certainly part of thefile that ended up with Dr. Burnett. But the admitting records should beon file in the ER. They aren't."

"I don't suppose we have much chance of finding out what happened tothem?"

"You saw how busy that place was-and on a Monday morning, hardly theirbusiest time. My guess is that we'll never be able to trace whathappened to those records between the time you were admitted and whenyou were put under Burnett's care. But we can a.s.sume any number ofpeople had access and could have tampered with the test results."

"What about the lab that did the tests?"

"It's there in the hospital. Their procedure is to keep a copy of allresults in their own files. But in this case "

"Let me guess. Missing paperwork."

"Afraid so. And the blood and tissue samples they used for the testswere destroyed afterward, per standard procedure."

"Am I being paranoid in thinking all this missing and misplacedpaperwork means something other than simple human error?"

"I don't think so. When there are this many glitches in a normallyefficient system, it usually means someone's been tampering."

Faith sipped her coffee, grateful for the warmth because she'd feltchilled ever since her strange experience in the emergency room. "Thenit's a safe bet that we'll never know for sure if there was actuallyalcohol in my blood or I was drugged intentionally."

"Probably not. But I'm willing to put my money on your having beendrugged."

"It seems strange to hope that that's what happened, but I really didn'twant to find out I'd been stupid enough to drink and get behind thewheel."

Kane's gaze was intent. "No, I doubt you were so reckless."

She wondered what he was basing that doubt on, but didn't ask. Instead,she said, "If I was drugged, the question is, who did it? I guess thewhy is obvious-they wanted me out of action."

"Yeah. Grabbed you in the parking garage would be my guess. It was a bitafter hours, the area likely to be deserted, so it's a goodpossibility."

"So why didn't I 'just go for a phone and call the police once they letme go? Why did I attempt TO drive?"

"You may have already been disoriented from the drug, not thinkingclearly. They probably held on to you long enough to make sure of that.

We do have half an hour or so unaccounted for, from the time you leftthe garage to the crash only six miles away."

"I suppose." But Faith remembered the flash in which she had remindedDinah that they couldn't trust the police. Had she, even in a druggedand panicked state, felt that the only thing she could do was get toDinah as soon as possible?

It might have been better if you had. It might have been so different... "That's the answer then," he said with bitterness rather thanrelief, calling from another pay phone.

"Just like you thought. She's gone to Macgregor.

"They're 'in a restaurant right now, heads together and talking up a storm."

"Get back here now."

"But shouldn't I follow-"

"We've found out what we need to know for the moment. She's gone to him,

and you can bet he'll keep her close, hoping she can lead him to Dinah."

"What if she can? What if she can lead him to us?"

"We'll have to make sure she doesn't, won't we?

Get back here now."

"Right.

"Faith?"

She looked at him, shook her head. Whose voice?

Not quite alien in her head, it could have been her own, her

subconscious, the healed part of her mind trying to nudge the part still unable or unwilling to remember.

Or it could have been D'mah's.

"What is it?"

"Nothing." She tried to think clearly, still not sure of that voice in her head. "So somebody wanted me out of the way and arranged an accident. I end up in a coma, presumably no longer a threat. But then something happened. Something must have changed.

Dinah became a threat to them somehow. Maybe they hadn't even connected her to me until she visited me in the hospital. Then they ... watched her, maybe? Saw her go to my apartment, maybe leave with my laptop?"

"Maybe. And maybe it was just common sense that she would become an

enemy sooner or later.

She's a Journalist, a good one. Once they connected her to you, they might have been convinced you had told her whatever damaging information you had."

"I don't think Dinah became a threat because they realized she knew me.

I think she became a threat when they realized something of theirs wasmissing."

"This evidence you believe you'd found?"

Faith frowned at her cup without seeing it, trying to make the piecesfit. "They keep asking her where it is. Over and over. That's why theydidn't just kill her outright. And it has to be whatever I found, don'tyou see? They never searched Dinah's apartment, but they've searchedmine twice-both times since she disappeared."

. "So they have to be convinced you have whatever it is they're lookingfor, but that Dinah knows where it's hidden?"

"It's the only possibility that makes any sense to me." She lookedsteadily at Kane. 'I took something from them, and they either didn'tknow about it until after the accident or thought they were safe once Iwas out of the way. Then they realized there was a connection between meand Dinah-a smart journalist with a knack for breaking big stories. Sothey grabbed her to try to make her talk. Only she's not talking."

"You said she refused to talk because she was protecting someone."

Kane's voice was almost as level as hers had been. -You?"

Faith shook her head. 'The last time she saw me, I was in a coma. I was... safe." 'Maybe they told her you came out of it."

"I suppose they could have, but why would she feel her silence wasprotecting me? If I was the one she was concerned about, hearing I wasout of the coma would make her more likely to tell them what she knew.

Wouldn't it? So they wouldn't come after me."

Kane nodded slowly. "Then who does she believe she's protecting?"

Faith rubbed her forehead fretfully. 'I don't know.

How can we know that until we know what it is I found? And who's threatened by it?

He grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away from her face. "Maybe youshould take a break for a few hours. I can take you back to theapartment-"

We don't have a few hours. Dinah doesn't have a few hours.

"I m fine." She carefully avoided any glance at the hand still holdingher wrist, and even managed a smile. "But we don't seem to haveaccomplished much, really. Speculation, supposition, guesses.

Maybe we're right, but even if we are, it doesn't get us any closer tofinding Dinah."

Kane's fingers tightened around her wrist for a moment. Then his gazewent to that connection between them and he frowned slightly. He leanedback, releasing her wrist. "We have to figure out who's got Dinah, andto do that we need to find whatever it is you found once before." Hisvoice was abrupt. "The best possibility is that you'll remember what youfound or where you found it. Why don't we visit the office where you worked and see if that jars your memory?"

Faith nodded and rose to her feet. There was a clock near the door, andshe could hear it ticking. Or maybe she imagined it.

Ticking.

"You knew your job." Marianne Camp, Faith's supervisor in the departmentwhere she had worked, was matter-of-fact. "You had some prior experienceworking for a construction company, and that gave you a solid base fromwhich to handle your duties here."

Faith wondered if she had done something to annoy the woman, or if heratt.i.tude was so chilly with all those she supervised. Then again, maybeshe didn't view aftereffects of a coma as a good reason not to return towork.

Kane smiled at her. -And those duties, Mrs. Camp?"

"Secretarial, for the most part." The supervisor shrugged, possiblyimpatient to leave on her lunch break, since it was nearly noon.

"Entering data into the system, filing paperwork, coordinating theschedules of the various 'inspectors."

"Was I friends with any of my co-workers?" Faith asked.

"Not as far as I was aware," she replied stiffly.