any personal feelings she might hope to ever develop. Who was she kidding? She had decided long ago that a personal life was too complicated. Work was far easier.
“All rightie, then.” The driver tossed the keys to Pierce. “Drop them by on your way out. We don’t release the keys or the vehicle until the bill is settled.”
Pierce gave him a nod.
When the driver had headed back to his office, Pierce reached for the driver’s-side door. Bella stopped him with a hand on his arm. “This car is evidence.”
“Be that as it may, I’m having a look in the car.” His tone warned there would be no discussion on the subject.
She reached into her bag and dug up a couple of pairs of latex gloves. She passed a pair to him.
He shot her a look. “The fact that you carry gloves around in your bag could be construed as—”
“I’m a private investigator. The last thing I ever want to do is render a piece of evidence unusable in court.”
She’d seen more than her share of bumbling detectives do exactly that and the perp ended up getting off on a technicality. Not happening on her watch.
While he settled behind the steering wheel, Bella opened the door to the back seat and had a look there. The small black clutch Maynard—or whoever she was—had with her was brought to the hospital. It had contained the driver’s license, lip gloss and a small round makeup mirror. One black high heel lay on the back floorboard. No overnight bag. No trash or spare change. The car looked and smelled brand-new.
“Have a look at this.”
Bella withdrew her upper body from the back seat and moved to the driver’s door. He held documents he’d taken from the glove box.
“The car was bought—if I’m reading this correctly—yesterday.” He passed the paperwork to her. “There’s nothing else here except one black shoe.”
“The other one is in the back seat.” She skimmed the pages. It appeared Cara Pierce had bought the car from the local Lexus dealership yesterday morning. She passed the papers back to him. “Did you check the console between the seats?”
“It’s empty.”
He peered up at her, blue eyes dark with fury. His lean jaw was taut with that same anger. Someone was using his painful past to get to him. But what was the endgame? That was the part Bella couldn’t yet see. Were they trying to discredit him professionally or destroy him personally? The rage in his eyes turned to something even more fierce...something desperate and urgent, something hungry. Bella abruptly realized how close she was standing to him.
Her ability to breathe vanished. “Well.” She stumbled back a step from the vee made by the open door of the car. “Let’s check the trunk.”
He pressed the button on the dash and a pop confirmed the trunk had opened. Bella headed that way with Pierce close behind. She struggled to dispel the hum of uncertainty and something like need inside her. The foolish reaction was surely related to her utter inability to sleep last night.
The trunk was empty save a single sheet of lined paper with words scribbled frantically across it. The page looked as if it had been ripped from a notebook. Blood was smeared across the center of it.
Pierce snatched up the page and stared at it.
“Don’t touch anything,” she warned again. Then she surveyed the trunk once more. Another spot of crimson at the edge of the carpeting snagged her attention. She lifted the carpeting that covered the spare tire area and she stopped.
Blood.
Lots of blood.
Pierce leaned in close, his face far too near to hers. “Ms. Lytle, I believe it’s time to call the police now.”
The Edge, 1:55 p.m.
For the second time today, Bella found herself walking briskly to keep up with Pierce’s hurried strides. She had to admit, seeing the half dozen Chicago PD cruisers out front was enough to have anyone rushing to see what was going on.
Once the call was made, he’d refused to wait at the tow lot until the police arrived. Bella had almost refused to bring him back and then he’d reached for his cell to order a car. She’d had no choice. As much as she’d felt that legally speaking they needed to wait for the police to take possession of the Lexus, she had known she could not allow Pierce out of her sight. He was at the edge—no pun intended.
Whatever had been on that page—he’d thrust it into his jacket pocket too quickly for her to get so much as a glimpse—it had shaken him. The paper was evidence and he’d taken it from the scene. He’d put her in an untenable position. Yet her first responsibility was to the client. She couldn’t say for a certainty that the paper he’d taken was significant evidence—which would present the one situation in which her obligation to him slipped out of first place. Basically until she knew what was on that page, she needed to focus on protecting the client.
From himself as much as any other threat.
They reached the quarantine unit and the door to Maynard’s room was open. The guard was no longer at the door. Bella glanced at Pierce and his face was clouded with that same anger she’d been watching darken his eyes since their conversation with his pretend wife hours ago.
A uniformed Chicago PD officer and two men in suits—detectives, she surmised—were crowded around Maynard’s bed.
“What’s going on here?” Pierce demanded.
“Dr. Pierce,” one of the suits said, “glad you’re finally here.”
The suit glanced at Bella. “Detective Corwin,” he said, then gestured to the other suit. “Detective Hodge.”
He didn’t introduce the uniform, but his name, Laurence, was on his name tag anyway.
“Investigator Isabella Lytle.” She thrust out her hand. “The Colby Agency.”
“We have a situation,” Corwin said.
“Your patient—” Hodge checked his notes “—Cara Pierce.”
“That is not her name,” Pierce snapped.
Bella started to speak but Hodge cut her off. “She called 911 and reported that you, Dr. Pierce, had kidnapped her and held her hostage for two months until she escaped yesterday. That running from you is the reason she had the accident. She said you were holding her here at the hospital as well and that she had to get away so she could hide from you.”
“What?” Pierce demanded. “We spoke to her—Audrey Maynard—just this morning. She claimed to have been paid by some person she couldn’t name or identify to pretend to be my deceased wife. The man who hired her also orchestrated her accident so that she would be brought here. Ask her for yourself.”
The suits and the uniform stepped away from the bed. It was empty.
Bella’s instincts rocketed to the next level. “How long has she been gone?”
“The call came in to dispatch around noon,” Corwin said. “We’ve been here maybe half an hour.” He shifted his gaze to Pierce. “Waiting for you.”
“Where’s the guard who was stationed at her door?” Pierce demanded.
“We’ve interviewed him,” said Corwin, who seemed to be the lead detective. “He’s headed downtown, where we’ll question him some more.”
“What did the guard say happened?” Bella asked before Pierce could make another demand.
“He says she came to the door demanding a phone. When he refused to provide her with one, she took off down the hall. She