nurse entered. Her cheerful voice reverberated in the silence of the room as she said, “So you’re awake at last. Good for you! Maybe this fellow will go home, now that he sees you’re all right.” She smiled as she turned back toward the door. “Dr. Weiss is still on call. I’ll bring her back to take a look at you. I’ll only be a minute.”
Natalie looked at Brady as the nurse left the room. She said, “You’ve been here all day?”
“No, only since they put you in here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Have I been sitting here, waiting for you to wake up? Yes. Why? Because when you first opened your eyes, you claimed someone deliberately pushed you into the street. For some reason, I believed you and I wondered why somebody would want to kill you.”
“Kill me…” A chill ran down Natalie’s spine. “Somehow I didn’t think of it that way.”
“What did you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Natalie saw him frown as he searched her face. She noted the concern that knit his dark brows and she wondered what he saw. A slowly escalating fear gained control as she asked, “Who would want to kill me?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. It could’ve been a random act—some psychopath with a grudge against something or other. Unfortunately, that kind of thing does happen occasionally.”
“No…I don’t think so. It was—” Memory nudged again and Natalie shuddered. Her breathing grew agitated as the memory cleared and she gasped, “It wasn’t random.”
“How do you know that?” Brady moved closer. He gripped her hand as she started to shake. He said tensely, “Natalie?”
“I know because—” Natalie’s breath quivered on her lips. Her eyes widened as she managed to choke out the words, “Because…he said my name.”
BRADY INSTINCTIVELY moved closer. He held her hand tighter, but she was suddenly trembling so badly that her teeth were chattering. Leaning closer, he whispered against her cheek, “Don’t be afraid, Natalie. You’re safe now.”
Natalie mumbled with growing incoherence, “How did this happen? I don’t understand. He said my name…my name…”
She moaned and twisted in bed. A wave of panic overwhelmed Brady and he pressed the call button. Where the hell was everybody? He turned as Dr. Weiss ordered sharply from behind him, “Step back, Detective. Move out of the way, please.”
Brady drew back to the far wall and watched as Dr. Weiss talked softly, responding to Natalie’s increasingly confused mumblings. He saw her speak to the nurse, then accept the syringe the nurse handed her a few minutes later. After injecting it into the IV, Dr. Weiss turned toward him to say, “Perhaps you’d better leave for a little while, Detective. There are some things I’ll need to take care of here that’ll take me a half hour or so. Don’t worry. Natalie will be fine while you’re gone.”
Nodding, Brady started toward the door. He had reached the hallway when he heard Dr. Weiss call out, “Wait a minute, please.” Drawing him outside the room a few moments later, Dr. Weiss said, “I heard what Natalie told you, Detective, but you have to understand that situations like this are quite common with head trauma. Natalie may even come up with more alarming delusions before this is over. She’s confused…frightened. She’s had a terrible experience and her mind is trying to make sense out of it. In my opinion, it wouldn’t be wise to put too much credence into what she says for another day, at least until she’s completely coherent.”
“You could be right, Doctor.” Refusing to add that she could also be wrong—dead wrong—Brady said, “You said you’d be busy here for a while?”
“About half an hour, at least. Natalie needs to be made more comfortable before she’s settled in for the night.” She hesitated. “Why don’t you go down to the cafeteria and get yourself a cup of coffee? I’ll make sure somebody stays with her until you return, if that’s what’s concerning you.” She patted his arm. “She’ll be much better tomorrow. You’ll see.”
Brady walked rapidly down the hospital corridor, his expression tense. He didn’t like this. Dr. Weiss could be right, of course. Everything Natalie had said could be a result of her injury, but he didn’t buy it.
Brady scrutinized the surrounding rooms as he passed. He had half an hour. Visiting hours were in effect, making it difficult as he searched the faces of the crowd moving down the hallway, but he also knew there was safety in numbers. With Dr. Weiss and the nurse in Natalie’s room, and with steady traffic moving past, Natalie would be safe enough for a while—at least long enough for him to get outside so he could use his cell phone to call the precinct and to make a quick call to the veterinary hospital.
Sarah was going to miss his nightly visit.
Wilthauer would have a fit when he called.
Stansky would be sure he’d gone crazy.
Hell, maybe he had.
Brady rang the elevator and waited anxiously. Actually, no one was more surprised than he was at the range of emotions Natalie—a virtual stranger—had raised in him. A few hours earlier, he had been gritting his teeth at the thought of seeing her at that precinct meeting; yet the moment he saw her lying in that hospital bed, battered, bruised and so damned helpless—
Brady felt an inexplicable heat rise to his face. He’d find the animal who’d pushed Natalie into the street and make sure the bastard never tried anything like that again.
He had half an hour.
The elevator doors opened and Brady stepped inside. He automatically scanned the hallway again as the elevator doors closed.
DR. HADDEN MOORE strode down the hospital hallway at a modest pace. It was almost nine o’clock and daylight was fading on the busy streets outside. Inside the hospital, the hallways had cleared of visitors and the nurses were busy dispensing meds before the patients were settled down for the night.
He wasn’t concerned by the late hour. Visiting hours didn’t apply to him. Dressed as he was in a white lab coat he had removed from the hospital linen closet, and with a stethoscope around his neck that he had found lying nearby, no one gave him a second look. The nurses’ station was vacant when he strolled past and he picked up a chart without challenge. Yet it didn’t really matter if he were challenged. He had a Ph.D. and he was completely confident that he was capable of carrying off his disguise in a convincing manner.
Hadden halted and leaned down toward the water fountain, frowning as Dr. Rita Weiss strode toward the elevator. Dr. Weiss was late leaving the hospital. His short visit to the emergency room earlier that day had been very informative. Natalie Patterson had been brought in and her injuries treated. She had been admitted and her care turned over to the recently divorced, efficient Dr. Weiss, whom a chatty clerk had helpfully pointed out to him. He had then gone to the cafeteria to pass the time until Natalie was situated in her room, the location of which the clerk had also cheerfully provided.
He had waited patiently until a later hour when he knew he could make his entrance virtually without being noticed.
His smile faltered as he approached Natalie’s room. Aware of the merits of well-planned strategy, he had resumed his surveillance of Natalie’s daily routine since she’d been assigned to the city, but she had emerged from her hotel later than usual that morning, surprising him. He had followed her covertly and had watched as she walked to the corner, failing again and again to hail a cab before finally boarding a bus in frustration.
He’d boarded the bus behind her, but she did not even look his way.
Disembarking from the rear door of the bus at the same stop as Natalie, he had then followed her cautiously as she continued on through the heavy pedestrian traffic.
He saw her irritation when she stopped at the last street corner and waited for the