Her cell phone was ringing.
It was the first time the phone had rung since Billy had given it to her.
Billy?
She jumped to her feet and ran across the room. He had said he wouldn’t contact her, but he was the only one who had her number.
Or it could be a wrong number.
She hesitated.
The phone rang again.
But what if it was Billy, and he needed to reach her?
Private number on the ID panel.
She slowly reached out and punched the access. “Billy?”
“No.” The voice was crisp and businesslike. “Santa Barbara Police Department. We’re investigating the homicide of a Jessie Newell. Your number was on his phone. What is your name please?”
“Homicide?” Murder. He was talking about murder. Billy’s murder. She couldn’t breathe. “How? What—”
“He was stabbed to death. What did you say your name was?”
Stabbed. She closed her eyes. “Dear God.”
“Your name.” This time his voice was no longer crisp and businesslike. It was rough and ugly.
And she recognized it.
“Bitch.”
A dark hospital room where she struggled for her life.
A man who cursed her and tried to inject her with that deadly hypodermic.
Panic.
Her heart leaped in her breast.
She hung up the phone.
He had found her.
She felt a wave of sickness wash over her.
And he had found Billy.
Stabbed him. Billy was dead.
He had died for her.
And now his killer would be coming to get her.
She steadied herself on the desk as the sadness and fear and anger attacked her.
Billy.
CHAPTER
9
JOE AND EVE WERE IN the waiting room for over three hours before Jensen gave them a report. “He’ll be okay. The shoulder wound was only a glancing blow, and that was the worst of it,” he said as he came out of the emergency room. “Thirty-two wounds, inflicted to give maximum pain. Whoever did it knew what he was doing.” His face was tight. “Jessie could have bled to death if he’d been careless, or he might have gone unconscious from the trauma effect. Jessie’s a good guy, he didn’t deserve this. Do you know who did it?”
“No, did he tell you?”
Jensen shook his head. “I didn’t ask him. That’s not my job. But evidently it’s your job. He’s waiting for a room to be readied. You can go in and ask him a few questions, but I don’t want him agitated.”
“No problem.”
Jensen frowned. “I mean it. Everyone likes Jessie Newell. The nurse on duty has been taking inquiries ever since we got here asking about him.”
“Really? From whom?”
He shrugged. “People from the apartment. Coworkers from the hospital where he works. Look, I’ve no idea what he did, but I’d lay odds that Jessie is clean. That guy who did this must be a complete nut.”
“Good chance. May we see him now?”
“Sure.” He turned away. “Second door on the left.”
“Coworkers,” Eve murmured as she walked with him down the hall. “Pierce?”
“If he’s the one who hired Drogan, the man who did this. Drogan might have called him with a report.” He checked his phone. “No info on a Drogan yet. Maybe Newell will be able to tell us more.”
“I didn’t get the impression that he knew much more than his name, but I could be wrong.”
When they entered the recovery room, Jessie Newell was lying in bed, swathed in bandages. “It’s about time. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
“I thought you’d changed your mind and were going to let them check you into the hospital,” Eve said. “Your intern friend said you were waiting for the next available room.”
“You can’t argue with hospital personnel. I know that from experience. You just have to agree, then do your own thing.” He struggled up in bed. “Get me something to wear. They stripped everything off me.”
“They had no choice,” Eve said dryly. “Your clothes were bloody and ripped in dozens of places.”
“I have to get out of here. Now.” He met Eve’s gaze. “I’m vulnerable here. Doctors and nurses all belong to the same club. Pierce is well-known all over Santa Barbara. He or one of his cohorts could come in here, and they’d welcome him with open arms.”
“You think he’d try to kill you?”
“Not if he could arrange for someone else to do it. But he’s scared, and he might get desperate.”
“Can you prove that he’s behind this attack on you?”
“I can’t prove shit. Why do you think that I was still hanging around the hospital after Beth got away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you or your motives.”
“Then get me out of here, and you might find out.” He added firmly, “Clothes.”
“Why should we help you?” Joe asked. “What if you split the minute we get you out of here?”
“You take the risk. Because if you don’t, I’ll find a way to get out of here on my own. I’ve wriggled my way out of tight places before.”
“Not looking like a mummy from a grade-B movie.” Joe hesitated, then turned away. “You’d better be worth the trouble. I’ll see if I can float around the area and grab some scrubs.”
“You expect us to smuggle you out of here?” Eve asked Newell as Joe left the room.
“Yes.” He sat up in bed. “Because you want me to talk about Beth Avery, and I won’t do it until you spring me from this place. Why not do what I need? You must know that woman in the hospital they’re calling Beth Avery is a phony. So you must know there’s something nasty going on.”
“I have suspicions,” she said. “Were you the one who helped Beth hide the pills in her mattress?”
“You found out about that? Yes. I had to do it myself for the first couple weeks. After that, she had the clarity to help me hide them.”
“Was it Drogan who tried to kill her that night?”
“I didn’t know his name. Just that he was hired to do the job. But from things he said while he was working on me tonight, I’m sure that he was the one. He was angry with her. He expected a victim, and she was strong enough to fight him.” He smiled. “Hell, she was strong enough to beat him.”
And he was proud of her, Eve realized. It mattered to him that Beth was no longer the drugged, mindless creature she had been told about. The knowledge brought a rush of warmth toward him. “She was bedridden, wasn’t she? I would have thought that her muscles would have been too weak to function after all those years.”
“She wasn’t in bed all that time. It depended on what doctor was on Pierce’s favored list. From what I can glean from her medical history during most of her stay, the orders were to keep her fit and well exercised.”
“That sounds like training a horse.”
“Except they don’t keep a horse drugged and under hypnosis for the majority of their waking hours.”
“Hypnosis?”
“She had regular sessions with Pierce and an expert from Berlin from the moment she arrived here in Santa Barbara.”
“Some kind of therapy?”
“You might call it that. I understand the expert from Berlin was a Dr. Hans Gelber who specialized in erasing the damaging memories of vets who suffered trauma during wartime. I thought it curious that Pierce thought that a skiing accident would cause that serious a trauma.”
Memory erasure. She shuddered at the thought. Losing a part of your life as if it had never been. “How do you know all this?”
“I don’t know nearly enough.” His gaze narrowed on her face. “But evidently more than you. What are you doing nosing around here? What’s Beth Avery to you? You said you didn’t know her.”
“I don’t. I’ve never met her.” She paused. “But she’s my sister.”
Newell went still. “I didn’t know she had a sister. No one told me.” He shook his head. “Beth would have told me.”