“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?” he asked harshly. “Beth’s like someone from that fairy tale who’s been asleep in a tower while the whole world grew up around her. There were hazards out there that she couldn’t imagine. I tried to fill her in a little, but our time together was too damn limited, and my main objective had to be to get her out of that hospital. But I knew she had to catch up before she could fit in somewhere and hide out until we found a way to keep her safe.”
“You’ve gone to a lot of risk to save Beth,” Joe said. “Why? And don’t tell me it was just because she was appealing and helpless. How did you know she had anything beyond that sweet smile to save? Most orderlies would have assumed that the doctors were right, and Beth Avery was a lost cause. Why didn’t you? And why did you spend eighteen months as an orderly anyway? It’s not exactly the kind of job a Marine with your record would embrace on a long-term basis.”
Newell didn’t answer.
“I’m not going to go any farther until I know,” Joe said.
Newell shrugged. “Oh, what the hell, I guess it doesn’t matter any longer. My uncle sent me here to check out what was going on with Beth Avery. He thought that she might have been railroaded in there, and he asked me to snoop around and find out.”
“Your uncle?” Eve asked.
“Herman Dalker, he’s a private detective.”
“I know.” Eve recognized the name. Sandra’s “Hermie,” whom she’d hired to find her daughter.
Newell’s gaze shifted to narrow on her face. “How do you know?”
“Did your uncle tell you who hired him for the job? It was my mother, Sandra Duncan.”
“You’re really Beth’s sister? I didn’t know whether to believe you.” His lips twisted. “You’re a little late rushing to rescue her.”
“I’m not making excuses to you. I’m here now. My mother told me that the detective she’d hired had told her that he’d keep an eye on Beth for her. It sounds to me as if he was doing a good deal more than that.”
“He liked your mother. And he didn’t like what he knew about the Avery family. There wasn’t any evidence that they’d done anything wrong, but he didn’t like the setup. So he thought it wouldn’t hurt to send me out to look things over. I needed a break after my last deployment in Afghanistan, and it didn’t seem much of a challenge.”
She glanced at the wound on his neck. “Wrong.”
He shrugged. “Some of the most innocent-looking fields are where the IEDs are planted. I expected to go in and work for a few months, make a report, then go on my way. It didn’t work out that way. I didn’t like the setup. I wanted to see what was happening.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, but it took a hell of a long time. They watched Beth Avery as if she were a crown jewel. The people at the hospital had to get used to me and accept me as if I weren’t there. So while I was waiting, I concentrated on checking out Pierce’s computer records on her. My uncle had trained me on cyberespionage and I had plenty of opportunity to get to the records.”
And if they’d been able to contact Newell, they might never have had to steal those records themselves, Eve thought. “And what else did you find?”
“Nothing incriminating. But her treatment was damn weird. She was drugged, and yet she had plenty of physical exercise. She swam and worked out in the gym. Once they even tried to take her skiing, but that required too much attention, and they were afraid she’d be damaged.” He added bitterly, “That’s the way they put it, ‘damaged,’ as if she were a piece of property they had to keep in mint condition.”
“And not a person at all,” Eve said dully.
“She wasn’t a person to them,” Newell said. “But she was damn important. There were notes by Pierce on the reports congratulating the different doctors and therapists who kept her in the pink of health in spite of the necessary sedatives. He said that it was important to keep her from disintegrating in case the family ever came to check on her. It was of the utmost urgency that they strike a balance until the Averys decided about her disposition.”
“Do you mean whether they wanted her dead?” Joe asked bluntly.
“It was never spelled out, but the implication was there. I got the impression from those years of notes that there was some kind of conflict going on in the Avery family regarding Beth.”
“Because they didn’t just throw her into the hospital and forget about her?” Eve asked. “It seems to me that it came pretty damn close.”
“They definitely didn’t forget about her,” Newell said. “She was a thorn in their existence even though they kept her in that place and tried to make her a zombie. But during the last months, I began to notice a difference in Pierce’s attitude toward her. He cut out her exercise and made her stay in her room. It made me uneasy. I wondered if maybe the ‘disposition’ had been decided upon. I had to find out. So I had Uncle Hermie send me some hi-tech equipment and bugged Pierce’s office.”
“Did it work?”
“Partially. I never heard the call actually setting up the attack on Beth, so I didn’t know who was going to do it or when it was going to take place. He must have made that call somewhere else. But I monitored a call from Pierce to Nelda Avery, and it was oblique but enough to raise a red flag. He said that he’d made the arrangement, and it would be handled soon. He said that he expected her to show her gratitude for his loyalty over the years in a generous manner.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing that would incriminate her. I believe she’s too smart to make any statement on the phone that would endanger her in any way. She said that she’d always be generous to people who made that poor girl ‘comfortable.’ She said to let her know. Then she hung up.”
“Cool. Very cool,” Eve said thoughtfully. “So Nelda Avery is behind Drogan’s attempt?”
“Presumably. At least she’s the family member who’s pulling the strings. Pierce was almost groveling when he was speaking to her. He must have been dancing on hot coals when he had to tell her that Beth had flown the coop. No wonder that Drogan is so frantic about finding Beth. Pierce is probably applying pressure.” He frowned. “Or maybe it’s personal. Drogan was pretty intense, but it was anger at Beth that was coming through, not worry about what Pierce was going to do. He made a couple of ugly mentions of what he was going to do to Beth when he found her.”
Eve felt a chill. “And you think that he may have found her already?”
“I don’t know. It could have happened.” He looked at the GPS on the dashboard. “We should know soon. Another forty minutes.”
* * *
“DROGAN, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Pierce’s voice was shaking with anger as Drogan finally picked up. “I just had a call from the local police asking questions about Jessie Newell. I told you that any questioning had to be done discreetly. Just find out the information, then make the kill. You fumbled everything again.”
“No, you did it. Everything would have gone off just as I planned if that Detective Quinn hadn’t interfered. You were supposed to throw him off the trail.”
“I tried.” Pierce took a deep breath. “He’s a cop. I couldn’t just kick him out of the hospital. I thought that I might have convinced him that—” Why was he making excuses to this idiot, he thought impatiently. “Did you get a lead on Beth from Newell?”
“Yes, he’s the one who helped her get away from the hospital. I took Newell’s phone and talked to her on his cell.”
Yes. Pierce’s hand tightened on the phone. “So you know where she is?”
“No, she hung up on me before I could trace the call.”
“You bungled that, too?”
“I’m getting very tired of your insults, Pierce. Be careful.”
Pierce struggled to curb his tongue as well as his rage. Drogan was definitely unbalanced and unpredictable. Besides, the man was his only path to Beth at the moment. “You can hardly claim any great progress when you had a chance to trace her and lost her.”
“I didn’t lose her.”
“What?”
“I’m going after her right now. You should be grateful I didn’t kill Newell. He’s going to lead me right to her. After I hung up from talking to Beth Avery, I headed for the hospital where they’d taken Newell. I knew that if I hadn’t damaged him too much, he’d be on his way to her as soon as he could. He wouldn’t tell me anything even though I hurt him bad. If she meant that much to him, he wouldn’t stay in that hospital when he knew I’d be after her. So I staked out the hospital parking lot and waited.”