Cruel Intent

When Ali gave her name to the receptionist, however, the woman nodded knowingly. “Of course, Ms. Reynolds. Dr. Langston, one of our in-house doctors, is with Mr. Brooks right now and assessing his situation. If you’ll have a seat, I’m sure he’ll be with you shortly.”

Stifling her surprise, Ali did as she was told-she took a seat and waited. Because she still had Athena’s phone in her hand, she used those few moments to attempt to contact B. Simpson. There was a problem, however: This wasn’t her phone. She was used to dialing B. by simply using her directory. Without access to her cheat sheet of numbers, she was unable to recall B.’s. She had already dialed two wrong numbers by the time Athena and Chris came into the waiting room.

“Any word?” Chris asked.

“Not yet.” Ali started to hand the phone back.

“You keep it until we find yours,” Athena said.

“Thanks.” Ali stuffed the phone in her pocket.

“I just talked to Dave again,” Chris said to his mother. “He told me that both our house and Grandma’s are currently considered crime scenes. That means until they can get them processed, we’ll need to stay somewhere else. I can stay with Athena, but do you want her to find rooms for you and Grandpa and Grandma?”

Nodding, Ali leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “We’ll need a place for Sam, too,” she said. “Assuming anyone can catch her, that is. She’s probably petrified.”

Athena collected Chris’s phone and went to the desk to find a phone book while Chris turned to his mother. “Why?” he asked. “What happened there?”

Just thinking about it was enough to make Ali feel sick again. “He filled the tub with water, shoved my head under, and held it there. Repeatedly,” Ali said. “He did the same thing to Mr. Brooks.”

Chris knew all about Ali’s fear of water, and he was obviously appalled. He reached over and took his mother’s hand. “But who is this guy?” he asked. “And why would he do such a thing? Is he really a killer, like Dave said, and how did you and Grandma and Leland Brooks get mixed up with him?”

“Do you remember that identity thief B. and I were tracking?”

Chris nodded. “What about him?”

“B.’s a very smart man,” Ali said. “The man’s name is Peter Winter. We were actually able to lift his files right off his computer. It turns out they’re encrypted, so we still don’t know what’s on them, but whatever it is must be really incriminating. He was worried enough that he came here looking for me in hopes of getting them back.”

As if speaking of the devil, a pair of swinging doors opened, and there was Peter Winter himself. He was sitting in a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse, while the same two uniformed officers flanked the wheelchair. Winter wore the cuffs, but his clothing was gone. Instead, he was clad only in a skimpy hospital gown, with a single sheet thrown over his bare legs. The moment he saw Ali, his eyes sparked a look of pure fury.

“Bitch!” he muttered under his breath as the chair rolled past her. “You incredible bitch!”

To her surprise, Ali burst out laughing. She couldn’t help herself, and she was still laughing when the automatic outside door whirred shut behind him. Before she managed to get back under control, the swinging doors opened once more. A man dressed in scrubs strode into the lobby.

“Ms. Reynolds?” he asked, glancing around.

Stifling her laughter, Ali got to her feet and hurried forward. “Yes,” she said, “that’s me. Is Mr. Brooks going to be all right?”

“I’m Dr. Langston,” he said, “Mr. Brooks’s attending physician. We believe he’ll be fine. He’s very heavily sedated at the moment. That means that his blood pressure and heart rate aren’t entirely normal. We found two separate puncture marks on Mr. Brooks’s arm, marks that might possibly indicate he had been dosed with some kind of medication. Do you have any idea what drugs might have been administered?”

Ali closed her eyes. She thought about lying helpless on the bathroom floor while her captor temporarily disappeared from view. She remembered that when she’d come back into the bedroom, Leland’s body had apparently been moved.

“The man who was just here,” Ali said. “The one they just took away in the cop car-”

“The one who was hit by a Taser?” the doctor asked. “What about him?”

“He was dressed when they brought him here. What happened to his clothes?”

“I believe the police officers who were with him took charge of all his personal property, clothing included. Why?”

“Have them check his pockets,” Ali suggested.

Dr. Langston looked at Ali for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do that. And I should probably take a look at your face, Ms. Reynolds. Apparently you got hit pretty hard. In the meantime, if you’d like to go wait in Mr. Brooks’s room…”

The whole time they had been in the hospital lobby, Athena had been on the phone. “The Majestic Mountain I

Ali nodded. Automatically, she reached for her purse and her credit card, but she didn’t have those, either.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Chris said. “I’ll put the rooms on my card.”

Leaving Chris and Athena to make the room reservation, Ali followed Dr. Langston through the swinging doors and into the interior of the building. “He’s in there,” Dr. Langston said, motioning Ali toward a room two doors down the hall.

Entering Leland’s room, she was more than a little gratified to have been given such unlimited access. He lay on his back with his hands folded peacefully across his chest. He was sleeping soundly and snoring with window-rattling volume. The thought that such a small man could make so much noise would have been humorous under any other circumstances. Today it wasn’t fu

Ali studied his sleeping face. His lips were cut and swollen. One eye was black, and the rest of his face was mottled with bruises and abrasions. One arm was in a sling, and both hands showed signs of having been in a serious physical altercation. Neither he nor Ali had won, but they had gone down swinging.

There was a single chair near the head of the bed. Ali slipped gratefully onto that and settled in to wait. The doctor reappeared within a matter of minutes. “You’re right,” he said. “They found two empty syringes of Versed in his pockets. Where the hell did he get those?”

“I think Winter is a doctor,” Ali said. “That’s what I was told.”

“A doctor!” Dr. Langston repeated, shaking his head. “In that case, it’ll take time for the medication to wear off. Fortunately for someone Mr. Brooks’s age, he doesn’t appear to be in any kind of distress at the moment. Other than bruising and battering, he has a dislocated shoulder and possibly a torn rotator cuff. We’re capable of monitoring his progress here, but if you’d prefer to have him moved to another facility…”

It was one thing to be allowed into Leland Brooks’s room, but Ali was surprised to be given so much information about his condition, and she certainly hadn’t expected to be consulted about the kind of care provided.

“Look,” Ali said. “I need to tell you, that I’m not a blood relation and probably shouldn’t have any say.”

“Mr. Brooks has an unusual blood type-O-negative-and wears a MedicAlert tag that gives emergency perso

“He’s given me his medical power of attorney?” Ali asked.

“Do you mean to say that you didn’t know?” Dr. Langston asked.

“I do now,” Ali said. “And we’ll wait here until he wakes up,” she added, making the decision as she spoke.

“Let’s go take a look at you in the meantime,” the doctor said.

An X-ray revealed that her aching jaw wasn’t broken, but the cut next to her eye required two stitches. In another time and place, she would have been concerned about scarring. Now she was just glad to be alive.