Nothing Personal (26 page)

The shoving got worse. B.J. began to curse. Kate fought harder for air as the press of bodies buried her, the questions feral and unrelenting. She couldn’t see above heads to find out where they were going. She could hardly hear B.J. next to her anymore.

“Please,” she tried, knowing damn well she looked like every guilty mother ever sentenced for smothering her baby. “Please, I can’t…”

She was gulping now, her heart hammering against her ribs, her chest on fire. Her peripheral vision was beginning to dim. She was in danger of hyperventilating, which made her furious. Kate Manion had never had an anxiety attack in her life, and she wasn’t going to have one now.

“Miss Manion, did you in fact set this all up just to kill your fiancé? Doesn’t he have a rather large insurance policy?”

“Goddamn it, let her go!” B.J. roared right in her ear.

She couldn’t even laugh. She couldn’t move.

“Miss Manion, isn’t it true that your own mother committed suicide? Aren’t you the one who found her, just like you found Doctor Peterson?”

That did it. All systems shut down and Kate missed the rest of the questions.

B.J. was beyond fury. He was battling a white-hot rage. He should have known better. He should have figured the pack was circling outside and taken Kate out another way. But he’d been distracted by the sight of her boss, in perfect rictus not fifteen minutes after the code had been called. He’d wanted to know the last thing that had gone through Gunn’s mind as he’d gurgled into oblivion. He’d wondered just what that white light had told him.

And then he’d been blindsided by the additional news about the apartment. No wonder Kate had gone down like a prizefighter after a quick one-two.

“Get that shit off me,” he heard through the door.

“Shut up,” Jules retorted evenly. “You passed out.”

“I did not pass out. I don’t faint.”

B.J. got the door open to see Kate struggling to sit up on the cart. She already had the oxygen off and was batting Jules’s protective hands away from the IV they’d inserted.

“Goddamn it, Jules. What is that?”

“That,” Jules informed her, “is the IV I got in and the two hundred cc’s of fluid we’ve infused
since you didn’t pass out. Now shut up and lie down. You’ve done enough gymnastics for one day.”

“I’m going home,” Kate insisted, her voice trembling suspiciously.

B.J. saved them both from going after each other. “It was either this or the press,” he stated baldly.

Kate turned on him, her eyes flashing fire even in an ashen face. “I overexerted myself a little,” she said through clamped teeth. “They were cutting off my air.”

He just nodded. “A handy little lesson, considering you keep forgetting about that hole you had in your chest.”

“Shut up, B.J.”

Behind him, a blond young thing in too-high heels and a business suit squeezed through the still-open door. “Can we get a statement for the press on how Miss—”

B.J. whipped around on her like retribution. “Get the fuck outa here,” he snarled.

She got the fuck outa there. B.J. closed the door so fast he almost broke the hydraulics.

“She can’t go back out into that mess,” Jules protested, then turned on Kate with a big grin. “You should have seen it. He came charging in here with you in his arms, shaking reporters off like water. Three people swooned, I swear.”

“Shut up, Jules,” they both snapped in unison.

Kate was pulling at the IV with hands that shook almost as much as the ones B.J. had hidden in his pockets.

“Let her go,” he suggested. “By now John and Mary have cleansed the temple and it’s safe to go through.”

“Are you gonna keep an eye on her?” Jules demanded. “I sure as hell don’t have the energy.”

“I’m—going—home,” Kate said.

B.J. couldn’t imagine why he had the urge to smile. None of this was funny, except maybe the sight of Kate facing off with Jules like a six-week-old kitten going after the family mastiff. He couldn’t think of anything he’d enjoy less than riding herd on a goddamn out-of-control woman with a death wish. Except that he didn’t want to lose that goddamn out-of-control woman. He couldn’t go through it again.

Almost on cue, the door into the work lane swung open and the skinny tech with the bad skin and feather earrings popped her head in. “Just got a call from John. He says all’s clear.” Then she turned to Kate, and B.J. noticed that for once the girl actually had color in her skin. “You guys have to tell me all about it, you hear me? Every detail.” When Kate didn’t answer right away, the tech huffed a little like a man whose phone sex operator has been cut off at the wrong moment and started playing with her hair. “
Every
detail. Phyl wouldn’t let me go stick a pin in him to make sure he was really dead. Okay?”

Kate was the first one to nod. “He went down like a champ, Sticks. Now, everybody let me outa here.”

Jules immediately slammed those plump hands on even plumper hips. “You’re signing out
AMA,” she demanded, “just like every other stupid gump who walks out when they’re not supposed to. And then you’re getting a Stupid Stunt Star in the Pig Nurses’ newsletter.”

“I’m fine,” Kate snarled one last time as she slid off the cart and almost onto the floor.

She wasn’t, of course. They were halfway across the campus when Kate came to a dead stop, her hand to her chest. “The file. Oh, God, Beej, where’s my file?”

B.J. stopped for her, just as he had the other three times. “What file?”

“Billy Rashad. The accident. I had it on me when that horde descended. Jesus, I hope they don’t get that.”

B.J. just lifted the nursing bag he was carrying in the hand that wasn’t holding her up. “Let’s get you inside before you have a full-fledged psychotic break, okay?”

She glared at him, which would have been a hell of a lot more effective if she hadn’t looked like an airline disaster survivor.

“You’re going to have a drink,” he said.

Her smile was sheepish. “I’m going to have a lot of drinks.”

They both did. Kate drank brandy and B.J. drank Jameson, both of them sitting on the floor in the living room, their heads back on the seat of the couch, waiting for John to show up with the latest news.

“I should be doing something,” Kate said, staring straight up at the ceiling.

“You should be sitting here getting pleasantly drunk. Now, shut up and do it.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“We keep having this conversation.”

“I’m losing control,” she said. “Everybody’s taking it away from me again: you, John, the news, the hospital. And whoever it is who is doing this. I’ve got to get it over, Beej. I need some resolution, or I’m going to fly apart at the seams.”

She wasn’t telling him a thing. He wished he knew how to comfort her. He wished he could hold her together with his own hands. But he’d spent too long keeping his distance. He’d thought he was safer that way. He celebrated the idea that only the most stupid bastard on earth could believe such a thing with another great slug of Jameson.

That was when Kate decided sitting was too easy. She lurched to her feet and began to pace, her eyes suspiciously bright. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I close my eyes and expect to have Tim haunt me. But he’s too damn polite. It’s my sisters who are haunting me, and that doesn’t make sense.”

“Your sisters?” B.J. asked, not moving. “Not your mother?”

Kate laughed as she lifted the brandy bottle for another dose. “My mother doesn’t haunt me.”

“You’re sure? You’re sure this isn’t because you feel guilty that you couldn’t save her?”

That got Kate to turn toward him. B.J. thought he’d never seen those sharp eyes so bleak.
“Guilty?” she retorted, and then smiled, a terrible smile of self-loathing. “No, I never felt guilty. I felt relieved. I was glad she’d finally gotten it over with, and we could get on with our lives. Shows you how much a fourteen-year-old knows.”

Goddamn it, he hated this. Hated knowing he had nothing in his bag of tricks to help her.

He did the best he could. He got to his feet, walked over to where she was standing with her arms wrapped around as if to hold herself together, and put his own arms around hers. Pulled her close. Held her until he could feel her relax against him. Then he lifted her face so he could see her. He couldn’t offer any words, but he could offer solace.

She was shaking. So was he. She was just too pale, her eyes too big, her forehead too tight.

“Have you been eating?” he demanded, stroking her cheek.

She laughed. “That’s the most endearing damn thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

He grinned back and felt better. “I don’t want you passing out again when I kiss you.”

Her eyes widened even farther, and B.J. thought he saw the ghosts dim for just a minute. “I do not pass out,” she insisted.

He just nodded. “Good.”

And then the phone rang.

“Ignore it,” she said.

He did. He kissed her instead, pulling her cap off so he could weave his hands into the short curls that had begun to hide the scar, inhaling the last traces of the perfume she’d put on that morning, forgetting the phone completely.

The phone didn’t forget them. It kept on ringing until finally even B.J. had to pay attention to it. It still took him six more rings after he’d lifted his head to pull himself back into control.

“Don’t go away,” he commanded, stealing one last kiss that tasted like brandy.

“Don’t think I can.”

He laughed for the first time in days, which made John mad when he finally answered the phone.

“Well, maybe you havin’ a good ol’ time, my man,” he snapped, with uncharacteristic surliness, “but I am hip deep in alligators.”

“I was busy,” was all B.J. would say. He was still watching Kate, thinking this was the damndest twist his life had ever taken. Of all times to feel like things were beginning to look better.

Kate had wandered over to the dining room table where she was picking through a small pile of envelopes. B.J. ran a quick hand through his hair, pushing it back from his suddenly slick forehead, as he did his best to concentrate on John’s voice instead of Kate’s body.

“You keep dat girl dere,” John said simply. “We got some work to do I don’ want her interferin’ wid.”

He had B.J.’s attention. “What’s up?”

“I’ll let you know soon as I know, but we maybe have a big break for ourselves here.”

“You know who it is?”

He shouldn’t have said it. Kate whipped around so fast she almost fell over. B.J. just waved her off again.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Do me a favor. Katie got dat chart?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Have her go over it one more time. And ask her if she sure she don’ know somebody collects beads.”

“You’ve got an idea about it?”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

And then B.J. was left to explain it to Kate. But when he turned to do that, she wasn’t paying attention. She was focused on her table, her drink forgotten. She’d reached out to stroke one of the envelopes with her index finger, as if rediscovering an old keepsake in her trunk.

“Kate?”

“My mail,” she said absently.

B.J. walked over. “I know. I saw it. John wants you to go back over the chart one more time to see if anything occurs to you. He’ll be here in a while to talk to you—”

She looked up at him, and the brief contentment had gone. “My mail,” she repeated, as if he hadn’t heard her.

He looked down at it, but it didn’t look any different from when he’d walked past to get their drinks. “What about it?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t bring it in, B.J.”

That was when he finally saw what she’d been stroking. Another envelope, the address typed, with no stamp, no cancellation.

“Oh, shit.”

Neither of them picked it up. They just watched it, as if they’d never seen anything like it before.

“Does John think he knows who it is?” she asked.

It wouldn’t do any good to lie now. “Yeah. Are you sure you don’t know anybody who wears beads?”

She looked up at him. “No.” She turned her attention back to the envelope. “I don’t think so. I think it’s somebody I don’t know. Somebody I’ve never met.”

“Kate…”

“No one I know would do this,” she insisted.

“Why don’t we look at the chart anyway?”

She shook her head and picked up the envelope. “I think I want to know what Florence has to say.”

B.J. was going to stop her. They should leave the message intact for John, just like the last one, even though there hadn’t been any kind of evidence on it, no prints, no fibers, no identifying marks. It was good forensics to preserve evidence. But right now B.J. was more worried about preserving Kate’s sanity. So he let her open it. He didn’t even lean over for a look. And when the doorbell rang, he went to answer it, ready to head John off before he interfered.

The note was the same, folded so haphazardly that the envelope didn’t lie flat. Kate pulled it out to find letters pasted over each other, gaps where there had never been gaps. Someone else, Mary had said. Another of Kate’s friends warning her to stay away until the murderer had done her work.
Well, hadn’t she? Florence had walked straight to the top, from Attila to Warner to Fleischer to Gunn. Who else was she going to kill, Saint Simon himself? Just set fire to the hospital and hope the right people got out?

DON’T INTERFERE. YOUR CONSCIENCE ISN’T CLEAN EITHER. JUST ASK MOLLY
.

“No,” Kate whispered bleakly. “Oh, no.”

“Kate?”

She couldn’t look away. No one knew. Not B.J., not Jules, not even Aunt Mamie. No one knew that Kate carried all the blame, kept it buried so deep that nothing could ever pry it loose. Nothing.

And yet, someone did know, and it was all changed again.

Kate finally felt a hand on her arm and looked up to find Jules glaring at her from six inches away. Behind her, B.J. had just closed the door behind Sticks.

“Are you taking care of her?” Jules demanded of B.J. without looking away.

Kate shoved the new fear away and tried to smile. Tried to react at all.

“I’m just…tired,” she managed, refolding the note as carefully as she could with hands that shook even worse than before.