Color Blind (30 page)

Despite everything, Jenna laughed. It was so true. Hank had called them both into this mess. Maybe she’d dragged them further than Hank intended, but if he expected to tell her half the story and let the other half remain a mystery, he had another think coming.

Hank ambled back over. “We can go in, but we can’t stay long. She’s ‘resting comfortably,’ whatever that means. Come on.”

Jenna stood, and Yancy followed. Hank put a palm to his chest. “Not you.”

At this point, best not to fight Hank. She shook her head at Yancy, who bit his lip and backed away.

Jenna walked beside Hank toward the room where everything went down.

“You know, you could cut Yancy some slack. He did keep a guy from splatting on the concrete out there,” Jenna said.

“Lawsuits,” Hank muttered.

Lawsuits. Ego. Same thing, right?

Nurse Twyla lay on the hospital bed. An industrial blanket covered her up to her waist, her pink scrub top gently rising and falling with her breathing. She stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed.

“Twyla? My name is Jenna Ramey. I need to ask you a few questions, okay?”

The nurse didn’t say anything, only nodded.

“The man who was here earlier. Can you remember what he talked to you about when he first came in?”

She nodded again. When she spoke, she sounded about a decade older than when they’d visited Yancy in the ICU a few nights ago.

“He put the gun to my head. Said they’d told him I was on duty when the park victims were brought in. I don’t know who ‘they’ meant.”

“Did he ask you any questions about any of the theme park victims?”

“One,” she whispered.

“Who was it, Twyla?” Jenna coaxed.

“The Waters kid. S-Sebastian.”

Easy, girl.
Twyla was tearing up, but pushing through this was paramount. “He wanted to talk about Sebastian Waters. What did he say about him?”

She clutched the blanket tighter, inched it up toward her thick neck. “Was angry. Said Sebastian killed his daughter.” Twyla gripped the rail of the bed with her right hand, then twisted her head toward Jenna. “Did he?”

The answer wouldn’t help Twyla sleep at night, for sure. Better to keep her centered on the matter at hand. “Did this man ask you any questions about Sebastian Waters?”

The woman’s eyes returned to the ceiling and slid in and out of focus. “He told me to tell him who Sebastian left the hospital with. Who picked him up.”

“Do you remember the answer to that?”

She shook her head vigorously.

“Did he ask anything else?”

“Who he talked to while he was here. Who visited.”

Jenna had let her doctor side take over in the past few years because it was far more patient than the cop side. But right now, the two were definitely dueling.

“Can you remember what you told him?” Jenna asked.

“N-No one visited him. Nobody except police. He only talked to the support group while he was here.”

The lavender Jenna saw anytime she had a sense of déjà vu flashed in. She swapped a quick glance with Hank. Support groups. Again.

“Thank you, Twyla,” she said. “Feel better soon.”

They exited the room, and Hank was already talking. “We need a list of everyone involved with the support group Waters attended while he was here. Any chance it could be the same one Thadius Grogan worked with?”

“Slim. If it was, Thadius would’ve gone another route to find him, no?”

“You’ve got a point.”

“We need names and meeting places. I have no idea where Thadius will go to track down a member of the hospital support group, but all the people involved need to be notified that they could be in danger. Not to mention, we need to know who talked most to Waters while he was at the meeting. I’ll get info from the hospital, you put Irv on notice.”

“On it,” Hank said.

Jenna sprinted down the hall. Minutes were precious. Assuming Isaac Keaton shot Sebastian Waters so the latter could escape the park shooting, Sebastian didn’t go to that meeting because he was a victim in need of camaraderie.

They didn’t just need to know who Sebastian Waters had talked to. They also needed to know
why
.

“I
had a great time today,” Zane said as Sebastian eased his neighbor’s borrowed Chevy into the parking lot of the abandoned Piggly Wiggly off the interstate. Funny how even the people who’d known you for only a few weeks could be swayed by the words “neighbor” and “shooting victim.”

He’d brought Zane here to meet her friend who was supposed to pick her up. She’d mumbled something about a friend needing company for the night, but Sebastian knew. He didn’t press.

“Me, too,” he admitted. So hard not to look at her, but he didn’t dare. Her face was weird from this angle. Better not to see that side of her.

“She’ll be here any minute, I’m sure,” Zane said.

Maybe Zane had homed in on his awkward inner conflict, or maybe she was reassuring herself. Sebastian couldn’t tell anymore.

The minutes ticked by. No sign of Zane’s friend.

“Maybe you should call her,” Sebastian suggested.

Still, in his gut, he knew this feeling. Had it too many times. No one was coming. Zane’s “friend” wasn’t a friend at all.

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be along. I don’t mind waiting if you don’t,” she said, her voice wavering, unsteady.

“No. I don’t mind at all.”

The truth seeped out so easily, effortless. A lot different from most things he’d talked about today. In fact, Sebastian couldn’t remember the last time sitting with someone was so simple. Usually, he felt so inconspicuous, like the world had no idea he was there, and he had a love-hate relationship with it. If they didn’t notice him, he analyzed why. If they did, it made him endlessly anxious. But Zane was aware of his presence constantly. What’s more, he liked that she was.

A few minutes turned into thirty, but they sat and talked. About anything, nothing. Sebastian wasn’t about to bring up the “friend” again. He wouldn’t remind her of the thing he’d tried so hard to escape.

“And that’s how we ended up keeping the ferret as a pet,” she said.

Sebastian had only half listened to the story. “Cool.”

She giggled, and the sucking noise her mouth sometimes made tagged the end. When the laugh died out, Zane sighed hard. “Yeah, I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

What was next, then? Either way, he didn’t want to ask. He didn’t really care.

This was the point people usually told him that their “friend” had probably gotten tied up, or that some stupid mistake was to blame, like they thought they were meeting at a different abandoned Piggly Wiggly parking lot. That sucked worse than the actual ditching. He wouldn’t do that to her.

Instead, Sebastian finally looked at Zane and was surprised to find her looking at him as though she had been the whole time. His ears burned. The rippled skin on her cheek was turned away just enough so he wasn’t staring at it head-on.

“I’m glad she didn’t show,” Sebastian said.

Before he knew what was happening, Zane had lurched across the front seat. Her lips pressed hard against his, her curved upper lip oddly smooth under his. She kissed him, and her hands gripped his nonexistent biceps.

He didn’t kiss back, but he didn’t stop her, either. He felt sensation pulse through him, nice. Calming, even.

Zane’s eyes were shut tight, but Sebastian never closed his. He glanced down, lifted his hands to her hips and placed one on either side. She was small, soft. Warm.

Finally, Sebastian convinced his mouth to close in time with hers. Awkward. More like eating pudding than what he’d heard about making out with a girl.

If Zane noticed that he didn’t seem to know what he was doing, she didn’t let on. Maybe this was her way of thanking him for his earlier discretion?

She pressed herself closer into him, halfway over the cup holders between them. Her knee bumped the drive shaft, and his hand acted of its own accord to pull her leg over the barrier and out of the way.

The stirring in his jeans interrupted his concentration on the feeling of her lips.
No, no, no. Not this. Not now.

But in the next moment, Zane’s hand closed over his, small and tepid. The memory of the handprint on City Walk washed over him, and the taste of her salty tongue overpowered his doubts. He let his own tongue roam over the scarred surface of her lip, his worries about how he was doing flitting away in the stale air of the Chevy. She breathed out as he tasted her, and she emitted a tiny gasp, which caused her mouth to squelch.

She didn’t flinch, and shocked as Sebastian was, neither did he. Noticed, sure. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to do it again. Hell, maybe he wanted it all the more.

That was what was perfect about her, after all. She was infinitely fucked up. Just like him.

T
he hospital pointed Jenna and Hank—and to Hank’s chagrin, Yancy—toward the workplace of the hospital support group’s leader while Richards and Saleda visited the guy’s home. Les Quaney turned out to be a chef at a local Thai restaurant called Chatchada, which was located in a hole in the wall on Second.

“Les Quaney around?” Hank asked the man behind the bar of the restaurant.

“Whatcha want with him?” the hefty bartender asked.

Hank whipped out his badge. “FBI. We need to talk to him as soon as possible.”

The guy wiped his dark hands on a cloth from the shelf under the bar, then stuck one out to Hank. “Les.”

Doesn’t seem surprised to see us.
In Jenna’s experience with federal investigation, most people were knocked back by a real live visit from an FBI agent. However, these folks with histories involving violent crimes tended to be the opposite. They weren’t necessarily thrilled or welcoming, but they had a quiet acceptance about them. A life of constant drama would do that to a person.

“We’re here to ask you some questions about Sebastian Waters. You may have met him at one of your recent meetings. He was a victim in the Gemini theme park shootings.”

Les Quaney scrubbed the counter with the same cloth with which he’d wiped his hands.
Nervous tick.

“Not sure I know the name. Park shootings, you said? Any clue which meeting? Sorry. I try not to pry into people’s business. Don’t keep up with who’s there, either. Anonymous is anonymous, you know. ’Sides, I have enough to think about on my own.”

“We understand,” Hank replied.

“It would’ve been a meeting at the hospital, probably only one. Sometime last week,” Jenna explained.

Les looked up toward his left. Memory accessing. A lot of people thought looking a certain direction or other was the “tell” of a liar, but Jenna had hung around with enough sociopaths to know the rules about this weren’t hard and fast. Still, in normal people, looking up usually meant they were looking to their brain—or rather, their reservoir for memories.

“Oh, yeah. Guy they brought from upstairs. He didn’t say much, really. Listened. I didn’t talk to him, either. Seemed in his own world. Mostly, everyone let him be. I think the only person who chatted with him was Zane. Of course, she chats with everyone. I’d be impressed if he made it away
without
talking to her.”

“Zane?” Jenna repeated.

“Yeah, Zane Krupke. Really active in the local vic support scene. Cheerful to the point of aggravation. I warn you, you talk to her, you might wanna take an Imodium first. The verbal diarrhea gets to you.”

“Any idea where we can locate her?” Hank asked.

Les folded his lips, scrunched his nose. “Not a clue, actually. I don’t know where she works or where she lives. I know she helps organize a bunch of events, but that’s about it. If you’d dropped by a little earlier, you probably could’ve caught her at the City Walk thing today. Would’ve ended a few hours ago, though.”

“All right. Zane Krupke, right?”

“Yep,” Quaney said.

“Got it. Thanks,” Hank replied.

Jenna and Yancy followed Hank out of the building. Jenna already had her phone to her ear. “Need everything you have on Zane Krupke, please, sir.”