Her Dying Breath (44 page)

“Y
ou listen to me,” Mayor Banks said. “I did know your father back then through the town council, but whatever that maniac woman thinks she heard is a lie. I was not involved in those experiments.”

Nick cocked his head to the side. He didn’t believe that. “Really?”

“Yes,” the mayor said. “And yes, we adopted Brenda, but that’s a family matter.”

“You and Senator Stowe and the Commander served in the military together on the same assault unit,” Nick said. “I saw a photograph of you together at a fund-raiser for the sanitarium twenty years ago.”

The mayor’s face blanched. A breath later, he said, “Yes, we served together. And the senator may have been in on the experiment. But I wasn’t.” His chubby cheeks deflated, as if he were wrestling with defeat. “I admit that I suspected he might be up to something, but he never confided in me. When you arrested Arthur and revealed that he was conducting an experiment, it all made sense. That’s the reason I tried to persuade Brenda to drop the story. I wanted her to stay the hell away from your father.”

Suddenly Mrs. Banks rushed toward them, her eyes filled with tears. “William, it’s Brenda! She’s not doing well in surgery.”

The mayor caught his wife by the arms. “What happened?”

“The surgeon said both kidneys were damaged.” Her voice cracked. “She needs a transplant immediately.”

Mayor Banks’s face looked strained. “Dear God, we’ll have to find her mother.”

Mrs. Banks shook her head. “There’s no time.” She clutched her husband’s arms. “They’re going to test me to see if I’m a match.”

The mayor nodded. “Yes, maybe that will work.”

“I don’t understand,” Nick said.

Mrs. Banks took a deep breath as if she needed courage. “Brenda is my sister’s daughter. My sister was a drug addict and lived on the streets. We took Brenda away from her when Brenda was four.”

“So Brenda is your niece?” Nick said. “Does she know the truth about her mother?”

The couple exchanged a pained look, then shook their heads.

“You need to tell her the truth,” Nick said.

“We will after the surgery,” Mrs. Banks said. “But right now, I have to talk to the doctors. If I’m a match, they’ll do the transplant immediately.”

Nick’s throat felt tight as the couple clasped hands and headed down to the lab.

Brenda felt herself rise from her body, as if she were weightless. The room was out of focus, and she felt weak, a bright light blinding her.

She blinked to clear the haze, then realized she was floating in a room of white.

And that she was dying.

Her body was lying in a hospital bed below, tubes, IVs, and machines whirring around her to keep her alive.

Gauze pads had soaked up blood, an oxygen machine pumped air into her, and another tube had been inserted down her throat.

She was so still, her complexion so pale, and there was so much blood. She strained to recall why she was here, then a brief flash of a gunshot sounding and a bullet stinging as it pierced her stomach came back.

“We’re losing her,” the doctor said.

“Hang on, Brenda,” a nurse murmured. “We’re going to find you a kidney.” A terrible sense of loss overwhelmed her as her life flashed before her eyes. Nick…holding her as she bled on the floor.

Nick and the beautiful night they’d spent together.

The betrayal she’d felt when she realized he’d investigated her past.

Then other snippets of her life, back to when she was little and scared and hungry and cold. She felt that coldness now, all the way through her bones.

More memories bombarded her, like a movie she couldn’t turn off. The homeless woman dragging her into an alley. Being sick and hungry.

Agnes soothing her after a nightmare.

The Christmases with the Bankses, candy canes and presents, warm and cozy by the fire, her mother cuddling on the sofa, reading stories to her.

Her sixth birthday party, when Agnes arranged pony rides for her and her first-grade class.

The lonely holiday when she’d been ten and her parents had dragged her on a holiday and left her in the hotel room with a nanny while they partied with their friends.

And her teenage years, when she’d learned about the adoption and rebelled against the Bankses.

Suddenly there was a commotion, as the operating-room door swung open. Doctors and nurses started bustling around. Machines beeped, there was a hubbub of harried voices, and a big man in a hospital uniform pushed another gurney into the room.

Brenda gaped in shock.

Her mother—Agnes—was on the other bed, an IV hooked up to her arm.

The nurse patted Brenda’s hand, but she was still floating above her body, too numb to feel it. “I told you we’d find you a donor.”

Her mother looked over at her. “I love you, Brenda. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

The same nurse that had patted her arm squeezed her mother’s shoulder. “You’re very brave to do this, Mrs. Banks. Now start counting backward from ten.”

“Ten, nine, eight…” Her mother’s voice faded as the doctors draped a sheet over her, then intubated her.

“Scalpel, please.” The surgeon held out his hand, and one of the assistants laid the instrument in his palm. Seconds later, they lifted Agnes’s kidney from her body, and Brenda watched them insert it into her own abdomen.

Slowly she felt herself floating back down, slipping back into her body…clinging to life as her mother’s kidney began to work.

It was the longest night of Nick’s life.

Finally, around four a.m., the doctor came out of surgery to talk to them. Nick hung close enough to the mayor to hear.

“So far the surgery is a success, but Brenda will need to stay on antirejection meds. She’s in the ICU tonight, but we hope to move her to a room tomorrow.”

“And my wife?” the mayor asked.

“She’s doing fine, Mr. Banks,” the doctor said. “We’ll let you see her when we settle her into a room.”

Relief echoed in the mayor’s sigh. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said as he shook the man’s hand. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost either one of my girls.”

Nick backed away, feeling like an outsider. He wanted to see Brenda, but only family was allowed. And he was nowhere near family.

He left the hospital and drove back to his cabin, but he was too wired to sleep. Tonight Brenda had almost died, and Seven had escaped.

Where would she go? Where was she hiding out?

He spread all the information he’d learned on the case on his kitchen table, then laid out the crimes in order. Seven had killed Logger and Sergeant Mason because they’d been hired guards where she was kept hostage.

Her accomplice, who he suspected was Six, had helped her burn down the compound, leaving the woman in the building to die.

Seven had tried to kill Brenda because she’d mistakenly believed Brenda was the Commander’s daughter, and that she’d been spared the experiment because of her relationship to him. Because the Commander loved Brenda.

But the Commander had never loved anybody.

Which meant that now Seven knew she was his daughter—and that he hadn’t loved her, because he sure as hell hadn’t spared her.

She murdered Ron Stowe to punish the senator. She’d also known Stowe and Laddermilk from the senator’s campaign.

He studied the senator’s photograph. Had he known about the project? Had he spearheaded it? The mayor suspected that he had.

Nick would question him in the morning. But he wanted to be armed with more ammunition, so he booted up his computer
and pulled up everything he could find on the senator, his life, and his career.

He found two more photographs with Seven in them. She’d always remained in the shadows.

Now he knew the reason.

Would she go after the senator next?

He checked the man’s calendar to see where he would be the next few days, and discovered that he planned to attend a charity auction the next day. Nick was shocked the man hadn’t canceled because of his son’s death, but the event was still scheduled; in an interview, the senator had claimed he would attend in his son’s honor.

Nick stood, paced to the window, and looked out at the mountains. In a couple of hours, he’d meet Jake at the jail to interrogate the shooter.

Then he’d go to the auction, in case Seven showed up to ambush the senator.

Brenda struggled to open her eyes, but her eyelids weighed a ton. Her body felt weak, drained, her mouth so dry it felt as if cotton candy were stuck inside it.

She tried to move, but pain ricocheted through her abdomen, and she realized that her arm was tethered to an IV.

She blinked, willing away the panic streaking through her. Then a warm hand closed over hers.

“Nick?”

“No, it’s me—your mother.”

A snippet of another memory invaded her consciousness. The surgery, floating above her own body, the realization that she was dying.

Then her mother being wheeled in beside her…

“What happened?” she whispered.

“You were shot.” This from her father, his voice gruff.

Anguish lined his face. He was standing by her bed, but her mother was in a wheelchair. She looked weak and worried, her face milky white.

“You’re going to be all right,” her mother said softly.

Brenda’s gaze met hers. Tears glittered on her mother’s eyelashes, and an IV was attached to a pole beside her chair.

Her father cleared his throat. “You needed a kidney transplant, so your mother volunteered.”

Brenda licked her dry lips. “But how…were you a match?”

A moment of silence lapsed, then her mother smiled sadly. “I guess it’s time you knew the truth, Brenda.”

“What do you remember?” her father asked.

Brenda forced her eyes to stay open. “I had nightmares…this dream about a homeless woman, drugs…a warehouse.”

Sorrow bled from her mother’s voice as she said, “I’m so sorry, honey. We hoped you’d forget, that you’d never remember that awful night.”

“So it was real,” she said. “I was hurt?”

Her mother wiped at her eyes. “The woman you were with, your mother—”

“Was a drug addict,” Brenda said.

Agnes nodded. “She was my sister, Jo-Lynn.”

Of all the scenarios Brenda had envisioned, none had prepared her for this. “But you…her…you’re so different.”

Her mother gently brushed a strand of hair from Brenda’s forehead, reminding her of the way she used to brush it at night when she was a little girl.

“I tried to save her, to save you,” she said. “I guess that’s why I went overboard in spoiling you, making sure you had the best clothes. I wanted you to fit into society, to have everything, to forget the horrible places your mother took you, the rags you wore. The…Dumpster diving for food.”

A cold knot of fear enveloped Brenda. “What happened to her?”

“I…we lost track of her,” her father said. “You have to understand, Brenda. Your mother and I did everything we could to save Jo-Lynn. She was in and out of rehab, then she’d run off and get hooked again. We thought when she had you that she’d change, but her addiction was too strong.”

“She turned to stealing to pay for her drugs,” Agnes continued. “Stealing and selling herself on the streets.”

Brenda clenched the sheets. “That night I was brought into the hospital, the warehouse?”