Obsession (10 page)

The shout from the hallway above made her jump, which was a bad thing in that it almost caused her to lose her footing and butt-bump down the rest of the steps. Only her grip on her trusty IV pole saved her. The voice was a man’s, the tone imperative, as if he was used to being promptly attended to. From the take she got on the location of it, she was very much afraid that the speaker was yelling from the doorway of her abandoned room.

Yikes.
She was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that it was Starkey. Or Bennett.

The IV pole clattered onto the landing, and she was right behind it.

It was the same voice as before, but she didn’t hear it nearly as well this time because the door to the next floor down was already swinging shut behind her when he bellowed.

On the other side of the door, she stopped because she didn’t know what else to do. The overhead wattage was bright, and she felt frighteningly vulnerable in its relentless glow. Heart pounding, she took a second to get her bearings. The floor was crawling with people. A young couple, visitors from the outside from the look of their cutoffs and flip-flops, were just walking into a room only a few doors away. A nurse stood at the nurses’ station writing something in a chart. Another one sat near the first, chatting on the phone. A man in scrubs conferred with a large group of what she presumed were a patient’s relatives in the middle of the hall just beyond the nurses’ station. Beyond them, two little kids turned somersaults down the length of the hall.

Fortunately, none of them so much as glanced her way.

Go back in the stairwell and head down, making like a bandit for the great outdoors? In a hospital gown, with an IV pole for a buddy?
That
wouldn’t be noticeable.
Oh, no, not at all.
Besides, any second now, Starkey and Bennett would start hunting in earnest for her. The thought sent a cold little thrill of fear racing down her spine. Would it occur to them that she might have taken the stairs? Unless they were idiots, she decided instantly, yes, it would.

Soon, the whole hospital would probably be put on alert. She didn’t know what the protocol was for dealing with patients who’d gone missing, but she was pretty sure something would happen. And here she was, wandering the corridors in a flimsy little cotton gown that left her way overexposed, tethered by the arm to an IV unit that was as tall as a flagpole. Somehow, she didn’t think she was going to be hard to locate.

The thought of being handed over to Starkey and Bennett—to say nothing of Ed—once they knew she had tried to run from them made her heart skip a beat.

She might not know much, but she knew what
danger
felt like when her body screamed it at her.

The nurse finished writing and slapped the chart closed. The sound made Katharine jump. Any second now, someone was going to glance her way. . . .

Move,
a little voice in her head shrieked, and she did. IV pole and all, she shot across the hall, opened the door to the nearest room, and stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind her.

The light was off and the curtains were closed, though some light seeped in around them. Still, the room was dark and cool. Some kind of machinery whirred soothingly. The sound of heavy breathing brought her gaze to the nearest bed. It was, she saw as her eyes adjusted, empty.

"Who is that?” a querulous voice demanded from beyond the curtain that separated the room into halves. She had had a private room. This was a double, and clearly the empty bed had a roommate. “If you’re here for Dottie, they just took her down to X-ray.”

Katharine took a deep breath and found her voice.

“Uh, thanks,” she called back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just use the restroom while I wait for her.”

“Help yourself.” The voice was definitely female, definitely old, and definitely crotchety. “It’s not like I can use it. I just wish. You ever tried to take a dump in a bedpan?”

Hoping the question was strictly rhetorical, Katharine made a noncommittal sound by way of a reply and rushed into the bathroom. Closing and locking the door behind her, she flipped on the light.

And froze.

She was looking at her reflection in the big plate-glass mirror that covered most of the wall over the sink. At least, she knew it had to be her reflection, because—a swift glance behind her confirmed it—there was no one else in the small, gray-tiled, steel-fixtured room.

The thing was, though, the woman looking back at her—the stranger with the poleaxed expression and the IV unit teetering precariously beside her—was no one she recognized at all.

Whoever this woman was, it definitely wasn’t her.

6

Y
ou’re nuts.

That was her first thought. Her second, as she stared wide-eyed and openmouthed at what had to be her own reflection because there just wasn’t anyone else there in the bathroom whose reflection it could be, was
Holy crap, I’ve woken up in somebody else’s body. Or something.

She
had an unruly mop of curly auburn hair that cascaded around her shoulders. Her skin was pale as milk. Her cheeks were full, her chin pointed. Her eyes were deep-set, with thick, dark brown brows that gave her expression a distinguishing gravitas that she had always liked. And she was plumper, not plump but
curvier,
that was the word, than the waif in the mirror.

Who was an impossibly thin beauty with a golden tan and shiny, straight platinum blond hair that ended in feathery layers that reached maybe an inch past her chin in front and was shorter in back. Right at the moment, the ’do was a mess, with the ends sticking out every which way and the back smashed, but she was pretty sure she was looking at a hundred-dollar haircut.

Or maybe even a two-hundred-dollar one.

The very thought of which boggled her mind.

I can’t afford that.
The thought popped into her mind out of nowhere.

The woman in the mirror apparently could. Along with a big ole sapphire ring and diamond ear studs that had to be at least a carat each and a pricey manicure and who knew what else.

Heart pounding, staring horrified at the woman in the mirror who was
—duh!—
looking equally horrified as she stared back, Katharine broke into a cold sweat.

Okay, the bandage on her nose—which thankfully wasn’t nearly as big or noticeable as it felt—kept her from getting a good look at that feature, but she definitely remembered getting her face smashed into her kitchen floor, so that was right. The bump on her forehead, too, had probably happened then, or maybe later, when she had flung herself out the window.

Which meant that she was definitely looking at the woman who had been terrorized and almost killed in her town house last night.

In other words, herself.

Her thick, dark brows were gone, replaced by elegant arches that were definitely lighter in color. But—and this was a biggie—her eyes were the right color: a soft, clear green. Very pretty, very distinctive. In fact, she had always considered them her best feature. She
remembered
them.

She blew out a sigh of relief.

With her lips still parted from that relieved sigh, she discovered her teeth. They were—she leaned a little closer to be sure—perfect teeth. Two rows of china-white Chiclets that gleamed at her when she pulled back her lips in a grimace to check them out.

Her heart started pounding again.

The thing was, she was pretty sure her teeth had never been that blindingly flawless. In fact, she distinctly remembered a tiny gap between her two front teeth.

Panic clogged her throat. Her heart stuttered alarmingly. She gripped the edge of the vanity tightly while the bathroom’s reflection blurred behind her, trying to hold on to her sanity.

The thought was solid with conviction.

But it had to be her, because there was no one else it could be.

Cold chills raced down her spine at the thought.
Cue the spooky music.
As she stared in growing horror at the woman in the mirror, she realized that she was breathing hard enough so that her throat ached, and she was going all light-headed and woozy and weak in the knees again. A little more shock to the system, she thought grimly, and she was liable to hyperventilate and pass out right there on Dottie and her crotchety roommate’s bathroom floor.

“Katharine Lawrence, please check in at the nearest nurses’ station. Katharine Lawrence . . .”

Booming over the PA system, the announcement was repeated twice. Katharine only needed to hear it once.

Her heart lurched. Her stomach dropped like she was on an elevator in free fall. The hair on the back of her neck leaped to tingly attention.

The hunt was on.

Okay, put the kibosh on the incipient panic attack. Whoever she was, whatever was going on with this whole body-switching thing, she was going to have to sort it out later. What she needed to do now was lose the IV, find some clothes, and get her newly skinny, newly blond ass out of the hospital.

Fast. Before the people who were looking for her found her.

Because no matter who she was, she still had the feeling that being found by them would be a really, really bad thing.

Her gaze lit on the tall silver pole looming beside her. New BFFs or not, there was no doubt about it: The IV had to go.

Wrenching her eyes away from the horror in the mirror, she looked down at her arm. And never mind that now that she knew it belonged to somebody else, she saw instantly that it was too tan, too thin, too elegant to have ever been hers. Later, she could freak out. Now, she just had to get herself—or whoever—out of harm’s way. A piece of surgical tape secured the clear plastic tubing to her elbow. Beneath the tape, she knew a needle was inserted into her vein.

This she knew. This was her. But this was also no time to be squeamish. Peeling off the tape, ignoring the churning in her stomach and the sweat that popped out on her forehead, she gritted her teeth and gently
—ouch—
pulled out the needle. A single drop of blood bubbled up in its wake. Fighting a battle with incipient nausea—obviously, she wasn’t a big fan of blood, either—she grabbed a tissue and pressed it to the wound. After a moment, the bleeding stopped, and she threw the tissue away.

Yay.
She was free of her best buddy the pole. Next up: clothes. Leaving the bathroom—

“Dottie, is that you?”

“Uh—she’s not back yet.”

She stealthily crossed to the closet and opened the door . . .

“Oh, I forgot about you. What’re you, one of her daughters?”

“Yes.”

... to find clothes. To wit, a short-sleeved blouse, dark, probably navy or black, with big pink flowers splashed all over it, and a pair of dark polyester slacks.

“Which one?”

“Uh, the oldest.”

Ignoring the neatly folded panties and the bra laid out on the top shelf—no way was she wearing another woman’s undergarments, and, besides, the bra cups were so big and firm that they stood up on their own, rising like twin Mount Everests—she pulled the hospital gown over her head . . .

“Sandy?”

“Uh-huh.”

. . . tossed it as far back along the overhead shelf as it would go . . .

“Well, that’s good, ’cause I was wanting to ask you where you got that angel cake you brought in yesterday. It was
good.”

. . . and hurriedly dressed in the absent Dottie’s clothes. The blouse could have fit three of her inside it; the elastic-waist pants were instant low-riders. If she took a deep breath, she had a feeling they would be gone.

The PA system crackled to life again: “Katharine Lawrence, please report to the nearest nurses’ station. Katharine Lawrence, we have an urgent phone call for you. Please report to the nurses’ station immediately.”

Her heart thundered.

“Sandy? The angel cake?”

“CVS.” There were flat-heeled black shoes on the closet floor. Hurriedly sliding her feet into them—they were a little short and a little wide, but if she curled her toes, they’d do—she headed toward the door.

“CVS? They have a bakery?” The old lady sounded confused. As well she might, since CVS was a chain of pharmacies.

“Some of them do.” Katharine listened intently at the door, heard nothing, and gave it up. She needed to go
now,
while they were still hoping she was going to turn herself in to a nurses’ station. “I think I’ll just go check on Mom. See you later.”

“Bring some of that cake next time, would you?”

“Sure. Bye.”

Slipping through the door, she tried to look nonchalant. Which wasn’t easy when her heart was beating a mile a minute and her pants felt like they might take a dive with each and every step and her cramped toes were already killing her. To say nothing of the fact that her legs felt about as solid as limp spaghetti and her head was swimming and the only way she was getting any air was through her mouth. The elevator was, she thought, her best bet, because the stairwell was too obvious and too easy to monitor. What she wanted to do was blend, blend, blend.

The hallway was even busier than before, which was a good thing, she told herself firmly. Smoothing her unfamiliar hair with her hands—she’d forgotten what a mess it was until she caught a glimpse of it in a shiny brass doorplate that read
staff only—
she kept her face averted from the nurses’ station as she shuffled in the wake of an orderly pushing a man in a wheelchair toward the elevators. Not that they were likely to be circulating a wanted poster of her or anything
—yet—
but still her bandaged nose might, she felt, attract attention if, by some miracle, her hobbling gait did not. And attention was the very last thing she needed or wanted just at that moment.