over Denley’s experience. “Trust me. That wasn’t the plan. He’s after Olivia. I want a guard posted by her hospital room.”
“Budget—”
“Frank’ll be glad for the overtime.” Frank Brandt was young and eager, even if inexperienced. He liked to relax at the local martial arts dojo and his edge wasn’t yet donut dimmed. Denley opened his mouth, but before a word could spit out, Sebastian repeated, “Send me the bill.” Let Sutton choke. Danger wouldn’t flirt any closer to Olivia than it already had.
Sebastian strode toward the edge of the road.
“Hey,” Denley called, “where do you think you’re going?”
“Looking for evidence.”
“You’ll mess up the scene.”
Like that was going to make a difference with the way the EMTs had trampled it to rescue Olivia. “He already has a warrant out on him for the murder of two marshals. Whatever evidence I find here won’t change anything.” Cutting down the timeline was more important than preserving this scene—a scene that would melt away before morning. Sebastian headed into the fog that covered the black hole where Olivia’s car had plunged.
Denley shone his flashlight at him. “You should get to your wife.”
“If I don’t catch this puke, he’ll go after her again.”
“He might not have anything to do with this. There’s deer tracks. The road’s slippery. On a night like this, could be just an accident.”
No, Sebastian didn’t believe in coincidence. Not with someone as determined as Kershaw. “What if he did? You don’t want that on your conscience. To get what he wants, he’ll go through anything and anyone. He’s armed. He’s motivated. He has nothing to lose.”
“Getting aggressive and imaginative at this time of the night won’t help you collar your mutt.”
Aggressive and imaginative—cop-talk for breaking the law. This was for Olivia. He’d get as aggressive and as imaginative as it took to bring down Kershaw.
IGNORING THE BEEPER vibrating at his belt, Sebastian placed a call. Working alone, he’d woven a wide network of contacts. The best way to information was knowing who to tap.
“Felicia?” a sleepy voice greeted Sebastian on the other end of the line as he paced the hospital’s emergency-room waiting area.
Officially, Aurora Cates was a librarian. But her real persona was information specialist. Why she hid her true calling was a mystery—one that was none of his business. Five years ago, he’d accidentally discovered that if he needed a fact, any fact—obtained legally—Rory Cates could dig it up. Best of all, she could do it efficiently and discreetly.
“Sebastian Falconer.”
“Falconer?” He heard the rustling of bed sheets. “Do you know what time it is?”
He glanced at his watch. Where had the time gone?
“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” Rory informed him. “What could be so important at this time of the night?”
“I need information.”
“I figured that much.”
Sebastian swallowed around the knot in his throat. “Information on coma.”
“Coma?”
His strictest rule was to never mix business and pleasure. That’s why he’d never asked Rory why she was hiding in a library when her skills were better suited elsewhere. Business took place on one level; personal life on another. Few people knew where he lived, that he was married or anything about his background. Safer that way, he’d thought. Kershaw had proved him wrong. “My wife was in an accident.”
“Wife? You’re married? How long?”
“Ten years.”
“And I’m just finding out now?” Her laugh was a bird-song. “If I need a secret kept, I know where to go.”
Mixing both planes of his life was as awkward as doing surveillance in a snake pit, but Kershaw had smashed those boundaries. “Who’s Felicia?”
“My sister.” Rory sighed, and Sebastian heard the frazzled threads of a knotted relationship. “I haven’t heard from her in a while and I’m worried.”
“She’d call you this early?”
“This late. Yeah. I’d take her call anytime, though.” The click of a pen. The shredding of a sheet of paper. Change of subject. Just as well, chitchat wasn’t his forte. “What do you need?”
“Anything you can dig up on coma and brain damage. Recovery.” The word tasted dry and made him wince.
“Jeez, Falconer,” Rory said as she scribbled down what he’d told her. “I’m really sorry. I hope she’s all right. She has to be a saint to put up with someone like you.” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’ll see what I can find for you.”
Not a saint, but his angel. “Thanks, I’ll owe you.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
AS SEBASTIAN WAS disconnecting, the emergency-entrance doors burst open and his sister-in-law strode in like a witch riding a twig broom. Her ICBM-like gaze zeroed in on him. He didn’t stand a chance, so he braced for the blow.
“Why wasn’t I called immediately?” Her question screeched across the room, making the nurses at the desk look up. Her bottle blond hair bobbed with every laser-sure step in his direction.
“I’m just coming up for air myself.”
One of Paula’s hands beat the air like a conductor gone mad. “For hours no one answered the blasted phone. I was going out of my mind. Then I had to find out about Olivia from that man.”
That man being Mario Menard, the Aerie’s groundskeeper and handyman. That man was even now installing another layer of protection to keep Paula’s baby sister safe. Sebastian couldn’t figure out if she treated Mario like a nonentity because he was the hired help or because he was always polite to her even when she was giving him her best impression of a third-degree black belt witch. The situation only seemed to get worse after the bankruptcy and suicide of Paula’s husband and Paula had to get a job.
“You were next on my list, Paula,” he said gently. After all, Paula had raised Olivia. Paula had been more of a mother to Olivia than their own mother, who hadn’t wanted the burden of a menopause baby.
“Next? I should have been first. What happened? How is she? When can I take her home?”
“Whoa, there.” He put up both hands against her verbal assault. “She’s coming home with me where she belongs.”
Paula’s eyes narrowed to barbed slits. “She’s coming home with me. We both know she was leaving you. That’s where she was going at that ungodly hour. To my home. Away from you. I figured you were giving her a hard time and that’s
