drew into a flat line as she sank down opposite him, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. She grinned at him, though the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Okay, Bwana. Teach me how to investigate.”
Rathe frowned but didn’t argue. During the long night, he’d acknowledged he would have to teach her some basic survival skills, since she seemed determined to see this through. He would walk her through a safely edited version of an in-hospital covert job, and try like hell to convince her it wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. He just couldn’t picture her in the Investigations Division, all five-foot-something of her pitted against the ugliness that lurked beneath the underbelly of the medical community.
Why? He wanted to ask. Why are you so set on investigations? Your father would’ve hated it. You could be hurt. Killed. Why?
But that was personal, not business. So instead he pushed a sheet of paper across the table to her. “Let’s start with the laundry room. Why did you follow those men out to the loading dock?”
“What’s this?” She picked up the paper, scanned its contents and answered her own question, “It’s the pickup timetable for the linens. There was a team scheduled for the one-to-three shift the other morning.” She glanced up at him. “Why wasn’t this information in our background packets?”
Rathe shrugged. “Who knows? I copied it from the schedule in the maintenance office…” among other things that she didn’t need to know about. He would tell her enough to do her part of the job and no more. He’d pass along enough to satisfy her, plus a little disinformation to keep her away from the dangerous parts.
Though the case seemed simple on the surface, Rathe had a feeling it was anything but.
“So how do you explain the bed and all the equipment we saw in that so-called laundry van?”
“I didn’t see it.” When she raised an eyebrow, he shrugged. “I didn’t get there until after the door was shut.”
There was no need to tell her that he’d been nearly panic-stricken to see the tiny, furtive figure of a woman heading for the departing van. In an instant he’d been back in the Tehruvian jungle, seeing Maria wave from a rebel army transport.
And that was before he’d realized the shadow in the laundry room belonged to Nadia French.
“Why were you there, anyway? We weren’t supposed to start work until later that morning.” She pursed her lips and blew across the top of her coffee. Sipped. Swallowed.
Rathe looked away. He had to keep this professional. Mentor and student. Senior and junior. The way it should have been from the very first day he’d noticed his best friend’s daughter watching him from the beachfront stairs.
“I was looking around,” he replied, not mentioning the gut feeling that had drawn him down to the subbasement. He tapped the paper that now lay on the table between them. “Unless you have a compelling reason why you followed those two, I think we should move on.” Rather, she should move on and leave the subbasement to him.
“You’re going to disregard what I saw in the van?” Her fingers tightened enough to dent the cardboard cup.
“No.” Rathe shook his head. “Not disregard. File and continue.” He held up a finger. “Rule one—Don’t fall in love with your own theory. When that happens, you’ll overlook clues that don’t fit.”
He waited for the argument, but she surprised him by nodding. She sipped, then gestured to encompass the hospital. “It’s like making a diagnosis. Don’t pick a disease until you’ve gathered all the facts.”
“Right. Only, think of the entire hospital, or maybe the Transplant Department, as the patient. As a doctor, you’re already used to that sort of investigation. This is simply on a grander scale.” A more dangerous one, though he was determined not to let her experience that firsthand. In the wee hours of the morning, when he’d tried to catnap in the basement break room, he’d decided on that course, with one addition: he was going to do his damnedest to convince her that HFH in general—and investigations in particular—wasn’t for her.
It was what Tony would’ve wanted him to do.
“So our symptoms are as follows,” she began, ticking the points off on her fingers. “First, there’s an increase in transplant deaths. Second, supply shortages are reported to Transplant Director Talbot and Assistant Director Hart.”
Rathe thought she might have lingered on the second man’s name and he scowled. That was another thing about working with women. They couldn’t keep their minds on business.
She blew on her coffee again, and Rathe forced himself to glance around the near-empty café. They weren’t being overheard. And he was a hypocrite, watching her make love to a cardboard cup while he preached to himself about women and their inability to focus on the job.
He gritted his teeth and gestured for her to continue.
“They’re missing antirejection drugs. Suture kits. That sort of thing.” Another finger joined the first two. “And third, I saw two men leave Transplant with a full laundry cart, even though the linens hadn’t been changed out. They loaded the cart into a van rigged with life support and then…” She glared at him. “Thanks to you, I don’t know what happened to the hamper from there.”
Annoyed, Rathe fired back, “Thanks to me, you didn’t break your neck trying some damn fool stunt in an attempt to—” He stopped himself. “Never mind. We’ve already covered that and you promised not to go down there again without me.” He fixed her with a look. “Right?”
“Sure. Whatever.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m scheduled to observe a rare-type kidney transplant in a little less than an hour. If we’re done here, I’m going up to my office to read over the rest of the material Talbot left for me.”
Done? They hadn’t even started yet, but Rathe didn’t argue the point. It was probably a good thing their covers would keep them separated for the most part. At night he could investigate the depths of the hospital, where he was positive the real machinations were occurring. During the day, he could keep watch over her and make sure she didn’t get too close to the danger he could feel fermenting below the surface of this case.
And sleep? He’d never needed much of that. Like Tony had always said, I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead.
“Dream well, old friend,” Rathe murmured to himself, forgetting for the moment that Tony’s daughter sat opposite him.
“What was that?”
Rathe shook his head. “Nothing.” He stood. “We’ll meet after the transplant, compare notes and divvy up which one of us will follow which line of inquiry. That’ll save us from duplicating efforts.” And allow him to keep her on the outskirts of the heavy lifting.
“Fine.” She tipped her head, considering. “But we shouldn’t meet in public again. It would look strange, don’t you think?”
Irritated that he hadn’t thought of that first, which just went to show that mixed-sex partnerships were needlessly distracting, Rathe scowled. “You’re right. There’s no reason for a visiting lecturer to socialize with a janitor.” He tried not to let their respective roles annoy him, but Jack Wainwright had no doubt laughed long and loud when he’d decided on their cover stories.
Rathe
