to blot out the hated face, she struggled to pull into a fetal position. She should protect her stomach. Her stepfather, Candido, was very likely to kick again. The effort brought a wave of nausea.
“You probably shouldn’t move.”
That wasn’t right. The voice—a man’s—was soft like Candido Branco’s but it was full of concern, not lust, not anger. She felt, instead, her father’s presence. The man who had loved her, whom she had adored and who had died so unfairly. Way too soon, and in a stupid, meaningless accident.
Nova forced her eyes open. Saw pale yellow walls. But not her father. She saw the face of the Alyeska man.
A great sadness of loss tightened her chest—through the years that crushing weight had caught her many times and she was always unprepared for it. She would never stop missing her father.
And then suddenly relief washed over her in a warm flood. The terror wasn’t real. Childhood fears could be pushed again to the depth of her mind.
She sat up and the Alyeska—what was his name? Yes, Duncan—scooted so he could support her back.
“Do you feel dizzy?” a male attendant in white asked her.
Her struggle with the assailant flashed in front of her in all its violence. God in heaven, she’d blown it! She looked at Duncan. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“The assassin!”
“He ran out that way.” Duncan pointed down the hall to her right. “Stivsky and Jacobson and your partner went after him.”
The throbbing at the back of her head was growing hard to ignore. She put her hand to it. Mistake. Her palm came away covered with blood. Her skin crawled.
The attendant put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “You should sit a bit longer. Are you sure you don’t feel dizzy? Someone’s getting a nurse and a wheelchair.”
Sitting like a slaughtered lamb with an audience to observe her humiliation was unbearable. She put her bloodied hand to the floor, pulled her legs under her till she was on all fours and, feeling like a defeated prize-fighter, began to rise. The attendant and Duncan rushed to take an arm each. A wave of dizziness left her swaying.
She clenched her fists. The dizziness receded, but the pain in her psyche did not. God help her, she’d blown it. The others simply had to catch the assassin. She’d still have to face her failure, but at least the Company would have a critical lead. The worst thing she could imagine now was that the assassin had killed both witnesses and then escaped.
Maybe I was overconfident. Maybe afraid. Her psyche took another blow. It was true. There at that critical moment, fear had ruined her concentration. But the man had been so strangely, weirdly strong.
A woman handed her a white towel. “For your head,” she said. Nova put the towel to the throbbing spot, then checked for damage. There had to be blood all over the back of her head, and a generous smear of bright red indicated she was still bleeding. A nurse arrived, pushing a wheelchair. “Let me take a look at that,” she said in a cheery voice as she took the towel from Nova’s hand. “Mmm. We’re going to need stitches. Come along, sit down, and I’ll take you to the emergency room.”
“First I need to check what’s happened upstairs.” Nova pressed the elevator button.
The nurse frowned. “You need to come to the ER with me. A doctor must check you out. You can’t just start wandering around.”
The lady in white was missing the point. “I’m still on the job. First I have to check upstairs. Duncan, you explain to her.”
Most of her spectators had wandered off. Only the male attendant, Duncan and the nurse stood gaping at her as though she were a sideshow freak. Mercifully, anger finally kicked in and pushed out her anguish. No use lamenting what she couldn’t change.
What she could hope was that he’d failed. And hopefully she’d find the witnesses still alive.
At the fifth-floor nurses’ station, a rain-drenched Joe was handed a towel by three nurses who informed him that both the terrorist and pipeline employee were dead, as were the two guards, that the desk nurse had merely been knocked unconscious, that the candy striper would probably never recover from what she’d seen, and that his partner was having her head stapled by Dr. Graywing in the third room down the hall, on his left.
He thanked them, gave them a warm smile, then headed down the hall.
When he knocked on the door, Graywing called, “Come in.”
Nova Blair sat on an examining table, her back to the door and her head tilted slightly down so the long hair draped her face. Dr. Graywing was daubing the back of Blair’s head with gauze.
At the sight of the wound, his anger rekindled. He was angry that by bad fortune Nova Blair had been the one to pursue the assassin. “Legendary,” his phone contact had said. Legendary for what? He moved to the other side of the room so he could see their faces.
“The assassin’s dead,” he said. “Suicide capsule I’d guess.”
His partner didn’t say anything.
Graywing shook her head and said, “Ghastly.”
“How’s your head?” he said to Blair.
Without moving she said, “It’s nothing.”
Graywing clucked. “Not so. It is a deep, two-inch long scalp wound. She insists she won’t remain here for observation, but I’ve told her for the next twenty-four hours she must look out for signs of concussion. Drowsiness or nausea.”
“How’d it happen?”
Blair shrugged. “I took the elevator and managed to beat him to the first floor, but I couldn’t hold him.” She spoke softly, her answer dragging like a whipped dog. Very unlike the confident woman he’d met a couple of hours ago.
“I suppose he just barged right past you?”
Nova Blair raised her chin slowly. She straightened her shoulders and her hair fell back from her face. “There was a bit more to it than that.” Her eyes had taken on a glacial, emerald chill.
He stuck his hands into his soggy suit pockets. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that quite like it sounded.”
“Yes, you did. Exactly like it sounded.” She lowered her head again and Graywing clamped another staple. A sickening sound. He was glad he couldn’t see what the doctor was doing. His partner said, almost as if to herself, “There was something bizarre about him. I’ve never felt that kind of strength in any man.”
A loud silence followed, as if the room was holding its breath. Agent Blair finally broke it. “You were telling us, Dr. Graywing, before we heard the screams, that there were three things Wiley said. First, that the terrorists had gas masks. Second, that Wiley smelled burning coffee. We’d like to hear the third. Agent Cardone, you’ll find my recorder inside my purse, on top. What was the third thing, Dr. Graywing?”
The doctor let her gloved hands hover in the air a moment, obviously thinking,
