Manhunt in the Wild West. Jessica Andersen
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who’d lost his.
“Jerry’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked softly.
She remembered the gunshot, remembered him falling, even remembered him lying in the van, limp in death, but a piece of her didn’t want to accept that he was gone. She wanted to believe he’d been stunned like she’d been. Not dead. Not Jerry, with his cold nose and ski-bunny girlfriend.
But Tucker shook his head, expression full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”
Chelsea closed her eyes, grief beating at her alongside guilt. She should’ve done something different. If she hadn’t been staring at Fairfax, she might’ve been quicker to recognize that there was a problem with the delivery. She might’ve been able to—
“Don’t,” Tucker said. “You’ll only make yourself crazy trying to ‘what if’ this. If you’d done something different, they probably would’ve killed you, too.”
“They did, sort of,” Chelsea whispered, her breath burning her throat with unshed tears.
Tucker shifted, pulled out his handheld, which acted as both computer and cell phone. “You okay if I record this?”
She nodded. “Of course.” No doubt she’d have to go through her statement over and over again with a variety of cops and agents, but this first time she’d rather talk to Tucker than anyone else.
Haltingly at first, she told him what had happened, her words coming easier once she got started, then flowing torrentlike when she described waking up in the van and realizing she’d been kidnapped by the escapees, followed by Fairfax’s strange actions. She kept it facts only, reporting what he’d done and said, and figuring she’d leave it to Tucker and the others to draw their own conclusions.
When she was done, she glanced at Tucker and was unsurprised to see a concerned frown on his face.
“That sounds…”
“Bizarre,” she filled in for him. “Like something from a not-very-believable action movie. I know. But that’s what happened.”
He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. Or rather, he probably believed that she believed what she was saying, but thought her so-called memories were more along the lines of drug-induced hallucinations shaped by her penchant for spy movies that always included at least one double agent and a couple of twists.
Then again, she thought with a start, what if he was right? She felt terrible that she’d been paying more attention to Fairfax’s butt than to her job and the potential security risks, opening the way for Jerry’s murder. What if her subconscious had taken that guilt and woven a fantasy that cast the object of her attraction as a hero, making her lapse, if not acceptable, then at least less reprehensible?
“Maybe I’m not remembering correctly,” she said after a moment.
“The info about Rickey Charles fits,” Tucker said, though he still sounded pretty dubious. “He was found dead in his holding cell this morning.”
Chelsea sat up so fast her head spun. “He what?”
Tucker winced. “I should’ve phrased that better. Sorry, I went into cop-talking-to-ME mode and forgot you knew him.”
“What did he—” Chelsea broke off, not sure how she was supposed to feel. She hadn’t cared for Rickey and couldn’t forgive that he’d apparently made some sort of deal with the escapees, but she wouldn’t have wished him dead under any circumstance.
“It was murder concocted to look like a suicide,” Tucker said succinctly. “I guess, based on what you just told me about what the driver said to you out on the loading dock, that Rickey was supposed to have signed off on the bodies, delaying discovery of the switch. When he turned up in the holding cell instead, someone working for al-Jihad killed him either to punish him or to shut him up, or both.”
Which would mean that someone in the PD—or at least someone with access to the overnight holding cells—was on the terrorists’ payroll, Chelsea thought. She didn’t say it aloud, though, because the possibility was too awful to speak.
Tucker nodded, though. “Yeah. Big problem. That’s why I’m here.”
He hadn’t stayed with her strictly to keep her company, she realized. He’d stayed because the BCCPD had figured it might not be a coincidence that the ME who’d missed his shift that morning had wound up dead. Tucker’s bosses—and her own—thought she might be at risk, that whoever had killed Rickey might go after her next, looking to silence her before she told the cops anything that might help lead them to the escapees.
Except she didn’t know anything that would help, did she?
“Don’t worry,” Tucker said, correctly interpreting her fears. “We’re keeping the story as quiet as possible, and letting the media think you’re dead, too. If the escapees are following the news, they have no reason to think you’re alive.”
Unless Fairfax had told them for some reason. But why would he, when he’d been the one to save her?
She didn’t know who to trust, or what to believe, and the confusion made her head spin.
She sank back against the thin hospital pillow, noticing for the first time that she was wearing nothing but a hospital johnnie and a layer of bedclothes. “Can I—” she faltered as the world she knew seemed to skew beneath her, tilting precariously. “Can I get dressed and get out of here?”
His expression went sympathetic. “Yeah, you’re cleared…medically, anyway. Since your purse was still at the office, Sara used your key to grab clothes, shoes and a jacket for you, along with a few toiletries.” He gestured. “They’re in the bathroom, along with your purse. The keys are in it.”
He didn’t offer to help her, which told her it was a test: if she couldn’t make it to the bathroom and get herself dressed unassisted, she was staying in the hospital until she could.
She’d been telling the truth, though. She felt fantastic—physically, anyway—and was able to make it to the small restroom and get dressed without any trouble.
In the midst of pulling on her shirt, she paused and frowned in confusion when she saw that there wasn’t any discernible mark where the injection had gone into her arm. He’d jammed the tip of that ampoule in hard enough that it should’ve left a mark. Did that mean it hadn’t happened the way she remembered?
It didn’t take too many minutes of staring at her own reflection in the mirror for her to conclude that she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to figure it out standing in a hospital bathroom. She emerged to find Tucker waiting for her, with his cell phone pressed to his ear.
“You shouldn’t be on that thing in here,” she said automatically, her med-school training kicking in even though the actual risk was relatively minor.
“I’m off,” he said, flipping the phone shut and dropping it in his pocket. “You ready to go?” He indicated the door with a sweep of his hand.
He didn’t offer to let her in on the phone call that’d been so important he’d broken hospital rules to take it, but his eyes suggested it was something about her, or the escapees.
Have you caught them? she wanted to ask, but didn’t because she feared it would come out sounding as though she hoped the men were still at large. Not that she did—her terrifying ordeal had more than convinced her that al-Jihad, Muhammad Feyd and Lee Mawadi were monsters who didn’t even deserve the benefit of an autopsy.
“The man who helped me, or who I think helped me, anyway…that was Jonah Fairfax, right?” she couldn’t help asking.
She hadn’t wanted to say too much about him, lest Tucker read too much into her words. But it wasn’t like she was going to be able to ask anyone else either.
After a long moment, he inclined his head. “Yeah. The description fits.”
“Have