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“I’m sorry to hear that. She has so much to share, and she’s such a gifted doctor.”

“She is a dear, isn’t she?” Barrie gushed. She had a view of Gray’s back. He was hunched over a desk. Had he found a computer terminal?

“What’s all that?” The nurse indicated Barrie’s heavy shoulder bag.

“Research materials I’m gathering for Dr. Hadley.”

“All that?”

“Uh, yeah, and, well, I can’t go anywhere without my, uh, Slim-Fast. I never leave the house with less than two cans, just in case. Always an extra pair of shoes. I have awful bunions. Magazines. You know, stuff. My husband teases me about my stuff all the time.”

“Weren’t you assigned a locker downstairs?”

“Yeah, but the gizmo thing…” She pantomimed working a combination lock. “I couldn’t get it to work. Until I get the hang of it, I thought I’d better cart this crap around with me.”

Nurse Linda Arnold tilted her head. “You look familiar to me, but I can’t quite place you.”

She recognizes me from TV!

“Where did you work before you became Dr. Hadley’s assistant?”

“Oh, a zillion places. I get bored with the same old job, so I sort of, you know, go with the flow.” Behind the nurse, Gray was giving her a thumbs-up. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to meander around and try to get my bearings.”

“Can I help you—”

“No, no, I do better when I learn my way alone.” She laughed. “I already know not to take that creaky old elevator again.”

“Excuse me?”

Gray had approached them and tapped Linda Arnold on the shoulder. She turned to him. “Are you the one who called for the light bulb to be changed?”

“No. It wasn’t me.”

“Must’ve been the third floor. I thought she said second. Sorry.” He doffed his cap and headed back to the staircase.

By the time Nurse Linda Arnold turned back around, Barrie had slipped out of sight.

* * *

“They’re not there.”

The report came back to the main man via one of his dour sidekicks, the one who’d so viciously ended Dolly’s brief life. It had taken them an hour and a half to “find” the motel.

“This is it,” Daily said, wheezing hard. “I’m sure of it. The Washington Inn. Room one-twenty-two.”

“There’s a teamster in there, mad as hell ’cause I woke him up,” the agent said, glaring at Daily.

“I don’t get it,” he said, looking helplessly from one to the other. “She said she was meeting Bondurant here tonight.”

“You dropped her in a parking garage, didn’t you?”

“How’d you guys know that?”

“Where was she going?”

“Here! That’s what she told me, anyway. Swear to God. I was supposed to drive around with the dummy and be her decoy.”

“This is bullshit,” one of them said. “He’s been jerking us around all this time.”