After She's Gone (West Coast 3)

He smiled a bit. “With marshmallows.”

“Definitely. Oh, and Steven, how did you get Doctor Sherling’s phone?”

“I have keys to all the rooms. All the lockers. All the doors. All the cupboards.”

“How?”

He hesitated. “Sometimes Elmo’s not so careful.”

Elmo was in charge of maintenance. Cassie had seen him play chess with Rinko. Once in a while, he even won.

Then again, maybe he never had. Maybe Rinko had lost on purpose. Cassie wouldn’t put it past the kid.

Before she put the car into gear, Cassie finally asked Rinko one last question. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

He stared at her and said, “Because you didn’t ask.”

Then he took off, keeping near the shrubbery, sprinting through the wet grass and up the steps to the side of the building where he disappeared and, presumably, crept inside the same way he’d exited minutes before.

“How did you know he’d be out here?” Cassie asked.

“I saw him peeking through the same door he’d come through before, around the corner from the receptionist, not visible in any mirrors or cameras, I’m guessing. Maybe he’s fixed it so that he can use it at will. He didn’t even poke his head through, just stared at me through the crack when it was ajar and pointed toward the front door. I figured he’d find us if we went outside. He’s clever and seems to be able to get where he wants to without being seen.”

“A ghost,” she said, backing out of the parking spot and driving away from the hospital.

“Why’s he in here?”

“He slips in and out of reality and gets violent, I guess. No one really knows. His family has a lot of money. I think a wing of the hospital is named after his grandfather, but whatever happened to him, it had to have been really bad.” She looked in her rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the hospital, white bricks and pillared porch visible in the gloom of the dark day.

For a second she thought she saw someone standing off to the side of the porch, a dark figure half-hidden in the thick rhododendrons and staring down the drive, watching her leave.

She blinked and the figure was gone. Uneasy, she convinced herself she’d been mistaken, had only seen a shadow in the thick foliage flanking the hospital. There had been nothing sinister lurking in the wet umbra, just her mind playing tricks on her.

Even with Trent sitting close enough to touch, she couldn’t wait to pass through the gates guarding the grounds and drive away from Mercy Hospital. Whether in her imagination or not, she believed evil lurked within its hallowed walls.

“Shane Carter wants to see me?” Nash asked into her cell phone as she threw her keys onto the desk in her den. She checked the time. Eight thirty-seven PM. The house was empty. Cold. More of a mausoleum than a home. And it was all hers. Every last slab of Carrera marble, every glossy plank of Brazilian hardwood, every glass tile in the pool and every one of five—count ’em, five—sports cars parked in the six bays of the garage. All hers. The final bay was proud home to the car she drove, her beloved Ford Focus. Everything else had, until recently, been owned by her stepmother, the ultimate collector of things. Now, thank you very much, Edwina Maria Phillips Rolland Nash, they all belonged to Rhonda.

And all of it, aside from some of the bottles in the wine cellar and the Ford of course, was for sale.

God, she hated this place.

“That’s right,” Double T was confirming. “Not only Carter, but Cassie Kramer and her husband want a sit-down.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Guess we’ll find out.”

“Guess we will. What time?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Four.”

“Works for me. It’ll give me time to pull some things together.” She hung up and felt better. Things were looking up. And the real estate agent had called saying she had an offer on this place. She went to the wine cellar, half a flight down to a climate-controlled room behind thick glass, and pulled out a bottle from Edwina’s selection. A Pinot Gris. Good enough. She had no idea what the wine was worth, only that she was going to carry it upstairs to her bedroom, open the bottle, and sip the wine in the bathtub with its amazing view of Portland. That luxury, she would miss. The rest of it, not at all.

She stripped, put on a robe, and added bubble bath to the tub. Picked up in Paris by Edwina a decade earlier, the soap was mild and non-stinging as if for a child, yet exotic and smelling of lavender. To top off her ritual Nash poured herself a glass of wine and paused to light a candle, as she did every night.

“Mommy misses you,” she whispered, but didn’t cry as the tiny flame flickered.

She slipped into the warm water and closed her eyes. She thought briefly of her child. This was the one time of day when she allowed herself a few minutes to remember her baby’s curly hair, blue, blue eyes, and soft giggle. If she thought hard enough, she could recall the smell of her, the oh so softness of skin. Tears pulled at the back of her eyes but she would no longer cry.